Free Essays,College Free Essays,Free College Essays at Anti Essays

The national energy program

The 1970s were a difficult economical period for the young developing country of Canada. During that period the oil prices were at its peak, and other economic problems were beginning to manifesting themselves. Unemployment was epidemic in the eastern provinces where the Trudeau government had much of its political support. (Edward A p12). Hence for the Prime minister wanted to help the eastern part by the means of controlling prices of oil on the west, introducing the national energy program. When Trudeau enacted The National Energy Program (NEP) it was initially intended to prosper Canadian economy by selling cheap oil. In fact, the “NEP” has imposed many western businesses to go bankrupt, provoked rebellious and separatist mood for the West, and degraded Canada to purchasing expensive oil from Norway, establishing a noticeable change to the Canadian identity.
The National Energy Program has demitted Alberta’s opportunity to make profit of selling its oil throughout the momentum of high oil prices thus making many businesses go bankrupt. The National Energy Program was active for five years which were amongst the most expensive for oil prices on record. The prices on oil through that period were “roughly speaking” double of the original as the demand on oil was enormous worldwide. To the contrary of making profit, the government kept all of it domestic oil prices below world market prices, essentially mandating Alberta’s generosity and subsidizing all Canadian consumers of fuel, all at Alberta's expense. As a result many residents of Alberta that were working on oil companies were left unemployed due to the fact that a significant number of oil companies left the province of Alberta. It was estimated by various scholars that Alberta has lost an enormous amount between $50 billion and $100 billion due to the enactment of NEP.( Statistics Canada 2006), The budget of the province was exhausting as there was nobody...