As Im sure many of you know, oil prices are through the roof. I personally dont mind this...it will encourage people to use public transit and to walk or bike places instead of drive.

However, what I DONT like is that oil companies are recording record profits while they say the price increase is just "supply and demand".

Here's my solution. I think NAFTA should be renegociated, and canadian oil should be nationalized. Did you know that according to NAFTA, our oil is guaranteed to the United States before us? Thats right: If someday oil is so scarce and expensive that people cant even heat there homes, Canada still has to supply a steady flow of oil to the US. And ever wondered why, if Canada has so much oil and so few consumers, we still pay alot more for it than americans do? Again, this is because of NAFTA, and its the same for all of our natural ressources.

As for the oil companies, I think we should give them the boot, establish a national canadian oil company (what Petro-Canada used to be before Mulroney sold it: stupid move), and take back the oil that rightfully belongs to us. You know those billions of dollars of profit oil companies are making off the tar sands? That money could be put into health-care and education, or we could do away with profit and reduce the price of gas.

Any other ideas for how to reduce the price of gas?

People always say Americans are paying so much more for gas, but Google tells me otherwise... is it doing it wrong? I'm too lazy to do the conversion for myself lol. A quick google search shows New York gas prices are approaching $5 USD / gallon. Google says this is pretty close to what we're paying now.

http://www.google.com/search?client=...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

I'm *really* in favour of nationalizing Canada's oil industry and it would help considerably, also if I'm not mistaken nationalization is the only requirement Canada does not meet in order to join OPEC

What do you mean by nationalizing, KaesoPublius?

Run by government or run by one MNC?

Nationalizing as in the Government of Canada would create a crown corporation to run the Canadian oil-gas industry, essentially the government would have total control over it instead of independant oil tycoons and multi national corporations.

It would be similar to other crown corporations like Hydro One (Ontario), LCBO (Ontario), Via-Rail (Canada) and stuff like that.

Ohhh. Gotcha.

So why are you in favour of it...and what is OPEC?

Well personally I feel that by giving direct control of oil and gas to the government it will be more directly controlled by the people and its revenues would also go into government coffers to cover social programming and the costs of the oil industry, cutting prices.

The counter argument made by Liberatarians is that keeping oil/gas on the open market should theoretically drive down prices through competition, but it's obviously not working.

And OPEC is the group of the world's top oil producing countries, they have a heavy hand in setting prices and production rates. Quite powerful people. For more info at a glance I'd recommend looking them up on wikipedia

I personally support nationalising it mainly based on of principle. Private corperations (most fo which are american) are essentially raping our land and ressources for profit.

Oil and natural ressources should not be the property of private enitities. They are the rightful property of the people of Canada. We have allowed globalist corperations to come into our country, steal our ressources, and take them back to the US, while leaving us with some measly royalties.

We are essentially allowing ourselves to be the slaves of the corperations and the americans. Not only do they consume most of our oil, ensuring we have to pay high prices for it, but they are also making record profits off of it. None of this helps, we, the rightful owners of the oil.

Venezuala has done it, and despite Chavez's misgivings, his government coffers are overflowing with money and he has put in place expensive social programs that have reduced poverty in his country.

Russia has done it, and they are once again on the economic rise...but only after Putin nationalised oil and rejected Yeltsin's neoliberal policies.

Basically, nationalisation allows the whole country to share the profits of natural ressource production, rather than a select few foreign corperations.