Tag: canada

Going to Mesh!

Post ImageDickson and I recently registered for Mesh, Canada’s first ever Web 2.0 conference taking place in Toronto on May 15th and 16th. The organizers already have an impressive list of guests and speakers, so I am really looking forward to it.

Canada needs a conference like mesh. Web 2.0 is happening all around us, as the Internet becomes the place to communicate, collaborate and entertain. mesh is brought to you by people who want to inspire enthusiasm, creativity and opportunity; by people who believe that for Canada to remain vibrant and competitive, we have to connect with each other and share our ideas about what the Web should be.

In particular, I am looking forward to meeting Amber MacArthur, because let’s face it, she’s clearly the best looking of all the speakers up on the site thus far! There are eleven people on the site along with some text that says “and 30 other leading minds…” – sounds like a great place for a geek like me.

If you’re going to the conference and want to hook up in Toronto, let me know. We’ll probably be there for a few days before and after the main event as well.

Read: Mesh Conference

CBC Radio One coming to Edmonton FM

Post ImageLooks like Edmonton will be getting another FM station, this one run by CBC, according to radio-guru Tod Maffin:

The CRTC CRTC this morning approved CBC Radio CBC Radio’s request to add FM transmitters to serve listeners in Edmonton, Calgary, and Winnipeg.

The AM transmitters in those cities will remain on to continue to serve outlying areas, but the Commission agreed with the CBC CBC that “urban growth, the construction of high-rise concrete and steel buildings, increased electrical noise from overhead wires, large and small appliances and portable radio transmitters have impeded the ability of its radio stations to deliver reliable high quality AM signals to listeners.”

I wonder if this will really have an impact on the number of listeners? I mean, I tune into 630 CHED when there is a program I want to hear (usually hockey), and that wouldn’t change if it were an FM station, its not like I’d randomly keep it on or anything.

Read: Tod Maffin

Paramagnus Finalists in Wes Nicol Competition!

It’s been a great week for Paramagnus! On Wednesday it was announced that we were semi-finalists in the VenturePrize competition and last night we found out that we were selected as finalists for local part of the Wes Nicol Entrepreneurial Award, also a businss plan competition!

The Wes Nicol Entrepreneurial Award is a national non-profit competition designed to promote entrepreneurship with Canadian University students. Now in its 9th year, the program is launching its second national Wes Nicol Entrepreneurial Award ceremony, to be held March 23rd, 2006 in Ottawa.

We present to the judges on Saturday, and if we win the local competition we get to travel to Ottawa to compete against the rest of Canada. Needless to say, we’re pretty excited!

If you’re going to participate in a business plan competition, you might as well compete in another. There ends up being quite a bit of overlap in terms of the work you need to do, but you meet different people and learn different things from each.

Hopefully a week from now we’ll be making travel arrangements for our nation’s capital!

UPDATE [10:02 PM]: I fixed this post to say “semi-finalists in the VenturePrize competition” as I had erroneously put “finalists”. I’m getting ahead of myself 🙂

Read: Wes Nicol

More on the oil sands

Post ImageA week ago today I wrote a post explaining how I think Canada should be making a greater effort to develop and benefit from the oil sands in Alberta. Naturally, I’ve been keeping my eyes open for any news regarding the oil sands, and I’ve actually come across a couple things.

First is The Oil Sands of Alberta which aired on 60 minutes on Sunday. A couple things stood out for me:

There are 175 billion barrels of proven oil reserves here. That’s second to Saudi Arabia’s 260 billion but it’s only what companies can get with today’s technology. The estimate of how many more barrels of oil are buried deeper underground is staggering.

We know there’s much, much more there. The total estimates could be two trillion or even higher,” says Clive Mather, Shell’s Canada chief. “This is a very, very big resource.”

Very big? That’s eight times the amount of reserves in Saudi Arabia.

Clearly, there’s a lot of oil there. We just need the technology to be able to get it out of the ground for a reasonable cost! That’s key to my argument – we need to work on ways of fostering that research and development.

“I think it’s bigger than a gold rush. We’re expecting $100 billion over the next 10 years to be invested in this area – $100 billion in a population that, currently, is 70,000 people,” says Brian Jean, who represents the region in Canada’s parliament.

There’s a lot of money coming in too. More than I expected, to be honest. However, I am still not convinced that big corporations are going to be the ones who find a way to improve the technology and thus the ROI. Sure companies make progress in a lot of areas, but more often than not, it’s an individual or smaller group of individuals that find a way. Corporations then either copy or acquire.

For more commentary on the piece, The Oil Drum has a very good post with a ton of interesting comments too.

The 60 Minutes episode makes it seem as though China currently doesn’t have much interest in the oil sands, though not for lack of desire. A press release I found yesterday though tends to suggest that the country is starting to make investments:

What is certain is that global demand for oil – especially from Asia – is far outstripping the ability of companies to meet current demand and replenish their diminishing reserves. These factors are being exacerbated by global political uncertainty. The oil sands are increasingly on the U.S. radar screen as they focus on reducing their reliance on oil producing countries outside of North America. The Chinese have become increasingly involved in the oil sands with the China National Offshore Oil Corp., recently investing $150 million in MEG Energy Corp., a private company engaged in the oil sands.

In a different press release, I learned that Purvin & Gertz, an independent energy consulting firm, made available a study that analyzes the challenges and opportunities presented by development in the oil sands.

Producers face issues of growing existing and new markets for oil sands crudes. The need for diluent to transport heavy crude will increase with bitumen production. Upgrading in Alberta could reduce diluent demand, but requires major capital investment and does not eliminate the market risks associated with marketing SCO.

I’d have thought that with the increasing demand for oil there would be little or no risks associated with marketing synthetic crude oil! I’m not an expert though, so maybe I’m missing something. You can find out more on the study at the Purvin & Gertz website.

I need to dig around a little more, but I would not be surprised if much of the $100 billion that has been announced turns out to be nothing more than a foot in the door for the companies making the investments. If you’re in the oil business, you don’t want to miss out on the oil sands. In order to benefit though, we need to get better at extracting and refining the oil!

I guess one reason Canada wouldn’t be all that interested in sponsoring research and development is that so much of the oil sands has been sold to foreign investment (at least that’s how it appears). Like I said, more research is needed, but if that’s the case, it’s potentially a major loss for Canada.

Conservative Canada

By now you’re almost certainly aware that the Conservatives won a minority in last night’s federal election (just as I predicted). During his concession speech, Paul Martin announced he will not lead the Liberal party in the next election. There are three main things about the election I found interesting:

  1. The magic number of 155 is hard to find, which means things will be especially intriguing. All the parties realize we don’t want to vote again right away, so it makes it even more important that they try to work together.
  2. The Conservatives gained a fair number of seats in Quebec. One wonders what this means for the separatists!
  3. I didn’t expect a completely blue Alberta, but that’s what we ended up with.

I followed the results online last night, and watched some of the post-election commentary on CBC. I don’t have much to say really, except that I hope the minority government doesn’t collapse right away. Lots of other people have far more interesting things to say than me:

There’s lots more interesting commentary if you do a quick search on Technorati or IceRocket or one of those. Seems to me that many Americans are not happy with our new government!

Voted NDP

Post ImageI mentioned yesterday that I had my choice narrowed down to two. Didn’t want to vote for the Liberals again (need some change) and I don’t align closely enough with the Greens (not that I entirely like any of the parties). For me, it was either NDP or Conservatives (I know!). I ended up voting NDP, for a number of reasons:

  • I like the Conservatives as the provincial government for Alberta, and indeed I did vote for Ralph Klein in the last election. I don’t think a federal Conservative government quite fits the same way.
  • Truthfully, Harper is a little odd, and I don’t think he’d make a very good Prime Minister.
  • The NDP won’t win the election, but a larger number of seats for them in the house is good for all of us during these minority governments (I don’t think the Conservatives will win a majority).
  • Apparently, my NDP candidate has a good shot of being the only non-Tory Edmonton MP.

So now we wait to see the results. Hopefully lots of people voted today, especially with the bogus emails floating around. Polls have closed in the east already, so it won’t be long!

Please Canada, develop the oil sands of Alberta!

Post ImageI have long thought that we as a country should be investing more money in energy, including properly developing Alberta’s vast oil sands. Canada could become the most important region in the world for oil if we were able to extract it efficiently enough – and while it may not the best for the environment, it would certainly be a welcome change to have the oil capital of the world in a democratic, peaceful place for once. A new report from CIBC World Markets seems to support the idea of developing the oil sands, suggesting it will become the most important source of new oil by 2010:

Alberta will sit on one of the most valuable energy sources in the world by that time, and one of the few still open to private investment, said Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets, the bank’s wholesale banking arm.

He added that conventional oil production around the world apparently peaked in 2004.

Energy companies are finding new oil, but most of it will come from non-conventional sources. Ocean oil rigs are the primary source of new oil today, with Alberta’s oil sands tomorrow, with expansion projects rivaling those of Saudi Arabia.

If we were able to properly develop the oil sands, without ceding too much control to the United States, Canada could become very rich, and the world would have oil for longer than is currently projected. This means two things would happen; first, the push for alternative energy sources may be slightly delayed and second, Canada could use its new wealth to invest in those alternative energy sources to be prepared for the time when no more oil can be extracted. If we sit back and choose not to increase production, the world will shift to other sources of energy more quickly, and we might one day be left with a bunch of useless oil, or at least, much less valuable oil.

One of the problems with the oil sands is that our technology is not good enough to efficiently extract the oil on a large scale. There has been some progress, but not enough. So how do we solve that problem?

  • We could just hope that Syncrude, Suncor, and the other companies involved figure it out.
  • The Canadian government itself could hire lots of researchers, engineers, chemists, whoever it takes, to try and improve the technology.
  • Canada could sponsor a research competition, kind of like NASA or DARPA’s popular programs in the United States. Challenge people to develop the most efficient, least harmful process for extracting oil from the oil sands. This is probably the best way to get some quick, meaningful innovation.

The point is that problems are not insurmountable.

There are lots of people who want Alberta to be the only one to profit from our reserves, but I don’t think there’s any reason that Alberta cannot be properly compensated and still have the entire country benefit. We don’t want Trudeau’s NEP, but we do need a national policy that recognizes Alberta and benefits all.

Unfortunately, our political parties do not seem that interested in developing such a policy. Vitality Magazine has a good round up of the “green” platforms the parties have announced for Monday’s election. There are quite a few mentions of alternative energy sources, but no mention of the oil sands. I think if we’re serious about alternative energy, we need to invest a lot of money into it, and what better way to obtain that much money than by fully exploiting the oil sands?

The oil sands offer our country very unique possibilities for the future. Let’s do something with the oil sands and take advantage of those possibilities!

(For more information, read these notes I took during a September 2005 conference that included some discussion on Canada, the oil sands, and the need for a national policy on energy.)

The Arch Card

I was browsing around looking for the McDonald’s McDeal menu (which is apparently different depending on what province you’re in, and no I didn’t find it, the McDonald’s Canada website is completely useless, and yes I know it off by heart for Alberta) and came across this post on the McChronicles weblog:

McDonald’s has rolled out their Arch Card, just in time for the holidays. It’s a great idea.

The McChronicles usually bristles at the concept of debit cards (giving an institution a free cash loan – with the risk of losing the card or leaving change on the card). But these cards offer a great way to give the gift of a nice McDonald’s meal, in denominations as small as $5. That’s cool especially around the holiday season.

You can think of the Arch Card like the Starbucks card – you can load it up (in store only for the time being) and check your balance and recent purchase history online. I think the “free cash loan” idea the McChronicles mention is funny, though correct. Personally, I’d be more worried that using the card will make it seem like I am not spending as much money as I actually am. That’s what happens with my Starbucks card!

Unfortunately, no word on if or when we’re going to get the Arch Card in Canada. Considering it only appeared in the United States last month, it might take a while. Cool idea though!

Read: Arch Card

Defending Canadian Democracy

Post ImageI signed the Green Party petition seeking to have that party included in the televised debates because I strongly feel they should be! I didn’t vote Green last time, and I may not this time either, but I still think that any party with a candidate in every riding should be allowed to take part. If the Bloc Québécois can take part, certainly the Green Party should be able to. Here’s part of an email I got today:

Thanks to the participation of people like you, we now have over 40,000 signatures on our online petition for Green Party of Canada leader Jim Harris to be included in the televised leaders’ debates. The broadcasters are taking notice, but still have not reversed their decision.

Now we need to push that number to over 50,000 people before the final televised debates start on Monday evening. Only 10,000 people submitted questions for the other party leaders in the first debates, so this would mean that five times more Canadians are asking for all five leaders to be in the debate.

Can you help us achieve that goal by asking friends, family, and colleagues to sign on too? Remember, this is not necessarily about supporting the Green Party of Canada, its about defending Canadian democracy!

The easiest way for you to help is to use the new page we set up for this at: http://www.info-greenparty.ca/petition/forwardmsg.asp.

If you’re in Canada and you agree, please sign the petition. I am skeptical that the television executives will change their minds, but stranger things have happened.

Twelve Hours to Inuvik

Tom and I left Edmonton at 10 AM yesterday morning, as scheduled. We got to the airport relatively early, watched the sports news while we waited, and everything was going good. When we gave the people at the gate our boarding passes, we were told that our flight was “green stickered” for Inuvik, which meant that we were landing subject to weather. The last time my Mom flew, she had the same thing happen. In fifteen years of flying to and from Inuvik, I don’t ever recall a plane not being able to land.

We arrived in Yellowknife on time, the only stop between Edmonton and Inuvik, and we had to get off the plane. Tom seemed to think that was weird, saying usually we’re allowed to stay on the plane while they add some cargo and take some off, and get any new passengers. So we got off the plane, and it wasn’t very long before we were informed that our flight had been canceled due to poor weather in Inuvik. They told us the runway was in poor condition, and it was extremely foggy. Then we found out we’d be able to fly out of Yellowknife at 9:45 PM, almost 8 hours after we should have landed in Inuvik.

So Tom and I spent from noon yesterday until around 10:15 PM when the flight finally left in the Yellowknife airport, some pictures of which are here. You might think that’s not so bad, but with no Internet, only a few power outlets, no coffee shops or restaurants except for one that is mostly a bar, and absolutely no TV’s, people, or anything really, it was kind of dumb. Tom played FIFA 06 on his laptop while I tracked down open network ports and tried to get online. Throughout our time in the airport, we started to find out more and more about our canceled flight, from other people who came and went, and from my parents on the phone.

We were on First Air, and the other airline that flys to Inuvik is Canadian North. We found out that Canadian North landed in Inuvik at 2:30 PM, and hour later than scheduled, but only 15 minutes after our flight was supposed to land. So clearly, weather in Inuvik was not an issue. After we got to Inuvik at midnight, it became clear that First Air knew all along we wouldn’t be landing in the afternoon, and the weather excuse was exactly that, an excuse. Needless to say, I was not amused.

Anyway, I am in Inuvik now, finally. I don’t remember it being so dry here, but I keep shocking myself everywhere! There is so much snow it’s insane. Not as cold as it could be, but still cold. I haven’t really been anywhere in town yet, but already I have seen so much different. Lots of new hotels for the pipeline project. In fact, there are about 350 hotels room in a town of only 3000 people – insanity. More later!