News Bites
Rex Murphy: The Government Needs To Get Its Priorities Straight When It Comes To Resources
(Kitco News) - Canada is rich in natural resources and energy, but the Trudeau government needs to stop putting “obstacles” in the way of prosperity, said long-time political commentator and journalist, Rex Murphy.
“If any other country in the world had the bounty that Canada has in both [energy and minerals], we would have every government, not just the federal, [but also] provincial and municipal saying ‘thanks Providence’ or or ‘thank God’, and we would not be building impediments and always making the most essential industries the ones that have to prove themselves,” Murphy told Kitco News on the sidelines of the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference.
Murphy has been critical of the Trudeau government’s policies on mining in Canada, writing in the National Post that the energy sector has been neglected and Trudeau has been fighting “our most urgent energy crisis: Gender.”
Canada is largely dependent on the resource sector for its economy, with the energy sector accounting for 11% of gross domestic product in 2017, according to Natural Resources Canada.
“The things that built this country all pertain to primary industry,” Murphy said. “Without energy and minerals there is nothing. Every modern convenience, every miracle of the new internet, everything that we have in a 21st century, integrated computer society, depends upon sources of energy, and sources of minerals.”
Murphy said that as Canadians have become more prosperous, the government has lost touch with its economic priorities.
“Times change. We’ve become more wealthy, more screened from the realities of the world. This country, for example, knows no famines, even our natural disasters, say compared to an Indonesian tsunami, are not large,” he said.
On U.S. politics, Murphy noted that the media now has a powerful influence on federal decision making, saying that there are now four branches of American government, executive, legislative, judiciary, and overseeing them all, the assembly of cable news anchors.
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