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Les Routledge

Featured News

Election – No Time to Discuss Serious Issues

Apr 7, 2011 | , ,

The former head of the Bank of Canada indicated that Canadians have to engage in a tough round of discussions about rising health care costs.

Canadians need to have a discussion about rapidly rising health-care costs, and soon, said David Dodge, former head of the Bank of Canada. Just not now.

Sask Tel Network Investment Plan

Apr 6, 2011 | , ,

Yesterday, Sasktel announced  a plan to invest in network upgrades across Saskatchewan.   While some media reports focused on the plans for the province’s nine major cities, the plans announced offer a combination of urban and rural commitments.

Over the next 7 years, SaskTel intends to invest $670 million in their broadband broadband access program.  Under this program, the intent is to replace legacy twisted pair copper networks with fibre optics that can support much higher speeds and virtually eliminate problems of network congestion.  The initial speeds for the new network will be 200 Mbps download and 50 – 60 Mbps upload.  Over time, the network has the ability to reach or exceed 1 gigabit per second speeds.  By 2017, SaskTel intends to have 100% of homes served in 9 cities passed by this network.

Defusing the Demographic Time Bomb

Apr 3, 2011 | , ,

The Financial Post ran a fairly alarmist article outlining the potential negative impacts of demographic trends that are present in Canada.  Quotes in the article include:

Christopher Ragan, economics professor at McGill University, said the Baby Boomers’ exit from the labour force would pose a “significant drag” on growth.

Kevin Page, the parliamentary budget watchdog, has projected the economy’s potential output — the level of goods and services the economy can produce without triggering inflation pressures — will drop to 1.3% by 2020 from 2.1% in 2010 and 3.7% in 2000.

Long Term Energy Supply

Apr 2, 2011 | , ,

A leading bank has predicted that the world will run short of oil by 2060.

HSBC does not mean to scare you in its latest report, but it does point out that we are facing a massive energy crunch. That’s because the bank is just not optimistic there is much oil left  in the world – in fact a mere 49 years of the black gold on current consumption levels.

While the article sounds scary, read a bit further into it and discover their finding is related to conventional supplies of oil.  If prices stay at current levels or higher, unconventional oil such as tight oil and oil sands becomes profitable.  Unfortunately, the article fails to mention how long those reserves will last.  I have a suspicion that if oil sands supply from Canada alone is added to the mix, the crunch point is put off well into the future.

Compelled Investment

Apr 1, 2011 | , ,

Manitoba Hydro has indicated that Bi-Pole III is now estimated to cost $3.2 billion, which is up $1 billion from their original estimate.

The cost of new hydro dam construction is also experiencing significant cost inflation.  During recent PUB hearings, it was reported that the new Wuswatim dam will now cost $1.6 billion. That figure is nearly 80% above the initial budgeted cost of $900 million.  Power generated from the dam is now expect to cost between 9 and 10 cents to produce.