A Bigger, Better Canada [MUt3]

We can do it, but we'll have to go North.  Pack your snowshoes.

So,

I've often described Canada's economic system as being "a kinder, gentler capitalism."  We have no doubt benefited from having a dominant superpower and its domestic market as a customer for our vast natural resources.  We have come from a group of fur trappers, loggers and miners to being an advanced economy as well as loggers and miners, thank you very much.  That said, for as much land as we have, Canada is only a nation of roughly 35 million people, leaving us as one of the least densely populated countries on the planet.

Historically, Canada's accomplishments have always looked best on a per capita basis.  We tend to punch above our weight as a people, and has given rise to the functional principle.  We are not a superpower, nor does it currently look like we will be one in the future.  That said, Canada may contend with the world leaders in key functions.  This is evidenced by our presence in things like the G7 nations, and our participation in world leading scientific and technological endeavours.  For example, you may take the Canadian Light Source pictured below.  It is a synchrotron light source (an excellent example of a big science thing).  I could go into the vast technical details, but it is extremely useful in a wide variety of applications from biological imaging to even construction materials.  Canada has one of only a handful in the entire world (which are this good), and it is the best used in the world based on access given to researchers and industrial partners/clients.

The Canadian Light Source, big science thing extraordinaire.

Our accomplishments are many and impressive.  I firmly believe that this is due to our unique combination of capitalism and kindness.  We grew out of a country whose winter alone would kill us unmercifully were we to not work together and take care of one another.  Our social programs help to ensure that many of the economically disadvantaged may prosper and thus contribute to an impressive economy.  Now imagine if there were more of us.  A lot more.

When Wilfred Laurier began his settlement of Western Canada, he envisioned a Canada numbering 60 million.  We... well, your monocles may drop in surprise at this, but we have thus far fallen short.  Currently, a good number to strive for would appear to be 100 million.  For the gaming-savvy, a variety of achievements might be unlocked at this level.  Canada's density poses a problem, because our markets are so few and far between and building the infrastructure to go between these urban centers is cumbersome and costly.  Militarily speaking, it also means that large sections of the country could be conquered by simply marching through it.  Services like health care and even internet in some cases are hard to deliver because there isn't enough of a market to warrant building the facilities.  Even economically, we have a very limited domestic market when you consider our economic output.  When a Canadian company wants to make something, it has to ensure that someone else will buy it.  It is hypothesized that a domestic market of 100 million people would begin to make us more independent of the rest of the world, and a people as economically prosperous as us would make for excellent consumers.

We are heavily concentrated at the bottom of our country, apparently clinging to the United States.  The article from the Globe and Mail linked in the paragraph above (and here, if you're lazy) makes excellent points on the matter, but I feel it falls short on an action plan.  The suggestion is that we massively boost immigration before developing countries reach economic prosperity and begin to experience shrinking populations.  These new Canadians would then go to existing cities, achieving a density which would alleviate our problems of sprawl and unlock tax bases which could fund truly inspiring projects.  However, this still leaves our major urban centers few and far between, and there's also the issue that these new Canadians would need something to do.

 To the north of our largest settlements, there exists mid-Canada.  It is not the far North, where trees refuse to grow and you have to be wary of the bears.  It is not the South, where the factories thump and farms flourish.  It is a land south of the permafrost, rich in natural resources and potential.  It is a vast corridor of potential wealth waiting to be unleashed.

As a centennial project [from which I am heavily borrowing], researchers at Lakehead University suggested the "Mid-Canada Development Corridor."  This has happened if only to a small extent in the intermittent period.  Fort McMurray is an example of what the corridor could offer, but larger and more extensive.  The idea would be to establish permanent settlements along mid-Canada that could take advantage of several natural resources to provide a diverse economic base and fuel development before other economic activities arise.  The hope would be that these larger communities would follow the example of settlement in Northern Ontario.  Roads were installed, logging camps were made which cleared out land and created income, eventually developing into permanent settlement.  Our nation's capital, Ottawa, originally started as a logging settlement.

This region of Canada is currently short on roadway coverage.  That said, there is good air and rail coverage.  This means that people may be carried by air until roads catch up, and there appears to be an extensive rail network which can provide efficient rail freight transport.  The majority of this corridor is the Canadian Shield and is rich in a variety of minerals as well as untapped hydroelectricity, which has a fantastic EROEI and would do very well for fueling both development and potentially the smelting of ore.  The only real exception to this is the Tundra and Northern Alberta and Saskatchewan, where the primary resource are oil, natural gas, or both.  As an interesting note, it was proposed that these settlements could follow the example of Siberian communities which have gas-heated greenhouses to supply fresh produce in the winter.  That said, with enough timber around it might be easier to use rocket mass heaters for those greenhouses.

By developing this corridor, Canada would unlock both vast swaths of natural resources which currently sit untapped, as well as the pseudo-magical 100 million tax base to further fuel our development.  Remote communities would not be so remote, and could be better served.  Perhaps some countries would take our claims to the our Arctic archipelago more seriously.  Better yet, if our per capita wealth keeps pace as we continue to nurture and encourage every single Canadian, we could become an economic heavyweight and become a major player on the world stage.  A nation as great as ours basically owes the world more Canadians.  And then there's the fact that we already produce the world's best hockey players, and a larger population would allow us to be even more selective.  Think of the hockey.

If nothing else, think of the hockey we could have.

NM

Update (2014-09-22): Part 2 of my Mid-Canada Ramblings may be found here.

Suggested Reading:
http://thewalrus.ca/if-we-build-it-they-will-stay/

http://www.plancanada.com/midcanada_corridor_report.pdf (Source of many maps)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/what-would-a-canada-of-100-million-feel-like-more-comfortable-better-served-better-defended/article4186906/?page=all

http://speeches.empireclub.org/61275/data?n=14

N.B.  This may end up being a living document for a couple days.  I keep forgetting to add important details.

Washroom Graffiti: A Bellwether.

As long as we've been humans, we've been putting stuff on available walls. Source.

So,

This will be a comparatively small post, but it's back-to-school season and I've been thinking about this particular phenomenon a lot.  Naturally, I'd love some [G+] feedback below because I am genuinely curious to hear your thoughts, but I assume the comments section will be a barren wasteland as per usual.

When I attended the University of Ottawa, for better or worse, I did not spend a tonne of time in Morriset Library.  However, when I had those marathon study sessions with my friends, or when I spent many consecutive days in there to study or work on a project, washroom visits became a necessity.  I would also like to pause here and congratulate my alma mater on keeping a proper coffee shop (i.e. Second Cup) in its main library.  While visiting these stalls, as with many stalls, one would find graffiti.  I'd say that I never gave it much thought, but frankly, the Morriset washroom graffiti was legitimately thought provoking.  Catalogued within those stalls were actual philosophical or moral debates, rebuttals below the original post and often in a different colour.   Sometimes they would be motivational slogans.  Often, because it was and is a bilingual institution, the commentary was in both English and French.  And once in the washrooms in the Marion basement men's room, there was a zig-zag line which was subsequently decorated with functional groups and ultimately the IUPAC name of the molecule which this drawing had become.

This picture is now everywhere on the internet, so I can't be sure of the original source.  But still, hilarious.

As with most interesting phenomena I come across, I discussed this with my friends.  That was the time at which I realised that this was not par for the course.  Having now attended Western University, I have also discovered that the overwhelming majority of graffiti at other institutions is not necessarily of the same calibre and is mostly homophobic slurs paired, ironically, with oftentimes vast and elaborate depictions of the male genitalia.  That said, it has been reported that there can be [extremely] encouraging messages left in the washrooms of Carleton (pictured below).  This raises several questions.  I wonder how much of Carleton's graffiti is more up-beat and how much is philosophical, as it seems to be a happy place, albeit an intellectual black hole as far as the anecdotes are concerned.  As I write that last statement, I can already hear the heated retort that "... well at least I don't speak French!"

Seen at Carleton by Rebecca Hay, artist and founder of the Just One Thing mental health initiative.

Digressions aside, this raises further questions for me.  Ottawa, Carleton, Wilfred Laurier, and Western are known by outsiders as: snooty and miserable; happy and a cognitive wasteland; happy party school; happy party school.  Their graffiti is thought provoking, motivational, homophobic slurs, and homophobic slurs respectively.  But what is the story elsewhere?  I highly encourage you to leave a comment below (so that all may peruse), with the perception of your school and the predominant graffiti you encounter.  Finally, should you find yourself looking at an institution at which to study, go to the washroom and enter a stall.  It could tell you a lot about the place.

NM

"This could get ugly," or why Russia scares me.

Satellite imagery showing Russian tanks in Ukrainian sovereign territory.  Source.

So,

I'll start by saying that this post might in fact be needlessly alarmist.  I'll also say that I might be hopelessly overreacting.  However, this blog was created as an outlet for my thoughts, and I plan to leave this post up in perpetuity in order to document my reactions and feelings from late August 2014.  Now, on with the hysterics.

On the 21st of August 2014, NATO released satellite imagery of Russian tanks in Ukrainian sovereign territory.  This was after an outright annexation of the Crimean peninsula almost immediately after the conclusion of the winter Olympic games in Sochi.  At the time, I likened it to the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia.

Pictured: Hysterics.

In fact, I was so concerned about the situation in Crimea that, while high on pain killers the next day, I kept demanding updates on the situation in Crimea from a very patient nursing staff.  In both cases, the invading country cited a need to assimilate an ethnic minority and to protect them.  An excellent rebuttal to this was provided by a research associate who exclaimed "Seriously?  Why doesn't Ukraine march in to claim the ethnic Ukrainians in Saskatchewan?  That's a terrible argument!"

The western world has responded with economic sanctions.  In the face of this most recent incursion, threats of increased, more serious sanctions have been leveled.  I am not certain that sanctions will be enough, as Russia functioned just fine as the Soviet Union for several decades without help from the outside world.

I'm also reminded of a rant I had about five years ago at the Black Tomato in Ottawa.  Excellent beer selection on tap, should you find yourself in the Byward Market.  I had just been prodded on the subject of Russia, and I immediately launched into several reasons why I didn't trust the governing regime.  They came quickly and easily to mind.

Viktor Yushenko, third President of Ukraine. Source.

Yushenko was a politician aiming for the presidency of Ukraine on a platform of aligning Ukraine more closely with the West as opposed to its historically close ties with Russia.  The pro-Russian opponent won the election, but soon thereafter widespread allegations of election fraud abounded.  Ukraine actually underwent what is known as the Orange Revolution in the wake of the fraudulent election which ultimately saw Yushenko take the presidency.  However, Yushenko did not escape the election unscathed.  See his cheeks in that picture?  Those pock marks are the result of dioxin poisoning.  Mysterious circumstances surround this, but the perpetrators were pro-Russian if not actually Russian.  Also, on the topic of election fraud, here's a paper on detecting election fraud, and how the 2011 Russian election fits a model for systematic stuffing of ballot boxes.

Alexander Litvenenko.  Source.

Alexander Litvenenko was once an agent of the Soviet Union's spy agency the KGB.  After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he became involved in the nation's security forces (or something, honestly I'm not really clear on it).  Then what happened?  Suddenly he became critical of the leadership, and was allegedly dismissed on direct orders from Putin.  Not long after, he defied an order not to leave the country and sought asylum in the United Kingdom.  While there, he became a journalist and started hurling accusations of corruption at the new Russian government, potentially attempting to blackmail some of the higher up officials.  Whatever the facts, it was bad enough that somebody wanted him dead.  That party got what they wanted.  Litvenenko ultimately died of Cold War-style polonium poisoning, leaving him the shell of a man you see above.

So admittedly one could never make a case against Russia on these two cases.  Anyone could have been the one to poison either of them, and not necessary due to Putin's actions.  However, one can begin to notice a trend.  You're critical of Russia, and things start going poorly for you.  According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Russia is currently the fifth deadliest place to be a journalist.  What's above Russia on that list?  Iraq, Philippines, Syria, Algeria.  So a couple active war zones.

The other cases that came to mind that night in Ottawa?  There's the issue that Russian fighters keep entering Canadian airspace and require an escort.  To wit: Russian aircraft thrice entered Finnish airspace last week.  Also?  That time that Russia cut off the gas supply to Europe due to a pricing dispute.  It's worth noting that the Ukrainian president which signed the deal that ultimately made the gas flow once more was indicted for abuse of power as a result of signing that deal.

I'd also like to point out that NATO appears to be chomping at the bit.  NATO was the authority who released satellite images of a Russian incursion into Ukraine.  NATO was also created as a mutual defense scheme to deter attack from the Soviet Union (or any other aggressor, but it's doubtful any other world power would choose to pick a fight with NATO).  Ukraine has also made an emergency decision to attempt to join the treaty organisation, and has asked for its assistance in driving Russian forces from its territory.  This is in stark contrast to their anti-NATO position which they have more or less solidly held since 2002.  But for now, the international community appears happy to stay with sanctions.

Frankly, I'm not sure Putin will cave to external political pressure.  He has proven himself to be an exceedingly strong leader and thus has a history of getting what he wants; I'm not sure anything short of military force will remove Russian military vehicles from Ukraine.  On the other hand, maybe economic sanctions will work.  Or will economic sanctions make Russia increasingly desperate?  We shall see.  Hopefully we'll laugh about this in five years, and my friends will be reading this article aloud as a method of amused derision.

NM

P.S.  I really hope that was an appropriately placed semicolon.

Update: Russian fighters circle Canadian frigate en route to NATO exercise in Black Sea, reminiscent of Cold War-style behaviours.

Update (2014-09-11): Russian forces withdrawing!  WOOOOO!

Energy policy proposals; numbers are hard. [EBP5]

Spillway from the Robert-Bourassa Generating Station in Québec.  Source.

So,

I don't know if any of you will remember this, but I sure do.  During the last Ontario election, I [perhaps mistakenly] recall hearing a lot of politicians calling for Ontario to shutter its nuclear plants due to cost and safety concerns in favour of importing excess energy from our neighbours.  Not only that, but The Star ran an opinion piece echoing what I had heard a lot: rather than expanding and upkeeping Ontario's nuclear generation capacity, we should simply shutter them and import low-cost hydroelectricity from Manitoba and Québec.

Now, on its surface this appears to be a reasonable proposal.  My intelligent, attractive, monocle- and top hat- clad readers will no doubt remember my praise of hydroelectric power based on the energy returned on energy invested.  As a result, the energy is indeed cheap comparatively speaking.  Further, our Francophone friends are exporting a lot of power to New England for less than we pay to generate nuclear power.  There is, however, one problem with this scheme.  There's not enough.

Source, retrieved 2014-08-25-21:30

At any given moment Ontario's nuclear plants, with some of the highest capacity in the world, are generating about 10 GW of power.  That's gigawatts.  To quote the great Rick Mercer, that's alotta poutine.  That's also GW, not GWh.  The -h suffix means "hours" and refers to the amount of energy that has been produced in one hour.  Your energy bill is usually on the order of kWh to refer to the amount of energy that has been used in a few months.  So Ontario is outputting that amount of nuclear power almost constantly, every hour of every day.  That amounts to around half of Ontario's generating capacity, but it will frequently represent a larger fraction of the actual generated energy because of the variable nature of hydro, wind and gas plants.  At the moment shown above, it is sitting at 57% of generated energy, though this is an off-peak hour.

If we look to another Wikipedia page, we can see that the sum total of Québec's energy exports in 2011 amounted to 26,763 GWh.  Based on quick, dirty, back-of-the-envelope calculations, if we took all of that energy at a rate of 10 GW, it would only replace Ontario's nuclear reactors for 112 days.  That's not even a third of a year.  I suppose rough approximations would indicate that that means it's only exporting about 3 GW of power at any given time.  This also assumes that you could convince our neighbour to stop exporting to New England altogether and allowing Ontario to be the exclusive purchaser.

So Québec does not generate enough hydroelectricity to replace Ontario's nuclear reactors.  "But wait!" you shout, slamming your fist on your desk, or perhaps grasping at your forehead, "Manitoba!  Surely Manitoba could help!"  Well, perhaps that's true.  I'll admit, before checking the numbers I was not optimistic, Manitoba not being known for heavy industry or other energy-intensive applications.  As it turns out, my doubts were well-founded.  Manitoba's current hydroelectric capacity is on the order of Québec's exports, as near as this page would suggest.  In 2012, Manitoba's hydroelectric generating capacity was 5485 MW, or just over 5 GW.  In fairness, Manitoba has no need to produce a lot more power unless they want to export, as it would appear that they are meeting over 90% of its demand with hydro alone.

So that we're clear, if Québec diverted all of its energy exports to Ontario, and Manitoba diverted the entirety of its hydroelectricity to Ontario, it still would not be enough to replace Ontario's nuclear generating capacity.  And, while I've got you, I should note that a lot of the drive behind hydroelectric development is from environmentally-conscious types.  It should be noted that all types of energy have an impact, and [as friend-of-the-blog Jeff P. pointed out to me] hydro is no exception.  A reservoir usually needs to be flooded when a dam is installed, which leaches water-soluble chemicals into the water, at least temporarily throwing the local ecosystem out of whack and potentially killing its inhabitants en masse, or negating its usefulness for things like irrigation.  And that's just the nutrients.  The American eel is, conservatively speaking, near-extinct in the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers because they have been turned into pink slime by turbines.

Not nearly as cute as it is threatened.  Source.

Manitoba, as it turns out, is also planning a large number of developments along the Nelson River, which could double its generating capacity in the future.  This is not unlike how Québec wound up with such a large generating capacity, in the 1960s and 1970s they built several large hydroelectric generating stations near James Bay (just off Hudson's Bay, into which the Nelson River drains).  It would appear then, that if Ontario truly wants to replace its [big, scary] nuclear generating capacity with hydroelectricity, more needs to be developed within Ontario.  The problem with that is that, as I understand it, all the commercially viable hydroelectric sites in southern Ontario are already developed.  To generate enough to replace its nukes, Ontario might in fact have to turn to the Arctic watershed as Manitoba and Québec have done, Ontario also having access to James and Hudson's Bays.  It would take a lot of transmission lines to get the power from the North to its southern markets, but that is the nature of these things.  Ontario needs to decide as a province whether it wants to continue with nuclear power or develop cheap hydroelectric capacity where possible.

It would likely take decades of investment, like in Québec, but could potentially be worth it with the promise of cheap power in an industry-heavy province currently struggling with high energy prices.  Sure would have made a nice post-2008 Keynesian* stimulus project.

NM

* Keynes proposed that stimulus projects should focus on public infrastructure because even if the spending failed to stimulate the economy as hoped, at the very least you'd be left with things you needed anyway.

Grains, Rails, and Regulations.

British Columbia agreed to join confederation if it would be provided rail access to the East.  They would be the last province to join Canada until Newfoundland figured out they were missing out on a great time.

So,

I have wanted to write about trains for a while, so expect this to be a long and rambling post fueled in equal parts by coffee, home brewed beer, excitement for Canada's 147th birthday, and Oxford commas.  A nation as large and diverse as Canada presents a special challenge for finding unifying themes that do not involve federal policy or apologising.  So I choose today to write about a technology that has unified our great nested nations, rail.

I can only imagine that you, dear readers, wearing your special Canada Day (or vintage Dominion Day) top hats and monocles, are wondering whether rail really is important in our present day.  I can tell you that for a great deal of people, it most assuredly is.  Ignoring the obvious arguments regarding the jobs involved in rail, many rural Canadians were supremely irked by rail service in the spring of 2014.  Many CBC Radio One listeners might remember the call in shows, or perhaps you spent time in a rural coffee shop (i.e. Tim Horton's.  Yes, I mean i.e. and not e.g.), around that time, and you listened to the exclamations that the railroads and/or Government hates farmers.  Last year, the prairie provinces had a wet summer that led to higher-than-average grain crops when a record harvest was already anticipated.  It ended up exceeding expectations by a third (which, in this case, represents excess millions of tonnes of grain).  It appears that from reviewing the relevant news coverage, when the harvest came in for the fall of 2013, there was so much grain that farmers waited for prices to go up before selling to the elevators.  What followed was what has been termed a "rough winter."  During inclement weather, railroad operators operate at 70% capacity to ensure that adequate braking can be provided by the locomotives on potentially icy rails, meaning that the shipment of grain was slowed even further.  Come spring, elevators collectively faced with teragrams of grain began to panic ever so slightly.

It was at this point that the Federal government decided to step in.  For better or worse, an Order-in-Council was passed requiring both CP and CN railways to ship 5000 cars worth of grain each per week or face $100,000/day fines, along with temporarily loosened regulations to allow more freedom to transport grain.  Coincidentally, this is almost exactly the same excess capacity that the rail companies had in the fall of 2013 before the harsh winter set in.  The CEOs of the respective companies warned of bottlenecks when the grain arrived to port.  I have not seen coverage of what ultimately happened, but the takeaway message here is that even today railways can evoke very strong feelings.

The view from the apartment in Calgary, looks like coal headed East.  It's interesting to note that I moved to an apartment a five minute walk from a CP Rail line.

Adjusting your monocle, I imagine you, most attractive and intelligent reader, are wondering why rail is such a big deal, why on Earth it would evoke such strong emotions.  The reason is simple: trains are ridiculously efficient.  There is simply no more efficient method of transporting freight over land than with trains.  For this reason, 11000 km of rail are currently re-creating the Silk Route in order to create a trade link between China and Germany.  Why?  When an entire train is considered, one liter of fuel will carry one ton of stuff for 185 km.  There is simply no better way of moving masses of stuff over land than by rail.  This is, of course, why grain farmers in Canada get so upset when they cannot ship by rail.  Without that efficiency, it would not be worth transporting.  In an interesting note, the method by which this fuel economy is achieved is fascinating.  In the case of CP rail anyway, a traction diesel-electric hybrid is often employed.  In this method, a diesel engine is operated at its optimal rpm, this energy is converted to electricity and is used to run an electric motor at very high efficiencies.  It's similar to the shockwave engine that MIT thinks will revolutionise passenger vehicles by exploiting high-efficiency combustion engine operation coupled to already efficient electric motors.

Naturally, low transportation costs mean that a variety of valuable goods will be shipped via rail.  Especially when commodity prices are high and no other viable methods of transportation exist, rail freight will be considered as a transportation option.  This is why oil transportation by rail has skyrocketed in Canada in recent years.  Whereas pipelines are facing stiff opposition from environmentalists and the politicians who represent them, oil companies can profitably ship their product by rail if necessary.  Being in the [strong and] free society that we are, it is the right of the company to operate this way.  And, considering that publicly traded companies have a legal obligation to maximise profits, they will.  Despite accusations from grain farmers that rail companies only care about oil and not farmers, it becomes an economic necessity to ship oil by rail where no other options are available.

As a result of the high price of oil, increased production/shipment, and deregulation, things will go wrong.  The disaster at Lac-Mégantic, in my opinion, is a prime example of why deregulation doesn't work.  When companies are allowed to police themselves, and they are also required to maximise profits, it creates a conflict of interest and independent review is crucial to safe operation for the benefit of both the operators and the citizenry.  It's also important to remember that Canadian pipelines are a comparatively (to different shipment methods and the pipelines of other countries), safe mode of oil transportation.  The demand for oil is not decreasing, and companies will ship a valuable product by any means necessary.

So, trains, eh?  When the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans were bridged in Canada in 1885, I'm not even sure what the primary shipments would have been, though lumber, grain and coal seem likely candidates.  It was the promise of a rail link that brought British Columbia to Confederation, and the railways helped build the country.  Today they continue operating, linking manufacturers, farmers, and their ilk to port cities and international markets.  Ontario currently has plans to establish a rail link to the Ring of Fire so that mines may be opened and the region developed economically.  And, given the efficiency of the mode, rail will continue to be an integral part of Canada's sustainable development.

NM

P.S.  Now if only we could get trains to run on syngas or methanol...