It is interesting how my perception of the income/energy trust debacle has evolved in the past year. Originally, when I was compiling my 08Jan2007 2-page summary of the CCET 251-page pdf report, I assumed everyone was acting in good faith and that highlighting the real facts would solve the problem. By the time I wrote my 22Oct2007 article on Energy Trusts in Alberta, I had become suspicious of collusion of federal/provincial politicians in favour of the "moneyed elites" to the detriment of ordinary Canadians. Today, as a result of Louis Mix's 8-page analysis (pdf or html) on Energy Trusts, I am convinced that the income/energy trust issue has very serious implications on Canada's future.

In my opinion, killing the income/energy trusts was a deliberate step on the road to serfdom that has been encroaching on North American society in recent years. Not the feudal land-based serfdom of the Middle Ages, in which the peasant farmer was at the mercy of the rich landowner and the aristocracy. Modern serfdom will be technological serfdom, in which ordinary Canadians/Americans are at the mercy of the moneyed elites -- the new aristocracy -- controlling all finance, communication (the Internet is the last holdout) and intellectual institutions.

Various studies have repeatedly shown that for the past twenty years ordinary Canadians have been getting poorer and the moneyed elites have been getting richer. The next step is to ensure that ordinary Canadians will never be in a financial position to challenge the new aristocracy. Income/energy trusts presented a threat to the moneyed elites. It was thus necessary to kill them.

As a person of Ukrainian origin, allow me to utilize the history of the Ukrainian nation as an example of what happens when you allow a foreign nation to control your economy. Around the middle of the seventeenth century, Ukraine was a hetmanate state with its Cossack army fighting for survival against Poles/Lithuania to the west, the Tatars/Turks to the south, the Asiatic hordes to the east and the Muscovites to the north. Despite the difficult politics of the day, Ukrainians were reasonably well off, had a high literacy rate and its leaders were well received in various European capitals.

Unfortunately, in 1654 Ukraine entered a military alliance with Moscow, which has haunted Ukraine to the present day. It was soon dominated by Tsarist Moscow, its Cossack army was exiled to the Kuban region and serfdom was established. In 1711, with Swedish help, Hetman Mazepa attempted to revolt against the Tsarist regime, but was defeated. With the closure of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy and transfer of its professors to Moscow, educational conditions continued to deteriorate resulting in a drastic decrease in the number of schools serving the population. [746 population/school (in 1768), 6750 (in 1775), 17143 (in 1860) until in 1902 more than 83% of Ukrainian children did not go to school.]

The horrors of the twentieth century included Ukrainians fighting for their enemies in opposing armies during WWI, failure to establish and maintain independence, Bolshevik collectivization, Siberian exile by the millions, the Holodomor (famine-genocide of 1932/33), the Great Terror of 1937/38, destruction by both Hitler and Stalin during WWII, UPA struggle for independence until 1956, and arrest/exile of dissidents until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The advent of independence in 1991 did not result in the expected economic benefits. This was largely due to the looting of the country by the criminal Oligarchs in Ukraine and the Russian Federation with the help of "Western experts" such as Mark Carney -- our future Bank of Canada governor. Even today many of the deputies (Members of Parliament) to the Verkhovna Rada proclaim their primary loyalty to Moscow rather than Ukraine.

With the above example as background, perhaps it is understandable why I am so disturbed by the following Email correspondence amongst CAITI members on 31Dec2007 by Neil Leeson, P. Eng., Petroleum Engineer, Calgary SW:

"I had consulted to Energy Trusts for 10 years before Halloween 2006; I have not had one day of consulting to Trusts since. Initially very proactive, most Managements have become strangely passive.

In turn, the demise of the Trusts has cast the Junior Oil & Gas sector adrift without a life jacket, thus 2007 ends for me with less than a month consulting in total to the oilpatch. My contacts in the Junior sector, mostly Senior Management and/or Owners, convey a mood more and more unanimous and ominous -- after all their career in the oilpatch, many are resigned to give up. Attacked from the East by Federal Conservatives (read Tom Flanagan), attacked from the West by Provincial Conservatives (read Tom Flanagan), attacked in the middle by an uninformed and uncaring Media busily inciting the masses to want more and more from the oil industry -- what Governments have really achieved is the destruction of an entrepreneurial and technical competitive edge once admired the world over. Management talents are no longer involved in leading -- they are totally absorbed in survival, logically staff follow by example.

The oilpatch is resigned to continued deterioration under these two current Government cultures in 2008, thus perhaps explaining the surreal apathy you refer to. In a few years the Country will suffer far worse consequences on every level ....but the instigators will be no where to be found!"

I find it incomprehensible that any government would adopt policies leading to "the destruction of an entrepreneurial and technical competitive edge" or to the control of domestic natural resources by aliens. I submit that giving up control of our economy to foreigners will be to the benefit of the foreigners and to the detriment of Canadians.

I would urge all Canadians to examine the implications of destroying income/energy trusts very carefully. The future of your children depends on it. Will they be serfs or will they control their own destiny?

Will Zuzak; 2008-01-01