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Suicides In Alberta Soar In Wake Of Canada's Oilpatch Depression
Over the past year, we have extensively chronicled the tragic story of Alberta - Canada's once booming oilpatch - disintegrate slowly at first, then very fast, into an economic and financial wasteland:
- "Canada Crude Contagion: Calgary Home Prices Drop Most In 2 Years"
- "Canada's Biggest Oil Casualty To Date: Calgary's Nexen Shutters Oil Trading Desk"
- "The Canadian Housing Bubble Has Begun To Burst"
- "Canada's Oil Patch Confidence Crashes"
- "Canada Mauled by Oil Bust, Job Losses Pile Up – Housing Bubble, Banks at Risk"
- "The Stage Is Set For A Massive Housing Market Correction in Canada's Oilpatch"
And, in the last article in this sad series describing the Alberta "bloodbath", we said that the biggest casualty of Canada's recession has been the local commercial real estate market, where office vacancies are about to surpass the aftermath of the (first) great financial crisis.
We were wrong: the biggest casualty of Canada's recession, which unless oil rebounds strongly soon will follow Brazil into an all out depression, are people themselves. As CBC reports the suicide rate in Alberta has increased dramatically in the wake of mounting job losses across the province.
According to the Canadian media, the most recent data only goes to June, but according to the chief medical examiner's office, 30 per cent more Albertans took their lives in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year.
That's how bad Canada's economic recession is: the real casualties are no longer metaphorical economic objects, but the very people who until recently enjoyed comfortable lives only to succumb to an unprecedented collapse in the local economy.
Here are the statistics as reported by CBC:
- From January to June 2014, there were 252 suicides in Alberta.
- During the same period this year, there were 327.
- If the trend continues, Alberta could be on track for 654 suicides this year.
- In an average year, there are 500, according to the Centre for Suicide Prevention.
"This is staggering," said Mara Grunau, who heads the Centre for Suicide Prevention. "It's far more, far exceeds anything we would ever have expected, and we would never have expected to see this much this soon."
What is taking place is hardly surprising: in this year of mass layoffs in the energy sector, calls to the Calgary Distress Centre have changed tone and have become more frequent, says counsellor David Kirby.
Unfortunately, when one can no longer slide the tragic reality under the rug of double seasonal adjustments and media propaganda meant to boost confidence despite economic collapse, human tragedy is what always follows.
"For me it says something really about the horrible human impact of what's happening in the economy with the recession and the real felt effect, the real suffering and the real struggle that people are experiencing," he said.
Kirby says demand for counselling services has increase by 80 per cent — and the problems people are struggling with are more complex. "There might be substance abuse issues. There might be imminent financial collapse," he said.
"Anxiety, depression. Relationship conflict, maybe concurrent domestic violence. So there are many more things that people are trying to juggle I think at the same time." Nancy Bergeron, who has answered distress centre phone lines for a few years, says this year has been the hardest.
"People are just at wit's end and they're contemplating it, right?"
Why? Simply because the price of a commodity has dropped to a third of what it was just over a year ago, and the shocking impact has been a paralysis of every aspect of financial, economic and social life, first in Alberta, and soon everywhere else across Canada, as the local recession (on its way to a depression) spreads across the country and eventually crosses the U.S. border.
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Why kill ypurself? Why not just go bankrupt and refuse to leave your house? If enough people did it, we may just have a few bankers and politicians offing themselves! The System is designed to screw you, start screwing back!
Take the bank to court and use the "no consideration was given by the bank" defence. That or the "chewbacca" defence.
Oil was 100 dollars and some assholes told us it would hit 200 dollars. Of course if you are earning 100k you are going to be in debt up to your eyeballs at 3%. The payments are nothing. You don't have to commit suicide though, you can just leave.
It's not sensationalism it's the truth.It's all going to hell and everybody in Alberta is in denial because they're all to fuckin in debt and stupid thinking that they are rich to remember the last big economic bust.You have a former Keynesian banker David Dodge who is Alberta's economic advisor now.He wants to run the provincial debt up $50 Billion on top of the $25 Billion they've got now.The politicians,union city workers everywhere,they are all over paid.A bloody dump truck driver making $40 dollars an hour.You have the average cop and fireman making $80-100,000 bucks and that's middle range.The Universities and education system are full of overpaid mooches making even more than that.It doesn't stop there,you've got all these overpaid government people at every level making a fortune off of taxpayers that make less every year and believe me,it won't stop in Alberta until it's completly busted.My sister in-law works for the welfare department of the province.Every Friday they only work till lunch and never go back to work from the local pub because they're all too fuckin' drunk to even walk.It's so arrogant in Calgary for instance.You can live beside somebody or on the same street for 20 years and they wouldn't say hi to anybody if their life depended on it.Just like their F'n shit doesn't stink.Everywhere you go shopping,you get ripped off on the prices and nobody cares about customer service.Record numbers of people are being poisoned in restaurants.Tourists that go to Banff are ripped-off the most.It's criminal in Alberta how business rips off the consumer on the mark-up of products everywhere you go.I have a neighbour that works for a division of Loblaws called No Frills.He's the manager of a small supermarket.He pays his entire staff minimum wage.He makes $75,000 a year plus bonus.His department managers make $45,000 plus bonus for using slave labour.He tells me that there's not a product in the store that they don't double and triple their money on.Last year the company sent every manager at the Company across Canada along with their entire family to Jamaica for a week of a so-called business pep-talk.All expenses paid.He said him and his wife were pissed the entire time on the beach.Everything paid for and used as a tax write-off to rip-off the federal government.What I'm trying to tell the average working person reading this is what is wrong in Alberta,but it's not just here,it's everywhere in our society in North America.It stinks like fucking shit.That's the problem.
+100, you nailed it.
This is a massive problem across the entire North American continent. Nowhere else are public leeches so overpaid as here. Europe doesn't pay their muni workers, fire and police forces this much.
In Germany you're lucky to earn 36k Euro p.a. after 15 years at the same muni job. Police and fire included. Nobody retires at 55 except when Greeks tried this.
Several States are just as broke as Alberta is going to be.
Just spoke to my mom on the phone yesterday...
Alberta elected an NDP govermnet (socialist) in April....they needed a change, the conservatives just REFUSED to hose out the sewar, the corruption was unbelieveable.
So now the NDP want to BAN COAL FIRED Power Plants!!!!.
Now, this might not mean much to anyone outside of Alberta but I'll break it down for yah:
1. Alberta has 12% of the world's known betumenous coal reserves,
2. Much of the reserves are between 2-6m below the surface,
3. Alberta's electricity is the most reliable in Canada BECAUSE it is privately run and regulated by the government (in all other provinces in Canada the government runs and regulates the power which is a conflict of interest),
4. Alberta currently sells electricity to Saskatchewan, British Columbia and the United states,
5. Alberta's generating capacity in ~5-6GW,
6. 90% of Alberta's power comes from plants around lake Wobmum West of Edmonton as the coal is very close to the surface there,
7. There are ~6 plants out there that produce electricity,
8. Alberta's coal, unlike Ontario's coal, has almost no sulfur in it, as such, it does NOT produce acid rain,
9. Fly-ash from the burnt coal in all the plants is captured by electrostatic precipitators (by law) and this ash is in direct competition for fertilizer production as Saskatchewan's potash, its the same stuff,
10. the only time you can tell that the plants at Wobmum are even operating is in the winter when the condensation from the stacks show up as white mist, in the summer the stacks are clear since the only thing coming out of the stacks is water vapour and CO2, the fly ash has been removed,
11. Alberta has laws on the books that forbid generation of electricity via natural gas because natural gas is more efficient for heating homes than producing electricity. In fact, coal fired power plant are much more efficient that gas turbine or natural gas fired plants.
The NDP wants to change all this because they buy into the global warming nonsense....the warming that stopped 20 years ago. As if burning coal produces less CO2 than burning methane? Elementary chemistry says that every combustion reaction produces a minimum of two by products, CO2 and H2O...the the NDP, like all socialist parties, have no science or engineering grads in teh ranks, they are all poly sci or women's studies grads so.....here we are.
This will have the following effects:
1. Put ~20,000 people in the coal fired power stations out of work,
2. Raise electricity prices by a conservative factor of 10,
3. Raise the price of the synthetic crude coming out of Ft. MaCmurray since they use a ton of electricity to break the oil out of the tar.
Alberta, you get the politicians you deserve. The Conservatives were corrupt, but they weren't suicidal.
Can you hear that flushing sound?
Its going to get worse, all self inflicted of course but, then, it usually is.
Squid
Nobody reaches high levels of government and buys into the global climate war-mongering scam. They just pretend they do.
<<The NDP wants to change all this because they buy into the global warming nonsense....the warming that stopped 20 years ago.>>
They are sell-outs and the people who voted for them are suckers. The same goes for the Green party --- what a fucking joke.
A govt. after Bloomberg's own heart.
On another note: The Canadian govt had enough research to know that when the oil downturn began that health issues would rise in Alberta: starting with research showing if someone just "thinks" they may lose their job, this can negatively affect their health. I was in a room in Canada with Canadians (including some govt employees) speaking about this and the fact the govt was mobilizing to try to mitigate + prepare.
A govt. after Bloomberg's own heart.
On another note: The Canadian govt had enough research to know that when the oil downturn began that health issues would rise in Alberta: starting with research showing if someone just "thinks" they may lose their job, this can negatively affect their health. I was in a room in Canada with Canadians (including some govt employees) speaking about this and the fact the govt was mobilizing to try to mitigate + prepare.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/04/the-pentagons-carbon-boot-print/
People need to ask this question over and over and over again:
WHO THE FUCK IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THESE TRADES?
All politics and economies are a trade, a transaction, a business deal.
SOMEONE IS MAKING MONEY OFF OF ALL THIS BULLSHIT
This is not the Black Swan you were looking for. /JEDI mind trick
Founded by prostitutes in 1849, and serviced by prostitute express riders who could bring in a fresh prostitute from Saint Joe in three days; Bloodbath Gulch quickly became known as a place where a trail hand could spend a month's pay in three minutes.
My cousin, an Albertan who owned an oilfield business, took his life in October. So this hits pretty close to home. :(
But another thing not talked about is implied suicide. People drinking a lot more. The death certificate won't say "suicide". It'll say something else.
I am sorry for your loss.
Alberta was fueled by short-termism, and a lot of QE Infinity. If Alberta has a suicide problem they should drive over to Steven Harper's house in Calgary and ask him for some of that $5 million he accrued during his tenure at the helm directing the incompetent Finance Ministers he utilized to leverage all of CANADA's eggs into one Alberta oil basket at the cost of the health of our overall economy. Moreover, if he declines to give you money when you ring his doorbell like it's Halloween and you want a treat, just ask him for the Gene Simmons bass guitar that was given to him as a 'gift' by the Zionist himself. I'm sure some crazed kid will give you $500. for it so you can drive out of Alberta and get a life.
And don't head East because the 'Eastern bums' don't have work either, Western bums.
Actually the oil bubble pumping paled in comparison to the $900B government-backed pumping of Canada's RE marketplace by way of government-sponsored subprime credit guarantees at the CMHC.
The deflation of the housing bubble will make the Alberta oilpatch stuff look like peanuts. At least most oilpatchers have useful survival skills. The crowd that has spent the past 10-15 years just HELOC'ing themselves to lavish lifestyles or flipping houses, not so much.
Yeah, I believe you on all that subprime. Frankly, everyone in Alberta should have known that the price per barrel of oil does not always go up like housing prices do. Everyone thought Athabasca Oil Sands was a sure thing that would never bottom out. It's all a good wakeup call IMHO. The suicides are an extreme reaction that indicates a lack of realistic planning. Frankly, its incongruent in terms of that tough oil patch persona that can tolerate adversity in life, and on the job. I'm wondering if they are not inflating the numbers with aging baby boomers that were living paycheque-to-paycheque?
I hope Gene suffers the same fate that he did in that shitty movie he was in with Rutger Hauer. Don't remember the name of the flick but Hauer shoves a grenade in his mouth and pulls the pin as he walks away.
Wanted, Dead or Alive...as he walks away from Gene Simmons he pulls the pin in the grenade and says "fuck the bonus"...
WTF was that about? Master, you havin a bad day?
Canada will be crying out to bring back Steven Harper in another 9 months.
Just wait till pretty boy Justin gets going, if he's any of his father's geans, this ain't gonna be good.
Squid
US dollar too strong, yet worthless...let's all price oil in Chinese currency, that should help... and not take any US dollars....
Unbelievable. This cannot happen to a country with such a "moral highground" government.
just socialist goobermint doing it to their people.
socialist gummaments around the world murder their own people.
why is Canada any different? socialism is socialism.
oops, forgot the utopia part. now where's my unicorn??
Hope and change with nice hair has come to Canada. Enjoy.
A real shooting war will bring those oil prices up in a hurry... Be careful what you ask for.
The Canadian and the Australian economies are very similar.
The carnage that's beginning to take hold in Canada provides a very clear glimpse into our future here in Australia.
Meanwhile, our very 'insightful' political parties are busily discussing the merits of gay marriage, fucking around with the GST rate, climate change and so forth.
Wake up you fools and start addressing the single most important issue that faces Australia. The biggest commodities boom in at least 100 years will soon turn into the biggest economic bust in more than 100 years.
Start preparing for it you fucking political morons.
Trudeau learned a lot from his father.
While Canada was sinking into a serious recession in the early 80s all we heard about in the media was "repatriation of the constitution" garbage. It's all just deflection to take people's collective minds off of what's really going on in society.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree!
It doesn't really work like that. This isn't the first oil depression in Alberta, but 3. that I know of. The good thing about Canada is that when Alberta is not the engine due to low oil prices, people moved to other provinces. I met a number of people whose parants moved out from Fort McMurray (richest place on earth when oil was at 100) in early nineties when Canada started feeling the glut of the late eighties. Alberta slowly depressed but the rest of Canada picked up on lower oil prices and then eventualy oil price cycle restarted. And finaly Calgary had 1 milion people.
Canada is a socialist country which means that there is a lot of buffer for the people. US can only be shocked by US banks.
All Canadian manufacturing can be done at a fraction of the cost in Mexico.
Industrial revolution 4.0 is a HUGE agenda item in Germany, among the world's leaders in innovation and production. It better be an agenda item in Canada as well as the US.
Workers are no longer required unless they get paid 2 bucks an hour because they're cheaper than the cost of running a machine.
What is an industrialized first world nation to do with many laborers who can no longer be employed?
This is the challenge.
Story from reddit
My coworker (sales) was driving back from visiting customer and decided to pull over for "a smoke" (I think he likely had to urinate, but whatever). After getting out of his truck he noticed another truck parked a bit down the same side road. While "smoking" he ended up noticing a hose from the tailpipe into the window. At this point he called the RCMP. I guess buddy had been reported missing a couple days and had been there long enough to run out of gas. His wife was pregnant with their second child and they had just purchased a new house. He was 24.
Hang in there Wade & JoJo,
The tide will turn...eventually.
Let me get this straight... the slave masters lay these folks off and they want to kill themselves?
When they open the cage door you are supposed to fly away!
Let's see: live in a cardboard box, have to dig in the trash for food and freeze your ass off vs. fuck this place you fucking pieces of shit can have it all i'm outta here.
I'd pick the latter if in that situation.
Suddenly we're realizing that economic malaise, collapse, disappointment and disillusionment lead to suicide?
(assuming you're not a sociopath or psychopath?)
Wow ...
We learn so quickly.
The GREAT LEVELING continues, next the GREAT RESET... that's about 4 years away when all the derivatives melt down.
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Good news!
Gas prices are down to 97¢ a litre in Toronto, which is fairly cheap across Cananda!
When OIL is $37 barrel?!?
This is the equivalent 1:1 of $3.68 a US gallon!!?!?!??!
With the exchange, it's still $2.76 US !?!?!?
Americans are paying ? $1.60 US
With the premium of the exchange (given that we're going to refine our own gas and not sell it back to us at world prices, like 2008, our gas prices should be into the low 60¢
Canadians, the silent majority, are well aware of how they are being played, suckered, ruled, fee'd, regulated, gouged, out the yin-yang.
And now toll roads in Toronto, the fingernail up the shoot, soon to be the whole @#$%ing arm, with them expanding everwhere, is beginning on roads we paid for with our taxes, decades ago.
•?•
V-V
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX3LacqYR58
Calgary is just a local problem. Canadian economy engine is Toronto and most Canadian manufacturing is in Ontario . The housing prises still booming here. In Toronto core homes for sale still have malty offers and price growing 10% a year. Bought my house in suburb 5 years ago for $ 570000 now its over 900000 . I know its just a paper gain but with 2.2% interest rate looks like the best investment . Plus lots of folks who lost their jobs in Alberta going to move to Toronto and its will drive prices even higher .
You will have to insure a $900,000 house and pay taxes on a $900,000 house and when it comes time to sell it may not sell as quickly as a lower priced home.