The Gatineau Hillbillies

The Government of Canada is at last getting out of the oil business, with the sale of its remaining 19% stake in Petro-Canada, nearly 20 years after it was set up as a Crown corporation to "give Canadians a window on the oil industry." The writer Peter Foster (Self-Serve: How Petro-Canada Pumped Canadians Dry) has estimated this strange adventure in petro-nationalism came at a total cost to the taxpayers of more than $15-billion. And that was in 1993: at 8% interest since then, its total contribution to the national debt could be well over twice that figure now. $32-billion plus. That's some fancy window. (CIPHER THE ONE, CARRY THE NOUGHT: Correction. Subtract the $2.3-billion from previous privatization tranches, say $5-billion with interest, and the $2-billion and change the current sale is expected to clear. You're still talking roughly $25-billion, net -- 5% of the total national debt. Quelle belle fen�tre!) An example. A reader writes:

When Trudeau's people formed Petro Canada as part of the NEP they first attempted to buy PetroFina, an unsuccessful gas station chain owned by Belgian interests (Genstar). When�negotiations failed, trouble-shooter Maurice Strong was called in to get them back on track.�A�deal was soon�made but at a price�much higher even than�PetroFina's asking price,�itself deemed exorbitant by the previous negotiator. The Leader of the Opposition, Brian Mulroney,�went ballistic when Trudeau and Lalonde cited cabinet confidentiality as a reason for blocking access to details of the deal.�They�also rebuffed the AG several years running when he too demanded to see the books.�When Mulroney�finally became PM, he�announced that he�too had come to the conclusion that it was not in our best interests to know details of the deal and continued to stonewall. Question: Did we ever find out where the money went? Will we ever?