The good news for consumers of course is the reduced pain felt at the gas pump when filling up your vehicle. The bad news of course will be the loss of those high paying jobs the industry provides which will have a major impact across the country.
How long before that will be felt in Nanaimo at this point is speculation but it must be assumed that the number of people supporting their families in Nanaimo by working in the patch will have an impact locally as those jobs disappear.
I have never been able to find a source of reliable data as to how many families in Nanaimo are supported by wages earned somewhere else. Anecdotally a large number of people I speak with have told me they know of friends or children who are doing exactly that, living in Nanaimo while working elsewhere. Children of course are more likely to have moved to where the jobs are.
The other side of the is : 1)that the average home will be saving over $1,500 per year due to the lower oil prices. 2)The cost of shipping all goods all over the world will be less which in turn will reduce the general cost of living here.
ReplyDelete3) The Canadian dollar is lower which means the well paying jobs in the forest industry, in manufacturing and any other export business will be more profitable and expanding. 4) The lower Canadian dollar will bring more tourist to the city, filling our "new" and present hotels. 5) We maybe even see an increase of the numbers of cruise ships coming to Nanaimo to 5 or 6 per year. 6) This may be a wake up call for Canada's oil industry to realize that maybe have to be concerned on how they spend their money. The oil industry has believed they can be profitable no matter how much it costs to produce the oil. They either get more grants from the Federal government, raise the price of oil or normally do both.