Greetings, so I’ll get this thing started by stating that I am an Albertan who voted in this federal election. By looking at the results below you will likely be able to tell which way I voted in this election. I won’t be getting too far into my political beliefs or stating who’s wrong or who’s right in all of this I would just like to lay out some thoughts on the results of the election as well as cover some of the popular talking points which have come out since the results were made official and how these may affect our personal plans towards financial decision making as well as any affects we may see on the economy as a whole.
Who won?
First things first. The Liberal party were victorious and attained a minority by winning 157 seats (170 needed for a majority). While the Conservatives won the “popular” vote -or had the most overall votes cast in their favour. Take a look below to see the result:
The elephant in the room (or country?)
I’ve only voted in this country a few times now, twice federally and twice provincially but this go round felt quite a bit different than the others as this election seemed to really put the province in which we live under attack.
Listening to the platforms leading into the election it became very clear there were 2 sides – the Conservatives who were pro energy and supported oil & gas and pipelines etc. and essentially everyone else, who made it known they were very much interested in making things difficult for the sector moving forward and want to “save the environment”.
One detail about this debate that I would like to be heard is that I myself as an oil and gas worker totally support green energy and talking to my co-workers and friends and family back home you don’t hear many people who are of the opinion we should just keep upping our consumption of fossil fuels and upping our carbon production over the long haul.
Instead, what you hear in talking is that we should in fact be in favour of more green energy. – The issue, however is the fact that we as a nation and as a world have become so reliant on these fuel sources for everything from heating our homes, fueling our vehicles to… well take a look at the list below and tell me how many of these you or someone you know uses:
So while when we talk oil & gas we think of big trucks and stacks at our plants emitting smog into the atmosphere there are a ton of other users currently for the petroleum industry. We need to reduce the usage but to come down swiftly and cut off oil and gas just doesn’t work all at once and without finding replacement energy sources PRIOR to ending the use of fossil fuels. That’s where I’ll leave that topic as I don’t want to rant.
WE’VE HAD IT! WE’RE SEPARATING!!
As you can tell, the country had a fairly divided vote on its hands and an initial response that we will likely hear chatter of for quite some time is the talk of a Western Alliance or some form of separation from Canada. This won’t happen.
I don’t see any chance of a separation at this time because I, like other Albertans are all very proud to be Canadians and most feel a strong tie to the name of Canada and what it stands for. I believe that currently what we’re seeing is posturing by politicians for their own agendas but ultimately there will be an agreed upon resolution to this whole thing – most likely in the form of a pipeline west prior to anything actually happening on the referendum or separation front.
What does this mean for the Canadian economy?
In the immediate after math there hasn’t been any large moves to the stock market and no announcements that I’m aware of as of yet that will have much of an impact in the near term.
The main concern is that the oil & gas sector does get killed off or meets speed bumps in which case obviously, the foreign investment will likely fade and the profits of the bigger oil companies and pipeline companies will likely feel the brunt of it.
On a positive side, as far as I can tell a Liberal win could help prop up the housing market some more as some of their talking points were related to allowing easier borrowing of money for home buyers which in theory should drive housing prices up for a period of time – whether or not easier borrowing is a good or bad thing is a separate conversation that I won’t touch on with this post.
As far as the overall GDP of Canada goes? Well considering Alberta is 17% of it, which is substantial it is still not devastating to the country as a whole if that slips by a bit – and ideally if that were to happen it would be getting picked up by other sectors or job creation being done in the meantime… you’d hope. As long as our GDP stays strong and growing then there’s every reason to believe that the stock market will continue to climb right along with it.
What’s our plan?
Well, to be honest.. the plan is to keep with the plan. I’ve been mentally preparing myself to purchase some oil and gas stocks if they should take a major beating in the coming years because I know it will be hard to pull the trigger on these companies when the going gets tough, but I’m bullish in the long term on the industry for at least the next couple of decades – at least.
We’re going to continue saving 50% of our income and investing it into strong, stable dividend paying companies in our TFSA’s and RRSP’s and throw any additional money we muster up into our mortgage. One minor change you may notice on our updates is a higher cash holding moving forward if anything changes and our job security begins to decline, in which case we would shift to saving a little extra cash for rainy days.
Anyways, that’s the hot topic around here right now and as such we felt the need to respond with our thoughts. We hope you enjoyed the read and if you have anything to say on the matter please feel free to leave a comment below or message us @FindependenceCanada on Instagram.
Thanks for stopping by,
FIC.