You make a great argument for refunding to big oil all the taxes government has taken from them over the years, since as you point out, they really were not making any profits. But perhaps rather than refunding the money, all those taxes should go into an invested fund that compounds over the year and when the oil is gone will go to cleaning up any environmental damage. Over $500 billion in this century alone has been paid to the Canadian government and if it had been invested the amount would equate to a $1 trillion dollar fund by now and continue to grow over time.

But it is about time someone like you highlighted how the energy industry is being taxes into insolvency rather than being asked to set aside a percentage of revenues to be fund a cleanup fund once the energy is extracted.

Finally, someone who gets it. Canada needs the energy and the 600,000 jobs the industry supports, but it is not the gold mine, that government treats it as... or that citizens Willy Nilly want to tax to support social programs like health care.

So, at some level isn't it immoral and unethical to tax an industry to the point that you target if for failure and then start claiming it can't afford its bills?

In contrast, you should begin arguing the Canadian government begin to return those taxes into a special environmental fund, since as you highlighted, there really wasn't the excess cash flow that bureaucrats thought there was... just a long tail before the expenses came due.