massive canadian oil company sun corp. announced laying off 1,000 workers, cutting a billion dollars from capital spending plan. the potential downside is great enough that high ranking government officials are speaking out about it. >> oil prices continue to slip. we don't evidently haven't seen the bottom yet and this is opened up an enormous revenue short fall in terms of the government's budget. quie for next year 6 to $7 billion. $5 billion the year after that and $5 billion the year after if we don't take action. >> reporter: the answer to the growing crisis is complex. the cause of the problem is not. the world is simply producing more oil than it is using. so is supply and demand so out of whack, we asked an oil economist, why don't the big oil producers simply cut back on production? >> when you got a price for, all try to offset by producing more. it's a free for all for the moment but until we see the participants in the global thing start to die off, we're going to see low prices. >> reporter: canada's oil pain