It’s a daunting task and we can only hope that Finance Minister Charles Sousa is up to it. He is travelling Ontario searching for solutions to Ontario’s economic malaise. Needless to say, our unemployment is higher and our economy is shrinking and only the ignorant among us think the answer is to balance the books. Charles has come to the understanding that he has to get away from Queen’s Park. You have to get out of the box to think outside the box.
And if Charles stops by Babel on his pilgrimage of promise, we can at least promise him an earful.
With his last budget on behalf of the New Democrat’s Andrea Horwath, Charles proved that he had no ideas of his own. His biggest problem du jour is a company in Waterloo called Research in Motion (RIM). RIM and its product, the Blackberry, are credited with getting business executives’ thumbs out of their bums so that they could use their thumbnails on tiny keyboards. The company revolutionized micro-managing.
But, like most once-successful Canadian companies, RIM is now circling the drain. It is the victim of its own success. It turned out to be another one-pony show in a business of three-ring wonders. It kept assuming that if it was right the first time, it will continue to be right. It did not understand the ebb and flow of the affairs of a fickle business world. It also failed to understand that it was not in the hardware business in a world built by constantly changing software.
Charles needs to challenge his brain trust in that Treasury building across from the Pink Palace on what RIM really cost the taxpayers of Ontario and how we can get our dividends before giving the company to the Americans. And, like Nortel, RIM’s software patents are worth far than anything mechanical the company ever designed.
Any economic modeling of the Ontario economy should tell Charles’ Ministry experts that, like the bumble bee, the Ontario economy cannot fly. It has to tax business fully and properly, it has to put blocks in the way of exporting jobs, and it has to put good citizenship by business ahead of worrying about ownership.
And just because Ontario’s lame duck Conservative Leader Timmy Hudak jumped on the same bandwagon is no reason not to sell off the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. With our liquor taxes, it would be the gift that keeps on giving. And, while we are at it, please get rid of those disgusting Beer Stores!
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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