It started over morning coffee. The wife was lamenting the price of cauliflower. Frankly, she was the only one at the table who gave a damn about cauliflower. We had to listen anyway. And somehow the conversation got around to Prime Minister Trudeau. There was a front-page picture of him at Toronto City Hall. The wife wants him to do something about the price of cauliflower.
Who would dare confront our rock-star prime minister and demand he do something about the price of cauliflower? Just the wife it seems. She would get the selfie with him and then demand he do something about the loonie versus the American dollar and the cost of American vegetables.
But here he is getting away free and clear. Nobody can logically blame him for the diving stock market and the disappearing loonie.
The problem is that he is expected to do something about it. There has to be a finite amount of time for him to show that the situation is being corrected.
The next problem is that he might be waiting for those experts in the Finance Department to produce their standard approach to spending federal money. They want to stimulate the economy by spending money on building more community hockey rinks that the communities were going to build anyway. With the feds providing half the money, the communities grab at the deal and go into debt to pay their half.
But Canadians end up with lots of community hockey rinks and higher municipal taxes to try to pay down the municipal debt. And with a cyclical economy such as we have been experiencing, we just keep doing the same stupid thing.
Trudeau and his bunch in Ottawa need to do some fresh thinking. Maybe we should restrict our federal support money to projects that are going to put something into the economy. We need projects that can pay for themselves. We need the federal money as a loan against the projects’ long-term return on investment. That way the federal government carries the expense as an asset which makes everyone more comfortable.
Take the idea Toronto is promoting for surface subway system using existing rail right-of-ways. The province has already assured people that it is going to electrify the lines so that GO Trains can also use the rails to improve commuter service.
The feds can think even bigger. Electrifying the rail right-of-way from Windsor to Quebec City would pay off handsomely if the rails could also handle high-speed trains. And if the job is done right it is going to reduce carbon, improve tourism, enhance business travel and greatly improve trade between provinces and into the United States. Maybe we can also find similar opportunities out west and in the Atlantic.
And if we do this right, we will even be able to afford cauliflower in winter.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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