Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (13990)	2/27/2010 3:28:51 AM
From: axial	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 37549

"I guess that's just the way the country is headed." When I first went to Germany, the Canadian dollar was worth 5 DM, and US $1.04. We continued to do well up until the first Oil Embargo in '73, and subsequent oil shocks. But we were spending ourselves into debt, including billions for PetroCan. When interest rates spiked in the 80s, payments on debt went stratospheric even as excessive spending continued. That balooned debt was completely unexpected, and has been an anchor around our neck ever since. Meanwhile we got NAFTA and globalization. Ontario recovered well with the auto industry and manufacturing, being geographically well-situated, and major companies moved their HQs from Montrreal to Toronto as we all suffered from continuing separation anxiety. But we never outperformed the US, and we never can. We'll suffer the same fate as Mexico, doomed to sell our natural resources to our southern neighbor until they're pretty well gone. Newfoundland fishery was depleted; Maritime economies were sustained for years by transfer payments and other Federal money. Nevertheless, Montreal and Québec experienced a slow revival, and the Maritimes survived. With oil money, housing development in St. John's now looks like Vancouver or Toronto. Saskatchewan and Manitoba maintained, Saskatchewan a little better because of agriculture and oil. But the character of the province has changed; outside the major cities, rural communities have all but disappeared, as fewer farms with fewer owners become larger. If you think you're irritated about the Federal government, you should have been in the west after the NEP. I was working the patch in the Yukon, and we watched convoys of oil rigs on satellite TV, leaving Alberta for the midwest US. That was within weeks of NEP inception. Wham! Just like that. Overnight, Alberta and BC were shit down and plunged into recession; whole towns barely survived. The oil patch shrivelled. The popular saying became "Will the last person leaving Saskatchewan turn out the lights?" Meanwhile BC got fished out too, while NAFTA and globalization wrecked a once-profitable forest industry. Eventually great companies like McMillan Bloedel folded. Instead of manufacturing wood products here, we sent raw logs to Asia. Between the fisherey, forests and the NEP tens of thousands of jobs were lost, and many towns barely survived. In the last decade. US NAFTA violations hammered the forest industry again. Up until recently Ontario sailed serenely through it all. It was the economic heart of Canada, and it still is. But things are changing, and economic and political power is being distributed elsewhere, mostly westward. Meanwhile western Europe is prosperous again. Even the UK experienced an economic revival, especially when US WWII debt was paid off, and North Sea oil revenues flowed in. The last time I visited the Middle East signs of prosperity were everywhere. Now it's all changing again; Ontario has become a have-not province. Its main competitor is its main market; the US. Asian Tigers are competing with everyone, and they'll win. As crude prices rise so will transportation costs, and global wage arbitrage will become less attractive. In time North America will experience economic consolidation; Canada may well revert to its pre-NAFTA status as a "branch plant" economy. In any case, there'll be lean days ahead, especially for Ontario, and also for federal revenues. Any Canadian commercial success will likely be acquired by US interests, because the US will retain its humungous strength and advantages for years, even as it declines. --- The point? Relative to ROW, with the US we too have been experiencing a decline. We're a great country and we play a good game, but the competition is tough. We've been stretched to the limit for years, and for Ontario as well as the country as a whole, it isn't going to get easier. "Ontario health care has steadily declined in the 25 years I've lived here... as has education." Pretty well everywhere else, too. Ontario's facing some hard realities, just as every other area of the country has done. It ain't gonna stop. Jim