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Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker
Building a building is never a program. Roads are by your definition just a transportation and mobility social program, that requires substantial ongoing maintenance and renewal.
As has been said, this initial phase of the programs are hyper local focused and very short term: what was announced in Ontario today for example wasn't 10 years of money to build new rail lines, but 3 years of funding to design them, amongst a lot of small capital projects.
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Where did I say a building is not infrastructure? I think you are missing my point here and slipping into a semantic argument.
Refer back to my initial comparison of deficit spending to margin investing. Both are extremely risky propositions. If all of this spending does not produce long term growth resulting in additional tax revenue to cover the debt service costs we are going to be in a heap of trouble. There are smart investments and stupid investments - you don't have to be a CFA charterholder to realize that the bulk of spending announced thus far falls into the latter category. It's spending that will produce a short term bump in GDP growth but will eventually prove to be a drag on the economy. Is there anything factually incorrect with this analysis?
Quote:
Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker
And really, what national project is there to do? Ambitious Highway funding so we can have a nice road to Revelstoke (I'd love that!) All we have to do to pay for it is to spend many more times as much on highways over the Canadian shield where 3 lanes with alternating passing lanes and down to two to fit on existing bridges is more than adequate.
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I'd love a nice road to Revelstoke as well! You know who else would? Distribution firms who can get their goods to market more efficiently, consumers in the interior who can take advantage of lower prices thanks to more efficient distribution, tourists who can get to Banff without a massive delay in the summer, resorts in the mountains who have more people coming to spend their dollars there...and I could go on.
Take a look at a zoomed out map of western Canada and the U.S. Do you notice a difference between the two countries? Somehow the U.S. has managed to construct a grid of efficient high-speed freeways connecting population centres even in the most sparsely populated states. We don't even have a modern road between Calgary and Edmonton - the two closest major cities in the west. I'm not advocating freeways across northern Ontario, but we should have
at minimum the existing network between major cities (including Fort Mac) upgraded to interstate standard and I'd like to see a dedicated route between Calgary and Saskatoon.
And I'm just brainstorming here, but how about some type of national fibre-optic project? I'm a finance guy admittedly I'm not well versed in the subject but I know Kelowna has been successful in attracting tech investment with their program in this field. How's that for an ambitious national project?
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Originally Posted by MalcolmTucker
And you know, isn't fulfilling our treaty obligations to first nations a worth national project.
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This is a strawman argument and I don't see much value in responding, but it's obviously an important project and nowhere did I suggest otherwise. It's just not the type of infrastructure spending that's going to make a sustained economic impact in the short to medium term and
shouldn't be represented as so by government. I'd love to see our northern reserves become economic powerhouses, but that's only going to happen in the bizzaro world. Given this, places like Tsuu Tina and Stoney Nakoda do have a chance to make a meaningful contribution to the local economy and I hope the best for them.