Desmond Hawkins
Deity
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2002
- Messages
- 9,922
Hello Canadian posters. The topic of this thread is economic stimulus for Canada. Basically, this thread will look something like a massive shopping list.
The criteria for what you think the government should do can be at your own discretion. My criteria will loosely be based on long-term usefulness (not just digging ditches) and immediate effect, roughly. Other investments may not have as short-term an effect, but are direly needed, and should be included as a cooling economy would be a good time to build them with cheaper labour and materials. This is not an exhaustive list, and posters should contribute their own ideas.
Good Investments - Immediate Effect
1. Post-Secondary Education - A recession can be a great time to upgrade skills and education for the workforce. It is like an infrastructural investment, except that the shovels can hit the ground (or the pencils hit the books) immediately. This might especially be true for a place like Alberta, where some sidestepped education to enter the hot labour market sooner. Also, graduate students specifically can start research immediately, the fruits of which can stimulate the economy for years. Since they are poor, students also tend to spend every dollar they earn in the economy.
2. Military - Some Canadians like to (ignorantly) play the peacekeeping card as an excuse as to why Canada should neglect its forces. Well, folks, even peacekeeping requires a strong military, and more likely, we will want to be able to defend our waters, field a strong air capability, and have the amongst the most professional armies in the world.
Much Canadian military equipment will be produced locally, by manufacturing in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. This indirect employment would help solidify high-tech manufacturing in Canada over a 30 year time-frame. Direct employment of new hires in the Canadian forces would also put money in the hands of families who then spend their stable incomes in the local economy. I would propose a much more ambitious goal of expanding the regular forces to 100,000 and the reserves to 50,000. That is a good 40-50,000 more than presently planned.
The overall advantage of military spending is that, unlike in the States, it was direly needed for the long-term anyway, and with a cooling economy, it will be easier to attract top-notch talent now that there are fewer private sector options.
3) Efficiency Upgrades - Upgrading buildings and infrastructure to be more energy efficient will help the economy in the long-run, and can start almost immediately, with labour-intensive work.
4) Road/transit Maintenance - Maintain and fix existing crumbling infrastructure, particularly in a place like Quebec which tends to be farther along in terms of aging infrastructure. The advantage of these sorts of projects is that they can start almost immediately and could re-employ lots of blue-collar workers with years of experience.
Good Investments - Not an Immediate Effect
1) Mass transit - Inter-Urban Rail - In terms of long-term usefulness, this is about the best investment that can be made. There should be a massive, national transit/land-use strategy. Every single major Canadian city should undergo a largescale transit upgrade, with an overall plan to feed into commuter rail systems, and ultimately, higher-order high-speed inter-urban rail (where appropriate). Even smaller cities are excellent candidates for LRT/mass transit, especially where they may lie on a future high speed rail corridor. These sorts of small centres will experience large-scale growth once travel times to major centres like Toronto or Montreal could be shorter than for those cities' own suburbs. By having the mass transit in before the growth, the type of growth/land use can be influenced, rather than responded to.
The only problem with these investments is that they take years of planning, and couldn't be started immediately. However, the advantageous labour/materials situation should still exist when they are ready to go in 3 years time, they will employ huge numbers of people in good jobs, and they will lay out a new, more efficient, and more desirable Canada.
The criteria for what you think the government should do can be at your own discretion. My criteria will loosely be based on long-term usefulness (not just digging ditches) and immediate effect, roughly. Other investments may not have as short-term an effect, but are direly needed, and should be included as a cooling economy would be a good time to build them with cheaper labour and materials. This is not an exhaustive list, and posters should contribute their own ideas.
Good Investments - Immediate Effect
1. Post-Secondary Education - A recession can be a great time to upgrade skills and education for the workforce. It is like an infrastructural investment, except that the shovels can hit the ground (or the pencils hit the books) immediately. This might especially be true for a place like Alberta, where some sidestepped education to enter the hot labour market sooner. Also, graduate students specifically can start research immediately, the fruits of which can stimulate the economy for years. Since they are poor, students also tend to spend every dollar they earn in the economy.
2. Military - Some Canadians like to (ignorantly) play the peacekeeping card as an excuse as to why Canada should neglect its forces. Well, folks, even peacekeeping requires a strong military, and more likely, we will want to be able to defend our waters, field a strong air capability, and have the amongst the most professional armies in the world.
Much Canadian military equipment will be produced locally, by manufacturing in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. This indirect employment would help solidify high-tech manufacturing in Canada over a 30 year time-frame. Direct employment of new hires in the Canadian forces would also put money in the hands of families who then spend their stable incomes in the local economy. I would propose a much more ambitious goal of expanding the regular forces to 100,000 and the reserves to 50,000. That is a good 40-50,000 more than presently planned.
The overall advantage of military spending is that, unlike in the States, it was direly needed for the long-term anyway, and with a cooling economy, it will be easier to attract top-notch talent now that there are fewer private sector options.
3) Efficiency Upgrades - Upgrading buildings and infrastructure to be more energy efficient will help the economy in the long-run, and can start almost immediately, with labour-intensive work.
4) Road/transit Maintenance - Maintain and fix existing crumbling infrastructure, particularly in a place like Quebec which tends to be farther along in terms of aging infrastructure. The advantage of these sorts of projects is that they can start almost immediately and could re-employ lots of blue-collar workers with years of experience.
Good Investments - Not an Immediate Effect
1) Mass transit - Inter-Urban Rail - In terms of long-term usefulness, this is about the best investment that can be made. There should be a massive, national transit/land-use strategy. Every single major Canadian city should undergo a largescale transit upgrade, with an overall plan to feed into commuter rail systems, and ultimately, higher-order high-speed inter-urban rail (where appropriate). Even smaller cities are excellent candidates for LRT/mass transit, especially where they may lie on a future high speed rail corridor. These sorts of small centres will experience large-scale growth once travel times to major centres like Toronto or Montreal could be shorter than for those cities' own suburbs. By having the mass transit in before the growth, the type of growth/land use can be influenced, rather than responded to.
The only problem with these investments is that they take years of planning, and couldn't be started immediately. However, the advantageous labour/materials situation should still exist when they are ready to go in 3 years time, they will employ huge numbers of people in good jobs, and they will lay out a new, more efficient, and more desirable Canada.
). Seriously though, we are grossly behind in this area too.
Great point. The Trans-Canada should be a freeway. Or at least having less stupid traffic lights.
