By Kirk LaPointe
We have been told repeatedly that we live in the best region of the best province of the best country of the best planet in the solar system.
This year we may get a new take on that.
Face it, much of the Canadian economy has the blues.
The good news: we’re about to get it washed red, the Liberal tint, coast to coast to coast.
A structurally US$0.70 Canadian dollar has winners in our regional economy: exporters, tourism, the film and television industry, retailers, real estate, and commodities firms based here and selling in U.S. currency, among them.
Everyone but the U.S. dollar-paying Canuck is a winner, it seems.
A bigger issue is that a structurally US$35 barrel of oil has losers all over the country.
We are in a smallish oasis in this area. B.C. continues to be tabbed by economists as the likeliest best-performing economy in the country this year, but that is like winning a contest by a process of elimination.
Where only a few weeks ago it appeared Canada would duck the punch and fight well as the year progresses, now it’s becoming clear the worsening is worse than many of our worst fears.
It is also becoming clear that the plan for a slow-motion rollout of the federal Liberals’ economic strategy is about to be fast-tracked.
When governments want to play, they can develop sudden athleticism.
Budget consultations are likely to be minimal so as not to waste any time in identifying the ingredients of an earlier-than-typical federal budget, and it is evident a national program on infrastructure is going to be advanced to get shovels in the ground. The latter might even precede the former to send the signal to Canada that its new government isn’t willing to let the country slide toward what is already an Albertan recession.
This is the definite good news for our region. While we might not necessarily need it, we certainly will take it.
A few weeks ago it appeared that any imminent appearance by Justin Trudeau in our midst would only be good for the selfie industry. He’d escape town without leaving a cheque or shovels to break ground.
Now, brace yourself for a few photo opportunities from our prime minister and his admittedly less photogenic cabinet.
Our finance minister has been utterly uncryptic about it. Never a better time to spend, Bill Morneau says. Well, not exactly, Mr. Minister, but we get your drift. Style has trumped substance so far in the Liberal regime, and a new take is coming on that, too, because the gesture of green-lighting mothballed projects may be as important as actually placing money in our hands or funds in our accounts.
But money may not be an object in this exercise, anyway.
C.D. Howe famously asked: “What’s a million?” Trudeau is bound to ask: “What’s a million every hour?”
We may remember that in the campaign he identified the need for a federal stimulus and suggested it would drive a $10 billion deficit. He hasn’t walked back from that – he’s walked forward, to the point of it now being a notional “goal” and not a national ceiling.
Capital markets are such that the cost of federal borrowing makes deficit-creating infrastructure investment as frictionless as at any time in recent memory.
When we have to bear some explanation of anything, we usually turn to an important question: What is in it for us?
Well, in this case, possibly plenty:
•A long-sought mass transit investment, providing our region can focus its plan and perhaps even hasten it.
•A commitment to environmental industries and environmentally resilient infrastructure.
•A renewed federal presence in housing construction.
•An expanded child-care program.
This quick dividend on regime change won’t make Vancouver any less expensive and won’t do anything other than make more people eager to own our already pricey real estate.
But, done well and promptly, it will make us feel we’re in the right place at the right time. When was the last time government made you feel that?
Kirk LaPointe is Business in Vancouver’s vice-president of audience and business development.
