Sadly, our federal finance minister Jim Flaherty missed that lesson.
When I first saw the headline ...
Red hot dollar could be boon to Ontario; Could buoy sagging fortunes of province's manufacturers: Flaherty
my jaw dropped .... then I thought ... maybe there is an angle I hadn't thought of. Unfortunately by the time I was done reading .... ummm, well ... infuriated... comes to mind. At a Conservative fund raiser yesterday Mr. Flaherty said:
That (the rising dollar) means increasing purchasing power for the nation's manufacturers, who will be able to acquire more advanced technology and keep pace with emerging markets in countries like China and Brazil, said Flaherty.
"What we're seeing is a strength and a resilience among our manufacturers."
Strength and resilience ??? Does this guy read the local section of the Citizen ?? Did he somehow miss Chesterville's Nestle plant, Domtar AND Hershey ?? Did he miss the several thousand union demonstrators on Parliament Hill yesterday ... all of them worried sick about losing their jobs ??
"If you want to work in Canada today, there's lots of work," he(Mr. Flaherty) said.
Now when I hear that ... it says to me ... "If there is no work where you live ... move to Alberta." Some plan.
On the devastating impact an almost par dollar will have on American tourism to Canada ...
"What we need to do in Canada is to offer a quality tourism experience for people so they want to visit," he said.
To illustrate how utterly stupid this statement is ... I'm gonna tell you about a good friend of mine. He is from central PA, a hard working construction man who looks forward to nothing more that coming to this neck of the woods and taking in 2 weeks of fishing and friends. Cost for accommodations for 2 weeks, beer, food and other necessities .. $1500 CAD. So ... total cost to him 5 years ago in USD .. $1050 .. this year $1450. He doesn't want or need anymore of a "quality tourism experience" ...we already had it for him... he just can't afford it anymore. On the local front, given that we are losing the top tourist draw to the Town .. I'm wondering if Mr. Flaherty has any advise on how we can build on that ... and offer that elusive "quality tourism experience" .. at close to 50 % more expensive than it was just a few short years ago.
The biggest slap in the face ... is where this speech was given ... in Chesterville. Yep, Chesterville .... former home of Nestle the water tower says .... with Cornwall and Domtar to the south east and Hershey and Smiths Falls to the west... you know ... those bastions of "strength and resilience" in the manufacturing sector ... by my count close to 2000 manufacturing jobs gone between these three communities alone.
RELATED: Forbes take today on the impact of the rising loonie ... with some basic math that maybe, just maybe, Mr. Flaherty can understand ...
Canada's manufacturing sector used to enjoy that the struggling currency made their goods less expensive in the U.S. and internationally. Now their return on investment is lower due to a less favorable currency conversion, and analysts predict some manufacturers could eventually be priced out of global markets.
"Contracts they put in place early in the year that they thought were worth a million dollars are now worth 10 percent less, so when they get paid, they're going to be paid a lot less than they contracted for," said Jayson Myers, senior vice president and chief economist at the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters.
"We've developed two economies in Canada," Myers said. "In Western Canada, you've got a booming oil and gas sector and a booming economy because of the dollar, but in Ontario and eastern Canada, it's really suffering because of weak economic activity due to the rising dollar."So much for "strength and resilience", huh ?
2 comments:
Hey Mike, This article hits close to home for me... I work in manufacturing support and yes I hear from our salesmen how bad it is out there, there is plant closures happening all over Ontario. I myself have had to do work for some of them, before their closures. If they closing it might close me right out of a job too.....
Clive did a post on the same article ... a couple of commentors from the Blogging Tories took the opportunity to union bash ... Completely forgetting about people like you ... those who are affected by plant closures indirectly. In Smiths Falls there will be hundreds of others affected that do not hold CAW membership cards, tourism operators, trades people, retailers, etc. But according to Mr. Flaherty .. they can all go to hel... I mean Alberta.
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