- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
Fund will be used to finance construction of major projects of national interest
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While the idea of a sovereign wealth is great, I am rather skeptical of the actual proposed implementation. A typical SWF model is that you have a revenue source such as resource royalties or foreign exchange that’s directed to a fund with political independence and a broad investment mandate as seen in Norway or Singapore.
But the proposed approach by the Federal Government does not follow these practices. It is using national debt to make initial investments. In theory, if your return is greater than interest it can work, but it’s not ideal. These investments are targeted at major projects in the national interest. But just like the Major Projects office, these are politically-prioritized. This makes me skeptical of the independence aspect of the fund. Finally, we should ask why our independent wealth funds (CPP/Pensions/Private) and global capital are not more interested in major project investments.
I am open to being convinced with more details provided because we do need a sovereign wealth going forward.
This is good news but I bet it has some neoliberal aspect that ultimately chips away at how good this could actually be.
What kind of finance pros are gonna run it? If Carney doesn’t handpick Keynsian ideologues for the job, it’s gonna be neolibs all the way down, cause that’s the predominant culture today.
I hope it can escape looting by future governments and that oversight of the funded projects is rock solid to avoid funneling money to cronies.
I’ll wait for the official announcement, but looks to me like this fund will financed with debt. So another $25B on top of the $75B already.
In principle, a sovereign fund is a fantastic idea that we should have done long ago.
In the specifics, I’m a bit concerned about how it’s being set up, because I don’t trust that “major projects of national interest” won’t be narrowly defined as “fossil fuel infrastructure”.
These are the projects that have been officially acknowledged so far, per the CBC:
The Sisson Mine, for critical minerals, in New Brunswick.
The Crawford Nickel project in Ontario.
The Ksi Lisims liquefied natural gas project in British Columbia.
An Iqaluit hydro project.
The Nouveau Monde Graphite Phase 2 project in Quebec.
The Northwest Critical Conservation Corridor in northwest B.C. and Yukon., which could include critical minerals and clean power transmission developments in the area.
The North Coast Transmission Line in northwest B.C.
Certainly all industrial infrastructure, but not necessarily for fossil fuels.
The Ksi Lisims liquefied natural gas project in British Columbia.
That one is, but there are also issues of geopolitics and strategic economics involved. I think the key rebuttal is whether it is “narrowly defined as fossil fuel infrastructure” which we can clearly see it is not, nor should it be. I don’t think it can realistically exclude fossil fuel infrastructure given how much of it underpins our economy and position in the world at this particular moment in history, but I will certainly be happy to see a lot these non-fossil-fuel infrastructure projects get built.
There’s a few other projects that are big ticket items that there would need to be federal money for. Thinking things like the Toronto - Quebec City high speed rail, the port expansion at Churchill, the space launch site in Nova Scotia. Pretty sure the major port in BC (the container port, not the LNG/oil one) is looking to expand too. Then there’s the Ring of Fire mining projects in northern Ontario. That would for sure involve the federal government, since it touches the “critical minerals” issue and directly involved Native relations.
I just figured it was to funnel money to Liberal Party donors as usual.
Your downvoters must have already forgotten about the ‘Green Slush Fund’ (Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) program) the one that the Liberals refused to reveal the details of where the billion dollars went even after Parliament demanded the books be opened. Eventually the Auditor General found that Liberal appointees to the fund gave $400 million tax dollars to their own companies, involving 186 conflicts of interest. We call this Green Slush Fund for a reason. Imagine how much more accountable they’ll be with 30 billion.
No way Brookfield will benefit from this fund.
/s
If you’re Canadian you should be angry you don’t already have a trillion+ dollar fund.
Canadians literally should be the wealthiest people on the planet
They have more resources and in abundance than anywhere else
nah…private industry makes all the tar sand money, fucks off, then the leftists pay for the cleanup.
Great deal for Alberta.
I am angry.
Pierre Trudeau was right.
The National Energy Program. The West lost their minds and privatized the profit. Alberta took a slice for the Heritage Fund which Lougheed looted and here we are.
The problem I see with that is that this fund won’t last long enough to matter. I don’t even give it a decade before a different administration quietly takes the money from that fund to spend it on whatever.
This is the problem: any surplus or balancing of the budget is weaponized.
The party being fiscally responsible is demonized: “why are you taxing us for benefits we don’t see now?”.
Cue to the opposition being elected and pilfering the coffers for easy political points from the electorate, then they will remember the opposition’s term as the party of “good times”.
I wish the electorate wasn’t this dumb, but in Ontario atleast, we re-elected in Doug Ford so…
This needs to be managed by an independent government entity, like a central bank. They say that it is, so that’s cool.
It depends how it’s put together. The CDPQ for example is pretty independent.
The proof really is in the pudding for the Liberals here.
Do you prefer it being under less democratic control than more? Cause that’s flip side of independent gov’t institutions.
Personally I think isolating public infrastructure/institutions from the gov’t has not worked incredibly well. I used to think the opposite. It “protects” them somewhat from bad actors but it also limits the ability of other gov’ts to leverage them to fulfill what Canadians voted for. Essentially limits the scope of electoral democracy to affect change further than it already is.
