Comments by "Neolithic Transit Revolution" (@neolithictransitrevolution427) on "New trade partners for Canada? Easier said than done" video.
-
If we were serious about diversifying, we would be doing it. Canada owns a pipeline company, which just finished building a pipeline, with logistics and trained staff and skilled labour and contractors all sitting on their hands. Work should be starting on adding pumping stations to Transmountain as an immediate option and to keep ground workers in projects. We should be starting Projects, which will take years and upfront planning, for another West Coast export pipeline and an Eastern pipeline, ideally getting Europe to agree to invest in the later upfront.
With Coastal link complete we should be rapidly permitting the Prince Rupert Gas line to keep works employed and lower costs by keeping those same skills and logistics systems employed.
And yes interprovincial trade is important as well. But BC doesn't need GM parts from Ontario, Nova Scotia can't change regulations to import Albertan oil and replace the lost demand. New Brunswick might be able to sell more refined products to Quebec, but at the end of the day that's at Quebec's expense. Our economy is based on exporting commodities and importing consumer goods. If we can't export, making it cheaper to ship internally isn't going to offset.
We need to be going full steam to reorient our export infrastructure. Not releasing the same proposal to do a study on high-speed rail we see every year. I supported high speed rail every other year, but right now every dollar we have needs to be invested in exporting east and west..
11
-
3
-
2
-
@raphaellagdameo7811 As I said, I have always previously been very supportive of High-speed rail - although frankly Ottawa should be cut out, it increases project cost by an order of magnitude for what could be an easy transfer from Cornwall.
But frankly who is making this trip? You aren't going to be running enough trains that people are commuting every day from Kingston to Toronto, certainly not to an extent it impacts housing prices on the lower end. Maybe some executives will choose it over flying but most of them will choose a teams call. And if we are seriously going to try to fight these tariffs, there isn't going to be a lot of money thrown around for tourism.
At the end of the day we have rail already, and busses and a Highway for cars. I don't think cars are as efficient as a train, but what's the cost of high-speed rail vs the incremental saving? If our economy is good, and you can say a Canadians time is worth $20 an hour, then it's worth it. But if we're looking at mass unemployment and a collapsing CAD, and suddenly our time is worth half that, it's not worth it.
The stimulus impact would be beneficial, but we have better projects that earn us export revenue to support the CAD to choose from. And frankly it's not as though the project is expected to break the ground in the next 5 years in any event..
2
-
2
-
@raphaellagdameo7811 I definitely agree with the appeal. But what does it matter if a Toronto to Montreal trip is cut to 3 hours? It's certainly much more convenient but what economic activity does that spur? And what activity does it spur if we assume we're in an economy that's seeing a 10% drop of GDP?
I am arguing this is an either or scenario. Again, in the past I wouldn't be. But this isn't Covid or the great recession. The Bank of Canada isn't going to be able to keep rates low without mass sell offs of our US Treasury reserves and that's a very finite amount. Without exports to the US, there is going to be substantially less demand for Canadian dollars internationally, and that means our dollar is going to struggle to purchase the imported consumer goods we rely on, leading to inflation, and the capital equipment we need to build these infrastructure projects. This is very much a shoe string budget we will be on in a way that hasn't traditionally been true. If you follow MMT, then when the discussion is that it's not about dollars available to a government it's about resources available, we are not going to have resources available if we don't have export revenue.
We don't need to spend money to keep people employed. We need to spend money that gets us exports. The people who are against pipelines, we can't afford to give them air time. We're talking about Alberta collapsing into a permanent depression. Ontario will be losing its manufacturing sector. And quite frankly I do not have a lot of faith the millions of immigrants in that corridor will be choosing to stick around, or the Ontario's housing sector, or housing and oil sands dependent banking sector, will manage to stay afloat. Very soon Quebec, along with BC, may be two of the few provinces of supplying transfer payments, and it's not because their economy will be getting stronger.
We failed to develop our economy when it was possible to build both and when we did have demand for foreign investment. And I don't want to get to the point our competitive advantage is low wages. We simply don't have the fiscal space to borrow and spend if these tariffs happen, and I believe they will, because I think the goal of this is to deindustrialize Ontario and bring that industry to the rust belt it is already integrated into, and in doing so crash the CAD to access our resources cheap.
If you want to argue for better rail in general, for more freight capacity east-west or better regional rail to Oshawa or Hamilton or even Niagara, areas people do commute and don't require 10s of billions of dollars for a single route, I think it could be very helpful in lowering cost of living. But right now I'd rather see a light rail/street car from Niagara on the lakes vineyards through Niagara falls to the border at Buffalo that can drive some tourism and help people in Niagara commute than a speed line between two cities that have very little economic integration just because they're big..
1
-
1
-
@raphaellagdameo7811 efficiency of what? Their trip? How does that make Canada's GDP grow? Really that means about a sixth of the population of the corridor we're talking about made a single there and return trip. If we assume that's all between Montreal and Toronto, we're saying save an average of 6 hours a year for 12% of the population between the two.
Europe and Asia have far more cities densely packed, and more importantly, aren't car dependent in their building. You have to start by making cities and neighborhoods survivable without a car for these kinds of benefits. No one decides against buying a car because they can make that one trip a year to Montreal in only 3 hours, they decide not to buy a car because they can get to work conveniently without one.
I agree with the point on freight. Although, I would much rather see new freight from North Bay to Ottawa so that we can free up the middle corridor in Toronto and reroute trains through Northern Ontario. But again, a high speed rail that skips Ottawa might make sense if the goal is to free up freight. Frankly, I think dedicated passenger rail would be more cost effective and provide most of the benefits, but if you're building splurge a little I guess. But if you include Ottawa that isn't what it's about at all and you're spending 10 times more on a vanity projects.
Again, just because it's well studied, doesn't mean it will help. We need to be generating export revenue. Even if a high-speed rail could be bought at a good price, if it isn't getting us foreign reserves it isn't helping. Even if we bought every part of it domestically, those domestic workers turn around and are buying imported consumer goods, because we don't make consumer goods, and that money is flowing out and having to be bought back by the BoC, and we can't do that for long before rates have to go through the roof or the CAD collapses against international currencies.
1
-
@raphaellagdameo7811 okay. Again, I can agree with the value of Toronto to Montreal. I think most would be realized with simple passenger dedicated rail, but I'm okay with a long term investment. It frees up freight and might make some trips more cost effective.
This project is not Montreal to Toronto. It's Montreal to Ottawa to Toronto. Which means that instead of flat farmland and already existing right of way, you're cutting through eastern woodlands, building over the hard rock and bogs of Canadian Shield, and through the Algonquin highlands. For hundreds of Km. Including Ottawa makes the entire project not worth the return.
We have a highway for those buses. We have airports for those planes. We aren't talking about entirely new infrastructure. In fact we will probably see those airports struggling when Canadians can't afford to travel and there is no US business to fly and attend to. There is an enormous marginal cost to building a high-speed rail over what exists. What's the goal, just to replace the buses and plains?
What's the cost per ticket. Is it really cheaper than the bus, or are those riders going to keep taking the bus because it's what they can afford, today, when the economy is relatively good. Because I'll be shocked if it's cheaper than the current train. And are the execs on those flights going to be flying, or are their companies going to make them do more online calls to save money, when the economy is in recession.
Time is money when you're employed. We are facing a mass unemployment crisis. A crisis unlike Covid or 2008, because our central bank will be unable to keep rates low and our government unable to borrow large amounts.
And we are talking about maybe an hour a person per year in the region? The GTA won't have a GDP of $450 billion a year if these tariffs are real. When Hamilton and Oshawa and Windsor lose industry, when immigrants decide they don't want to live in a country they came to for economic opportunity that now is facing a decade of recession, that won't be the case. What are people in the GTA going to do with quicker access to Montreal that makes money, and vice versa.
From Paris or London I can go to a dozen other cities. You're naming hubs in a network. Our cities are islands; especially if you got there on a train. And they are cities that have public transit outside the downtown. Montreal and Toronto are maybe the best in Canada, but you can't go to the suburbs. I'd much rather see this money spent on building new LRT, or just bus lanes and stop lights timed to bus routes. There is far more time we could be saving for people with the very limited fiscal space we have being put into public transit compared to an HSR.
Right now a quarter of the country's exports, which fund a quarter of the country's imports, are oil sands. When the price of that collapses, our dollar can't buy things. I'm not even saying to expand the oil sands. I think we'll probably lose the oil sands mines, a million barrels a day, which you might think is a good thing until you realize it means the tailings ponds along the Athabasca will be abandoned. I'm simply saying we need to prioritize getting what we can out of the country, or else decade and hundreds of billions of investment into the Canadian economy are written off. While Ontario's Manufacturering is written off.
We won't be able to afford importing those $200 billion in service if we can't get our exports to market, and you have not given any explanation to how this rail line would internalize those services.
And tar is an acidic oxidized carbon residue, you are referring to bitumen..
1
-
@adelezakus4795 obviously we agree on a lot, most importantly the importance of planning infrastructure on long time lines. There are two things I disagree.
First is that HSR is a solution to sprawl or long commutes. No country with HSR treats it as a commuter service. I get the idea but I think the solution has to be developing dense walkable communities within our cities, around existing transit hubs. That's how we reduce long commutes, we reduce the number of long distance commuters, not spend more on subsidizing long distance commuting.
And in regard to to tariffs, my point there is that even if all the iron for rails and manufacturing of train cars and equipment used to build is made in Canada, those workers get paid. And when they get paid, they end up buying imports, because almost all of our consumer goods are imported. And buying imports when we don't have exports means the Bank Of Canada has to protect the CAD, either selling reserves or raising rates.
I really believe we need to focus everything on salvaging those exports. Any government money spent means capital flight, and if it isn't being invested on getting access to foreign assets, it's wasted. We are in such an incredibly similar situation to Venezuela. Our ace up the sleeve is the US doesn't want a Venezuela on its border. And I don't want to play it..
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
@therighteousrighthand Sweden is a very unusual case, and even they are now partnering internationally for their next generation fighters. And, along with all the big players, we would also be competing against Sweden. In many ways I would prefer to work with Sweden and buy their products than attempt to enter an industry they are struggling in.
But I certainly agree with the rest. I just don't agree with your industries. Halifax, Either Vancouver or Prince Rupert, and Southern Ontario should all house massive food processing industries to value add to the enormous amount of food we export raw and in bulk.
We need to start allowing mining again. I'm the a cut the red tape type problem solver, and there is lots of other things we should do, but in the case of mining cutting tape is a must do. All the EV manufacturing and batteries were premised on us having the supply chain to keep costs low. Without that, our only advantage was access to the US market. Maybe we can do well in the battery market, and that the main thing for EVs, if we have the supply chains. But I'm not going to support EVs if we aren't creating the inputs.
We need to build some pipelines to the West Coast. An east coast pipeline is fine, good for economic security, and we might be able to get Europe to invest in it if they feel the US is unreliable. But we should have massive petrochemical facilities on the West. It's import to understand we don't have all that much oil, we have bitumen it's as different as NG from oil, and the advantage here is that Oil is going to be hurt by EVs kicking out demand for gasoline. Bitumen doesn't have that problem, we can turn it all to diesel, or jet fuel. Or non combustion uses like Asphalt or lubricants or even carbon fiber. And we can have a dominant position in Asia with that.
Along with that I'm pretty pro Hydrogen investment. It's unlikely to be relevant for energy, but we can use it in our fertilizer industry, we can use it to upgrade that bitumen to other products, we can use it in industry for heating. And also SMRs, we should be ripping out the boilers in the Oilsands and using nuclear for the steam generation. Likewise for the petrochemical clusters or other industrial clusters or upgraders.
In terms of Industry/manufacturing, I'll take whatever the Europeans will invest in us, wether it's artillery or hydrogen/ammonia or an LNG pipeline. If they pay I'm in, the east coast has always been an economic weakness.
If I'm using government money, I'll support wind turbines (particularly in NF), mining equipment, and maybe heat pumps and solar cells. Things we need domestically at scale for either cost of living and lowering consumer energy costs or for powering industry, and can find large export markets particularly in Latin America. And I'm okay to throw some money at Additive manufacturing/3D printing random consumer junk but I don't expect it to stick.
Last point, agricultural. 3 pillars and 2 add on. 1) we should be trying to pull in Dutch farmers finding land to expensive in the Netherlands to come to southern Ontario and the two food hubs and putting money into a massive greenhouse industry, and building those greenhouses. 2) we should be trying to turn the tundra into a massive grazing land for cattle and some additional animals, domestic muskox for wool and bringing in some Fins for Caribou. 3) we should be subsidizing kelp farming on the east coast to drive employment, increase fish stocks, and use it as biomass for fertilizer, Biogas, and chemicals. And 2 less large scale, creating more markets for berries from the North, and trying to bring in some American farmers from Wisconsin/Minnesota who have been priced out to develop Ontario's sand belt for wheat.
1
-
@therighteousrighthand Sweden is a very unusual case, and even they are now partnering internationally for their next generation fighters. And, along with all the big players, we would also be competing against Sweden. In many ways I would prefer to work with Sweden and buy their products than attempt to enter an industry they are struggling in.
But I certainly agree with the rest. I just don't agree with your industries. Halifax, Either Vancouver or Prince Rupert, and Southern Ontario should all house massive food processing industries to value add to the enormous amount of food we export raw and in bulk.
We need to start allowing mining again. I'm the a cut the red tape type problem solver, and there is lots of other things we should do, but in the case of mining cutting tape is a must do. All the EV manufacturing and batteries were premised on us having the supply chain to keep costs low. Without that, our only advantage was access to the US market. Maybe we can do well in the battery market, and that the main thing for EVs, if we have the supply chains. But I'm not going to support EVs if we aren't creating the inputs.
We need to build some pipelines to the West Coast. An east coast pipeline is fine, good for economic security, and we might be able to get Europe to invest in it if they feel the US is unreliable. But we should have massive petrochemical facilities on the West. It's import to understand we don't have all that much oil, we have bitumen it's as different as NG from oil, and the advantage here is that Oil is going to be hurt by EVs kicking out demand for gasoline. Bitumen doesn't have that problem, we can turn it all to diesel, or jet fuel. Or non combustion uses like Asphalt or lubricants or even carbon fiber. And we can have a dominant position in Asia with that.
Along with that I'm pretty pro Hydrogen investment. It's unlikely to be relevant for energy, but we can use it in our fertilizer industry, we can use it to upgrade that bitumen to other products, we can use it in industry for heating. And also SMRs, we should be ripping out the boilers in the Oilsands and using nuclear for the steam generation. Likewise for the petrochemical clusters or other industrial clusters or upgraders.
In terms of Industry/manufacturing, I'll take whatever the Europeans will invest in us, wether it's artillery or hydrogen/ammonia or an LNG pipeline. If they pay I'm in, the east coast has always been an economic weakness.
If I'm using government money, I'll support wind turbines (particularly in NF), mining equipment, and maybe heat pumps and solar cells. Things we need domestically at scale for either cost of living and lowering consumer energy costs or for powering industry, and can find large export markets particularly in Latin America. And I'm okay to throw some money at Additive manufacturing/3D printing random consumer junk but I don't expect it to stick.
Last point, agricultural. 3 pillars and 2 add on. 1) we should be trying to pull in Dutch farmers finding land to expensive in the Netherlands to come to southern Ontario and the two food hubs and putting money into a massive greenhouse industry, and building those greenhouses. 2) we should be trying to turn the tundra into a massive grazing land for cattle and some additional animals, domestic muskox for wool and bringing in some Fins for Caribou. 3) we should be subsidizing kelp farming on the east coast to drive employment, increase fish stocks, and use it as biomass for fertilizer, Biogas, and chemicals. And 2 less large scale, creating more markets for berries from the North, and trying to bring in some American farmers from Wisconsin/Minnesota who have been priced out to develop Ontario's sand belt for wheat..
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1