It’s quite true that according to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that the government can simply create the money to build things like transit. But the political culture of Canada is that this can’t possibly be true—so the Conservatives would fight tooth and nail against it. If something remains a Crown Corporation there is inevitably pressure to politicize it. But selling it to the private sector, the new owners get to own whatever anger comes from users–not the government.

This is the core problem with the Leftist idea of government ownership of everything. If we do that, then business decisions start getting made for political reasons–which destroys the efficiency of businesses. And this sucks the productivity out of the economy. And that makes workers poor. And that gets us back to the ‘losing jobs’ aspect of what Lewis was saying. I’m much more in favour of Social Democracy where business is business and government is government–and government is there to firmly regulate business and make sure that it doesn’t abuse people or the environment.

All Carney has to do is put a tax on use of airports, and use that money to fund LRT.

The problem with that is there will be pressure from the Conservatives to cut the taxes and then the LRT ends up being stranded without a funding source. Does that sound plausible to you? It certainly does for me.

What about the sale of Petrocanada? Was that also a terrible idea? My understanding is it served its purpose and made a profit for the government.

I’ve never understood why folks think that ‘preserving jobs’ is a reason to not pursue a government policy. If it gets in the way of increasing productivity, it just means that wage increases stop. The only reason why autoworkers make so much money is because of all the robots that work besides them. And it’s those robots that have dramatically cut the size of the human work force–not exporting jobs to Canada or China.

Also, Avi Lewis purports to be someone who is a radical with regard to the Climate Emergency. But the dramatic increase of frivolous air travel is one of the biggest and most intractable sources of CO2. Why should he be so concerned about keeping the price of air travel low for the masses? After all, wasn’t the whole point of the carbon tax to discourage carbon-intensive behaviour (like flying all over the planet to go on holidays)?

Carney has said that he wants to use the capital liberated by selling off the four biggest airports to build-up other aspects of the Canadian public transit system (including smaller airports). So he increases the cost of flying between Toronto and Ottawa or Quebec city by 10% and then uses the capital raised to support a high-speed rail system between these cities, and then builds a regional traditional passenger rail and bus network that feeds into that high-speed rail system (like GO Transit does in Ontario). Obviously a nefarious scheme by the Carney government to destroy the working class.

I joined the NDP to support Avi Lewis’ vision of a grassroots-based party built around consciousness-raising and building local base communities. Instead, all I see is the same old tired nonsense.