The prime minister said the private money will be sought through “long-term concessions” to operate these airports, which would include Toronto Pearson International Airport, Vancouver International Airport, Trudeau International Airport in Montreal and Calgary International Airport.
“The government of Canada will retain ownership of the underlying land and assets, but we will unlock their true value by bringing in new capital and expertise to their operations and growth,” Carney said during an address at the Canada Investment Summit in Toronto on Tuesday morning.
“We will reinvest the tens of billions of dollars of capital we raise into the infrastructure that Canada needs for the next generation.”
I always felt Toronto Pearson could use some more expertise. /s
So the HWY 407 treatment. Expect lower wages for airport workers and higher prices for everyone.
What I don’t get is the investors are going to want a return on their investment, the pro people seem to be forgetting that so they but a billion into Canada and take out 2 billion. How is that a good thing long term.
I think the good faith version of the scheme is that not every billion invested produces the same amount of goods and services as every other billion. E.g. a billion invested in a luxury yacht-building shipyard compared to a billion invested in high-speed rail. The yach shipyard produce few goods/services for very small group of people. The high-speed rail produces goods/services for a lot of people and businesses. If you take the materialist perspective that the wealth a nation has, constitutes of all the goods/services we produce, then if we take billion from airports, put it in developing or expanding some other activity that produces more goods/services for us, we get more g/s. And then the good faith bet would be that the value/quantity of those would be higher than the value lost from the higher cost from the profit the new airport operator will get (and possibly exfiltrate abroad). Are the new investments gonna do that? I don’t know. I am skeptical for a set of reasons. Either way we’re getting less airport for our money in the (not too) long term as you suggested.
I always felt Toronto Pearson could use some more expertise. /s
So the HWY 407 treatment. Expect lower wages for airport workers and higher prices for everyone.
What I don’t get is the investors are going to want a return on their investment, the pro people seem to be forgetting that so they but a billion into Canada and take out 2 billion. How is that a good thing long term.
I think the good faith version of the scheme is that not every billion invested produces the same amount of goods and services as every other billion. E.g. a billion invested in a luxury yacht-building shipyard compared to a billion invested in high-speed rail. The yach shipyard produce few goods/services for very small group of people. The high-speed rail produces goods/services for a lot of people and businesses. If you take the materialist perspective that the wealth a nation has, constitutes of all the goods/services we produce, then if we take billion from airports, put it in developing or expanding some other activity that produces more goods/services for us, we get more g/s. And then the good faith bet would be that the value/quantity of those would be higher than the value lost from the higher cost from the profit the new airport operator will get (and possibly exfiltrate abroad). Are the new investments gonna do that? I don’t know. I am skeptical for a set of reasons. Either way we’re getting less airport for our money in the (not too) long term as you suggested.