I believe McGuinty is really full of sh*t.
So he prefers the CAD =0.67USD old days where Canada can manufacture cheap goods? How funny... even at parity, Canadians need to spend 20% more for everything they purchase than American customers. At 0.67, guess how much we will be paying? Why don't Canadians deserve the same purchase power as the Americans?
What's more important, Canada can never compete with low cost countries no matter how low the CAD is. Are we really gonna depreciate our currency to compete with developing countries? Don't pretend there is anything Canada can produce but China can't nowadays.
His green energy plan is the biggest joke I have ever heard for the policy in any jurisdiction and only complete fools out of touch with the world will applaud it. Essentially we should stop using cheaper energy but rely more and more expensive but "green" energy such as solar and wind, which costs 10 times more than traditional energy sources? What matters to him is to personally become some sort of "green energy pioneer" so that when everyone dies, his name will still be remembered, rather than doing any good to Ontario. As good as it sounds, solar and wind energy are too premature to expand on the large scale, because technology hasn't made them affordable yet. Besides, neither source is reliable energy and we have to rely on mother nature for it to work well.
McGuinty always boasts about so many "green jobs" his ridiculous energy policy creates. Anyone will some intelligence should know these jobs are completely bogus because they are based on huge policy subsidies. If the province needs to spend $2b in subsidy in creating 10,000 green jobs, that simply means each job costs a lot more than they supposedly contribute to the economy, so what's the point? I guess the point is to announce in 2020, Ontario consumes 50% of "Renewable energy" on paper, while destroying value for ontarians? He might have just pay each worker $100 a day for sitting on the curb and then declare he has personally created 10,000 jobs in Ontario.
Ontario's electricity price is becoming less and less competitive and we are losing jobs because of this. For a large industrial users, Quebec's electricity price is 40% lower, guess where an energy heavy company will go when deciding to open a large plant? For some industries, energy is the biggest operating cost. He wouldn't chosen this stupid energy plan if he did care about manufacturing.
Canadian dollars are higher only against USD, which is depreciating due to the state of the US economy. If you look at CAD against other major currencies, it is a different story. This again proves that the old "let's produce to the US of A" strategy has already stopped working, yet these people turn a blind eye to it and claims we lose manufacture jobs because CAD is too high! Apparently there is only one other country in this entire world, and if it goes, Canada has to die with it!
CAD got higher because the Canadian economy is stronger vis-a-vis its neighbor, and we should be happy about that because we can buy more stuff with our hard earned money. If we are losing manufacturing jobs, that only means poor countries can make what Canada makes now, why companies choose to make them in expensive Canada? It is more of a matter to reconsider how we grow going forward, whether to abandon this "make for USA" philosophy, which is completely obsolete. US companies will ALWAYS outsource to cheaper countries, and should Canada keep depreciating currency to be "competitive"? It is time to think otherwise and find our own advantage and stop being always at the mercy of fickle American economy and its consumers.
