The Record, Friday July 11, 2008
http://news.therecord.com/article/381731
When a person’s livelihood is uncertain they often get scared and angry at the government. This means that during times of economic insecurity the opposition, to be the voice of the people, must ask the government what it is doing about the economy and bring up things that the governing party is doing that the opposition believes isn’t helping.
As the manufacturing sector in Ontario is uncertain, the Conservatives are currently questioning the Liberals plans to help the Ontario economy. As the Liberals are off on trade missions to places like Paris and California, the rest of the government would like them back in Ontario doing things here.
My question is what would they like to see being done? Yes, the fact that the manufacturing sector is being hit hard is a troubling one, yet as the article states, most of the reasons for this are out of governmental control. The Ontario government has no control over the price of oil, the main reason for the changes in the economy. The government cannot afford to put more money into the manufacturing sector especially automotive manufacturing because they are doing so poorly and without help that is unlikely to change.
It is so obvious. The increase in the price of oil drives up the price of gas which makes people think twice about buying a new vehicle, especially a gas guzzler. Other manufacturing companies are deteriorating because they are having a harder time paying for the transportation of their products.
To me, there is an obvious way for the government to help out the manufacturing sector, if they choose to. By investing in new greener, technology, the government can help the automotive sector switch over to a new, cheaper source of energy which would then lead to a decrease in the price of transporting goods, helping out all manufacturing businesses. This would also help Canada become a more environmentally friendly place, which is a big deal to many people right now. It’s a win-win situation.
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3 comments:
Good post Laura, I agree with you that the Ontario government should invest in the modernization of the automotive sector. However, the short-term costs may be too much for any company to handle at this point because the enormous financial burden that the Big Three may incur. It's unfortunate, but it may be more efficient for the older plants here to close and to build newer ones elsewhere instead of converting our existing ones to plants that produce more energy efficient vehicles.
The sad thing is, the automotive manufacturing sector has always been volatile, but things have never been quite so bad. There have always been mass lay-offs and call backs. But due to the forever rising cost of oil (for one reason or another -- that has also recently dropped, which is nice) people are responding by driving less. And thus, gas companies aren't selling as much gas, so they irk the prices up to cover their own losses and people are starting to look for more economical forms of transportation. Can the current manufacturing companies create eco-friendly cars based in the plants they currently have, I don't know, that's a lot of retro-fitting for whatever changes need to be made. But what the government is missing is that this isn't a new issue, it's just a popular issue because of the cost of gas and people realizing, hey something's up. So really, we've really dropped the ball on this one (the royal we here, as in developed countries), because this problem's been staring us in the face for some time now, too bad it took us to step in it to notice. I really hope there are some amazing brain-children out there to get us out of this mess!
I think its important to acknowledge that the Ontario government has been bailing out the auto industry for years, with adhoc solutions that attempted to prevent the very closures that have become inevitable due to the rising cost of oil and the failure of the domestic auto industry to produce fuel efficient vehicles. Is it surprising that the a truck plant in Oshawa is closing its doors when it costs $200 to fill up said vehicles, and its fuel is expended at a rate of 10mil/gallon?.. not really..
This scenario reflects a major shortfall in the Ontario Manufacturing industry: The general failure to pursue and invest in more efficient and alternative technologies (sustainable industry) has created no new industry and resulted in an economic downturn. A look to our European neighbours would have foreshadowed a looming market desire for these efficient technologies, and where are we getting these technologies, not domestically….
This is where tax payers’ money should have been invested. I think that this unemployment was needed perhaps, as an economic “kick-in-the-pants,” to diversify our markets and focus on domestic production. It shouldn’t have come to this, but it did, so lets not reduce our intellect to pointing fingers as the Opposition has, but have productive round-table discussion and decide where we can go from here to reemploy these people…. May I suggest wind and solar technologies…
Perhaps this is why Mr. McGuinty and his crew are in Europe and California… the birthplaces of these Greener technologies.
Green technologies and holistic long term thinking are no longer optional… THEY ARE THE ONLY OPTION and I think this is represented by the current economic situation.
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