Unpublished: Tories care about oil exports, not steel jobs

Vincent J. Curtis

5 Nov 2013

[Written in response to an Op-ed piece of that headline in my hometown newspaper.  The thesis of the piece was that Canada was suffering from the "Dutch Disease," a phenomenon in which manufacturing is made uncompetitive through the rise in value of national currency from booming oil exports.  The writer alleged that United States Steel was shutting down its Hamilton operation as a symptom of Canada's suffering from "Dutch Disease."]


Writer and activist K.S. is obviously no economist, nor has he ever run a business.

Canada is making tons of money exporting oil and not much money these days making steel.  So his solution to this apparent problem is to make less money exporting oil in the hopes that the steel industry will make more money.

This is not how an economy or a business works.

Money from the selling of oil goes to make up for the losses being suffered by not selling a lot of steel.  'What you don’t make on the apples you make up on the bananas', is one homespun piece of economic wisdom.

Mr. S. fails to explain why steelmaker ArcelorMittal Dofasco continues to do well.  He fails to account for the mismanagement of the Ontario economy through ten years of Dalton McGuinty.

His voting for the NDP was a foregone conclusion.  But still, hasn’t he noticed what great hair Justin Trudeau has?
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