Canada

I find it amusing you want me to cite facts in an online post like I’m writing a paper.

I ask that you justify the corner stone of your arguments; otherwise this is just a Fox News forum. The fact your resists any challenge to your statements makes me believe you even less.

If we had any other pm than Carney right now, Canada would be in a full recession. You cannot think Trudeau or Pollievre would have us still trading water. Carney did not start the trade war, but he sure has diversified our trading alliances and done what he can to keep Canadians working. You’ll remember Carney called this nine months ago with his speech in Davis, and you can be assured he was already planning contingencies for when the trade war came to pass. He does deserve credit for that.

Wow so many fallacies here. First off, we cannot really know what "would have happened" and much less take that as a fact of any kind.

Second, I never even hinted at the idea that Trudeau and much much much less Poilievre would have done better. I agree with you that they would not have.

Third, I agree that Carney has done a good job in some areas. The diversification and overall cooperative tone he has set between Canada and so many other countries is amazing and I do applaud him for that (not liking some of his actions does not imply I hate everything he is doing). Having said that, none of those alliances have yet rendered any tangible money. I do think they will in time but to pretend we were spared a recession by his hand is just uninformed.

The main reason Canada has not been hit super hard by the absolute stupidity of Trump's actions is that most of those have been just words. We were not paying significant tariffs on almost anything until very recently (when the new tariffs arrived a few weeks ago). The main exception I think was aluminum but Canada is rich enough to stopgap one industry from plummeting for a little while.

What Carney does from here on out would be a real test since we are NOW under financial duress due to the new tariffs plus the ones we are imposing to retaliate.

Here’s why the decades long leases are good. The airports are updated and maintained for free during that time.

I think you mean "free" as in, the gov does not have to pay directly but you are wrong in 2 ways: 1) the Airport Authorities do collect fees from airlines and do use that money for the airport upkeep so it is not like the feds are just dumping money on airports for 100% of the repairs 2) with the leases, these private entities will want every penny the put into the airport plus a juicy extra on top (that is where profit comes from). The fed gov may not have to pay anymore, but all traveling Canadians and all Canadians who buy stuff that was transported by air will pay for that...

The money from the leasees airports issues to maintain and update the other Canadian airports.

Again, every penny would have to be made back and then some. That is how private business works, do you really think a private company will get one of these leases to lose money and fix Canadian infrastructure for the sake of being nice?

Then, the leases are up and Canada owns updates infrastructure. It’s a compromise that allows us to nation build. You gotta wait for satisfaction, but future Canada will really like this.

Maybe I am just old and had the chance to see this in action while you have not. What would happen after a 50 year lease is that we will get a ruined airport that will have to be condemned and/or that will need a complete revamp.

These companies will spend the minimum money to be compliant with the law while charging the maximum they are allowed to get away with. This is capitalism 101. Do you normally pay to have your car repainted AFTER you sold it? just so the new owner starts with a fresh new paint job?

You recently commented on Gatineau/Ottawa so I assume you know the area. "Recently" (last few years) we have seen this structure with the LRT and Lansdowne Park in Ottawa. The LRT was an unmitigated disaster when it launched and the company given the monopoly on its maintenance barely had qualified techs to fix the bad trains we bought; to this day, the LRT is barely functional and completely unreliable ALMOST 8 YEARS after launching!

Lansdowne is the same; public paid to have it upgraded and gave a lease to a private company to rake in some money... what have they done? NOTHING but charge outrageous fees for parking. They have not built anything, they have not improved it in any way and never even saved enough money for the second phase which, you should guess by now, they are asking the public to fund once again