Doug Ford changing the dial on foreign investments
TORONTO – Bang. As if “out of the blue”. Premier Doug Ford announces a new deck of cards for Ontario’s (and Canada’s) political-economic agenda: the introduction of Special Economic Zones (SEZ), starting with Billy Bishop Airport at the western end of the Toronto Islands. First, he gave notice that the Provincial Government intended to take control/ownership of the asset to improve its potential and maximize its commercial trajectory.
The predictable happened: Wailing and gnashing of teeth by opposition at Queen’s Park and Toronto City Council enumerating a litany of “failings” by Ford as an individual (or representative of government) pointing to his “relationship” with developer buddies and insensitivity towards the homeless, the environment and to all that is good and sane.
Please excuse the tone it sounds so turn of the century – 2003, for greater precision – after the anti-anything and everything party (AAEP) was installed at City Hall. Their program can be summed up as follows: seize control of the Waterfront lands, some 600 acres of which were owned by the Federal government; kill the Billy Bishop Airport (BBA); prevent the construction of a bridge from the mainland to the Island Airport (BBA); kill the rail access project from Union Station to Pearson; slow construction along the coastline East to West and beg for more money from the Federal government for pet projects only they understood. There’s more, but the list is too long to exhaust in this article.
For today, I think it is significant contextualize the announcement with these considerations: there will be a civic election in six months with the usual myopic projects that ignore what is best for the GTA as an economic engine; secondly, the need to demonstrate movement by provincial leadership on developing natural resources (like those at the Ring of Fire), and third, signaling to the international marketplace of Investors that our political leadership can make things happen in the language they understand. Cutting red tape (words) may sound nice but falls short of the experience associated with SEZ (facts and dollars).
The essential element that makes the SEZ attractive to investors is that the host country makes it clear that beyond those zones social, cultural and political “guideposts” remain the standard and that the benefit accrued from the SEZ is gradually spread widely in the host country. Think about Ireland, now a financial centre, and the numerous Eastern Seaboard of China (see the map below, from https://www.globalvillagespace.com/history-of-special-economic-zones-in-china/) – some of them mere fishing villages or local “cities” at the end of the twentieth century, now mega powers driving the world’s biggest economy.
It was my good fortune to visit most of them in their growth period and see firsthand the genius of the architects of that expansion, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Jiamin, Zhou Rongxi – all communist leaders who refused to despair that the world would always remain as they found it. The accomplishment is mind-blowing.
Prime Minister Carney, as a manager of money and investor/salesman on a global scale has been exploring potential partnerships for economic diversification and growth, has visited with the most pragmatic investors in the game – the Chinese. Teamed up with Premier Ford, he/they will have the opportunity to show the world that the business of Government is business, if they want to establish and sustain “social benefits”.
