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And yet, as the saying goes, “we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
COVID-19 is causing a massive restructuring of vital business sectors. Retail, which employs millions of Canadians and occupies vast amounts of real estate from street-side shops to malls, faces profound uncertainty from the pandemic-driven shift to online shopping. Lockdowns facilitated an array of new communication tools that allow many of us to work remotely, emptying office towers. The potential impacts are staggering, including mass unemployment and devaluation of the commercial real estate that underlies both public and private pension funds. The full impact of these and other post-COVID structural shifts, especially in transportation and accommodation, are yet to be known, but it’s clear they will be profound. Government tax revenues will fall, while the need for support and training of displaced workers will increase.
It’s now clear that our national debt will exceed $1.2 trillion, twice what it was when the Liberals came to power in 2015
In the face of such alarming prospects, it seems the coronavirus has fostered escape to a fantasy state where reality is magically replaced by an imagined world that is whatever one wishes it to be. It’s baffling to hear our government declare the pandemic has created an “opportunity for public investment in green restructuring of the economy,” which translates into subsidizing windmill and solar-power companies. How will that work out? Ask Ontarians, who’ve seen home and business electricity rates skyrocket to produce very expensive and completely unreliable power.
