I was at Mr. Breakfast with my mom the other day and there was a copy of the business section of the Leader-Post lying on another table.
The headlines gushed with good news: “Optimism high in province,” “House sales record set in July.” Two oil companies “soared” on the markets, and Agrium predicted that there will be a turnaround in the agriculture sector (provided farmers increase fertilizer use). There was even an article on teaching young’uns to deal with their money (since presumably they will have wheelbarrows full to lug around when things really turn around).
Marilyn Braun-Pollon of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) was ebullient about Saskatchewan’s outlook, saying the latest statistics on confidence among small business owners are “another good news story.” The only reason she gave for all the small business optimism was lower income and education property taxes. Oh, and population growth. Whee.
“Don’t you wish you lived here?” quipped my mom.
It’s true, I don’t live in the same Saskatchewan touted by the Leader-Post. In the papers I write for, things always suck. I live in a place where we’re always more wealthy than we perceive ourselves to be. Progress is occasionally made, but hard to keep.
Predicting the economic future in Saskatchewan is a little like that joke about the province’s flatness, where you can see your dog run away for three days. Whatever financial storm happens in the world, happens here. We can see it coming from miles away.
Whether we choose to acknowledge what we see is another story.
“We have resources!” yell the boosters.
“We had resources during the last recession too!” I yell, over the din of construction. If anyone hears me – which happens pretty much never – I get that withering look, the one that says I’m a spoilsport for even thinking that things might go south.
Which they will, of course. I’ve lived through a couple of these pseudo-booms – both at times when I might conceivably have started a career. Having never succeeded in the past go-’rounds leaves me oddly comfortable this time around. Sure, I don’t have a pension to lose, but I also haven’t spent the last 20 years behind a desk. Funny how jobs in alternative media seem to stay put. Maybe it’s all that reality stuff.
From my vantage point, I have little to do but wait. Wait to say I told you so, wait for my sector to bottom out so I can expand. (Yes, I too am a small-business owner – too small to have a seat at the CFIB’s table, where everything’s yummy and the courses keep coming. Oh, and by the way, my property taxes actually went up by 200 per cent last year. I’m hoping to get a new central library out of the deal, maybe a crosswalk on my corner, some arts grants – you know, services.)
So I wait.
I listen to the talk about nuclear, which, although depressing, is a little more engaging than the “My house is worth $500,000, how much is yours worth?” chatter. I think I might have had to kill myself if that hadn’t stopped.
Nuclear has replaced tar sands for the moment, a nice little bait and switch act for our attention. Ethanol – that food-sucking, water-wasting, greenwashed miracle fuel – is quiet, for now. So is “clean coal,” which seems to have gone back to the drawing board (i.e. marketing focus group). And potash…. Well, if those bloody farmers just did what Agrium told them to. It’s their own damned fault if they can’t compete. And oil will go up, because we’re running out of it, so that’s good, right? Right?
I do miss the discourse about things we could build and have forever like health care, or alternative energy or affordable housing – all those little things that actually keep our little resource-extracting ship of fools afloat. There’s really no point trying to discuss such things right now, though. We only have ears for housing starts, football stadiums and nuclear reactors.
Oh well.
I can’t say when it will all go to hell, only that it will. The thing I worry about is not that the bust is coming, or when or how bad. I worry that we won’t learn anything, again, just like all the other times.
Sasquatch columnist Carle Steel is a Regina writer and journalist. She finished writing this piece the day before the government announced a $1.3 billion shortfall in potash revenues. She told you so.
Subscribe the THE SASQUATCH
Resume browsing