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Carney announces creation of Canada's first sovereign wealth fund (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 5 days ago by RickyWars@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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Fund will be used to finance construction of major projects of national interest

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[-] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

The problem I see with that is that this fund won't last long enough to matter. I don't even give it a decade before a different administration quietly takes the money from that fund to spend it on whatever.

[-] veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

This is the problem: any surplus or balancing of the budget is weaponized.

The party being fiscally responsible is demonized: "why are you taxing us for benefits we don't see now?".

Cue to the opposition being elected and pilfering the coffers for easy political points from the electorate, then they will remember the opposition's term as the party of "good times".

I wish the electorate wasn't this dumb, but in Ontario atleast, we re-elected in Doug Ford so...

This needs to be managed by an independent government entity, like a central bank. They say that it is, so that's cool.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 days ago

It depends how it's put together. The CDPQ for example is pretty independent.

The proof really is in the pudding for the Liberals here.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 days ago

Do you prefer it being under less democratic control than more? Cause that's flip side of independent gov't institutions.

Personally I think isolating public infrastructure/institutions from the gov't has not worked incredibly well. I used to think the opposite. It "protects" them somewhat from bad actors but it also limits the ability of other gov'ts to leverage them to fulfill what Canadians voted for. Essentially limits the scope of electoral democracy to affect change further than it already is.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 days ago

The DOGE example shows we do need a way to protect institutions from the "tear it down" far right. It's ridiculously easy to destroy but hard to build. So I would say give them a strong democratic mandate and charter and make it legally hard to tear down in one mandate.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Right, that's the worst case scenario result. But I think we (they) might have gotten to it by having decades of unrepresentative government where the gov't represented business at the expense of the majority. And if that's valid, then I think there's an argument to be made about getting the gov't to do what's elected to do by giving it more power to do stuff, as well as experience the consequences of bad gov't earlier, before we get to a DOGE moment. That doesn't really change how capital captures and drives gov't to make decisions in its interest instead of workers, but we'd still be able to course correct faster and more effectively I think. I don't have a settled opinion on this but I've been warming up to the idea that voters should in fact be able to change gov't institution directions via elections in major ways. Also I don't think isolating gov't institutions from elected governments does prevent capital from taking them over. And we might be curbing just our own ability to exercise control.

[-] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Oh I hear you. But I think we can create robust democratically accountable institutions that are also protected from destruction. Things like civilian oversight boards, ombuspeople, and unions having a stake. I'd even go wild and say use things like sortition to randomly select citizen "juries" with the power to veto defunding/destructive policies.

Edit: the Liberals aren't going to do any of that of course.