Long ago, when the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement was hailed as the first comprehensive modern day treaty, fiscal deficits were regarded as being bad, bad, bad, and bad. Now, these days, I’m pig-biting mad when I hear of $30 million dollar losses. Is this a normal state of affairs? I remember when you would get fired, immediately, if you incurred a $ 10,000.00 deficit. Nowadays (due to inflation) you have to be at least a million dollar loser to draw any attention to yourself. Hoooweee, we must be rich to be able to afford attitudes like that. I think we must be gunning for the biggest time Loser Award cause we just keep on trying year after year with the same results. Imagine, in the annals of history, in one year alone, we lost $14 million bucks? Not bad for only 10,000 people. Let’s see, that works out to negative $1,400.00 for every person on the average. Hoooweee, are we rich yet or what? Did anyone invent the panic button yet, up there?
Apparently, ejection seats come standard when you get board membership, and some seats come with parachutes that automatically guide you towards you next high paying job and some even have cushions to comfort your personal bottom (line).
The only thing we did smart was to build low lying buildings so that when we do have to bail out the window the ground isn’t so far away and we live to walk away. Just think, how high the turnover rate would be if we built tall buildings. Watch out, folks, here come the next investors after seeing their last quarterly report.
Now, if I were running things, we have all the southern folks come north to spend money up here in hotels and radio bingo. This move would probably cut into some business in Montreal at the Cree Hilton and Casino, but what the heck; they’ll still make money anyways. I’d have tourists come up here by the hundreds to spend more money, which we badly need and increase the taxes just a smidgen and call it a cultural tax. Tourists, love ’em, cause they sure ain’t leaving.
I say we nominate our politicians for Oscars for best performance at a general assembly for the line, “Who will move to accept these financial statements?” and keeping a straight face while at it.
All in all, we put our money where our advisors told us and I say we put them in winning stocks instead, such as:
-Microsoft
-Rezolution Pictures
-Water bottling (we import it, why not export it)
-Small outfitting camps (for the naturally deficient)
-Casinos (why not, we win either way)
-Anything pleasurable or exciting
-Consulting for regional organizations (can’t live without consultants)
-Anhauser Busch
-Any pharmaceutical company
-Training camps for regional representatives specializing in recognizing danger signals
-Bingo card printing companies
And, most of all, don’t invest in these losing ventures:
-Any Quebec forestry company
-Backyard Hydro projects
-Napster (it’s free now but wait for court proceedings against users) -Bre-X (too good to be true)
-Large outfitting companies (everyone loses in this)
-Anything to do with sharpening things
-Large wholesale companies Quebec savings bonds (they might just get up and leave you)
So make money where the money is, not where your mouth is.
