Dollar Up, Sky Down

The Canadian Dollar has achieved parity with the U.S. Dollar.

For this page, that news is not so bad in the short or long term. I have a getaway planned for Mount Baker, WA next week, which will also include a stop at Bellis Fair Mall in Bellingham. A good portion of my retirement savings are in bonds and treasury bills rather than the stock market, so the ascending loonie puts my senior self a little closer to buying name brand dolphin-friendly tuna rather than the iffy store label variety. It's the time in between that has this page more than a little nervous. Unlike our petroleum soaked, carbon farting Alberta neighbours throwing all their eggs at the gas pump, British Columbia has a patchwork of key industries, from Forestry to Films, all of which have prospered with a lower dollar. Now that the odds are 1 to 1, all bets are off.

Given the catastrophic failure of the Project for a New American Century from Baghdad to the Bayou, it's not like the braintrust in Victoria could have failed to see this day coming. However, Gordon Campbell and the Liberals, after all their alarmist screaming about a phony 'structural' deficit left behind by the previous NDP administration, continue to throw good money after bad ideas like the Gateway Project, renovating the Sea to Sky Highway for Whistler's wealthy, treaties with First Nations that won't stand up in court, the expanding roster of failed public-private partnerships, and the repetitive propaganda reel of their "The Best Place on Earth" Campaign.

After an extended period of dollar parity and the bills from the 2010 Olympics crush B.C.'s tax base, the rabid dogs of the right will be screaming for heads to roll. Not Campbell's head or those of his comfortable cronies, but rather those heads attached to working people struggling to get by, whose only 'crime' is that they work at a union job in the public sector. 2010 may be on its way, but the clouds are gathering for a perfect storm that could bring back 1983 as well.