A continuing saga of statist overstretch and pretension:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper today announced measures to promote an economically viable, job-creating, commercial agricultural industry in Canada’s North. These include support to help establish a permanent campus for the Northern Farm Training Institute (NFTI) in the Northwest Territories, and the launch of the Northern Greenhouse Initiative, which is aimed at advancing the commercialization and enhancing the productivity of greenhouse projects across Canada’s North.
Heavens. Here is how Wikipedia describes the agriculture of the Northwest Territories:
Agriculture of the Northwest Territories is nearly impossible except for limited cultivation south of the Mackenzie River area
So naturally a bright light in the PMO thought what the heck, let's quite literally plough a few million dollars into the subarctic tundra and see what happens. For those questioning the sanity of those concerned in this endeavour I remind you, gentle reader, that in politics everything makes perfect sense. So long as you're a politician.
The Northwest Territories happen to be represented in the House of Commons by the NDP. The other two northern ridings are held by the Tories. The riding of Western Arctic as its known was lost by a margin of 2139 voters. If you're a government trying to pick up a few marginal seats, the Western Arctic looks like a good place to buy. A few million tossed in just the right way and the Boys in Blue have a straight three across the Canadian North.
The official goal of the project is to allow the North to reduce some of its pricey food imports, which is perfectly laudable if you're a private investor. The nutty part is that they want to reduce prices by growing food in government subsidized greenhouses. It's a form of import-substitution that was mocked by no less a figure than Adam Smith:
The natural advantages which one country has over another, in producing particular commodities, are sometimes so great, that it is acknowledged by all the world to be in vain to struggle with them. By means of glasses, hot-beds, and hot-walls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine, too, can be made of them, at about thirty times the expense for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries. Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of claret and Burgundy in Scot- land? But if there would be a manifest absurdity in turning to- wards any employment thirty times more of the capital and industry of the country than would be necessary to purchase from foreign countries an equal quantity of the commodities wanted, there must be an absurdity, though not altogether so glaring, yet exactly of the same kind, in turning towards any such employment a thirtieth, or even a three hundredth part more of either.
I love the phrase "acknowledged by all the world." Poor Adam Smith never met Stephen Harper. The Tories, while negotiating a free trade deal with the EU, are fighting against the theory of comparative advantage in the Canadian north. Just in case you didn't grasp how terrible an idea it is to promote agriculture in the North:
Although his current crop is still only half of the typical yield in Alberta or Ontario, it is impressive by the standards of Norman Wells, N.W.T., where the average high temperature crosses 13C only three months a year. It took Mr. Whiteman years of trial and error attempts at working with compost, fertilizer and vegetable matter, to bring his “dead soil” to life. And the nutrient-deprived soil was not where his challenges stopped.
One admires the tenacity while questioning the opportunity costs. If Mr Whiteman wishes to continue has battle with the elements, the best of luck. But let him do it with us own money not ours.
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