Northern Plans

Every time I look south for news and anything interesting, I find the south staring right back at us with great interest. Sometimes it feels like a major move is coming and it’s going to take us by surprise, just like it did in the ’70s.

It’s this feeling I get about the amount of buzz there is concerning the north on the usual channels – television, newspapers, magazines and the Internet. Topics ranging from global warming, diamond mines, vast energy deposits, minerals and, of course, other countries interested in our true north strong and still free, although soon to be in need of sovereign protection.

Then there is the economy – the slowdown, the meltdown and even the evaporation of businesses – and all the remedies tossed around like aces up the sleeve in a card game. Oil sands here, gas deposits there, hydro power at that site, massive infrastructure projects on this site, all designed to be the “stimulus” to keep the economy strong and put money in people’s pockets.

Of course, not to mention that this is easier to exploit than having to play watchdog over exorbitant payoffs to top executives, à la Obama’s bailout plan with conditions. It seems that spending more on big projects is the way out for our economic woes, and the north has just what is required to make that happen: long days in the summer, potentially shorter winter months, lesser ice for shipping and great potential to make big money.

Recently, the Quebec provincial government decided to do just that – open up the north for mining, hydroelectric projects and active tourism (as opposed to lazing about on a beach somewhere).

So where do we fit in that big picture? I suppose we could come up with our own stimulus package, with some helpful advice from Obama no less.

For starters, we would invoke our own “Buy Cree” approach to ward off purchasing from southern suppliers. So what do we spend most of our money on? First of all, we would pay our own lawyers, as they seem to be paid first when it comes to any big negotiations. Then we could pay our own consultants, as it seems that most consultants just sell you back what you tell them in the first place. Then we could hire our own workers to work in our own companies, instead of outsourcing help from the south. Then we could trap, hunt and fish for most of our food and sell it legally to ourselves. Then, we could produce our own materials for housing and make money there, like we used to back in the day.

Another good one would be to bail out all the bands that are in deficit so that they could get a good credit rating and be able to strengthen their own communities. Of course, we would have to make sure that the head honchos wouldn’t pay themselves enormous bonuses for thinking of this stimulus package – they could pay me instead. Or coming up with something silly like building a large structure in a southern community to show off their robust economy while we are in need of our own large buildings to house our own big shots.

I think spending on ourselves would help greatly, but do we still have the money to do so? Only time will tell.