And?
I love the 407, please keep off it
I love the 407, because there's never any traffic on it. But it's certainly not cheap, and when I consider how shortsighted the decision to sell it off was, I get really annoyed. I'm a BIG fan of toll highways, but only when the investment goes to fund local infrastructure (roads/transit), not to foreign companies.
Good thing I have NB Plates Seriously though I've never received a bill... I've used it a few times.
You can quibble about the price they sold it at (though the future of investment monies is always nebulous) but you cannot quibble with the concept of selling it. I mean if they were offered a high enough price then why not? Take the money and recycle it into other useful endeavours (yes, I realize this is unlikely to happen, but the principle of never selling it to foreign companies under any circumstances is asinine)
Quote from: mmret on January 22, 2015, 10:02:43 pmYou can quibble about the price they sold it at (though the future of investment monies is always nebulous) but you cannot quibble with the concept of selling it. I mean if they were offered a high enough price then why not? Take the money and recycle it into other useful endeavours (yes, I realize this is unlikely to happen, but the principle of never selling it to foreign companies under any circumstances is asinine)My understanding is that they built it with public money, and then sold it for a pittance of it's future value to balance the budget. I'm not against the idea of selling off public assets where it makes sense, but too often governments seem to propose selling assets to balance the budget in the short term at the expense of long-term planning. These foreign investors wouldn't buy the assets unless they believed the long-term profits exceeded the short-term costs, so the benefit in the short term is to the government who sells them and has a large one-time cash infusion. Once they balance their budget, we've lost that future revenue source forever. In Toronto's case, where exponential growth was obvious, I think we got royally ripped off with the 407 deal we signed.
Quote from: Snowman on January 22, 2015, 05:40:10 pmI love the 407, please keep off it
You can quibble about the price they sold it at (though the future of investment monies is always nebulous) but you cannot quibble with the concept of selling it. I mean if they were offered a high enough price then why not?
The route is operated privately under a 99-year lease agreement with the provincial government. The lease was sold in 1998 for approximately C$3.1 billion to a consortium of Canadian and Spanish investors operating under the name 407 International Inc....When Mike Harris was elected Premier in 1995 on his platform of the Common Sense Revolution, the Ontario government faced a $11 billion annual deficit and a $100 billion debt. Seeking to balance the books, a number of publicly owned services were privatized over the following years. Although initially spared, Highway 407 was sold quickly in the year leading up to the 1999 provincial elections....On October 5, 2010, the Canadian Pension Plan announced that an agreement was reached with the owners of the roadway to purchase 10% stake for $894 million.[30] This implies a value of close to $9 billion for the highway in its current state. However, in 1998, Minister of Provincial Parliament (MPP) E.J. Douglas Rollins found that as much as $104 billion had been spent by the province to that point.
