This just takes money from taxpayers who won't see a dime of the upside and gives it to VCs so they won't have to risk a dime on the downside. Why is this a good idea?
It is Steven Harper and Jim Flaherty privatizing profits and outsourcing costs to the people, business as usual.
Remember ~$2 billion dollars disappearing into thin air[1]? Well, I mean, there was the $2m fakelake[2], an unlawful prison[3], and a 'terrorist' was caught[4] (and released[5]) but I still think Canadians did not get their money's worth. Sonic cannon's manufacturers, on the other hand, made out quite nicely. Oh, Canada...
Venture capital largely gets spent on employee salaries. At worse, the money while it lasts will create good jobs - think of it as a Keynesian stimulus, something the Conservative government's not usually known for. At best, it jumpstarts a lot of legitimate growth, like Israel's 1993 Yozma plan.
I suspect most of the people in this thread are just grousing because they don't like their government, and therefore don't like anything it does. But Canada's been starved for venture capital for a long time, which has resulted in a lot of unnecessary brain drain. No program is guaranteed to succeed, but here Harper's doing something quite smart.
It's impossible to create something out of nothing. It just takes money that was being spent in one place and spends it in another. Every job that is created by the stimulus in one place is a job that can't be created somewhere else. You just see the jobs that get created and don't see the jobs that don't get created.
A Keynesian stimulus hardly works. It's been tried many, many times, with always the same results: close to none, or ending up in worse situation in the mid-term, by modifying the market incentives and removing cash that would be invested somewhere else by private entities. It is not about not liking one's government, this kind of government intervention is opposed to democracy and free market.
Well, spending tons of cash that does not belong to you (but to the taxpayers) to favor certain interests and not others can hardly be called democratic. Only free markets are democratic, hence you will see that stimulus are largely employed in authoritarian regims rather than actual democraties.
It is Steven Harper and Jim Flaherty privatizing profits and outsourcing costs to the people, business as usual.
Remember ~$2 billion dollars disappearing into thin air[1]? Well, I mean, there was the $2m fakelake[2], an unlawful prison[3], and a 'terrorist' was caught[4] (and released[5]) but I still think Canadians did not get their money's worth. Sonic cannon's manufacturers, on the other hand, made out quite nicely. Oh, Canada...
[1]http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/06/17/why-host-a-billion-dollar...
[2]http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2010/06/23/g20-fake-lake...
[3]http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/06/28/toron...
[4]http://www.torontolife.com/daily/informer/from-print-edition...
[5]http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/05/15/toron...