Strictly Business - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin

This week we have a report from Goderich Town Council that has played out in other townships before. Goderich Town Council plans to ask its neighbouring municipal councils to pay up for their parasite residents blatantly using Goderich’s facilities and showing absolutely no remorse for it.

 

Now, I don’t mean to throw stones at Mayor Trevor Bazinet, who, by all accounts, seems like a great dude, or his council, which, at least in relative terms, seems rather cohesive and functional compared to others in the area, but pardon me if I’ve seen this one before.

 

North Huron Council famously tried it with its neighbouring municipalities, breaking down some figures and noting that, when it comes to X arena, Y number of users come from Z municipality (not North Huron), so council should pay A amount of money to North Huron to compensate. No one took them up on it, of course, with the exception of Morris-Turnberry, which doesn’t really have recreational facilities of its own and is over a barrel, to a certain extent, with North Huron. 

 

The whole thing reeked of Donald Trump holding that big tariff board during his “Liberation Day” press conference (even though it hadn’t happened yet). The board listed ridiculous percentages, completely unverifiable, that the U.S. was being charged in tariffs by other countries (again, without any supporting facts or context) and how the U.S. was going to respond, which was based on those made-up figures. It failed to show a full picture of the trade situation between the two countries being discussed and, as a result, told an incomplete tale that fit one man’s narrative.

 

How the recreation scenario compares, which was pointed out by Central Huron Council at the time, is that while the figures presented by North Huron - we have to assume - were correct, they didn’t tell the other side of the story. How many North Huron residents, many of whom, in Blyth, directly abut Central Huron, were using Central Huron facilities and would North Huron consider paying for them?

 

Now, I know that there is a lot less money up for grabs for municipalities these days and that makes improvements or even basic upkeep and operation of buildings like arenas very tough in small, rural communities. Having said that, surely if a breakdown was done between North Huron and Central Huron users, it would be closer to even than either would care to admit, rendering the whole exercise pretty useless when the dust settles. This is similar to the Trump scenario in that, when other countries started breaking down trade and tariffs on other goods, surprise, things broke pretty evenly and the U.S. wasn’t the world’s whipping boy like Trump said it was. 

 

Also not so dissimilar from Trump, asking people to identify where they’re from to use an area community centre, perhaps charging “outsiders” more to use it, is just such bad business. And for communities like Goderich and Blyth that so thrive on tourism, it just sets up a real feeling of isolationism and turning inward - again, stark echoes of Trump and the very American notion that America doesn’t need anyone but Americans to succeed.

 

I imagine that Goderich’s plan, even if it’s well-intentioned, will not go the way that councillors hope it will. Numbers will get broken down, questions will be asked, and, in the end, nothing will be accomplished, because no one wants to pay for such a thing, and, if they were to consider it, they would want to know how much money is going the other way first, rather than just paying up blindly. 

 

Can’t we all just get along?