Sell, sell, sell

Following up on Jim Flaherty's mooted sell-off of federal assets, there's been plenty of commentary about the sheer lunacy of selling off assets at a time when their value is the lowest. And that goes doubly when the federal government - unlike at least some of the businesses whose assets figure to be available for fire-sale prices - unquestionably has the ability to weather the financial storm such as to avoid taking pennies on the dollar.

But then, these are the Cons we're dealing with. And if one assumes a guiding philosophy that the federal government should generally be looking to give away its assets to benefit those capable of snapping them up, then the prospect of tying an asset selloff to Flaherty's budget deficit looks like more of an opportunity than a danger.

With asset prices lower than usual, the Cons seem to think they've bought themselves an excuse to auction off more assets than they'd normally have to in order to fill a fiscal hole of their own making. And the effect only figures to be self-reinforcing: the more properties the Cons put on the market, the greater the glut will be to drive down prices - which Flaherty would then point to as reason to put even more on the auction block to make up for lower returns.

The end result would then be to privatize as much as possible as quickly as possible for the least return possible. Which would fit with both the Cons' governing philosophy and Flaherty's track record.

The only problem, of course, is that there's no evidence at all that Canadians in general want to see their government run based on such an asinine view of the world: indeed, a substantial chunk of the reason why the Cons covered the impending budget deficit during the election campaign was presumably to avoid having to justify such obviously flawed plans. And if Flaherty is determined to push ahead with a selloff, then the opposition parties need to be prepared to force the Cons to sell voters on the concept.