It was reported last week that Sun Corporation Incorporated, an American firm, offered to buy back Ontario’s quarter interest in Suncor. When the Conservative government bought the 13 million shares four years ago, it paid $650 million. The recent offer, which the Liberal government, to its credit, is trying to resist, is about $500 million less.
This loss would, of course, be paid for by taxpayers.
Now, most of us find it hard to conceptualize a number as large as 500 million. To borrow a phrase from the vocabulary of small children, 500 million is higher than most of us can count. Five hundred is a number that most of us are familiar with. Even one million, which used to represent a largely unattainable height, has become commonplace. But, putting the two figure together to get 500 million pushes back the boundaries of logical comprehension.
I wondered what I would do if I had $500 million. For the sake of argument, let’s say that it fell from the sky one sunny afternoon, or that Peter Pocklington, for some unfathomable reason that only millionaires have, left me exactly that amount in his will, and conveniently died. I guess I would start by putting the money into a bank until I could decide how to spend it, but that wouldn’t be very long.
I’d need a place to live, of course. Nothing fancy, necessarily, but with all the amenities (colour television, VCR, combination radio, tape deck, turntable with the best speakers money could buy – once I had dispensed with these necessities, I might add a few luxuries, as well). Let’s allow $500,000 for the house.
I’d also need something to live on – in this hypothetical situation, I mean. Let’s say that I’ll have a living allowance of $1,000 a month for a period of 30 years. That would come to a total of $360,000.
Not a bad start. I’m not a particularly fashionable dresser (as those who know me will readily attest), but, with all that money at my disposal. I will have a wonderful opportunity to expand my wardrobe. I can envision spending $5,000 a year on clothes, which, of course, is still peanuts compared to the wardrobe budgets of the stars. (They should learn where the bargains are.) Over my projected 30 year period, this comes to a total of $150,000.
Having taken care of food, clothing and shelter, I pause to take stock. The problem with spending as great a sum as $500 million is that if you don’t spend it fast enough, you earn what you spend in interest charges on what you don’t spend. And, when you consider the possibility of earning money through investment, well, it becomes clear that $500 million isn’t as easy to spend as one might, at first, have thought.
Okay. Lately, I’ve been interested in writing a screenplay, but haven’t put too much work into it because the money needed to produce an original Canadian film is scarce. But, hey – now I can afford to finance the film myself! Let’s give the project a budget of five…no, $10 million to start. Of course, the sky’s the limit on a movie budget! And, to ensure the film does not make money, the participation of the National Film Board is essential.
No, wait a minute – I could write the production costs off my taxes. Funding a film, though promising, wouldn’t be of much help.
But, I would like to fill out my collection of Cerebus, the Aardvark comic books. I once had the first issue, but, in a fit of monetary need, I sold it for $50 (a substantial profit at the time). Now, I would have to set aside $1,000 to buy the one comic book. And $500 for the second issue (which I never owned), and the cost of updating my collection comes to $1,500.
And, now that I’m thinking about it, I guess I wouldn’t have to wait for all of my favourite authors’ books to come out in paperback; I could buy them as hardcovers. A book a week, on average, at $25 per book…hmm, over 30 years…wow! That would come to $39,000!
And, let’s not forget tapes and records. Sure, all those discs I couldn’t afford before are now within my grasp. Let’s allow $500 a month over a 30 year period…that would give me an additional expenditure of $800,000. Now, we’re getting somewhere!
Totaling what I’ve spent so far, we find it comes to…umm, carry the one…oh, and don’t forget the $1,500…$1,230,500. That leaves a mere $489,769,500 to go.
That may not sound very impressive, but it’s actually taken me several hours just to come up with this meager list of expenditures, and I think I have been quite liberal about indulging some of them. I guess if I had had more practical experience in politics, it would have been a lot easier for me to find ways to spend the money. Ah, well – I tried.
Imagine what difficulties I would have had if I had started with the $1 billion the federal government is willing to spend in the bank bail-outs!