GM,

Good catch!

Noted this interesting passage: China State Council "plans to sell $24 billion US of bonds this year to build railways in the less-developed central and western regions. China has been a major buyer of U.S. Treasury Bills.

It also plans a $35-billion fund dedicated to rail financing and will increase financing to build low-cost housing."

So, they (the Chinese government) are dumping the US bonds and spending big bucks on building RR infrastructure. They would not even blink spending $35B (...and allocating another $178B, this year, to develop the shanty towns), while both levels of government here were gazing the navels trying to find a way for "getting it right" for something less than $2B for the RR to the RoF to tap into the billions of dollars worth of resources, along with the development of the isolated FN communities, job creation...The governments would probably get all their investment back with the tax revenues in just a few years.

$2B is chump change compared to the cost of cancelling the gas plants ($1.1B), or the contribution of $0.6B for building the private road and subsidy for the electric arc furnace for CLF proposel smelter for many many years (must be several $B).

If this is not enough then let's throw in the cost of laying off all ONTC workers, say almost another $1B...and the subsidies (the sweetheart deals with Samsung, et al for a few more $B) for wind and solar generated power (paying 10x the cost of selling to the consumers including the folks south of the border). Any deficit from this operation is of course financed by the tax payers of Ontario.

Enought ranting for the week, but making a timely decision considering the total picture is much better than spending too much time trying "to get it right" for an individual item (this would be equivalent to the saying "paralysis by analysis").

To get it right, to Ont Gov should put on the table just over $1B as seed money and ask the Feds for equal contribution as stated in the letter from the Premier to the PM. Just do it!

goldhunter