Back in the 1970s, the infamous Alice Cooper was turning heads with his trademark makeup and by being the most reptilian rock star in the world’s least understood rock band. Meanwhile, Cooper penned the best tunes for adolescents everywhere while staging THE SHOW to watch. The lyrics from their best song ever, “Billion Dollar Babies,” skyrocketed him to an otherworldly rock star planet.

The song has kept on going for three more decades, with almost prophetic but still glaringly hard raunchy rock. But I will now let you, dear reader, in on a secret. A secret message is decipherable only to those who play “Billion Dollar Babies” backwards at 6.66 rpm. What can be heard is eerily astounding: “… Yes, the feds will pay up… will pay 1.2 down and 200 mil later on… for 2.4 decades….whoooo…”

Yep, finally the bacon smells like it’s coming home to momma and now we can get down to the business of doing business.

Wait a minute, did we say business? First, the gauntlet of community referenda must be passed, the paperwork comes later in piles of expensive glossy propaganda to woo the voter. And the moolah? Well, it’s paid out in full with the usual hold back to ensure that the bills to count the money are paid and that there’s still a bit left for the lawyers to nibble on when they retire.

Of course, some must be left to work on the next 25-year agreement to play catch up to the last agreements with the province now known as the Paix des Braves and to train the new legal beagle recruits on how to reap greater rewards when it comes to negotiating for more, more, more…

After much nibbling and some hefty gulps of cash, plans will be laid out to split (fairly) the rest over a period of two-point-four decades. Of course, the planning process will cost about the same as the legal process and will take longer.

After the planning process, the cash will be managed, and this will cost about the same as the planning process, except four times a year. Then the implementation will take up the rest of the last decade and a half and will cost much more due to inflation and amortization. By that time, I’ll be retired with my pension plan indexed and maxed out like my credit card.

And then again, if we’re really smart, we’d do it like real investments into the future, making sure that there’s some payout in the end, and that the end is not so far off into the future so that the signatories will never see their dreams become reality. Whatever the case may be, we’re still getting closer to the cherry on the top of the sundae and the ice cream still keeps on coming, rightfully so.

Now what about those lucrative spin-off projections from the forestry and mining much foretold in the Paix des Braves?
So far, forestry is taking a beating with the rising Canadian loonie, but I hear there’s gold in them thar hills, with a bit of radiation mixed in for good measure, all of which will be cashed in sometime soon. Having a uranium mine and a gold mine might foretell that one day money will glow in the dark. The richer you are, the more you radiate success.

But Alice put it best in his eternal, lyrical wisdom: “Reckless like a gambler, million dollar maybe / Foaming like a dog that’s been infected by the rabies / Million dollar baby / Billion dollar baby… ”