Enough is Enough, Already!

Enough is enough, already! The Government of Canada must say no to any takeover of Alcan, and the sale of BCE to the vultures, and they must do so immediately. Not to do so will be a treasonous failure to act in the best interests of Canada. The same no must apply to any future billion dollar transactions which cannot be proven to be of significant tangible benefit to Canada and the Canadian people.

Not long ago it was INCO and Falconbridge. Now, in addition to Alcan and BCE, it is IPSCO and Lion Ore. The carnage has got to stop! Period! If it isnt, this wonderful, resource-based country will have been sold down the river and we might just as well give up on any thought of there being a Canada, or at least a Canada of any significance, a few years from now.

There are four reasons why Canada must put an end to the sale of its major assets. First, to stem the loss of executive jobs. Second, to slow down the reduction in blue chip Canadian stocks for Canadians to invest in. Third, to stem the loss of tax revenue necessary to support Canadas generous social security net. Fourth, and probably most important in the long run, to address the trend toward worldwide oligarchies which is wrong, very very wrong, and which must be reversed and the sooner the better.

For years Canadians have been worried about the brain drain. It would be interesting to add up the number of executive jobs that have been lost in the last fifteen years as a result of the 13,000 or more Canadian companies that have been bought by foreigners. When the head offices move, as they inevitably do, the top executive jobs move with them.

It is also interesting to note how many former Canadian companies have been delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange. My modest portfolio used to include INCO, Falconbridge, the forest giant MacMillan Bloedel and a number of other blue chip companies that have been sold to foreigners. The list of mature Canadian stocks to invest in is shrinking fast.

It is no secret that when head offices move the new management usually contrive to apply fees, royalties and other charges that minimize the taxable Canadian profits. The Canada Revenue Agency does its best to stem the outward flow but it is a constant struggle.

Finally, the whole trend to bigger is better has to be arrested and then reversed. What we are seeing is a repetition on a global scale of the consolidation of power and wealth that took place in the United States in the late nineteenth century. The robber barons of that day, led by John D. Rockefeller Sr., didnt like competition, and admitted it. So they bought up or merged with their competitors to eradicate the nuisance.

Political philosophers in the early twentieth century recognized that what had happened was not in the public interest. The rich people lauded the wondrous advantages of a market economy while deliberately and methodically undermining those alleged advantages by forming oligopolies and monopolies in restraint of trade. So the politicians of the day acted to increase competition by breaking up some of the biggest of the big.

In the post World War II era, some of the grandsons of the monopolists, in concert with some of the greediest of their greedy cousins in other countries, decided that what had worked for their grandpas more than a century ago might work again at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries. This time, however, no one country was big enough to satisfy their ambitions so their business plans call for global rather than just national dominance.

Amazingly they have managed to convince the majority that their plans are both inevitable and good when in fact they are neither. Success to date has depended on naive politicians being intimidated by public servants afflicted with incurable cases of mondialitis, which has spread with the rapidity of a pandemic. So, like a pandemic, the disease has to be stamped out before too many small economies end up in the economic morgue.

I tried to find a nicer word than treasonous to describe what is going on, but to no avail. It is time to call a spade a spade and let our politicians  and the experts who advise them - know in no uncertain terms that we will hold them accountable for their unforgivable negligence. They can still rewrite their epitaphs, but only if they act at once.

Paul Hellyer,

Former Deputy Prime Minister and Founder of Canadian Action Party

June 1, 2007