Commentary from Larry Solway
The axioms of Enterprise have taken a dive. How long ago we recoiled at the Charles Wilson declaration: "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." It was then, and is still today, a cynical, self-serving, fatuous, sanctimonious, and dangerous distortion of reality.
Now, the Barons of Bluster, the tycoons who proclaimed world prosperity (or at least prosperity for the "have"" countries) are eating their words. Nortel lays off 10,000. Still not enough to quench the thirst of the barracudas who define prosperity by the current price of the stock. So John Roth (he of "brain drain" and lower-the-taxes orthodoxy) will cull another 5,000 helpless folks from the payroll. Still the market refuses to cuddle up. They massacre him.
I do not celebrate the decay of stock values. I am not warming my hands with glee over the current Bonfire of The Vanities, (with apologies to Tom Wolfe.) No, I am distressed that the stock market seems to be the barometer of a healthy economy, but more than that, all our economic struggles seem to be focussed on restoration of share values.
 |
|
The Left must persuade people that only a government in charge of our affairs can withstand the onslaught of world business |
Mix in the declaration by Ontario Deputy Premier Flaherty a few weeks ago that he could not support public sector pay raises because times were difficult. Once again, the shoes pinches poor folks first and the affluent cling to their Sports Utes and tax breaks. Flaherty won't acknowledge that the "miracle" of job growth in Ontario was built on the dubious success of globalization and Free Trade, and will not budge from the Common Sense Revolution dogma that tax cuts create jobs. When the boom goes bang, tax cuts remain, jobs disappear. The rest of us have to take our belts in a little.
Enough angry ventilation.
The protests at Quebec City have value if you believe we have surrendered too much to global competition and the enrichment of multinational corporations. Still from many, their response will be silly. Like the comment in our reader's section that we have no right to attack Ralph Klein because more than 50% of Albertans voted for him. Which is a sad reflection on the intelligence of Albertans who won't grasp that they are now going to pay through the nose for energy rebates that are made necessary by the prodigal policies of the government they love so much.
One of my favourite ironies is the mantra that the "left wing media" distort the real truth and that Stock Day is a nicer guy than the Socialist journalists make him out to be. Now that same "left- wing" media has already begun the predictable process of demonizing the Quebec City protestors. It isn't enough that there has been an outcry that the police and their quarantine zone around the conferences that makes even peaceful protest impossible. Not enough that there are already murmurings that "agents provocateurs" will be among the protesters and will do violence.
But that "lefty" press has already started to turn the protesters into an unwashed rabble who dress funny and want nothing less than total anarchy and overthrow of all we hold dear.
I harken back to what I wrote in these pages for several weeks: that the revival of The Left cannot happen unless we restore government as the ally of the people. I wrote again and again that government must be the last and best hope; that government must act for the people's interests and not for Commerce when its aims are inimical to those interests.
Government has abdicated. We leave economic management to unelected monetarists like Greenspan in the U.S. and the knee-jerk Dodge in Canada.
Government has control of the fiscal instruments. They won't use them. They bring tax cuts to the wealthy and subsidies to industry. Whither the money we spent to keep Nortel Canadian? Whither the long-gone money that we gave to Massey Ferguson and saw that company abscond to the U.S.?
We of The Left must persuade people that only a government that takes charge of our affairs can withstand the onslaught of world business. It is bizarre perhaps, that even though they participate in the W.T.O. that European Community countries still have socially conscious governments who recognize that their people come first.
Our policies must not be dictated by the world's still two largest economies: the U.S. and Japan. Neither represents a shining example of how successful unbridled Free Enterprise can be.
The sad and funny (if you lie sepulchral humour) aspect of the George Dubya prescription for survival is that he still believes Americans know better than government how they want to invest their retirement funds! Anyone for Amazon.com or Cisco Stems or Nortel?
Now it's your turn:
How does free trade affect you? Is free trade an issue for you and your community? Is the Canadian Left right to make a big deal of it?
Tell Straight Goods and see what others are saying...
Then take the Straight Goods poll...
Posted: April 02, 2001
[ Front Page ]
