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Privatizing Canada would benefit us all

In what is now an election year, please consider the following.

In what is now an election year, please consider the following.

Since corporations have been arbitrarily given the legal status of ‘people’; and since our resources, natural and otherwise, can by various instruments be effectively claimed by corporations and so can then be bought and sold; and since these resources are increasingly being purchased by foreign interests (China, Brazil, etc.) contrary to the best long-term interests of Canadians; and since our governments are swayed by the economic impact of these corporations in their approach to lawmaking; and since the interests of the shareholders of these corporations frequently trump the interests of citizens because of the legal responsibility of corporations to their shareholders; and since any voice against this trend is squelched as ‘socialistic’, and ‘anti-business’; and since municipal governments are already formed as corporations, I propose the following:

Privatize Canada.

We would be better represented as shareholders than we are as citizens. If privatization of national resources is such a good idea, why not take it all the way? Treat Canada as a corporation, and stop considering ourselves as citizens, becoming instead shareholders of the Corporation of Canada, with one share per shareholder.

The interests of Canadian shareholders would suddenly trump the rights of any other corporations in any and all transactions in Canada. Technically, this is already our present democratic status in that our government is supposed to be doing its best for us, but the point here is that, in practice, our interests are often ignored. They’re our forests, our water, our oil, our minerals, our roads and infrastructure that multinational corporations use pretty much freely to make private profits for themselves and their shareholders; apparently we do this because we believe in corporations.

Fine, let’s BE one. Citizens are suckers, but shareholders rule. So show us what you’re doing with our assets, and show us how it helps our future. Not the future of something called ‘Canada’: our future.

Ironically, this could not be considered ‘socialism’, ‘nationalism’, or ‘protectionism’. CPP payments are dividends. Medicare is the company health plan. OAS is the company retirement package for shareholders; nothing socialistic about any of this, nothing to be afraid of.

The polarization of ‘left’ and ‘right’ would suddenly make no sense; we’d all be ‘free-enterprisers’ as well as ‘socialists’, although neither term would have any meaning anymore.

No longer could anyone privatize the profits and socialize the losses. Our ‘bosses’ would still work for us, but they’d have to work together for a change, doing menial things like properly funding the maintenance of our assets. I’m sure their reasons against it would be very patriotic.

The only thing stopping us is sentimentality; the old power of nationhood has disappeared into global economics anyway, although those running for office pretend that it hasn’t when they promise (in election years) ‘help for families’ that they’re unable or unwilling to deliver because there is no power in the office anymore.

Yet there is no lobby group more powerful than 34 million interested shareholders who demand full representation and quarterly reports to prove it. We just have to demand it in the language of those whom we need to hear it.

Brad North is married, with two grown children, and has lived in Terrace since 1960.