Free Market Theories Again Hit Canadians Right in the Pocketbook

Another neoconservative, free market theory has gone up in flames, as deregulation hurts the Canadian consumer ... again.

This time it was the telephone industry, that is enjoying massive profits at our expense.

A report detailing the effects of deregulation in the telecommunications industry finds Canada's three largest telephone companies have benefited at the expense of consumers.

... Its author, Michael Janigan, told CBC News that four years after deregulation, Bell, Telus and Rogers are making "super-normal profits," while consumers are paying too much and getting too little in terms of service.

"We still have three big players with over 90 per cent of the market, and they're pretty fat and happy," Janigan said in an interview with CBC News. "We're still seeing the incredible clout of the big telcos in relation to their ability to swing competition in their favour." The report points to a policy decision in December 2006 by then Industry Minister Maxime Bernier that ordered the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to use market forces to the maximum extent possible ...

Don't fret over all those profits though. They are getting another huge tax break. Whew. That was close. They almost had to give us some of our money back.

Higher taxes, higher gas prices, higher telephone bills. Good job Harper. Remind me again why neoconservatism is good for us.

The Sovereignty of Money and the Sovereignty of the Consumer, but Not the Sovereignty of the Nation

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. (Frederic Bastiat 1801-1850)

I mentioned Frederic Bastiat in relation to Maxime Bernier, former Vice-President of the Montreal Economic Institute, and presently the Reform-Conservative member of Parliament for Beauce, Quebec.

The MEI belongs to the school of thought that government is the impediment of progress, and the only real sovereignty is that of the consumer.

Other Libertarian thinkers also refer to the sovereignty of money. But none feel any connection to the sovereignty of a nation.

In a 2005 speech, Maxime Bernier claimed that "Individual sovereignty is what is important – not sovereignty of the state. Indeed, the sovereign state is, by its very nature, a steam-roller of the individual."

Bernier, like most Canadian neoconservatives, doesn't believe that Canada should be protective of any industry. In fact he once asked: 'With economic globalization, is nationality important?'

There was a column in the Star this week by David Crane: Big Fish Feed in Canadian Pond. The author was sounding the alarm on the increase in foreign ownership and control of Canada's high-tech industries.

...Many of Canada's small or mid-size but promising high-tech companies have also been sold off to foreign investors, making them R&D branch plants of foreign corporations rather than a potential RIM .... Last year alone, according to investment Canada, there were 437 foreign investments in Canada – 338 of them were foreign takeovers and 99 were new businesses. Of the 338 foreign takeovers, just 22 were reviewed and all were given the green light.

There was another column in today's Star by Bruce Campbell, Executive Director of Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, discussing the same thing: Owning the podium, selling the stadium.

The Harper government portrays itself as standing up for Canada, but it is preparing a major sell-off of Canadian interests that will compromise our cultural sovereignty, national identity and national security. In last week's federal budget, the Harper government signalled its intent to throw open the doors of foreign ownership in three strategic, previously protected, sectors: telecommunications, satellites and uranium.

Notions like sovereignty, democracy and nationalism, are direct threats to neoconservatism; so if you are writing about things that the Harper government is doing, from their neoconservative ideology, you would say they are right on course.

The problem with most of our media, is that they don't view anything this government does from that perspective, so they think they have a scoop if they discover them 'moving away' from being fiscally conservative, or doing anything that jeopardizes the future of our country.

We may watch Stephen Harper mouth the words to Oh, Canada and feel all warm and fuzzy, but believe me, those words mean nothing to him. The sovereignty of money drives the neocon bus, and silly notions of nationality only get in their way.

Bruce Campbell knows this. I think by now most of the country's economists have caught on. They continue to sound the alarm, but few Canadians really listen to this country's economists. Let's face it. It's pretty boring stuff.

So instead they view the budget from the summary provided by the mainstream media, which is usually just "Oh look. It's shiny".

But I believe that Bruce Campbell and David Crane, are simply speaking to us in language we can understand. They've taken the shine off the glowing reports, and are trying to warn us of what exactly is happening here.

We are losing our sovereignty. We are losing our ideas. We are losing our country.

It started off as just a bit of chipping away, but now it is being broken off in big chunks. Once these things are gone, they are gone. Permanently. We can't stand up in outrage a year from now and say we want it back.

Another person who had a lot of influence over this movement in Canada was Roger Douglas, former New Zealand labour minister, and author of the book Unfinished business.

He guided not only Harper's Reform Party but also Mike Harris of Ontario and Ralph Klein of Alberta.

New Zealand's slash and burn pioneer, Sir Roger Douglas, an occasional consultant to Ralph Klein's government, promoted the strategy of 'retroactive consensus' at the Reform Party's 1991 assembly): the idea the governments should ruthlessly and quickly force change to minimize the effectiveness of opposition, building consensus only after all the decisions had been carried out."

(Slumming it at the Rodeo: The Cultural Roots of Canada's Right-Wing Revolution, Gordon Laird, 1998, Douglas & McIntyre, ISBN: 1-55054 627-9Pg. 163 )

And is this not how the government does things now? They shut down the House for almost three months, while they negotiate the most aggressive trade deal in our history. And of course we only learn of it after the fact.

When Brian Mulroney introduced the Free Trade deal he held a referendum. Stephen Harper doesn't even hold a press conference. He just does it and lets someone else announce it.

Roger Douglas, whose slash and burn policies have been dubbed 'Rogernomics', also told his disciples, at that 1991 Assembly:

"Implement reforms by quantum leaps. Moving step by step lets invested interests mobilize. Speed is essential. It is impossible to move too fast. Once your momentum starts, never let it stop. Set your own goals and deadlines."

But he said above all. Don't Blink!

I think we've seen the momentum building, and I'm afraid that no matter how many economists and other experts sound their warning it may be too late. Roger Douglas turned New Zealand inside out with his policies. Back to that 1991 Assembly:

"What Preston Manning and Roger Douglas did not tell their audience was the story of the impact of Douglas's policies on the people of New Zealand. Saskatchewan political economist, Dr. John Warnock, travelled to New Zealand to study the effects of what New Zealanders dubbed 'Rogernomics.' The figures tell a story of devastation - a word used by New Zealand's own agricultural minister to describe the state of agriculture in four years after the 'reforms': A 40 per cent drop in farm income; a 50 per cent drop in the value of farm land; a policy of paying 3,000 farmers incentives of $ 45,000 to leave and the suggestion that another 15,000 (out of 79,000) should follow them. Unemployment, which had been at 4 per cent before Douglas's reforms, jumped to over 12 per cent in just over a year and is still increasing.

"Douglas completely eliminated regional development grants and subsidies to rural services. Says Warnock, 'They had things like subsidized petroleum - regardless of where you were the price was the same - subsidized train service, bus service, airport service. They privatized all these things and the prices immediately skyrocketed.' A massive de-population of the countryside resulted, and approximately 40,000 New Zealanders per year have since left the country for Australia to find work since 'restructuring' took effect.

(Preston Manning and the Reform Party. Author: Murray Dobbin Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing 1992 ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, pg. 113-114)

But a handful of people got filthy rich, and isn't that what's really important here?

IS THIS REALLY YOUR CANADA?

Maxime Bernier and the Unimportance of Nationalism

"And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God" (Frederic Bastiat 1801-1850)

Last Month Andrew Coyne wrote on his blog under the title: Maxime Bernier unplugged

That was a remarkable speech Maxime Bernier delivered the other day in Calgary. That is, it was an entirely unremarkable speech, the kind you would hear every other day in any normal democracy: a fairly pedestrian restatement of conservative principles by a leading conservative politician.

But in the Conservative Party of Canada, in its present moribund state, it counts as Luther’s 95 Theses. It must surely rule out any return to cabinet, if it does not lead to his outright expulsion from caucus, since it contradicts every line of current Conservative —

I often find myself upset with the media (oh, really?), and the first time I read this I was just as miffed with Coyne. The reason being that most journalists and columnists have no conception of neoconservatism, so they write their assessments and predictions, based on what a conservative government would do.

And what a conservative government in the real world would do, is pretty much the exact opposite of what a neoconservative government does.

But in fairness, I think Coyne does get it, but was just surprised that Bernier was not more discreet. However, I don't think that 'discreet' is a word in Maxime Bernier's vocabulary, and I actually respect him for that.

As foreign minister he stated that the real reason for being in Afghanistan was the drug trade, and was the first to publicly sound the alarm on Asadullah Khalid. Naivete got him in trouble, but with Maxime, I believe it's just a case of what you see is what you get.

Bernier is a true Libertarian, and follows very much the philosophy of Frederic Bastiat who never believed in any kind of trade restrictions, tariffs or government controls. He felt, as most Libertarians do, that individuals should be responsible for themselves and that everyone should have an opportunity to make as much money as possible.

Ronald Reagan once stated that he wanted America to be the kind of country where someone could always get rich. Unfortunately his vision made America a country where someone could always 'get' poor, and his administration created the most homeless people of any other. But that's not on the neocon's radar.

Mr. Coyne's surprise at Bernier's speech was his commitment to reducing the size of government. From Bernier:

Last year, the federal government’s total expenses were about 250 billion dollars. You can do a lot of things with 250 billion dollars! From a historical perspective, it’s a gigantic amount of resources. What if we decided that this is more than enough? That expenses are not going to grow anymore?

And I’m not saying zero growth adjusted for inflation and population or GDP increase. Just zero growth. The overall budget is frozen at 250 billion. From now on, any government decision has to be taken within this budgetary constraint. Every new government program, or increase in an existing program, has to be balanced by a decrease somewhere else. ... We have to convince people that we’re not simply aiming to be better managers of a bigger government; we are aiming to be better managers of a smaller government.

Smaller government? Coyne asks. What party does this guy belong to? Surely not the gang that increased spending by nearly 40% in four years? I can hear the opposition parties already: Does the PM believe in Zero Budget Growth? When will he repudiate these remarks?

However, that is the other side of neoconservatism. Before you can justify spending cuts, you have to make sure that you clean out the coffers. It's why they blew a thirteen billion dollar surplus, and were in deficit long before the recession hit.

I guess the reason I wish Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty would be more open like Bernier, is because I think that Canadians have a right to know. Instead of pretending that you plan to balance the books then snicker into your hand, lay it out there.

Harper always did before. When he was helping to found the Reform Party, he made speeches suggesting that the government had no business providing unemployment insurance, or Canada Pension, health care, Old Age Security.

He detested social programs: These proposals included cries for billions of new money for social assistance in the name of “child poverty” and for more business subsidies in the name of “cultural identity. In both cases I was sought out as a rare public figure to oppose such projects.” (The Bulldog, National Citizens Coalition, February 1997)

In 2006, the Globe knew where Bernier's head was:

... since being named to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's cabinet in February, the rookie 43-year-old MP from Quebec's rural Beauce riding has demonstrated a stern resolve to get government out of the way of business. It is a perhaps an unusual stance for an industry minister.

The holder of that post is commonly seen as the champion of government programs aimed at helping Canadian companies compete with global titans and foster innovation at home. That mindset is at the heart of Technology Partnerships Canada, the $300-million-a-year Liberal loan program that helped Bombardier Inc. become a world leader in regional jets and countless biotechnology and software companies develop new products. Mr. Bernier is now considering abolishing TPC altogether ... In the same vein, the new minister is largely unmoved by calls from the Ontario government to buttress with federal money its $500-million Automotive Investment Strategy. The fund has been a key factor in attracting $7-billion in new auto investment to Ontario. (How far will this free marketeer go? Globe & Mail, September 26, 2006)

See to a free marketeer, Libertarian; the first priority is not the country, or it's inhabitants; it's the markets. They actually push for foreign ownership and foreign control, as Stephen Harper is now.

Or as Maxime Bernier once asked: 'With economic globalization, is nationality important?'

I think nationality is very important. But since Frederic Bastiat did not believe in borders or sovereignty or 'states', only individuals; do we not get a vote?

IS THIS REALLY YOUR CANADA?