HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1988-04-20, Page 4PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 1988.
They finally got it right
With the federal government’s announcement last week that
it will sell off 45 per cent of Air Canada to ordinary shareholders
it appears for the first time in the government’s privatization
campaign they may finally have done it right.
The government has announced that with this share issue the
first priority in sales will go to the airline’s employees followed
by the general public. Ownership by any one individual or
company will be limited to 10 per cent. The object will be to get
as many people involved as possible in the ownership of the
airline.
The government has been hot on the idea of privatization
since before it won the 1984 election, often citing the success of
privatization in Britain as its justification. But for the first time
the Conservatives here have really done what the
Conservatives in Britain have done: sell a company to the
ordinary people.
There is a real argument to be made for this kind of
privatization. Too many Canadians are employees of
multi-national businesses or government and government-
owned crown corporations. We have a real lack of the
entrepreneurial spirit because people are used to working nine
to five and getting a paycheque. The Thatcher revolution in
Britain has promoted “people’s capitalism’’, changing
people’s attitudes about risk taking and personal economic
responsibility. Three times as many Britons as before now own
shares and hundreds of thousands of people are homeowners
for the first time as public housing was sold off.
A privatization process that can transform the population
from a nation of wage earners to a nation of risk-takers can have
real benefit. The emphasis on selling shares to Air Canada
employees is particularly welcome. Employees who have a
stake in the operation of their company are likely to be much
more motivated and happy. It turns them from employees to
proprietors.
The innovation of this move of privatization only makes the
previous actions by the government in the field look worse.
Only a fanatical free enterpriser who believes that any private
enterprise can run something better than government can
really believe in the earlier privatization moves. In each case
the government sold off companies like deHaviland to other
large companies, thereby only contributing to the concentra
tion of ownership in a country that already has the highest
concentration of big business ownership in the western world.
It is the kind of move that creates helplessness and cynicism in
the man in the street instead of feeling like part of the action as
in this kind of sale.
Those moves were also a betrayal of the ordinary taxpayer.
These crown corporations, even Air Canada, have been built
with ourtaxdollarsover the years. We already own these
companies through our taxes. When the government is so
anxious to sell a crown corporation that they take less than the
company is worth to sell it, they are cheating you the taxpayer.
After the worm turns
When people who see themselves as being persecuted
become the people with power the results are often not pretty,
as can be se en by recent happenings around the world and close
at home.
The most frightening example of a people who have gone
from persecuted to persecutor was in the occupied West Bank
of Israel recently when a young Israeli settler was killed in a
confrontation with Palestinians native to the area. The school
girl, it turned out later, was not killed by the rock thrown by the
Palestinians but by a bullet from an Israeli gun. The settlers
however, wouldn’t believe it and accused their own
government of plotting to keep the real truth from being known.
They demanded that entire towns be wiped off the map in
retaliation. It sounded disturbingly like the kind of vengeance
that took place in territory occupied by the Nazi’s during World
War II where acts of subversion were sometimes punished by
mass destruction and murder.
Last Sunday 25,000 people in Montreal marched to protest
the possible tampering with Bill 101 which would give some
language protection to English speaking Quebecers, permis
sion, for instance, to put up English store signs.
And recently a major feminist organization protested groups
like “Fathers for Justice’’ saying that organizations that stand
for the rights of men are really just a way of undermining the
women’s movement. The organization is also against joint
custody in divorce cases.
When people fight against the odds for years for a just cause,
they can sometimes become so imbued with passion they don’t
realize that there can be any right side but theirs. In the
occupied territories Israel has gone from being the endangered
nation to the occupier. In Quebec many people fail to realize just
how great the change has been in the last decade, how firmly
implanted French has become so that a few concessions to
English Quebecers in the name of fairness won’t hurt. They
also didn’t realize how their stubborness is hurting the cause of
English-French understanding across the country.
And some elements of the women’s movement don’t seem to
realize that although there are still many inequities against
women, there are times when the system is also unfair to men
and that men’s rights sometimes need protecting too.
Justice is a fragile thing. It isn’t always on the side of groups
that see themselves as oppressed.
LOOK AT IT THIS WAV... IF THE LIBERALS
ARE AGAINST IT AND THE N DP ARE
AGAINST IT AND THE UNIONS ARE ,
AGAINST IT. IT MUST BE A MELL
Mabel’s Grill
There are people who will tell
you that the important decisions in
town are made down at the town
hall. People in the know, however
know that the real debates, the
real wisdom reside down at
Mabel's Grill where the greatest
minds in the town [z/not in the
country] gather for morningcoffee
break, otherwise known as the
Round Table Debating and Fili
bustering Society. Since not just
everyone can partake of these
deliberations we will report the
activities from time to time.
MONDAY: Julia Flint said she was
over to see her niece’s science fair
project at the local school. The poor
kid didn’t do so well, Julia said,
because she hadn’t learned the
jargon you need to get along in the
world of scientific academia. “It’s
sort of like being bilingual,” she
said, “only instead of English and
French it’s English and academ
ics.”
Tim O’Grady said no matter
what you called it, it was all Greek
to him when he went through
school.
Ward Black said he recently had
a group of people who had just
graduated from university make a
pitchtocouncil about some new
scheme the government’s got
going and he guessed they’d
learned their second language so
well he couldn’tunderstand a word
they said. “First we spend years
getting them to talk like that so they
can communicate with their teach
ers and professors, then we’ve got
to spend years getting them to talk
plain English again so they can
communicate with the rest of the
world,” he said.
TUESDAY: Billie Bean said he
hadn’t got much sleep last night.
Hank Stokes figured right away
Billie had been sitting up watching
the Acade my Awards. Billie admit-
tedhe had. “And you stayed up
longenoughtosee Cher’s dress
didn’t you’ ’, Hank asked. Billie
admitted he had. It was kind of like
drinking a cup of strong coffee just
before going to bed, Billie said: one
minute you were getting drowsy
and the next Cher walked on stage
with that see-through dress and
you were wide awake again.
Hank said that dress nearly cost
him cracked ribs. It gave him ideas
before he went to bed and when he
snuggled up to his wife, who had
sensibly gone to bed on time, she
gave him an elbow to make him
settle down.
Julia said she liked the way Cher
in her acceptance speech got
things in proper perspective. She
didn’t bother to thank the guy who
directed the film she won her best
actress award for or the guy who
wrote the part. She knew that
Hollywood was really all about: she
thanked her hairdresser and make
up person.
THURSDAY: Billie said he thinks
he’s finally found the thing that’s
going to make him a rich man. He
read in the paper about a guy who
has opened a car wash where
women in skimpy outfits wash the
cars. Seems men with cars have
been flocking in and the guy’s
thinking of expanding already,
maybe starting a car wash with
guys in skimpy outfits washing
women’s cars.
Tim said the idea might have
Continued on page 22
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