EDITORIA

Corporate Canada calls
for even larger profits

anada’s wealthiest corporations want more
profits or they will continue to leave the coun-
try. That’s the bottom-line message that was
delivered to Canadians on April 5 from the _
Business Council on National Issues, the
well-known free trade lobbyist and represen-
tative for 200 of the country richest chief
executive officers, including those that run
the forest industry.

Corporate Canada’s top dogs want to see more corporate
and personal profits or they predict falling living standards
for the rest of us, an increase in the exodus of talented indi-
viduals, and more flight of corporate offices. To fix the situ-
ation, says the BCNI, Canadian governments must slash
taxes to levels equal to or below those of the United States
and get rid of numerous government regulations.

David O’Brien, the CEO of Canadian Pacific, says that
Canada will not be able to have its cherished social pro-
grams unless the BCNI recommendations are adopted.
Jean Monty, the leader of BCE, who reportedly last year
made $47.7 million in capital gains on his Nortel Inc. share
options, says that there has to be an aggressive publicity
campaign to get the message to Canadians. His colleague,
CanWest Global TV network boss Izzy Asper, and BCNI
member, may be quite friendly to selling ads for just that.
Asper told the CEO conference that the country’s incompet-
itive tax system needs an overhaul.

They even brought in a guy from a right-wing think tank
in Washington who said that the Canadian government
should tie the loonie to the U.S. dollar, adopt American-
style cross border trade rules and change the country’s tax
system.

You see, even though the Liberal government passed a
budget in February calling for $65 billion in tax cuts over 5
years, the BCNI wants more.

And all of this they want at the same time that Canada’s
exports and corporate profits are booming. In 1999, total
value of exports from Canada grew by more than an aston-
ishing 11% to $409 billion and growth in the country’s GDP
jumped to 4.2%.

“The situation does not get much better,” says the eeport
Development Corporation’s chief economist Stephen Polz.
Yet the BCNI’s bosses want more.

Canadian Labour Congress President Ken Georgetti, in
an article in the Globe and Mail, pointed out that the Lib-
erals delivered, in their February budget, tax cuts that the
BCNI called for 6 months earlier.

Calling the BCNI’s position paper, entitled “Canada: A
Global Champion or Falling Star,” a “blatantly self-serving
and short-sighted document,” Georgetti drew attention to
the fact that the Liberal budget answered the BCNI by
reducing taxation on capital gains, eliminating surtaxes on
high incomes over 5 years, and reducing the corporate sur-
tax.

Just the cuts in corporate taxes alone given out by the
Liberals, would be more than enough to pay for a national
day care program, said Georgetti.

Canada’s banks and trust companies, which raked in -
profits of $10.9 billion last year, will keep another $750 in
after-tax profits under what the BCNI calls “timid tax
cuts.”

Georgetti said that Canada should not try to be like the
U.S. Why have greater gaps between the rich and poor?
Why have more poverty? Why give up greater access to
quality public health care and education? In the last 5
years, 5 million more Americans joined 40 million others
who can’t afford health insurance. :

Forty percent of BCNI’s CEO’s think that there is a
greater than 50% chance that their jobs will leave Canada
in the next ten years. Most of those CEO’s work for U.S.-
based multinationals now — so who is going to make that

decision anyway? E

The union movement says that Canada’s corporations
are all too fast to ask for more handouts at time when the
creation of their wealth is at an all-time high.

The corporate captains BCNI couldn’t care less about
whether hey stay in Canada or not, but they do care about
their pocketbooks. And working eople should watch for a
publicity campaign orchestrated by these overpaid CEO’s to
promote their own selfish agenda.

LUMBER WORKER

Official publication of I.W.A. CANADA

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Liberals collaborate with Klein’s
private health care reform move

Jean Chretien and the fed-
eral Liberals are standing
around and doing little if

‘nothing while Canada’s

health care system is being
threatened by Alberta pre-
mier Ralph Klein’s health
care bill.

Klein’s Bill 11, the Health
Protection Act,.was intro-
duced into the Alberta legis-
lature on March 2. Critics,
including the Alberta and
federal New Democratic par-
ties and the Canadian
Labour movement say the
bill, which would allow gov-
ernment-appointed hospital
boards to establish for-profit
hospitals, will facilitate the
destruction of Canada’s pub-
lic health care system.

In mid-March, federal
NDP leader Alexa McDo-
nough said federal health
care minister Allan Rock
and Klein are “partners in
crime in terms of disman-
tling health care.”

Klein said that he will vote
closure on debate of Bill 11
during the bill second read-
ing which began on April 4.
Meanwhile Chretien said he
will not comment on the bill
until it passes and does not
know what parts of the
Canada Health Act the bill
conflicts with.

Bill 11 says that the fol-
lowing services must be pro-
vided at private medical
facilities: accommodation,
food, meals, nursing care,
laboratory and diagnostic
equipment, drugs and oper-
ating rooms, and medical
supplies.

Just like the language in
the Canada Health Act that
defines what a hospital must
do, so too does Bill 11 spell
out many of the functions
that private health care facil-
ities would have to provide.

Alberta NDP leader Raj
Pannu pointed out that the
bill itself, would in fact legal-
ize for-profit hospitals.

But Klein says that what
makes a hospital different is

that is has an emergency
ward and a wide range of
diagnostic equipment while
a “health care facility”
doesn’t. Not true — all hos-
pitals in Alberta don’t have
emergency wards or neces-
sary equipment.

Bill 11 would offer private
hospital corporations a large
number of minor surgeries.
It will allow the Health Min-
ister, through hospital
boards, to award surgical
facilities to for-profit (Amer-
ican) corporations, and not
have his/her decision re-
viewed by a court.

In the February 28 bud-
get, the Liberals decided to
give all Canadian provinces,
another $2.5 billion for
medicare, post-secondary
education and social ser-
vices, over four years while,
at the same time, it plans
to cut business and personal
taxes by $58 billion. That’s
five cents for social programs
for each dollar in tax cuts.

Estimating the population
of Canada at 30 million peo-
ple, the Liberals are provid-
ing a whopping $20.83 cents
per person, per year in addi-
tional funding to be split
between health care, high
schools and universities,
and social services.

In 1993 the Liberals gave
the provinces $18.8 billion
for health care per year. By
2004, even with the
increases, they will only
spend $15.5 billion per year.
Over the past 5 years, the
Liberals cut an average of
$7 billion per year in social
services and the Canadian
Labour Congress points out
that the nation’s medicare
system alone has suffered
$30 billion in tax cuts over
the past 12 years.

Small wonder then why
plans like Bill 11 crawl out
of the woodwork. Today only
15% of every dollar spent on
medicare comes from
Ottawa.

On March 25, after a con-

ference with her provincial

counterparts, Saskatchewan’s

minister of health Patricia

Atkinson, an NDP’er from

the cradle province of
medicare, said the follow-
ing: “Unless the federal gov-
ernment makes a major com-
mitment to the provinces
and the territories and a
major commitment to the

Canada Health Act, all of us

are going to be in a position

where we are going to have

to say to our taxpayers ‘what

are you prepared to pay for

through your tax system and

what are you prepared to

pay for as individuals.”

Private, two-tiered health
care then, is just around the
corner.

And when the doors open
to private hospital corpora-
tions, they will be kicked
wide open, says the Cana-
dian Union of Public Employ-
ees, which in mid-March,
released a legal opinion on
Bill 11.

The opinion says that all
of Canada’s province’s could
be forced, by the North Amer-
ican Free Trade Agreement,
to give “national treatment”
to U.S. (and Mexican) health
care corporations.

The NAFTA requires all
Canadian governments, fed-
eral, provincial and territor-
ial, to give the Americans
equal access to government
contracts and subsidies. And
if Klein passes Bill 11 and
then backs out, any corpora-
tion that ran a private hos-
pitals would have to be com-
pensated.

“Our legal opinion makes
it clear that Klein’s proposed
legislation will pave the way
for Americanization and the
ultimate destruction of
medicare,” said Judy D’Arcy,
national president of the
Canadian Union of Public
Employees.

LUMBERWORKER/APRIL, 2000/5