Christmas 2008

Written - 15 December, 2008

The holiday season is a time for reflection, as well as celebration. This year has witness the beginning of major changes to economics worldwide, leaving some in Canada without the means to have a holiday such as they may have enjoyed in the past. However, times of change are also times for reimagining our greater community, as well as ourselves and the collapse of the automotive industry creates interesting opportunities, should we change the frame of the how the industry, government and economy operate.

Today, rich executives make millions for themselves by engineering the collapse of companies through mergers and creating vast monopolies. These monopolies in turn impoverish rich countries by removing manufacturing jobs and replacing them with part-time service jobs, which cannot unionize due to high turn over and fragrant anti-union campaigns by management. The manufacturing jobs exported to poor countries have followed a policy of paying workers the minimum amount possible and creating extreme working conditions, often for women and children. In addition, the communities where these plants open often become dangerously polluted as companies select locations with minimum environmental standards to cut costs for production.

This system works to benefit only rich executives, corrupt governments in poor countries and shareholders in rich ones. But these people are not the majority of the population. During this time of change, we need to seriously look at redistributing wealth and rethinking democracy. Instead of trusting the big three automotive executives at the cost of $3.3 billion to not sell out Canada when the US offers its bailout packages, why not buy out the Canadian assets and change it to green manufacturing? While nationalizing operations is not in itself an end, surely it is better than executives walking away with millions while thousands face unemployment. At least with government control there is some accountability to the Canadian population.

Further, there is a need to reframe what we manufacture in this country. Canada has been embarrassed on the international scene by inaction over climate change and the sell off of most of our companies/resources. By switching automotive manufacturing to wind or solar generation, southern Ontario could supply the US mid-west with much needed green technology during a presidency that promises new strategies.

These ideas are not the whole answer, but they might be a start and new answers are needed now more than ever.