On December 23, 2018
© By John Arkelian
Perfidy: The word means treachery, duplicity, disloyalty, untrustworthiness, and unfaithfulness. And that’s precisely what multinational corporations have shown to Canada – and to the rest of the Western industrialized world. Most of our once thriving industrial sector has been transferred to the Third World, especially China, where wages are low and regulations governing workplace safety, labor standards, and environmental protection are weak. The rush by big business to de-industrialize the West happened with the connivance of our political leaders. The result of their mutual perfidy has been ruinous for the West.
In November 2018, General Motors of Canada announced that it will be shutting down its automotive assembly lines in Oshawa, Ontario by the end of 2019, in order to relocate south of the Rio Grande, where labor is cheaper. Never mind that the Oshawa plant is praised as one of the most productive in the world. Never mind the fact that Canadian workers (and Canadian consumers) have been loyal to GM for decades. The only thing that counts is maximizing profits – loyalty be damned. It’s hardly the first time that this sort of thing has happened – in the auto sector (the Oshawa plant once employed 30,000 people, now it’s down to about 2,700) or in other areas of manufacturing – but it’s high time that we responded in kind.
In 2009, the taxpayers of Ontario and Canada bailed out General Motors of Canada to the enormous tune of $10.8 billion. Was that mountain of money a loan or a gift? If it was the former, has it been paid back? If it is an outstanding loan, we should demand its immediate repayment in full. Whether the bailout was by gift or by loan, an insistent question is why our feckless leaders failed to extract an ironclad guarantee from the undeserving corporate beneficiary of our largesse to maintain a specified number of jobs in this country for a specified span of time (say 50 years or more)? Their perverse apparent failure to make a bailout contingent upon such a binding guarantee qualifies our leaders for the ‘Fools of the Year’ award.
Now, less than ten years after Canadian taxpayers saved an imploding corporation, it is blithely pulling up stakes at its biggest facility here as though it owed us nothing. One of their vice-presidents acknowledged recently that, “We owe our existence to the government here;” but, that’s not stopping them from telling us good riddance. The only thing more appalling than their perfidy is our leaders’ milquetoast response. We suggest another course, one that is aimed at making General Motors rue the day they ever heard the name Canada. If any of the senior managers at GM Canada are here from abroad under work visas, those visas should be cancelled forthwith. The Canada Revenue Agency should initiate close tax audits of the company, its senior managers, and its directors. The federal government should order commercials for television, radio, and print media exhorting Canadians to vote with their wallets and boycott the products of companies, like GM, that treat us with such brazen contempt. We should also urge the Oshawa Generals hockey team to change its name in the face of the perfidy of their one-time sponsor. And, last, but not least, Canada should steer an urgent course back to the principles of the now recklessly defunct Auto Pact, which sensibly stipulated that a manufacturer wanting to sell its product here without tariffs has to make a certain percentage of that product here.
We’ve allowed multinationals to walk all over us. They worship at the altar of corporate greed, with nary a thought to loyalty, good stewardship, or the welfare of the societies in which they operate. If we are pushed, we should be push back. If we are thrown aside as inconsequential, we should exact a high cost. Writing for “The Toronto Star” on November 27, 2018, columnist David Olive proposed nationalizing General Motors of Canada and thereby “creating the country’s first Canadian-owned automaker.” While the prospect of governments running businesses (aside from publicly-run, not-for-profit utilities and transportation systems, of course) generally isn’t an enticing one, Olive makes a compelling argument that we have the expertise, skilled labor, and infrastructure to have a successful automaker of our own – making cars for consumers here and abroad. One thing is certain: Canadians have been ill-used by General Motors (and by the corporate sector generally) and their enablers in government. It’s high time that we fight back.
John Arkelian is a lawyer and journalist; he represented Canada abroad as a diplomat.
Copyright © 2018 by John Arkelian.