Canada’s economic system lines corporate pockets

Canada’s 35 million citizen shareholders are facing a great debt and a failing future. Seventy years of a corporate, consumer-driven agenda has created enormous wealth from our natural resources and manufacturing.

Corporations’ taxes have declined, profits have increased, while citizens’ take-home income has declined and their taxes have increased.

Canadians are well programmed to be an aggressive consumer, spending money they have not yet earned, enslaving themselves with a larger debt load to the financial institutions while buying from a supplier sector of foreign made product.

In the food industry we are consuming large amounts of unhealthy chemicals and additives; 100,000 have been added to our food chain and diet over the last 70 years.

In comparison, Norway held onto their natural resources as a “partner to business with corporations,” and in 40 years has saved $1 trillion for future generations from their small North Sea oil reserves business dealings.

Canada’s policies on Canadian oil resources were lobbied away. There’s no partnership on a “trickle down theory of wealth” for Canada, and from a much larger oil reserve, nothing to show for it.

The financial sector bailed out with public money during the 2008-2009 market meltdowns now have lobbied tax breaks while amassing record profits.

Tens of billions in lower taxes have been shifted out of our Canadian government system to a few while on the streets of Canada a record number of food banks exist to feed fellow citizens.

As a nation, we need to change our philosophy. Our governments should maintain some ownership of our natural resources and profit, as Norway does, so all 35 million Canadians who own our country will prosper.

We need to pull back the uncontrolled, inflated, market “paper economy,” to balance that with the real economy of work. We must have leadership that envisions a healthy, educated country.

We are entering a couple of years of elections, and I hope you review and elect persons with the interest of the whole of Canada’s society.

Those are people who will take charge of our governments, balance our country’s wealth and taxes and build a Canada that is strong, debt free and industrially prosperous for today and for the children that our grandchildren will raise.

Rick Grylls
Greater Sudbury