The provincial Libs unveiled their Jobs and Prosperity Council last week, but are these chosen prosperity seekers going to spread the wealth or just continue to suck it up?
Start with chair Gordon Nixon, CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada, 2007 winner of the Outstanding CEO of the Year Award and a big number nine on the list of the country’s top-earning (shall we say over-earning?) CEOs. He pulled in over $10 mil last year, counting stock and bonuses.
His bank, besides being one of the big five chronically accused of small business loan stinginess, was, according to the Centre for Policy Alternatives, among the largest recipients of bailout cash – an estimated $25 billion. Prosperity via charity.
Who else is appointed to juice the economy so everyone gets a share? That would be Kevin Lynch, vice-chair of BMO Financial Group, and Michael McCain, president and CEO of Maple Leaf Foods Inc., whose company (leaving aside the business incompetence that cost 22 lives in Canada’s worst listeriosis outbreak) is restructuring and ditching 1,500 jobs.
Add Mike Lazaridis, the Research In Motion founder whose company is having its own plenitude problem. The co-CEO resigned under investor pressure, and rumours now abound that RIM’s prosperity may rest on the traditional remedy for struggling Canuck firms, the U.S. takeover. Then there’s George Cope, prez and CEO of competition-killing BCE Inc. and Bell Canada, and Nitin Kawale, president of Cisco Systems Canada, whose firm laid off 6,500 globally last year.
Sure, this lopsided caucus of the 1 per cent has a few bright lights like the ever fabulous CAW economist Jim Stanford. But its solutions are likely to be shaped by the preconceptions of its leading personnel.
If the Libs had any economic imagination, they might call in Macrowikinomics author Don Tapscott, who knows dinosaur corporations can’t innovate and open-source sharing can. Or Local Food Plus founder Lori Stahlbrand to grow the job-rich sustainable eats market. Or appoint an expert not in withholding financing but in sprinkling it around, like Alterna micro-loan officer Susan Henry. Perhaps economist Marc Lee, author of A Green Industrial Revolution, or social capital aficionado Bill Young or an Ontario Co-operative Association entrepreneur.
Let’s get real the council will not engineer a people’s prosperity it’s real business is business as usual.
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