4 - Friday, September 25, 1987 - Nor

@

IT TURNS out that foreign
States, including everything fr

over the previous year.

That’s a hefty lump out of the
$4.5-trillion-a-year Yankee
economy.

U.S. economists insist that
America would have to continue
f to decline for 50 years before
outsiders would own more of the
country than Americans
themselves.

This sounds to me like a for-
mula, given the trends.

The invaders, it turns out, are
British, German, French, Dutch,
Japanese, Australian and — you
guessed it Canadian en-
trepreneurs.

Canadian holdings in the U.S.
have risea to $18.3 billion. We
own a bit of the fort, boys. And
not just Ripley’s Believe It Or
Not. Brooks Brothers yet.

1 find it fascinating, watching
the Ameticans cope with being
bought out.

It behooves any compassionate
Canadian to set himself up on the
lucrative U.S. lecture circuit and
go around advising Yanks on
how to deal with the stress of be-
ing tenants in their own country.

What happened in the U.S. isa
dramatic reversal of the situation
that existed just 10 years ago,
when the Europeans were para-
noid about the American inva-
sion of Europe’s economy.

American business executives
were tough and shrewd and
energetic. Unless something was
done, they’d soon own as much
1 of Europe as they did Canada.
The European economy would
become ‘‘Canadianized.”’

Since then, a massive role-
reversal has happened before our
wondering eyes. The mighty
American economy has pancak-
ed, with the United States
becoming a debtor nation like
Mexico and Brazil.

It owes so much more than it
makes that it has to be propped
up by foreign creditors who can’t
afford to lose their investment.

Americans have to accept
foreign ownership now because
they need the money to maintain
their exalted lifestyles.

Canadians having been raised,
all of us, with a foreign-owned
economy as a fact of life, are
long are past the point of para-
noia about it. We achieved Zen-
like indifference generations ago.

I mean, the fact is, capital is
capital,
| Does it matter that the widget
factory where you work is 70 per
cent owned by a company in the
U.S? Would a Canadian owner
be much different? The rules of

THERE’S A battle over a basket-
ball hoop going on at West 23rd
Street in North Vancouver.

A group of citizens on West
23rd want to keep the basketball
hoop and markings that they built
for their children fast June, but
North Vancouver District’s
engineering department says the
hoop is in violation of the Street
and Traffic Bylaw,

Appearing before district council
Monday, John Dobbin, who lives
at 1228 West 23rd Street in the
Pemberton Heights area, said,
“lm here on a specific request —
to request the relaxation of that
bylaw because I require council’s
consent for the basketball hoop.

“We're not trying to create a
problem,” said Dobbin. ‘‘We had

Bob Hunter

rose to $1.33 trillion last year,

NV DISTRICT COUNCIL
Hoop request pondered

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Socreds meet

NOR FH Vao -
couver-Capilano riding Social
Credit’ constituency is hosting a
buffet breakfast Saturday morning
at Cheers Restaurant, 125 East 2nd
Street in North Vancouver.

Education Minister Tony
Brummet is scheduled to be the
guest speaker with a review of Bill
20 and teaching district: reactions
to it.

The breakfast begins at 9 a.m.
The cost to attend is $$.

THE

Strictly personal ®
“Career Development Program”.

Tuesday, September 29, 1987 at 7:30 p.m.
in the Endeavour Room
LONSDALE QUAY HOTEL ;
GARY BAILEY, Monager or call PAT MUNROE, Monaoger.
FRI, CMR, RI(B.C ) FRI, CMR. RI[B.C.) :
BR WEST VANCOUVER BRANCH NORTH VANCOUVER BRANCH fl
§ 922-1244 988-6131

ownership of the United
om real estate to securities,
an increase of 25 per cent

the game remain basically the
same, The boss gives you X
dollars for X amount of work. A
board of directors makes its
awesome decisions. You roll with
it.

Life goes on. You work. You
go home.

If American ownership of the
workplace has a bearing on the
quality of your life beyond the
job, it is ultimately benign, If
anything, i¢ drives the standard
of living upwards.

In the U.S., the debate about
the take-over of large chunks of
the American economy comes
down — as it has always done
here — to the question: does it
make any difference to the
worker in Chicago if the divi-
dends go to New York or Tokyo?

Canada has the highest level of
foreign, mainly American,
ownership of domestic enter-
prises of any major industrial
country. Some 44 per cent of afl
non-financial industrial profits
made in Canada go elsewhere.

I suppose this is awful, yet, as
economist Aian Kugman of the
C.D. Howe Institute says: ‘We
in Canada have much more
foreign ownership than the U.S.
will ever have, and we're one of
the wealthiest countries in the
world as a result.”

Economic nationalism
economic xenophobia.

Implicit in the fear of incoming
foreign bucks is the idea that our
relatively ancient Canadian colo-
nial mentality will be re-enforced.
That is, we'll be so used to
kowtowing to distant bosses that
we'll forget to stand tall.

I dovioi it very much.

We know wurselves to be much
mere equal than the Americans
appreciate. It is just when they
don’t notice that we get ticked
off, i.e. most of the time.

There is an impulse, of course,
to slam the door and buy back
Canada. But buy it back for
whom?

I may have believed in that
soluticn at one time, but no
longer. The flow of capital
around the world forges a net-
work of interconnections which is
ultimately a good thing. The key
to Canada’s wealth and power
lies in maintaining that flow, be-
ing open.

And besides, as the Americans
are discovering, we can go buc-
cancering too. The richer we get,
the more 50.

When you see the whites of
their eyes, boys, buy!

SEPTEMBER 30th
| Is THE DEADLINE FOR

ae

is

REBATE

OFF THE PRICE OF ALL
1987 PONY’S IN STOCK.

(Whiie quantities last)

TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT

PLEASE ACT BEFORE SEPTEMBER 30th.

(No other specials or discounts apply)

some people standing around (last
June} saying, ‘Wouldn't it be nice
to put a basketball hoop up for the
kids?’ ”

However, the district's engineer-
ing department doesn't see it as
very nice,

Engineering says children play-
ing at the hoop will be in danger
from approaching cars, and,
because they are concentrating on
their game may run into the paths
of approaching cars.

As well, engincering believes the
district would be liable if a basket-
ball player were struck by a car
while playing on a public road.

Dobbin refers to his street as ‘‘a

1695 Marine Drive
North Vancouver

preteen

~ GIVE BLOOD. GIVE LIFE! i

Rare blood types and Red Cross
are counting on you!

See Hoop
Page 5