Fae

A LETTER to my Member
of Parliament:

Dear Bob,

Perhaps I] am wrong. I hope so.
But I fear I see a corporate
welfare bum polishing his gold-
plated begging cup. General
Motors. One of the biggest com-
panies on the planet.

Skid Road bums I -:n handle.
They only cost a! Besides,
there, but for the, ~f God,
gol.

Corporate welfare bums are
different. They don’t ask, they
demand. They don’t ask me. They
insist that my government turn me
upside down and shake money out
of my pockets for them.

Corporate handouts take many
forms, most of them obscure. Tax
relief. Grants in aid. Government
low interest loans or govern-
ment-guaranteed loans. Sometimes
jt’s a new form of import trickery

*"..0n this
continent free
enterprise is
applied selectively.
Corner groceries
can indulge in free
enterprise and
profit or go broke.
But not big
companies ...
Why? ... Because
they are big...”’

to shield a corporation from
competition.

Hidden or open, the taxpayer
pays the bill.

We went through this a few
years ago with Chrysler, a com-
pany so badly run that had it been
a corer grocery store it would
have gone broke and been taken
over by new management long be-
fore.

Chrysler’s executives insisted
that their well-being was the re-
sponsibility of the taxpayers of the
United States and Canada.

About the only question either
government asked was whether
they would carry the money home
in their own baskets or did they
want it delivered by Brinks?

What if we next get GM, bigger
than Chrysler and greedier?

General Motors once sold
almost half of all the cars bought
on this continent. GM’s market
share has dropped to about a
third. A lot of unsold cars.

There are other bad signs.

We are seeing self-pity, one of
the prominent characteristics of
any panhandler.

George Eads, chief economist
of the corporation, said recently
that the Japanese share of the
American car market will not stop
increasing until American manu-
facturers make cars as good as the
Japanese, something, he said, they
are not doing.

It would be hard to state the

| Paulitics & Perspectives

Pau
Sr. PIERRE

principle of a free market
economy more neatly. Those who
serve their customers will prosper.
Those who don’t will perish.
Precisely what Adam Smith had in
mind. Free enterprise, it’s some-
times called.

But on this continent free
enterprise is applied selectively.
Corner groceries can indulge in
free enterprise ard profit or go
broke. So can farmers, truckers,
popcorn sellers, carpentry shops,
the owners of mushroom planta-
tions, and prostitutes. But not big
companies such as Massey
Ferguson, Chrysler or Generai
Motors. Why not them? Because
they are big, that’s why not.

What is bad for General Motors
has to be bad for all of us, so all
of us are expected to do some-
thing and not just stand there
squeezing our wallets until the
knuckles turn white.

We must pay money to North
American car makers and if we
won’t pay to buy their cars then
we shall have to pay and not get a

car.

Please understand, Mr. MP,
this letter is not to ask you to try
to reverse the full current of mod-
ern history and force GM or any
other huge corporation to submit
to free competition. I ask only
that you try to change the rules
for mendicant corporations,

To this end, recall a few facts:
One of GM’s board members, H.
Ross Perot, himself a successful
entrepreneur, was outraged by the
last wave of firings in the com-
pany. Workers lost jobs while ex-
ecutives took raises. Mr. Perot
called it disgraceful. He said it
publicly, and so loudly that he
was bought off GM's board of
directors for $700 million.

Some of the shareholders would
rather have kept the $700 million
and listened to the criticism.

This month was just as bad.
Retiring GM chairman Roger
Smith had his pension doubled to
$1.2 million per annum. The State
of Michigan, which holds a block
of GM stock, tried to prevent it,

but couldn’t.

The experience of the chairman
should be compared with that of
one of the workers fired while Mr.
Smith was repelling GM custom-
ers. The quotation appears in the
book In Search of Excellence:

“I guess I got laid off because I
make poor quality cars. But in 16
years, not once was I ever asked
for a suggestion as to how to do
my job better. Not once.’’ He did
not get a million dollar a year
pension.

So, to my request. It’s a modest
one, surely. But it is realistic.

Before my government gives my
next handout to any corporate
welfare bum, could there not be a
condition imposed requiring that
the entire management responsible
for that company’s plight be
fired? No golden parachutes. Just,
down the road you go, Charlie.

Imagine how that would en-
courage productivity from the
white collar class in 20, 40 or 100
other big corporations.

Governments say their bailouts
save thousands of jobs. Not exact-
ly. Governments save the pay,
perks and pensions of failed exec-
utives. They reward failure.

9 - Friday, June 22, 1990 - North Shore News

N. Van man faces
sex-related charges

A NORTH Vancouver man has
been ordered to stand trial on a
variety of sexual assault-related
charges after a recent North Van-
couver provincial court prelimi-
nary hearing.

Alan Paul Nahanee, 31, is
charged with two counts of sexual
assault, one count of gross in-
decency and one countcf touching
a child for a sexual purpose.

The charges stem from incidents
alleged to have occurred between
January 1987 and March 1989,

Nahanee will next appear in
Vancouver county court on July
11 to set a trial date.

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