Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Red Wilson's pet project received a $17 million grant from Harper government


What’s with all these poodle panels announced by Stephen Harper? In particular the Competition Panel headed by Red Wilson on the hollowing out of corporate Canada?

I’m still waiting for Red Wilson, president of the Competitiveness Council, to return my phone call of six weeks ago. I was hoping to tell his eminent panel looking into the hollowing out of corporate Canada, that 7 of the largest 25 takeovers of Canadian businesses in the last 5 years can be directly explained by a piece of legislation that has been in effect for only one year, namely Stephen Harper’s income trust tax. Evidently Red Wilson is not interested in hearing about causal relationships as he and his panel are going to be prescribing cures without knowledge of the causes, it would appear.

Or perhaps Red Wilson and his panel have been conveniently set up to absolve the Harper in any economic wrongdoing.

We are told that these multitude of panels that have been set up by Stephen Harper are “independent”.

How is it conceivable that Red Wison is “independent” when his pet project, namely Historica Foundation, received a $17 million grant from the Harper government coming in at number 96 in the Top 100 grants of the last year?

The fact that this panel of five “emminent” Canadians has no less that 3 people associated with BCE, one of the world’s largest leveraged buyouts and dominated by foreign capital making use of Harper’s policy of tax free foreign leverage buyout loans is a further troubling reality as it relates to this panel’s true agenda and professed independence on the matter of foreign takeovers.

$17,105,000 HISTORICAFOUNDATION OF CANADA (Toronto) Cdn. Heritage Exchanges Canada, Contribution

Mr. Wilson is Chairman of the Board of Nortel Networks Corporation and Chairman of the Board of CAE Inc. He is also a director of DaimlerChrysler Canada Inc., and DaimlerChrysler AG (Supervisory Board and Chairman's Council). He is a member of the International Council, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., (New York); and Founding Co-Chairman of the Historica Foundation of Canada. From: http://www.mcmaster.ca/ua/alumni/gallery/G259750.htm

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

As in other situations, clearly Harper et al have a different - not to mention self-serving - definition of "independent", unlike most people and the dictionary.

Come to think of it, another word Harper and his CON minions have a strange definition of is "accountable".

Anonymous said...

If I see one more of Mr Harper`s so-called independent panels , I may go bananas.

Actually , maybe some monkeys for panelists would not be a bad idea--they would come up with the same foregone conclusions at a fraction of the cost.

Payment-by-bananas could be even cheaper than I thought if we could get Brian Mulroney to broken a deal with Karlheinz & have a few freebie bunches as throw ins.

The appearance of accountability is all that matters to Mr Harper--put a few handpicked cronies out there & describe to them the goal & required outcomes & all will be well with the world--afterall , the public is easily fooled.

Just ask those pesky income trust investors , they know all about it.

Dr Mike.

Anonymous said...

Brent for PM!!!