George Bernard Shaw used to tell the story of how he encountered “the man who lost his keys.”
Walking home from the theatre one night, he came upon a man on his hands and knees under a lamp-post, obviously searching for something.
“I’ve lost my keys,” the man told Shaw.
The playwright joined in the search, but after several minutes it was apparent the keys were nowhere to be found.
“Are you sure you lost your keys here?” Shaw asked.
Corporations and corporate power
In May 2012, the third edition of my report Profiting from Repression: Canadian Investment in and Trade with Colombia was published and released by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) in Ottawa. The report links ten Canadian companies in Colombia to the genocide of indigenous Colombians, to complicity in eight murders and one attempted murder, to other significant military/paramilitary repression, to large-scale displacement, and to environmental destruction on a massive scale, as well as to union-busting, strike-breaking, and worker exploitation.
Three decades ago, when I started sounding the alarm about the growth of corporate power, very few other writers or analysts seemed to share my concern. Perhaps it was because the corporations back then exercised their power much less openly and harmfully. They didn't have governments that served them so slavishly, media that eulogized them so profusely, or free trade agreements that extended their influence on a global scale. Their power was also constrained to some extent by government regulations and strong unions.
[An earlier version of the following essay was written seven years ago, but this updated version is just as topical and even more relevant.]
The North American Free Trade Agreement was the first of a New World Order of trade agreements designed -- to borrow the words of the Trilateral Commission in 1975 -- to repeal "an excess of democracy in the Western world." It set a precedent never before dreamed of, let alone achieved, in international trade: the right of private investors to sue nations. And not just for millions of dollars, but billions, robbing national treasuries of the means to meet the social and economic needs of their citizens and, in many cases, pushing them back into extreme poverty.
"Mapping Corporate Power in Saskatchewan" traces the ties between the major corporate contributors to both the Saskatchewan Party and the New Democratic Party, and their links to other corporate interest and advocacy groups. The research demonstrates that Saskatchewan corporations have the networks, the committed leadership, the organization, and the access to government to play a large role in shaping public policy. As record amounts of corporate money flood our political system, Saskatchewan urgently needs a publicly accessible lobbyist registry to let citizens track corporate lobbying.
This paper looks at income inequality over time and shows how the growth of income concentration in the hands of the richest 1% is connected to the concentration of corporate power among the 60 largest Canadian-based firms.
This paper explores the possible connections and avenues for cooperation between the living wage movement and the broader corporate social responsibility community.
For Canada’s 100 highest paid CEOs, the rewards start clocking in very early into the New Year.
By 1:18pm on January 2, the first official working day of the year, Canada’s top 100 CEOs will have already pocketed $45,448. It takes the average Canadian an entire year of full-time work to earn that.
This factsheet, Overcompensating: Executive Pay in Canada, highlights some key numbers around executive pay in Canada and also includes a list of Canada's highest paid 100 CEOs.
Food issues have been much in the news recently, but I want to focus on what can only be called an attempt to trash organic food and organic farming – an attempt that, as we shall see, fits into a larger agenda.