As a forced and reluctant shareholder in GM (I’ll never buy their product, why would I want their stock?) here are my demands:
1. Stephen Harper and Dalton McGuinty must explain in detail (use pictures and one-syllable words if necessary) why the ongoing demand for cars wouldn’t/couldn’t be met by other more successful manufacturers. People are still going to buy new vehicles, whether supplied by GM or others.
2. I want a letter of appreciation from GM pensioners thanking me and all other pension-less Canadians for the taxes paid on our depleted savings to top up their incomes so they don’t have to suffer the effects of the global recession like their fellow citizens. That’s the least they owe us.
3. A formal letter of apology to all taxpayers by the various levels of government which failed in their fiduciary duty to ensure that GM (and other corporations like it) adequately funded their pension plans, resulting in item 2 above. The letter is to be read out in the House of Commons by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and in the Ontario Legislature by Premier Dalton McGuinty. Name names.
That’s all. Three demands. Satisfy those and I’ll quit bitching about this egregious waste of taxpayer dollars to selectively support one industry sector that just happens to be centered in a vote-rich area of the country.
Sadly, I expect I’ll be complaining for a while yet.
I’m having a tough time with this whole notion of the Conservative government having a seat at the boardroom table of General Motors. Aside from the fact that I think we should be running, not walking, away from any taxpayer investment in this losing proposition, I can’t help but despair at the thought of a business (any business) being run by the same folks who manage to waste most of my tax dollars with such blithe ignorance of the concepts of accountability and value for money.
But the die seems to have been cast, so here are some of the implications of which you need to be aware.
GM Canada headquarters will be moved immediately to Calgary.
The company will be subject to the Official Languages Act. All documents, working papers, blueprints, etcetera will be translated into the second official language. All assembly line robots and senior level plant managers in Windsor must be able to converse fluently in French, English, and IRL (Industrial Robot Language) .
All parts purchasing will now come under Public Works Canada, the department best known for its inability to get contracts in place in a timely manner – and for pissing off every potential supplier in the process. The “just in time” manufacturing methodology will now be known as the “just some time” manufacturing methodology.
All new model names must be vetted by the Canadian Human Rights Commission to ensure that they are not potentially even vaguely offensive to any obscure special interest group that may or may not exist, now or in the future.
To help “new Canadians” integrate, an appropriate ratio of right-hand to left-hand drive vehicles will be built based on the percentage of immigrants arriving from right-hand drive countries. Once they become citizens, their vehicles must be immediately converted back to left-hand drive, else the owners risk being labelled “not real Canadians” by Jason Kenney.
Regional benefits will be mandated. GM’s Canadian operations will be split up so that at least 50% of the jobs go to Alberta, 30% to Quebec, and the rest are divided up between the other provinces on a per-capita basis except Newfoundland which has no sitting Conservative MPs. When the Harper Conservatives are given the boot, the allocations will of necessity change with Alberta’s share dropping to 0%.
The product line will be changed to better represent the Conservative’s new Canadian logo – From Sea To Sea To Sea. Consequently the highest production vehicle will be the electric Woodie featuring pine beetle lumber from British Columbia, seats made from PEI and Nova Scotia seal skins (Newfoundland skins are too thin), and batteries from… well, somewhere, ideally up North. A hidden agenda will replace the glove box. It will be available in any colour but red.
On the plus side, GM’s corporate colours are already blue, so that won’t have to change. At least not until the next election.
The Globe and Mail reports that the GM/CAW agreement will, in fact, result in provincial and federal taxpayers forking over billions to protect the pensions of GM retirees. This in spite of Harper’s and Clement’s repeated assurances to the contrary.
In decrying the blatant about-face, Kevin Gaudet, federal director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, provides one of the best quotes I’ve seen in a while, stating, “Mr. Harper left his balls out West when it comes to taking a principle stand…”. Truer words were never spoken.
I presented my thoughts on bailing out any pension plans in the following letter to the editor, published by the Ottawa Citizen April 27. It now appears more relevant than ever.
“While I certainly sympathise with retirees from Nortel, Chrysler, GM and others who are concerned that their retirement incomes will be impacted by the current state of their companies and the recession, I must protest in the strongest possible terms any government action to guarantee 100% payouts from those defined pension plans.
I am one of the vast majority of Canadians who never had a pension plan, who never had an employer making matching contributions (or better) to my retirement funds. Now retired, what I have to live on I saved from my own earnings. And over the past 2 ½ years, thanks to Jim Flaherty’s income trust fiasco and now the global recession, my retirement fund has slipped to slightly better than 50% of where it was projected to be today. To put it in even plainer terms, my income is now half of what I had expected. As a consequence many plans have been cancelled or deferred indefinitely, and total retirement remains elusive as part-time work supplements my modest retirement income.
There are many, many of us in similar situations, and to ask us to now use our tax dollars to augment the pension incomes of others is neither fair nor appropriate.
By all means provide support to those workers who might lose their entire company pension, but under no circumstances should we be topping up pensions that have unfortunately suffered a similar degradation in value as the rest of us have experienced.”
As Randall Denley says in today’s Ottawa Citizen, “Events of the past several months have certainly made private-sector executives look incompetent, but the corollary is not that politicians are better at business.”
He then goes on to describe how the public and private sectors have different motivators and drivers as well as different reward systems. In short, a properly functioning marketplace operates on a financial risk-reward basis, while governments operate in a no-risk environment where they control the resources, the laws, the money-collecting mechanisms, and the money-printing equipment to be used once the taxpayers have been wrung dry.
And the irony of it all is that we now have politicians taking control of large businesses like GM and Chrysler, not because the politicians have better business smarts (you only need to look at Jim Flaherty to prove that point) but because the businesses had themselves become too big and unwieldy. “GM is failing because it is bureaucratic, unable to make tough decisions, can't control costs and doesn't have a compelling plan for the future. In other words, it was run too much like a government and not enough like a business.”
With few exceptions (across all parties) I wouldn’t trust the fiscal ability of any politician to balance my check book, let alone direct the day-to-day operation of a multi-billion dollar corporation dedicated to profits and wealth creation. Yet that is precisely what they are doing.
If GM and/or Chrysler are going to fail, they will fail for reasons beyond the scope of this (or any) government to fix, so by dabbling in an area they know nothing about, the politicians are simply delaying the inevitable and incurring huge taxpayer obligations in the process.
"I don’t have the brains for business. I want to go into politics." - Mao Xinyou
It may be too little too late for GM, but this latest announcement of a partnership with Segway to produce the Puma is the kind of creative thinking the Big Three should have been doing for years.
Obviously this is not everyone’s idea of the ultimate two-wheeler, but for the right marketplace it has the potential to be a low-cost, energy efficient, flexible means of transportation.
Unfortunately for North Americans, our governments will ensure that this innovative idea will never see the light of day in any of our over-crowded and motor vehicle congested cities. By the time they have legislated front and side airbags, impact bumpers, seat belts, crash guards, safety glass, crush-proof fenders, a dashboard full of idiot lights, strengthened door pillars, and a spare tire the Puma will be indistinguishable from this other GM product.
Except that the Puma driver (rider?) will probably be required to wear a helmet.
