Brian Maclean
Statistics Canada's Privatization Plan: pushing High Tech Info while forgetting economic history
Nipawin - Saturday, March 2, 2002 - by: Mario deSantis
business investment in IT	"Canadian businesses have invested heavily in information and communications technology during the past two decades. This investment was a major factor in the acceleration of growth in the business sector's economic output during the last half of the 1990." The Daily, Statistics Canada, March 1, 2002
intrinsic	Information technology should be considered as an intrinsic (endogenous) factor of our economic activities and therefore we have the individual and collective responsibility to innovate, to be inventive and to exchange ideas.
error	Statistics Canada's assertion that heavy investment in information and communications technology in the last two decades was a major factor in the acceleration of growth in the business sector doesn't make sense as Statistics Canada tries to justify the bad times of the 80's as the reasons for the supposed good times of the late 90's.
real income fallen by 6%	But the 90's were not good times for everybody. Economics Professor Brian Maclean has stated that
	"from 1968 to 1984, Canada's real per-capita GDP growth rate averaged 2.3%. For the post-Trudeau period, it has averaged a much lower 1.6%, and for the Mulroney period, a miserable 1%."
	In a deceptive article, Avery Shenfeld, Managing Director and Senior Economist at CIBC World Markets, admits that
	"[Canada] real per capita after tax income has in fact fallen by more than 6% in the 1990s."
	The Centre for the Study of Living Standards has reported that
	"real GDP per capita was 0.4% lower in 1996 than in 1989."
deliberate devolution	The reality is that in the last two decades we have been experiencing an economic catastrophe, and such catastrophe has been realized with the concerted consensus of politicians, bureaucrats, corporate gurus, and academicians as all of these elitists have been preaching the gospel of the Free Market to free trade, to free capital flow, to cut taxes, to reduce debts, to have smaller governments, and to oligopolistically privatize public services including education and now health care.
curse	The ultimate result has been the privatization of our justice systems and of democracy. How much more privatization do we need beyond B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell's nightmarish budget?
References:
	The Daily, Statistics Canada, March 1, 2002 http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/020301/td020301.htm
	Was Pierre Trudeau an economic failure? No, Brian K. MacLean, published in the Financial Post/National Post, October 14, 2000 http://www.geocities.com/brian79/trudeau.html
	WHERE THE "FOUND" MONEY WENT, by Avery Shenfeld, Managing Director and Senior Economist at CIBC World Markets, Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, June 1999 http://www.robarts.yorku.ca/canadawatch/vol_7_3/shenfeld.htm
	Canada's Disappointing Economic Performance, Growth of Per Capita Real GDP in 13 OECD Countries, 1989-96 The Centre for the Study of Living Standards http://www.csls.ca/pdf/disecper.pdf
	Injustice Busters Site managed by Sheila Steele and Richard Klassen http://www.injusticebusters.com
	Reckless and Unnecessary: CCPA's analysis, facts, and figures for understanding and challenging BC's January 17 budget and job cuts by Seth Klein, CCPA#BC Director http://www.policyalternatives.ca/bc/cuts-analysis.pdf