By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
As
hundreds of thousands of students in the province of Québec continue to strike
into their 13th week
against tuition increases, as the provincial government continues to employ
legal repression and state violence against the youth, as Canadian families are
over $100,000 in debt, as a looming housing crisis begins to rear its ugly
head, as youth unemployment increases, student debt explodes, jobs vanish,
poverty deepens, and oppression increases, it’s time to meet those responsible,
those who are doing better than ever, those who are making record profits,
sitting comfortably in their estates which are larger than the entire island of
Manhattan, who travel by helicopter and private jet, who co-mingle with the
Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Spanish royalty, presidents and prime ministers at
home and abroad: meet Canada’s ruling oligarchy.
As this series, “Class War and the College Crisis,” is more
focused on the issue of education, I will focus here on the composition of the
oligarchy in terms of how they control our educational system. This part in the
series will be part article and part research annex. First, I will introduce
the reader to Canada’s most powerful family, our version of the Rockefeller’s
south of the border, or the Rothschilds in Europe, and of course, all these
families are close in both business and social circles. Such is the nature of
being an elite in a globalized world. The Desmarais family, located in the
province of Québec, are without question the most influential and powerful
family in the country, and it’s no wonder, considering their power is vested in
an investment company known as Power Corporation.
Why is Power
Corporation important?
The name says it all: it has Power. Founded in 1925, Power
Corporation of Canada is an investment company involved in communications,
business, and especially finance. Power Corporation was founded by A.J. Nesbitt
and P.A. Thomson, two partners in the Montreal investment firm, Nesbitt,
Thomson and Company, who wanted to consolidate Canada’s power sector, and
established Power Corporation as a ‘holding company,’ meaning, it owns other
corporations. In the 1960s, the company began to invest in energy, finance,
industry, and real estate. In 1968, financier Paul Desmarais took over the
leadership of Power Corporation, and rapidly expanded the assets held by the
company, including by the 1970s: Canada Steamship Lines (transportation);
Consolidated Bathurst (pulp and paper); Investors Group, Great-West Life,
Montreal Trust (financial services); and Gesca (communications). Power
Corporation expanded across Canada, Europe, and into China. Paul Desmarais
stepped aside as Chairman and CEO in 1996, though remaining as the controlling
shareholder, and had his two sons, Paul Jr. and André, become Chairman and
President and Co-CEOs. Power Corporation owns Gesca, a communications company
which in turn owns La Presse as well as six other daily newspapers in Quebec.
The
Desmarais family, wrote Christa d’Souza for the London
Telegraph, are “Canada’s equivalent of the Rockefellers or
Vanderbilts.”[1] Indeed, it would appear that the Desmarais are very much akin
to the Rockefellers, the most powerful family in the United States, and one of
the most powerful families in the world (perhaps only challenged by the older
European-based Rothschild banking family). The Rockefeller family developed the
Standard Oil empire, which branched off into several different oil companies,
including Exxon and Chevron; founded the Rockefeller Foundation as an engine of
social engineering, founded the University of Chicago, became a dominant force
in global banking (through Citibank and JP Morgan Chase), highly influential in
politics (Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and Senator Jay Rockefeller), and
of course, remain a dominant influence in think tanks, such as the Council on
Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission, which
ultimately play a major role in shaping policies of industrial nations.
The
Desmarais family, while not as powerful in a global sense as the Rockefellers,
have nevertheless made themselves a powerful name in the global oligarchy, and
most certainly the most powerful family in Canada. Paul Desmarais Sr. is one of
Canada’s richest individuals, which is, of course, no surprise, and as Konrad
Yakabuski wrote for the Globe and Mail, “Desmarais has
been personally consulted by prime ministers on every major federal economic
and constitutional initiative since the 1970s. Most of the time, they’ve taken
his advice.” Power Corporation has taken large stakes in major European
companies such as Bertelsmann, Total and Suez. Peter Munk, a friend of Paul
Desmarais and the CEO of Barrick Gold Corporation (a major mining company
profiting off of genocide in the Congo), said that, “Paul built that business
with an enormous capability for networking that no one in Canadian history has
ever matched. And the boys got introduced to his contacts. They were educated
well, they married well. And they’ve behaved.” In the mid-1960s, a protégé of
Desmarais was a young Montreal lawyer named Brian Mulroney, who would later
become Canada’s Prime Minister. Paul Sr. groomed his sons, and especially
André, who is now perhaps the most well-known Canadian businessman in China.
André also married the daughter of another Canadian Prime Minister, Jean
Chrétien. Desmarais Sr. also got involved in French banking through Paribas,
and later, Pargesa, which handled investments in a wide range of European
corporations, and shot Desmarais into the accepted ranks of French nobility and
the old-monied European elite. Paul Desmarais Jr. is close friends with the
recent French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and socializes with Spanish royalty,
the Rothschilds, and other European oligarchs.[2]
The Desmarais family have strong connections to Canada’s four
major political parties: the Liberals, Conservatives, Bloc Quebecois, and the
NDP. This has included close ties to Lucien Bouchard, former leader of the
Parti Québecois and Premier of Quebec, Jean Chrétien, former Canadian Prime
Minister; Brian Mulroney, former Canadian Prime Minister who worked for Power
Corporation; Bob Rae, an NDP leader, and Paul Martin, another Liberal Prime
Minister who worked for Power Corporation. When André Pratte, the chief
editorialist of the Desmerais-owned paper La Presse, wrote in 1994 that, “Power
Corp. controls everything, everyone knows that. Chrétien, [then Quebec premier
Daniel] Johnson, it’s Power Corp,” Paul Desmarais Sr. intervened directly with
the paper to ensure that Pratte was demoted. Claude Masson, the deputy
publisher of La Presse at the time, stated that, “When you bite the hand that
feeds you, there are consequences.”[3] Indeed, the hand bites back.
The Desmarais’ also have close connections with James
Wolfensohn, the former President of the World Bank, who has extensive ties to
the Rockefeller family. Paul Jr. married Hélene Blouin, the “founder and CEO of
le Centre d’entreprises et d’innovation de Montréal, an incubator for tech
businesses; a director of the Montreal Board of Trade; chairman of HEC
Montréal; and a co-founder of the Montreal Economic Institute, a think tank
that has become Quebec’s leading policy advocate on the non-partisan right.”
André married France Chrétien, daughter of Jean Chrétien, and he even served as
a press secretary to Jean Chrétien while he was Minister of Justice in the
Pierre Trudeau government. In the 1990s, the international advisory board of
Power Corporation included former Prime Ministers Brian Mulroney and Pierre
Trudeau. Brian Mulroney was sure to create friendly ties between the Desmarais
family and soon-to-be Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who put two
Desmarais-connected politicians in his cabinet, Peter Mackay and Maxime
Bernier.[4]
Quebec author Robin Philpot wrote a scathing critique of the
power of the Desmarais family several years ago, suggesting that, “Over the
last several years, [Paul Desmarais Sr.] has spun his web to such an extent
that it now enables him to call the shots,” especially in promoting his
right-wing economic vision, with “a disproportionate influence on politics and
the economy in Quebec and Canada.” Of course, it’s not only Canadian
politicians with whom Desmarais is close, but French and American politicians
as well, including Sarkozy, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. Desmarais owns
seven of the ten French-language newspapers in Quebec, and has been close to
nearly every Quebec premier, apart from Parti Québécois leaders Jacques
Parizeau and Bernard Landry. Philpot alleged that Desmarais “has a lot of
influence on Premier Jean Charest,” who is the current premier imposing tuition
increases. When Desmarais received the French Légion d’honneur (Legion of
Honour) from Nicolas Sarkozy, Jean Charest was in attendance, of which Philpot
stated, “He took him along like a poodle.” Philpot added, “It’s a very
unhealthy situation for a government to be indebted to a businessman that has
his own interest at heart. They get their hands tied.”[5]
Jean-François Lisée, the director of the Center for
International Studies and Research at the University of Montreal stated that,
“They are in a class all by themselves… There’s the Desmaraises, then there’s
everyone else.” However, as one man close to the family said, in regards to
their influence in politics, “We live in a village in Canada, and there are a
lot of circumstances which come together which make it appear as if there’s
some great manipulation… These are the coincidences of life. It might be more
notorious than substantial.”[6] Indeed, the elite live in “a village,” and
that’s the whole point, which is, I might add, “substantial.”
In rural Quebec, the Desmarais family has an estate the size of
Manhattan, with a private golf course and pheasant shooting range, as well as a
music pavilion where opera is performed. This is the home of Paul Desmarais Sr.
Guests, such as former U.S. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, come
play golf on this vast estate, and are flown in on helicopters belonging either
to Power Corporation or Desmarais personally. As one of Canada’s richest
billionaires, this is a simple matter. Power Corporation, which owns a
controlling share in Power Financial Corporation, an insurance giant, has
established ties with one of Belgium’s richest men, Albert Frere, with whom
they have been in business for decades, and together hold significant shares of
Total SA (the third largest oil company in Europe), Lafarge SA (the world’s
largest cement maker), and GDF Suez SA (the world’s second largest utility
company).[7]
The Desmarais family has even had the internationally renowned
Cirque du Soleil perform on their massive 15,000-acre estate. King Juan Carlos
of Spain has even been a guest from time to time. André Desmarais is himself a
member of the Trilateral Commission, founded by David Rockefeller, and is also
on the International Advisory Board of David Rockefeller’s former bank, JP
Morgan Chase, alongside other notables such as former British Prime Minister
Tony Blair. Both brothers have regularly attended meetings of the Bilderberg
Group, of which David Rockefeller is a top official (founded in 1954 as an
elite think tank linking Western Europe and North America). The Desmarais also
hold a major international meeting of elites in Montreal every year, the
Conference de Montreal, drawing in thousands of top policy-makers,
industrialists, bankers, strategists, and international elites from the major
nations of the world. A son of Paul Desmarais Jr., Paul Desmarais III, is a
banker with Goldman Sachs. At times, the influence of the family is shyly
acknowledged. As French President Sarkozy stated upon awarding Paul Desmarais
Sr. with the French Legion of Honour, “If I am the president of France today,
it is thanks in part to the advice, the friendship and the loyalty of Paul
Desmarais.”[8]
So while Quebec students are being asked to pay double their
current tuition to reduce public spending, the Desmarais family is hob-nobbing around
with a top public-sector individual responsible for investing $150 billion in
Quebecers’ public-sector pension and insurance plans, Michael Sabia. Though
apparently a weekend stay at the Desmarais estate by Sabia did not involve
business discussions, it was merely “friendly.” No doubt. Meanwhile, Power
Financial profits rose 37% in March of 2012, earning the company $533 million,
while Power Corporation itself earned $314 million in the same amount of time,
with its profits also increasing by 37%.[9]
The
Canadian Oligarchy Assaults Democracy
In the 1970s, just as the United States elite were organizing
for their assault on the democratic advances brought about by the activism and
popular mobilizations of the 1960s, so too was Canada. With the Powell Memo and
the Trilateral Commission’s “Crisis of Democracy” report in the early and mid
1970s, we saw the emergence of a vast array of right-wing pro-business think
tanks which sought to – and successfully did – promote neoliberalism and thus,
created enormous repercussions for universities and education. Canada was not
to be left behind in the elitist assault on democracy.
As
William Carroll and Murray Shaw wrote in the journal Canadian
Public Policy: “Integral to the rise and consolidation of
neoliberal hegemony were the emergence of new centres of class-wide business
activism and the retooling of established policy institutes along neoliberal
lines.” A few major think tanks and policy institutes were integral to this
approach for Canada. The Conference Board of Canada was founded in 1954 when
the New York Conference Board opened an office in Montreal, later moved to
Ottawa, and now one of the largest think tanks in Canada, linking academia,
government and corporate elites. The Private Planning Association of Canada
(PPAC) was founded in 1958 by members of the Canadian American Committee (CAC),
“a group of business and labour leaders from Canada and the US” who were
seeking closer and deeper ties between Canada and the United States,
specifically in relation to trade. When the PPAC merged with the C.D. Howe
Memorial Foundation in 1973, the C.D. Howe Institute was formed. The C.D. Howe
Institute became a major force pushing for free trade agreements such as NAFTA,
and by the mid-1990s, was portraying social programs as a major source of
Canada’s economic problems.[10]
The Business Council on National Issues (BCNI) – now known as
the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) – was founded to create
consensus on policy issues among Canada’s top 150 CEOs, making it less of a
think tank, and more of a “shadow government.” Founded in 1976 in order to
bring together the corporate elite of Canada into forming a more long-term
strategic position with the government, directly lobbying the state. The
mandate of the Council is “to ensure that Canadian chief executives play an
influential role in the international financial, trade, investment,
environmental and foreign affairs domains.” Since the era of the Trudeau
Liberals, politicians have come and gone from power, but the Council, “the
voice and organizational embodiment of corporate rule, is a permanent
presence.” Another major player is the Fraser Institute (FI), dedicated to
mythical “free market” policies and neoliberalism, founded in 1973 with money
from fifteen different mining executives, and is essentially a replica of the
American Enterprise Institute in the United States. The Fraser Institute is
perhaps the most quoted institution in the Canadian media, ensuring that its
neoliberal ideology is firmly entrenched in popular ‘information’ (i.e.,
propaganda). One study from 1998 showed that over the course of a year, the
left-wing think tank, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives was quoted in
business news stories 16 times, while the Fraser Institute was quoted in over
140 stories.[11]
Today, Hélène Desmarais, wife of Paul Desmarais Jr., is on the
board of the C.D. Howe Institute, alongside top officials from GE Canada,
Manulife Canada, HSBC Canada, Enbridge, Barrick Gold, BMO Financial Group, and
a number of other top financial and industrial corporations. Power Corporation
is listed among the C.D. Howe Institute’s supporters, alongside other notable
entities such as: Astral Media (a major media conglomerate), Bank of America
Merrill Lynch, Barrick Gold Corporation, BMO Financial Group, Bombardier,
Canadian Bankers Association, Canadian Chamber of Commerce, CIBC, Canadian
Pacific Railway, Canadian Oil Sands Limited, Cargill Limited, CN, Deloitte
& Touche LLP, Desjardins Group, Deutsche Bank, Enbridge, Encana, Ford Motor
Company, HSBC, Google, Imperial Tobacco, JP Morgan, National Bank of Canada,
Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, RBC Financial Group, Rio Tinto Alcan, Scotiabank,
Shell Canada, SNC Lavalin, Standard Life Financial, Swiss Bankers Association,
TD Bank Group, and many others. The C.D. Howe Institute also gets a good deal
of financial support from several Canadian universities, including Carelton,
HEC Montréal, Laval, McMaster, Queen’s, Ryerson, Calgary, Lethbridge, Western
Ontario, Université de Sherbrooke, U. of Alberta, UBC, Ottawa, Saskatchewan, U
of T, and Wilfred Laurier University.[12]
Looking
at Power
The board of directors of Power Corporation includes: Pierre
Beaudoin, President and CEO of Bombardier; Marcel R. Coutu, President and CEO
of Canadian Oil Sands Limited and Chairman of Syncrude Canada, director of
Great-West Lifeco (owned by Power Corporation), and is a member of the Canadian
Council of Chief Executives; Laurent Dassault, Vice President of Groupe
Industriel Marcel Dassault (a Paris-based investment and financing company),
and a director of a number of European companies, including SITA, Generali
France, Kudelski, and the Banque Privée Edmond de Rothschild Europe (a major
banking house owned by the Rothschild family); Guy Fortin, Vice Chairman of
Sanpalo Investments, former senior partner at Ogilvy Renault, Chairman of the
Canadian Tax Foundation; Anthony R. Graham, President of Wittington
Investments, formerly with National Bank Financial Inc., Chairman of
President’s Choice Bank, on the board of Power Financial, Loblaw Companies,
George Weston Limited, Brown Thomas Group Ltd, Holt Renfrew & Co., the
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Council for Business and the Arts in
Canada, and is a member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives; Robert
Gratton, former Chairman and CEO of Montreal Trust, director of Power
Financial, member of the Harvard Business School Canadian Advisory Board, the
Conference Board of Canada, the C.D. Howe Institute, and the Trilateral
Commission; Isabelle Marcoux, Vice Chair of the board of Transcontinental Inc.,
on the boards of George Weston Ltd., Rogers Communications, the Board of Trade
of Metropolitan Montreal; Donald Mazankowski, director of Power Financial,
former member of the Canadian House of Commons and member of Parliament for 25
years, former Canadian Minister of Transport, Deputy Prime Minister, President
of the Queen’s Privy Council, and Government House Leader, and is a former
member of the board of governors of the University of Alberta.
Other board members include: Raymond L. McFeetors, Vice Chairman
of Power Financial and Chairman of Great-West Lifeco, a director of London
Life, Canada Life Financial, Canada Life, Crown Life, IGM Financial, Investors
Group, Mackenzie Financial, Putnam Investments; Jerry E. A. Nickerson, Chairman
of Nickerson & Sons Ltd., director of several Power Corporation companies,
honorary director of the Bank of Montreal; James R. Nininger, on the Board of
Management of the Canada Revenue Agency (responsible for administering the tax
laws of Canada and most of the provinces), on the board of Canadian Pacific
Railway, former President and CEO of The Conference Board of Canada (a major
research institute/think tank); R. Jeffrey Orr, President and CEO of Power
Financial, a board member of several Power group subsidiaries, former Chairman
and CEO of BMO Nesbitt Burns and Vice Chairman of the Bank of Montreal’s
Investment Banking Group, and is a member of the Canadian Council of Chief
Executives; Robert Parizeau, Chairman of Aon Parizeau, Inc., director of
National Bank Life Insurance Company, former Chairman of Gaz Métro, former
director of Van Houtte, and director of the National Bank of Canada for over 20
years, and is a director of the Institute of Corporate Directors; Michel Plessis-Bélair,
Vice Chairman of Power Corporation, director of several Power group
subsidiaries, and a director of Lallemand Inc., Université de Montréal,
Hydro-Québec, and is a member of the International Advisory Board of École des
hautes etudes commerciales (HEC) of Montréal (Business School of Montreal);
John A. Rae, director of a number of Power subsidiaries, a director of Fednav
Ltd, BNP Paribas (Canada), McGill University Health Centre Foundation, former
Executive Assistant to Jean Chrétien, National Campaign Chairman for Jean
Chrétien’s 1984 and 1990 leadership campaigns, and Coordinator of the National
Campaign of the Liberal Party of Canada for the 1993, 1997, and 2000 elections,
and is also Chair Emeritus of the Board of Trustees of Queen’s University;
Henri-Paul Rousseau, a director of several Power group subsidiaries, board
member of the Global Financial Markets Association, former President and CEO of
the Caisse de depot et placement du Québec (which manages public pensions for
the province of Quebec), former President and CEO of the Laurentian Bank of
Canada, former CEO of Boréal Assurances Inc., and former Senior VP of the
National Bank of Canada; T. Timothy Ryan, Jr., President and CEO of the
Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the leading
trade association representing global financial market participants, CEO of the
Global Financial Markets Association (GFMA), a director of a number of Power
subsidiaries, as well as a director of Lloyds Banking Group, Lloyds TSB Bank, HBOS,
the Bank of Scotland, and the United States-Japan Foundation, formerly a top
official with J.P. Morgan, is a private sector member of the Global Markets
Advisory Committee for the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC), the
Council which oversees all sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies; and Emoke J.E.
Szathmary, President Emeritus of the University of Manitoba, former President
and Vice Chancellor of the University of Manitoba, Provost and Vice President
of McMaster University, and former Dean of the Faculty of Social Science of the
University of Western Ontario, is currently a director of a number of Power
subsidiaries, and is a director of the International Institute for Sustainable
Development, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, the Canadian Foundation for
Innovation, and the Board of Governors of McMaster University.
And of course, we have the Desmarais family themselves,
including Paul Desmarais Sr., Paul Desmarais Jr., who is not only a director of
several Power subsidiaries, but is Vice Chairman of the Board and Executive
Director of Pargesa, a director of Group Bruxelles Lambert, GDF Suez, Total,
Lafarge, and is a member of the European Institute of Business Administration,
Chairman of the Board of Governors of the International Economic Forum of the
Americas, a trustee and Co-Chair of the International Advisory Council of the
Brookings Institute, founder and member of the International Advisory Board of
the McGill University Faculty of Management in Montreal, and the founder and
member of the International Advisory Committee of HEC (business school) in
Montreal. André Desmarais is not only on several Power subsidiaries, former
Special Assistant to the Minister of Justice of Canada, a director of Pargesa
in Europe, CITIC Pacific Ltd. in China, is a member of the Chairman’s
International Advisory Council of the Americas Society (founded by David
Rockefeller), and is Honorary Chairman of the Canada China Business Council.
As for Power Financial, while there is a great deal of overlap
between the two boards, there are some unique names on the board of Power
Financial. Among these are J. Brian Aune, President of Aldervest Inc., former
Chairman of St. James Financial Corporation, is Governor Emeritus of Concordia
University; V. Peter Harder, President of the Canada China Business Council,
former Canadian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, former Deputy Minister of
the Treasury Board, Solicitor General, Citizenship and Immigration, and
Industry Canada, and is a director of IGM Financial, TimberWest, Telesat
Canada, Energizer Resources, Northland Power, Pinetree Capital Ltd, and is an
independent advisor to the Auditor General of Canada.
The
Oligarchy of Education
Canada’s
universities, like all universities, are governed by bankers and corporate
executives, foundation officials, and think tank presidents, media moguls and
millionaires. Given the current situation in Quebec, where hundreds of
thousands of students have been taking to the streets in a strike against
tuition increases, with over 200 protests in Montreal over the past three
months alone, I will focus here on the two major English-speaking universities
in the province: Concordia and McGill. This is important to focus on, simply
because throughout this crisis, the university administrations have been
claiming to be “neutral,” though they have actively set themselves against the
students, filing legal injunctions against picketing, hiring private security
firms to patrol the schools, and even calling in riot police to disperse
striking youth. The schools have claimed to be neutral on the issue of tuition
increases, though they have not – in any way – applied pressure or lobbying
efforts on the government to reverse its position. In fact, it has been the
exact opposite. When we look at who actually sits on the boards of the school
administrations, it becomes clear that these are the very same elite who, in
their various other social positions, lobby the government to increase the tuition, who sit on the boards of
the banks that hand out student loans and charge exorbitant interest rates, who
profit off the debt and poverty of the masses.
So let’s start with my own school: Concordia University.
The Chancellor of Concordia is L. Jacques Ménard, the President
of BMO Financial Group, one of Canada’s largest banks, a director of Claridge
Inc., and a director of the Institute for Research on Public Policy (a think
tank promoting elite interests). The Chairman of the Board of Governors of
Concordia is Peter Kruyt, President and CEO of Victoria Square Ventures, a
director of La Presse (the largest French-language newspaper in Quebec), a
director of Picchio Pharma Inc., a director of CITIC Pacific Ltd., Chairman of
the Canada China Business Council, and a Vice President of Power Corporation, a
company he has been working for since 1980 when he was Executive Assistant to
the CEO, Paul Desmarais.
Norman Hébert, Jr.: CEO of Group Park Avenue Inc., former board
member of Hyrdo-Québec, Chairman of the Board of Société des Alcools du Québec
(SAQ, a provincial crown corporation which sells liquor).
Hélène F. Fortin: a director of Larose Fortin CA Inc., member of
the Institute of Corporate Directors, former Assistant to the Vice President of
Quebecor Inc. (a major media conglomerate), and a former director of CBC and
Hydro-Québec.
Brian Edwards: founder of BCE Emergis, one of North America’s
largest electronic commerce companies, Chairman of the Board of Miranda
Technologies and Biotonix 2010 Inc., and is on the boards of Camoplast Inc. and
Impath Networks Canada Corporation, and Transat AT.
Jean Pierre Desrosiers: on the boards of KPGM, Aéroports de
Montréal and D-BOX Technologies Inc.
Rita Lc de Santis: a partner at Davies, Ward, Phillips &
Vineberg, former member of The Italian Chamber of Commerce in Canada, Board of
Trade of Metropolitan Montréal, Business Development Bank of Canada and
Hydro-Québec.
James Cherry: President and CEO of Aéroports de Montréal, former
executive with Bombardier, Oerlikon Aerospace Inc., CAE Inc. and ALSTOM Canada
Inc.
Baljit Singh Chadha: Director of the Canada-India Business
Council, Pesident and founder of Balcorp Ltd.
Charles Cavell: former President and CEO of Quebecor World Inc.,
former Chairman of the Board of Sun Media Corp, a director of Adaltis Inc.,
Novelis Inc.
Tim Brodhead: former President and CEO of the J.W. McConnell
Family Foundation, former Executive Director of the Canadian Council for
International Co-operation (CCIC), past chair of Philanthropic Foundations
Canada.
Joelle Berdugo Adler: founder of ONEXEONE, and CEO of Diesel
Canada.
Jonathan Wener: President and CEO of Canderal (a major real
estate investment company), a trustee of the Fraser Institute, member of the
board of the Laurentian bank of Canada, Silanis Technologies, and former
president of the Urban Development Institute of Canada.
Annie Tobias: former official at Deloitte & Touche
Michael Novak: Executive Vice President of SNC-Lavalin Group, a
global engineering and defense contractor.
Marie-José Nadeau: Executive Vice President of Hydro-Québec,
Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs and General Secretary at Cascades
Fine Papers Group Inc, and is a director of Metro.
Andrew T. Molson: Chairman of the Board of Molson Coors Brewing
Company, is a partner and chairman of RES PUBLICA Consulting Group, a
Montreal-based holding and management company, is Chairman of the Board of
Trade of Metropolitan Montreal and a director of The Montreal Canadiens,
DundeeWealth Inc., Groupe Deschênes Inc. and Montréal International, and is
president of the Molson Foundation.
Tony Meti: President of G.D.N.P. Consulting Services, Inc., a
former Senior Vice President at National Bank Financial Group, a director of
ADF Group, Saputo Inc.
Jacques Lyrette: Executive at Innovative Materials Technologies,
former CEO of ADGA Inc., an engineering consulting company.
Arvind K. Joshi: CEO at St. Mary’s Hospital Center, member of
the advisory board of the John Molson School of Business at Concordia
University.
Suzanne Gouin: President and Chief Executive Officer, TV5 Québec
Canada, former director of Hydro-Québec.
McGill
University:
H. Arnold Steinberg: Chancellor of McGill University, formerly
worked for Dominion Securities (now RBC – Royal Bank of Canada – Dominion
Securities), has been a member of the boards of Bell Canada, Teleglobe,
Provigo, National Bank of Canada.
Heather Munroe-Blum: Principal and Vice Chancellor of McGill, is
on the board of the Internationalization Committee, and the Membership
Committee of the Association of American Universities, a member of the Science,
Technology and Innovation Council (STIC) of Canada, the U.S. National Research
Council’s Committee on Research Universities, the Canada Foundation for
Innovation, the Trilateral Commission, and is co-chair of the Private Sector
Advisory Committee of the Ontario-Quebec Trade and Co-operation Agreement, on
the boards of the Trudeau Foundation, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board
(CPPIB), Conférence de Montréal, and the Royal Bank of Canada. She has served
on the boards of the Conference Board of Canada, Montreal Chamber of Commerce,
Four Seasons Hotel, and Hydro One.
Stuart Cobbett: Managing Partner and Chief Operating Officer of
Stikeman Elliott LLP, and is a Director of Citibank Canada.
Lili de Grandpré: founder of an organization strategy consulting
firm, CenCEO Consulting, formerly with the Mercer Consulting Group and Bank of
Montreal.
Michael Boychuk: President and CEO of Bimcor Inc., and is a
member of the advisory board of Centennial Ventures, a U.S. private equity
firm, former Senior Vice President and Treasurer of BCE Inc. and Bell Canada.
Gerald Butts: President and CEO of WWF-Canada.
Daniel Gagnier: former Chief of Staff to Quebec Premier Jean
Charest, former VP at Alcan, former Chairman of the Canadian Manufacturers and
Exporters, current chairman of the International Institute for Sustainable
Development, and a board member of the Asia-Pacific Foundation.
Banking
on Power
In Canada, there are five major banks which dominate the
national banking sector (and together wield enormous influence over Canada’s
monetary system through the Bank of Canada). These banks are the Canadian
Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), the Bank of Montreal (BMO), Toronto-Dominion
Bank (TD), the Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank), and the Royal Bank of Canada
(RBC). To understand how these banks wield influence over Canada as a whole, it
would be useful to examine the boards of directors of the banks, drawing the
overlap of leadership between the ‘Big Five’ and Canada’s major corporations,
think tanks, foundations, media and educational institutions. For the purpose
of this report, I will simply take a look at the board of directors of the
biggest bank: Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), and show how it overlaps with the
other institutions which dominate our society.
W. Geoffrey Beattie: on the board of directors of General
Electric (GE), President of the Woodbridge Company, a privately held investment
holding company (the majority shareholder of Thomson Reuters, a major media
conglomerate of which he is Deputy Chairman), and he is also a board member of
Maple Leaf Foods Inc. and Chairman of CTV Globemedia, a major Canadian media
conglomerate.
Richard L. George: President and CEO of Suncor Energy, on the
board of the Canadian Pacific Railway, former Chairman and current board member
of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), was a member of the North
American Competitiveness Council (NACC), which was formed in 2006 to advise
North American governments on the process of ‘North American integration’.
Paule Gautier: the first woman president of the Canadian Bar
Association, on the boards of Metro Inc., TransCanada Corporation, and
Transcanada Pipelines, an associate member of the American Bar Association, and
is on the board of CARE, a supposed “humanitarian” organization, and she was a
former director of the Institut Québecois des Hautes Études Internationales at
Laval University.
Timothy J. Hearn: former CEO of Imperial Oil Limited, former
chairman of the C.D. Howe Institute (a major pro-business think tank) where he
remains as a board member, former member of the Canadian Council of Chief
Executives (CCCE), is co-chair of a fundraising campaign for the University of
Alberta and is chair of the fundraising campaign for Tyndale University, and is
on the Advisory Board of the Public Policy School at the University of Calgary,
a director of Viterra Inc., and is Chair of the board of directors of the
Calgary Homeless Foundation.
Alice D. Laberge: former CEO of Fincentric, a current
Commissioner of the Financial Institutions Commission, on the board of the
Minerva Foundation, and a member of the Financial Executives Institute, and a
former director of BC Hydro and Power Authority, and is on the board of
directors of the University of British Columbia (UBC).
Jacques Lamarre: former President and CEO of SNC-Lavalin, a
major global engineering, construction, and military contractor; is on the
board of Suncor Energy, the founding member and former Chair of the
Commonwealth Business Council, former Chairman of the board of directors of the
Conference Board of Canada, a leader at the World Economic Forum, a former
director of Canadian Pacific Railway, a member of the C.D. Howe Institute’s
British North American Committee.
Brandt C. Louie: Chairman and CEO of H.Y. Louie Co. Limited, a
food retail distribution company, Chairman of London Drugs Limited, Vice
Chairman of IGA Canada Ltd., former Chancellor of Simon Fraser University
(SFU), Governor of the Vancouver Board of Trade, Governor of the British
Columbia Business Council, a member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives
(CCCE), and is a member of the Dean’s Council of the John F. Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University, and is a current director of the Gairdner
Foundation. He is also a board member of the World Economic Forum, Grosvenor (a
property company), and the Fraser Institute, a major right-wing pro-business think
tank.
Michael H. McCain: President and CEO of Maple Leaf Foods Inc.,
Chairman of the Canada Bread Company, board member at the American Meat
Institute, the Richard Ivey School of Business Advisory Board, a member of the
Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), and a former director of
Bombardier Inc.
Heather Munroe-Blum: the Principal and Vice Chancellor of McGill
University, board member of the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, a
member of the Trilateral Commission, has attended meetings of the Bilderberg
Group, is co-chair of the Private Sector Advisory Committee of the
Ontario-Quebec Trade and Co-operation Agreement, on the board of the Trudeau
Foundation, and is on the board of the Conférence de Montréal (the
International Economic Forum of the Americas), which is chaired by Paul
Desmarais Jr.; and she has also been on the boards of the Conference Board of
Canada, Montreal Chamber of Commerce, Four Seasons Hotel, and Hydro One.
Gordon Nixon: President and CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada, a
director and past Chairman of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE),
on the board of directors of the International Monetary Conference, and has
been on the boards of Daimler/Chrysler, Catalyst, EnCana Corporation, and
Queen’s University School of Business; is a director of the Institute of
International Finance and has attended Bilderberg Group meetings.
David P. O’Brien: Chairman of the Board of the Royal Bank of
Canada, Chairman of EnCana Corporation, a director of Enerplus Corporation,
Molson Coors Brewing Company, and TransCanada Corporation; he is also the
Chancellor of Concordia University, and is on the board of the C.D. Howe
Institute. He was the former Chairman and CEO of Canadian Pacific Limited.
J. Pedro Reinhard: a director of the Colgate-Palmolive Company,
a director of Sigma-Aldrich Corporation, a chemical company; former Executive
Vice President and Dow Chemical Company, is a former board member of the
Coca-Cola Company, and is President of Reinhard & Associates, a financial
advisory practice.
Edward Sonshine: was President, CEO and a director of RioCan
Real Estate Investment Trust, Chairman and a director of Chesswood Income Fund,
and is Vice Chairman and a director of Mount Sinai Hospital.
Kathleen P. Taylor: President of Four Seasons Hotels and
Resorts, is a director of The Hospital for Sick Children Foundation, a cabinet
member of the United Way of Greater Toronto and a member of the Industry Real
Estate Financing Advisory Council of the American Hotel and Motel Association
and the International Advisory Council of the Schulich School of Business of
York University.
Bridget A. van Kralingen: Senior Vice President of IBM, and was
Managing Partner of Deloitte Consulting, and is a member of the board of
advisors at Catalyst Inc.
Victor L. Young: a director of Imperial Oil Ltd., former
Chairman and CEO of Fishery Products International Limited, and is a current
board member of McCain Foods, former Chairman and CEO of Newfoundland and
Labrador Hydro, and was a director at BCE Inc. (Bell Canada).
Our
Parasitic Elite
Canada’s elite, like all elites, are parasitic to the social
good and wellbeing of the people. They own the banks and financial
institutions, own our central bank which sets the interest rates, gives loans
and collect on debt, pushing people deeper into servitude and slavery; poverty
as punishment. They control our media, which shapes our views and ‘opinions,’
they sit on the boards of our universities, putting future generations into
debt before they have a chance at life, and control the ‘knowledge economy’ for
which they have defined the purpose of education. They influence and control
our governments and political leaders, sit on the boards of the think tanks
that write policy and promote political agendas, they run the foundations and
claim themselves to be benevolent philanthropists, when philanthropy is at
best, moral masturbation for the wealthy, a way to feel good about their vast
disparity of wealth, and at its more organized levels, is simply a means
through which to engage in social engineering and social control: to give a
little in order to continue taking so much. The profit off of the foreign wars
our country wages and supports, blood plunderers of the Congo, Afghanistan, and
Libya. The Canadian elite rule the country as a proxy for the American Empire,
acting as a resource suction-cup for the behemoth below us, providing the
United States with most of its oil, water, electricity, and timber. These
rapacious parasites claim they hold the answers to the crises they cause and
profit from; a super-class which can only be understood as a sprawling,
venomous, and vacuous social succubus.
With a massive student movement in Quebec nearing its fourth
month of strikes against tuition increases, the media has set against them in a
massive propaganda campaign, the legal system has set against them in declaring
injunctions against picketing students, the provincial state has dismissed,
derided, and engaged in fallacious negotiations designed only to win public
sympathy for the government, while the police have been incredibly oppressive
against the youth: employing pepper spray, tear gas, smoke bombs, concussion
grenades, beatings with batons, mass arrests, shooting students in the face
with rubber bullets, and a disturbing trend of driving police cars and trucks
into crowds of students. These are images you expect from a military
dictatorship like Egypt, but not from a supposed “democracy” like Canada. In
the midst of this social upheaval and state repression, the propaganda campaign
against the students has been so successful that the majority of public opinion
stands with the government and against the youth. Through every institution,
and with every means made available, the elite have set themselves against the
student movement. It is time the students and Canada at large recognize our
elite for what they are: parasites!
While
this rhetoric is perhaps a little inflammatory, it remains apt. A parasite is
much smaller than its host, and it benefits at the expense of the host,
changing its behaviour and health. The word “parasite” comes from the Latin wordparasitus which is itself derived from the Greek
word, parasitos, meaning, “one who eats at the table of
another.” The elite have been eating at our table for far too long. They have
long over-stayed their welcome. It’s time to make it known that we have no
patience or place for them at our table any longer. This will not be easy, this
will not be simple; this will take a long time and a great deal of effort. But
if we don’t start now, if we don’t begin to take and create a society of, by,
and for the people (what was once referred to as ‘democracy’), then elite
parasitism will continue to sap the strength, health, environment, wealth, and
the very hope and lives of future generations. They will continue to spread
like a social cancer until the host is dead.
The youth are always told that the future is ours, but that
remains up to us to make it so. The past and the present belong to the
parasites, so if we do not stand up and struggle now and forever, we have no
future to inherit, no world in which to grow and no hope in which to gaze. We
have only debt bondage, state violence, table scraps, impoverishment,
punishment, and oppression. The youth in Quebec are trying to just begin to
stand up, to say ‘No More!’ and demand for themselves and others a chance at a
future. The success of the strike is secondary to the newly-discovered strength
of the students. They have been dismissed and derided, insulted and oppressed,
from the left and the right, from so-called Progressives and
self-congratulating Libertarians. Because the students do not articulate the
same philosophy as those of other critics, they are presented as naïve and
‘entitled.’ Those who insult and deride without empathy or understanding only
expose their own naivety.
The
fundamental and historical importance of the present situation in Québec is not
the cost of tuition, it’s the mass mobilization of youth: it is an expression
of a popular and growing dissatisfaction with the way things are and an articulation and drive to
create something different, to chart a course for the way things can
be. Those who fail to see and recognize that, fail to see the
development of progress through history, not immediate, but evolving, not
instant, but incremental and persistent. If nothing else, this generation can
look back and say, “At least we tried. At least we started.”
What will you look back and say?
Notes
[1]
Christa d’Souza, The art of being Louise MacBain, The Telegraph, 26 June 2004:
[2]
Konrad Yakabuski, Like Father, like sons?, The Globe and Mail, 26 March 2006:
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Marianne White, “Author delivers high-voltage critique of Paul Desmarais Sr. —
the man behind Power Corp,” Ottawa Citizen, 21 October 2008:
[6]
Ian Austen, “The Name Is ‘Power’ and It Fits,” The New York Times, 26 January
2007:
[7]
Lisa Kassenaar, “Desmarais family keeps a low profile,” Edmonton Journal, 1
August 2009:
[8]
Lisa Kassenaar, “Buffett Loses to Desmarais as Power Exceeds Return,”
Bloomberg, 30 July 2009:
[9]
Christinne Muschi, “Great-West Lifeco helps boost profit at Power Financial,”
Reuters, 14 March 2012:
Kevin Dougherty, “Sabia-Desmarais meeting was “friendly”, not
lobbying, Caisse de dépôt says,” Montreal Gazette, 7 February 2012:
[10]
William K. Carroll and Murray Shaw, “Consolidating a Neoliberal Policy Bloc in
Canada, 1976 to 1996,” Canadian Public Policy (Vol. 27, No. 2, June 2001), pages
196-200.
[11]
William K. Carroll and Murray Shaw, “Consolidating a Neoliberal Policy Bloc in
Canada, 1976 to 1996,” Canadian Public Policy (Vol. 27, No. 2, June 2001), pages
200-202.
[12]
C.D. Howe Institute, Members and Supporters:http://www.cdhowe.org/members-and-supporters
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