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January 17, 2008 Has deep integration been good for Canadians? Well, some of them. A new report from Bruce Campbell of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) shows that while free trade with the United States has been wonderful for Canada's wealthy CEOs, it has not produced the jobs or overall prosperity that big business lobbies promised in their 1980s pro-Mulroney propaganda. The CCPA report compares the revenues and employment levels of 41 member companies of the Business Council on National Issues and then (following its name change) Canadian Council of Chief Executives between 1987 (just before the first Free Trade Agreement was signed with the United States) and 2006. "Overall, the 41 companies' combined revenue grew 127 per cent, from $137 billion to $310 billion between 1987 and 2006," writes Campbell. "During that same period, they shrank their combined workforce by over 118,482 -- a 19.6 per cent decline." Job cuts were most significant in the manufacturing sector with the services sector absorbing "almost all of the 33 per cent growth in the employed labour force between 1987 and 2006," writes Campbell. Furthermore, while average real incomes of the richest 1 per cent "soared from $268,000 to $429,000 during 1992-2004," average Canadian wages, adjusted for inflation, "have not grown at all since 1987 -- in fact, not since 1980." Even more handsomely rewarded have been the richest 0.01 per cent of Canadians -- "the 15,000 Canadians who make up the super rich and where the CEOs are located," writes Campbell. Their average individual incomes more than doubled between 1992 and 2004, from $2.5 million to $5.9 million. Six of the 41 companies looked at -- BCE, Canfor, Ford, General Electric, General Motors and Suncor -- currently sit on the North American Competitiveness Council, an all-corporate advisory body to the Security and Prosperity Partnership. Not surprisingly, considering they are the only group to have significantly benefited from free trade, they continue to advocate even deeper economic integration with the United States. Tom d'Aquino, president of the CCCE, even told a federal Competition Policy Review Panel this week that the government should respond to a recent wave of foreign takeovers by cutting corporate tax rates and engaging in total regulatory harmonization with the United States. "NAFTA is a stage in an integration process that creates pressure for further agreements which themselves foster still deeper integration -- but without any consideration for what kind of Canada is being left in its wake," writes Campbell. "The facts, however, cast strong doubt that the promise made 20 years ago -- the promise of a better life for all Canadians -- has been fulfilled. It was an empty promise made by a business elite that has reaped the benefits of these self-serving agreements, without really considering how the majority of Canadians would be affected." To read Campbell's report for the CCPA, click here.
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