Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site utcs.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcs!clarke From: clarke@utcs.UUCP (Jim Clarke) Newsgroups: can.politics Subject: Re: Nationalization/Crown Corps. Message-ID: <729@utcs.UUCP> Date: Wed, 3-Jul-85 13:49:12 EDT Article-I.D.: utcs.729 Posted: Wed Jul 3 13:49:12 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 3-Jul-85 14:14:05 EDT References: <1121@ubc-cs.UUCP> <1110@mnetor.UUCP> <720@utcs.UUCP> <1114@mnetor.UUCP> <183@watmum.UUCP> <1131@mnetor.UUCP> Reply-To: clarke@utcs.UUCP (Jim Clarke) Distribution: can Organization: University of Toronto - General Purpose UNIX Lines: 35 Summary: In article <1131@mnetor.UUCP> fred@mnetor.UUCP (Fred Williams) writes: > Would I rather see the money going out of the country? Well, >I think the money should go to whoever can produce a quality >product for less money. That is the basis of free enterprise. >Rewards go for results. Umm, well maybe that's something wrong with free enterprise. It seems to produce profits nicely, but it doesn't care much about anything else. My (poorly informed) impression about crown corporations is that they fall into more than one group: -- The very public giants like CN and Air Canada, which make money or lose it very much in the news. They might be less efficient than their private equivalents, but are we sure? Lots of airlines lose money lately, ESPECIALLY in the free market to the south, and CP has had some pretty big government subsidies too, hasn't it? Maybe the big difference between Air Canada and, say, Massey-Ferguson (or White or Volkswagen or Chrysler, to name a few "private" firms that have benefited from "socialist" interference here and in the U.S. lately -- or does anyone remember those private Canadian railroads that went into CN when they failed?) is that the ups and downs are better smoothed by the government for crown corporations than for private ones. Also, we the taxpayers do have a little more to show for our money if we own the company that gets it. -- The group that never expected to make money and were (I presume) crown corporations rather than divisions of government for managerial reasons. Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd springs to mind, because my father worked for them for 20 years or so. He and his friends sure didn't act like civil servants, because they weren't. They also didn't act like private employees -- they worked harder. But maybe AECL was a special case. -- The group that do nicely, thank you, without a lot of notice. Remember Polysar? As I recall, we had to sell it to private investors, because our friends to the south found it offensive to have to deal with a government-owned company. The money felt different, somehow.