VANCOUVER - On Friday afternoon, when no one was paying attention, the Canwest newspapers broke a big story: The Harper government is considering selling off the CBC, the National Arts Centre, and VIA Rail.
According to Andrew Mayeda of Canwest, the government is considering privatizing a number of Crown corporations including CBC and VIA Rail. Mayeda quotes SFU professor Aidain Vining:
"They're not the classic privatization candidates, where you sell and walk away," said Vining, an expert in Crown corporation privatizations. "Unless, of course, you're prepared to fully withdraw from the public purpose (of the Crown corporation)."
Certainly, the sale of a flagship Crown asset such as the CBC would be politically controversial.
Paul Wells, blogging on the Macleans website, says:
Now, don't get too excited. Andrew Mayeda's story is careful to point out that there is, as yet, no plan to put the NAC or the Corp on the block. He seems to have got his hands on a departmental survey of all saleable assets. And it's less glamorous Crown properties that are listed above the blue-chip properties Andrew mentions in his lede. It's entirely possible for the feds to reject a sale of these marquee assets, or indeed of any assets at all.
But Paul Dewar, the NDP MP who gets quoted in the Sun story above and has archived it on his website, is right. The feds are not only airily mulling an asset sale in the abstract, they've booked revenue from it in this budget year, and in succeeding years, to the tune of many billions of dollars in total sales. When Dewar quizzed Jim Flaherty about it three months ago, Flaherty was nonchalant in acknowledging, broadly, the premise of Dewar’s questions.
There are really only two possibilities. The government can [sell] billions of dollars worth of stuff, or its deficit can be billions of dollars higher.
On Friday evening, The Hook found no responses yet from Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, Inside the CBC, J-Source, or CBC News.
Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.
I see...........
....... Harper wants to lose the next election. Me thinks he is trying to pull off a Gordo, me thinks he will fail big time.
Substance?
Where in this piece is there anything other than postulating?
"On Friday evening, The Hook found no responses yet from Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, Inside the CBC, J-Source, or CBC News."
Well, gee, Crawford, this is not exactly the best time to be looking for comment, is it?
Poddy woddy Tory mumbo jumbo
Only the Tories would consider a policy that is the equivalent of selling the house to make the mortgage payment.
In typical conservative fashion, they lower taxes and starve the public treasury of needed funds at the very time that the economy starts to tank - then take on a massive deficit to maintain short-term service levels.
If that isn't enough, they decide it would be a good idea to a wholesale sell-off of public assets at the lowest ebb in property values and revenue projections in the last 50 years. Real bright.
And these bozos try to sell themselves as the party of competent fiscal management?
It has become increasingly clear that the Conservatives' strategy is based on a rigid ideological commitment to erode our ability to provide necessary public services by strangling tax revenues, liquidating public assets, and impairing government's ability to enforce public policies through radical de-regulation.
These are precisely the same fiscal policies that have plunged the entire global economy to the brink of financial collapse -- all so they can maximize profit margins for a small, privileged corporate elite. The neo-Cons should change their party motto to 'Boondoggles-R-Us'.
And they are Buying Part of GM
Meanwhile, they are buying a stake in a failing automaker, the so call Government Motors.