It is not anymore one person one vote, it is now one property dollar one vote. Our big corporations are an invention of man, yet they have been given legal rights beyond people's rights. And the big corporations behave just like people with the difference that big corporations have money, no families and no emotions; while people have no money, families and emotions.

The purpose of big corporations is to make money with money, rather than to look after the welfare of people, and as our Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said recently in his trip to China, a million dollars doesn't speak Chinese, doesn't speak French, doesn't speak English, and it moves very quickly(1).

Our governments have abdicated their main role to work for the people, and now they are working for the big corporations; and the World Trade Organization has been set up not to serve the people but to serve the big corporations. Something is basically wrong in the way our leaders are planning for the future of common people. Governments should serve the people, and we have the Fraser Institute telling us that Romanow government performed relatively well when compared with other provinces or other states in the south(2). And what is the index of performance used by the Fraser Institute? The index of performance is not what these governments do on behalf of the people, their index of performance is the fiscal performance of governments, again, governments are not considered as agencies serving the people, they have become entities per se.

Our social and economic strength should rest on the creativity and knowledge of people, and instead our corporate world concentrate our strength on our strong leaders who make the tough decisions for everybody else, and what is this, tyranny or democracy? So today, we have John Roth, CEO of Nortel Networks, being reviled by the stockholders, the media, governments, by everybody and above all by Nortel's own employees. Nortel's stock went down 35% in a span of 18 hours and Nortel has announced thousands and thousands of layoffs(3).

And what do we have to think about Time Magazine which only few weeks ago hailed John Roth as the most successful businessman in modern Canadian history?. There is something wrong about our conventional commerce, and we can't continue to look for the tough leaders to make tough decisions for us, be shareholders or employees or consumers at large. We have to take our freedom back, have governments working for the people, become leaders ourselves, take over our responsibilities, and serve each other.

We must stop the status quo, business must not be as usual, and we must stop serving the big corporations and their governments.

Endnotes

1. Human Rights are Before the Rule of Law, by Mario deSantis, February 15, 2001 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/2001_300/desantis325/ruleoflaw.html

2. Saskatchewan gets passing grade from right-wing group, CBC Saskatchewan, February 12, 2001 http://sask.cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2001/02/12/frassaskrep010212

3. NORTEL'S JOHN ROTH LOSES $ 300 BILLION, Note, February 16, 2001 by BOURQUE NEWSWATCH http://www.bourque.org/  (Note June  17, 2006: This $300 billion figure seems unreasonable to me)

Additional sources

Background of John Roth http://www.nortelnetworks.com/corporate/pressroom/roth.html

Nortel's home page http://www.nortelnetworks.com/index.html