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I had a head ache this morning. I understand Timothy Shire's concerns that while our Saskatchewan Crown corporations were established to satisfy the direct needs of local people (owners) now these same Crown corporations are unilaterally changing their mandates and investing local resources either out of the province or outright in far away countries such as Australia or South America. We must understand that the public role of our Crown corporations fades away as they neglect the needs of their owners and as they export our resources out of the province and into the Free market. There is no doubt that our provincial government is following the privatization agenda of our Crown executives.

Today I read an article in which journalist Brent Jang mentions the love affairs with Crown corporations of former premier Roy Romanow and present premier Lorne Calvert. Brent Jang suggests that our Crown corporations should be privatized and he contends

"that the value of Saskatchewan's Crown corporations [such as SaskTel, SaskPower, SaskEnergy] is being eroded as the business world outside the Prairie province embraces mergers and acquisitions."

Now we have been learning on these pages of Ensign that the mergers and acquisition embraced by big corporations are the symptoms of the malaise of the Free Market. Further, Brent Jang suggests that if Lorne Calvert doesn't privatize the Crown corporations then the Saskatchewan New Democrats will look like left-wing ideologues and would follow the path of former B.C. NDP premier Ujjal Dosanjh. And I just want to ask Brent Jang if B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell is an ideologue when he is going to privatize the public service by firing some 12,000 employees and cutting the governmental budgets by some 25 percent.

We are really in a mess, our Crown corporations have de-regulated (privatized) their operations while retaining their chartered crown status; our politicians, of the left and of the right, have no intelligent common sense as they follow their paper ideologies; and our journalist Brent Jang is a hypocrite himself as he cannot discern privatization as an ideological economic policy.

References

SGI Putting Your Money To Work Outside the Province, by Timothy Shire, February 17, 2002 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/SGI/crowncapitalism/crowncapitalists.html

Saskatchewan's love of Crown corporations ill advised, by Brent Jang, The Globe and Mail, February 18-2002