Information technology should be considered as an intrinsic (endogenous) factor of our economic activities and therefore we have the individual and collective responsibility to innovate, to be inventive and to exchange ideas.

Statistics Canada's assertion that heavy investment in information and communications technology in the last two decades was a major factor in the acceleration of growth in the business sector doesn't make sense as Statistics Canada tries to justify the bad times of the 80's as the reasons for the supposed good times of the late 90's.

But the 90's were not good times for everybody. Economics Professor Brian Maclean has stated that "from 1968 to 1984, Canada's real per-capita GDP growth rate averaged 2.3%. For the post-Trudeau period, it has averaged a much lower 1.6%, and for the Mulroney period, a miserable 1%."

In a deceptive article, Avery Shenfeld, Managing Director and Senior Economist at CIBC World Markets, admits that "[Canada] real per capita after tax income has in fact fallen by more than 6% in the 1990s." And The Centre for the Study of Living Standards has reported that "real GDP per capita was 0.4 per cent lower in 1996 than in 1989."

The reality is that in the last two decades we have been experiencing an economic catastrophe, and such catastrophe has been realized with the concerted consensus of politicians, bureaucrats, corporate gurus, and academicians as all of these elitists have been preaching the gospel of the Free Market to free trade, to free capital flow, to cut taxes, to reduce debts, to have smaller governments, and to oligopolistically privatize public services including education and now health care. And the ultimate result has been the privatization of our justice systems and of our democracies. How much more privatization do we need beyond our B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell's nightmarish budget?

References:

The Daily, Statistics Canada, March 1, 2002 http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/020301/td020301.htm

Was Pierre Trudeau an economic failure? No, Brian K. MacLean, published in the Financial Post/National Post, October 14, 2000 http://www.geocities.com/brian79/trudeau.html

WHERE THE "FOUND" MONEY WENT, by Avery Shenfeld, Managing Director and Senior Economist at CIBC World Markets, Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies, June 1999 http://www.robarts.yorku.ca/canadawatch/vol_7_3/shenfeld.htm

Canada's Disappointing Economic Performance, Growth of Per Capita Real GDP in 13 OECD Countries, 1989-96 The Centre for the Study of Living Standards http://www.csls.ca/pdf/disecper.pdf

Injustice Busters Site managed by Sheila Steele and Richard Klassen http://www.injusticebusters.com

Reckless and Unnecessary: CCPA's analysis, facts, and figures for understanding and challenging BC's January 17 budget and job cuts by Seth Klein, CCPA­BC Director http://www.policyalternatives.ca/bc/cuts-analysis.pdf