Capitalism, despite the myths has never created prosperity It exists to take money, not to give it. That's why it like free trade agreements that let it move its work to countries with cheap labour. In the process, it also depresses wages in its home countries. uncounted Billions were made out of the Alberta oil boom. But almost all of it went to the oil companies - and whatever prosperity Alberta got was really short term.
As well, capitalism cost us (counting the U.S.) trillions for its wars. That's money the tax payers get the bill for. In any base, major capitalists don't pay much in the way of taxes. Many billions of Canadian dollars are in secret bank accounts in Bermuda, Luxembourg, etc.
In all of Canadian history, there was only one, brief period of some prosperity - from late 1939 to the 1960s. that was true because of governments' controls on capitalism. But Mulroney and Reagan and Thatcher got rid of that sort of thing. The wage gap is now the biggest it has ever been.
To get an idea of the real Canada of most of our history, read Terry Copp, The Anatomy of Poverty.
Canadian business practices have always been vile. Right now, Canadian owners control mines in Central American and Congo that employ children as young as five, that pay as little as two dollars a day, that poison the environment for centuries to come. In Guatemala, they were involved in the mass murder of some 300,000 Guatemalan men, women and children - as well as large numbers of clergy who supported the workers. It didn't make our newspapers because they're all owned by the same kind of people. The only record I know of it is a film at National Film Board. (I also met the doctor who did an autopsy of a Canadian lay missionary who was tortured to death.)
Not a single news medium in North America ran that story. (The New York Times very briefly and incompletely ran a sort of story when Clinton apologized for it - without saying what it was. You might get it by googling Clinton, Guatemala, apology, 1998 or, possibly, 1999.)
There are only a handful of news outlets in the world that one can trust - notably "The Guardian", the Israeli "Haaretz", and 'Aljazeera". And, no, you can't trust BBC news. You can trust CBC. It is the only major news medium in North America that is honest. The catch is that it's running scared of Harper selling it off. And he will.
I had some thirty years of experience in TV, radio and print. And I taught journalism to working journalists in Hong Kong. So I know the rules of the game.
