The Many and the Few
The SNC-Lavalin controversy refuses to go away, but it has raised the interest and understanding of Canadians regarding how large corporations are dealt with by government – not only in Canada but through most developed and developing nations. While some still attempt to promote the adage “What’s good for business is good for people,” many harbour great suspicions about it – especially since the financial fallout of 2007.
The behind-the-scenes dealing with large corporate organizations like SNC-Lavalin are legal and have always been present in politics. But as citizens gain greater insights regarding the rather remarkable overlay of democracy by corporatism and globalization, they are beginning to push back, mostly against the political class.
All this has left the modern citizen in a quandary: How can one possibly, and through human effort, effect the betterment of the social condition when the great financial forces that determine the future of society are free-floating and independent of citizens themselves and seem to have the endorsement of the governments that represent them? And since most such dealings fall within the approval of the law, how can they be altered or better scrutinized?
Capitalism’s modern version is remarkably adept at generating wealth, yet less of it is being either made in local communities or invested in them. This is the major reason our economies can't seem rise out of this period of stagnation. More money is changing hands than at any other time in the history of civilization, but for some reason it doesn't seem to be falling into the hands of the middle and lower classes - citizens, who at least in moral and spiritual terms, are of equal importance as the wealthy.
As patience wears thin regarding big monied interests and their easy access to the halls of political power, we must get past the point of irritation and determine if this is what we still condone as citizens. We have prided ourselves on a capitalism which, though we confess it be harsh at times, has nevertheless brought about higher standards of living, more social equity, and greater benefits to the common person than at any other time in world history. The phenomenal growth of the West's middle-class in this last century gives testimony to this reality.
But that progress is now flattening out for the citizens of the West. The wealth generated has been fabulous but it hasn’t accrued to us as in past times and we are sensing that something is wrong – a sentiment that has re-emerged with the SMC-Lavalin story. We know well enough that the link between capitalism and citizenship brought great benefits to both, but it would be incorrect to assume these two elements were indivisible. Wealth among the capitalists is mushrooming while that of the middle-class has been permitted to languish.
In the end, it is as if we become the very thing we set out to destroy. Worse still, the average worker, farmer, manufacturer, researcher, etc., simply doesn't have the power to alter society's direction. It is elites that lead the way and history teaches us that at a certain point those elites cease to fulfill their obligations to the societies that spawned them and thus begin to indulge only themselves. Canadians are sensing this to be increasingly so and to them the SNC-Lavalin story is about more than political wrangling – it’s about a common interest denied.
There are many individual MPs at the federal level uncomfortable with the coziness of the relationship between big money and government that has prevailed over successive administrations. Only those who have accumulated significant financial resources are free to play in this version of democracy. Most Canadians have neither the personal ability, wealth or the wherewithal to compete in this dimension. Citizens have now been incapacitated, quite literally, because they can't possibly compete with wealth groups enjoying so much political access – a reality in which organized money dominates the action while the unorganized voices of citizens experience great difficulty gaining access to the halls of power. A lonely MP, trying to represent the larger public interest, finds herself or himself arrayed against an army of special interests, most of which are working against the public interest.
A free society is meant to be made up of loosely structured groups with specific interests who nevertheless understand their need for one another and therefore seek to bring about a consensus that is both prosperous and socially just. In other words, the various segments of society are willing to cooperate for the overall public good. The world of business is key to his success and always has been – especially those businesses that remain in our communities and empower us not only in wealth generation but in social fairness. Yet one key element of modern life - the new global corporate capitalists - have decided to play by a different set of rules and use their wealth to gain intimate access to policy makers. Soon enough, Canadians will have to decide if this is a practice they continue to accept. And in order to change it, the cozy relationship between wealth and politics will have to opened up and arbitrated by a strong democratic spirit. We must either make that choice or it will continue to be made for us with the same unequal results.