Dear Editor:

Private corporations now dominate our planet. Already 55 of the top 100 world economies are corporations, and they all want more. Has this rise of private corporate power done the world good? Oddly, throughout the world, countries which harbour this fabulous private wealth are all broke. Privatization is a parasite that bankrupts its host country.

Yet privatizing all of Canada’s resources is exactly what Harper —and Christy Clark — are up to. Parks Canada, BC Hydro, Jumbo Glacier, BC Ferries, our roads, our water, our vast natural resources, are now all either private or public-private partnerships or under review.

Has this been good? No, these once healthy publicly-owned companies are now all on life support. The real loser, once again, is the tax and rate payers who now prop up these failed public-to-private conversions. International gangs of deregulated private banks and corporations caused the 2008 economic collapse. The working man had nothing to do with it.  Yet globally, taxpayers dished out $10 trillion just to cover gambling debts of private banks. Canadian banks alone got $114 billion; GM and Chrysler Canada got $14 billion. What did average Canadians get? They get to work two years longer, and have lost more social programs.

Corporate salaries today are up to 300 times that of average Canadians. This manufactured social inequality always leads to unrest and violence. The international private oil cartels are behind all the world conflicts. Now these thugs are in Canada. Harper’s rock-bottom 15 per cent corporate tax rate — and gutted environment laws — invites them in. In Stephen Harper corporate profiteers have found a pawn, a wannabe American, willing to sell off Canada, its resources and its culture for personal gain, ego and ideology. We’ve been had.

Bryan Stawychny

Edgewater