- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $170,231.20
- Government Page
- Feb/12/24 5:41:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague on an excellent speech and his excellent work. I want to ask him a question about economic reconciliation as it relates to procurement. One of the ways we advance economic reconciliation is that we seek to ensure that government procurement is available to indigenous-owned businesses as well as to businesses owned by other historically disadvantaged communities, and that there are not aspects of the procurement system that are excluding people who have been historically disadvantaged.
One of the problems we have seen as we have unravelled the Auditor General's arrive scam report is that there are systems built into government procurement that are designed to advantage incumbent players; that is, someone has to have had a certain number of contracts with the Government of Canada already. This means that if someone has not dealt with the government before, has started a new business or has had other governments as clients but has have never sold products to the federal government before, they are systematically disadvantaged.
In the past, I have heard from stakeholders asking, for example, why we are not meeting our targets in terms of indigenous-owned businesses' getting government procurement. We then find out, in the context of the procurement ombudsman's report, that one of the reasons is probably that there is a systematic advantage, as a result of the way the system is designed, that steers toward incumbent players and insiders, even if other people have innovative ideas.
I would be curious to have the member's thoughts on how we can advance economic reconciliation by addressing some of the issues in the arrive scam scandal, and more broadly, on what prevents new entrants from participating in government procurement.
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- Jun/9/23 1:11:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, I do have many concerns about this legislation, although I do think the member gilds the lily a bit.
The irony, in relation to her comments, is that the development sector has overwhelmingly said that it would like us to pass this bill, though it has also been critical of various aspects of it. I know the member worked in the sector previously, but I do not think she knows more than all of the stakeholders that represent the sector. I would challenge her to provide the House with one or a couple of quotations from individuals who actually want us to vote against the bill. There is going to be a lot of information out there of people saying things that are critical about the bill, but can she name one development organization that is standing up and saying we should oppose this bill?
The other irony I will point out is that, despite the member's sharp criticisms of the government, she is a member of a party that continues to give confidence and supply to the government. The Conservatives and the Bloc, though we have voted against the government on key confidence and supply issues, have sought to work collaboratively with the government to find compromises, recognizing that one cannot always get 100% of one's way here.
I have two questions for the member. First, can the member name any stakeholder that agrees with the NDP position of opposing the bill at third reading? Second, if these issues are so fundamental, why does her party uniquely continue to provide the government with confidence and supply?
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- Jun/9/22 4:27:14 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, the member identified a number of stakeholders who have a particular point of view, and I do not doubt that the committee heard from a broad range of stakeholders with different points of view on the bill.
My point was fairly specific. It was simply to say that when we broaden the range of discretion for decision-making in a situation where the decision-maker may, or likely does, have unconscious bias, broadening the range of discretion for that decision-maker does not make the problem better. It makes the problem worse.
We could talk about alternative mechanisms, like sentencing, starting points or clearer parameters for judicial decision-making, but in the absence of those things, when the government proposes a bill that widens the latitude for judicial discretion and there are concerns about unconscious bias, it does not make any sense to me to say that that is somehow going to address the problem of over-representation. It is not.
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- Apr/25/22 3:38:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have many concerns about the budgetary policy of the government. I wonder if the member could comment specifically, though, on the issues around the government's intention with respect to direction and control regulations. The government has finally recognized that there is a problem with direction and control, but there is still a lot of concern among stakeholders about what remedy the government will put forward. The budget refers to changes that are in the spirit of Bill S-216, which is a bill sponsored by a colleague of mine in the Conservative Party, but it does not address the specific measures.
I wonder if the member, who I know has some expertise in this area, can clarify for the House, and for stakeholders in the development community and elsewhere who are following this issue with great interest, what precisely the government intends to do on direction and control and when we will see those changes formally brought in.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity this debate provides to discuss the important issue of stakeholder capitalism.
Fundamental to our current economic system has been the idea of shareholder capitalism, the idea that corporations exist for the specific and narrow purpose of maximizing value for their shareholders. I think it is important to acknowledge that there are legitimate criticisms of this shareholder capitalism model.
When companies only consider the interests of their shareholders, they may end up doing harm to non-shareholders. Questions of morality and long-term sustainability are part of the equation in shareholder capitalism insofar as they impact a company's reputation and bottom line, but insofar as they do not impact the bottom line, they are excluded from consideration. Maybe that presents a problem.
Historically, we have tried to address these harms associated with shareholder capitalism through law, regulation and tax policy, which force companies to internalize social costs. Needless to say, those efforts are never perfect. One increasingly popular response to the potential problems with shareholder capitalism is the proposed alternative model of stakeholder capitalism. I will argue today that stakeholder capitalism is dangerous. It exacerbates the problems of shareholder capitalism and creates new problems of its own.
Stakeholder capitalism is the idea that we should pursue an economic system in which companies seek to maximize value for all stakeholders instead of just their own shareholders. On the face of it, the idea that companies should concern themselves with the social good instead of their own bottom line is obviously intuitively appealing to many people, but we need to go beyond the superficial, nice-sounding platitudes that usually shape the defence of stakeholder capitalism to understand the substantive implications of this radical shift in thinking.
To start with, it is important to understand the history of the idea. Stakeholder capitalism is a new name, but not a new model. In fact, the process of early European colonization was generally affected through large monopolistic companies that were granted charters to trade exclusively in certain areas, partially in exchange for commitments to undertake certain other non-economic actions that were perceived to be in the interests of the home state.
The Hudson's Bay Company and the East India Company were early examples of stakeholder capitalism at work. These companies acted like governments when they were in the field, and they were protected in their undemocratic exercise of political authority by the fact that they took into consideration the interests of their chosen or assigned stakeholders. Of course, they did not take into consideration the interests of all stakeholders, but neither do their modern equivalents.
Today one of the most prominent proponents of stakeholder capitalism is the World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab. Stakeholder Capitalism is his most recent book, and it is explicitly endorsed in the Davos Manifesto. Here in Canada, Mark Carney is a leading advocate and his book Values makes similar arguments to those made by Schwab. Schwab, Carney and the NDP member proposing this bill today have every right to advance a particular set of proposals about how they believe our economy should change, but we should talk about the fact that these ideas have significant unseen consequences.
Generally speaking, though not always, the proponents of stakeholder capitalism come from the political left. The political left has a long track record of critiquing shareholder capitalism, but has generally done so in the context of a broader critique of corporate power. That critique has been that corporations should not be too powerful because they can use their position of power to exploit workers and to push agendas that may be contrary to the democratic will of the people. This is actually a potentially good critique, and many modern conservatives would embrace it, adding as well that too powerful corporations can often use their power to subvert and undermine the market itself.
Conservatives and past versions of left-wing parties have both critiqued powerful monopolistic corporations, but have disagreed about solutions. Left-wing parties have critiqued capitalism itself and pushed for greater state ownership, while conservatives have sought pro-competition and other forms of regulation to ensure that private enterprise can do its job without any single private company having enough power to distort the market or undermine the common good.
Today the parameters of the economic debate have dramatically changed. Today many on the left no longer critique corporate power itself, but simply argue that corporations should be asked to champion progressive or woke causes. The political left now seems fine with large and powerful corporations as long as those corporations are talking about climate change, racial inequality, and trans rights. The left is no longer talking about the problems of corporate power, but about how to use corporate power.
It is very telling that Bill C-245, the bill we are debating tonight and a bill proposed by someone who is arguably one of the most left-wing members of this chamber, is about using corporate power instead of limiting corporate power. She is demonstrating that shift in the thinking of left-wing parties. In particular, Bill C-245 proposes to use the Canada Infrastructure Bank, a Crown corporation, as an ideological tool to shape the kinds of investments that are made in the private sector and to do so with non-economic objectives in minds. This is what stakeholder capitalism has been all about since the colonial era, the use of corporate power to advance ideological objectives that are distinct from shareholder interests.
I believe that modern conservatism must strongly make the case against the kind of stakeholder capitalism championed by this bill and others.
Modern conservatism must take up the arguments against corporate power and recognize that centralized corporate power can be just as dangerous when wielded on behalf of stakeholders as it can be when wielded on behalf of shareholders. We have to defend workers and defend one person, one vote democracy against the idea that corporate power brokers should be the ones defining collective values. This is not an unquestioning defence of shareholder capitalism, which requires appropriate control. It is simply a recognition that the prevailing concept of stakeholder capitalism is worse.
Broadly speaking, I would make three arguments against stakeholder capitalism.
First, an emphasis on stakeholder values is often done insincerely as a branding exercise to mask a lack of real and substantive action on genuinely important issues. It could be used as a basis for claiming that public interest or anti-monopoly regulation is not necessary, even while not moving substantially on the values that are claimed. On this point, I would like to challenge all corporations that have said Black lives matter to say the same about Uighur lives. The NBA, among many others, has figured out that campaigning for racial justice in America is good for their bottom line and campaigning for racial justice in China is bad for their bottom line. However, those who only campaign for racial justice when it is good for their bottom line are not really for racial justice.
Mark Carney, whom I referred to earlier, got himself into hot water for making and then walking back the dubious claim that the half-trillion dollar asset management firm where he works is net zero. I think some members of the House would call that greenwashing. The prevalence of hypocrisy and its potential to distract from real action is one important critique of stakeholder capitalism.
The second critique is that, even when corporations are sincere about championing certain values, encouraging them to identify and then act in the best interests of stakeholders gives companies too much power to make decisions about the common good that they do not have the mandate to make and that are outside of their expertise.
The House decided at one point to ban corporate and union donations to political parties. Why? It was because we determined that corporations should not have a privileged ability to shape public conversations about the common good by funding certain candidates over others. It was recognized that corporations' being able to throw their weight around in politics has a distorting effect on decision-making. However, what is the point of banning corporate and union donations to political parties if we then allow and even encourage those same corporations to use their unique privileges to advance political positions in other ways, by requiring their employees to take courses on progressive ideology, pushing investments toward certain kinds of enterprises or enjoying the privilege of limited liability while participating in explicitly political activity?
I believe that decisions about the goods that a society pursues should be made through democratic competition and debate, not through corporate-directed stakeholder consultations that perpetuate corporate interests and power, even when well intended. The goods that a society prioritizes should be selected on a one person, one vote basis, not on a one share, one vote basis. Even the most generous-hearted corporations necessarily reflect the power of shareholders and management to aggregate feedback from their chosen stakeholders as they make decisions.
A society in which large corporations identify stakeholder values and then push those values is functionally much less democratic than a society in which collective social priorities are identified through open and transparent democratic debate. Again, the corporatized nature of European colonialism should point us to the risks of excessive and unconstrained corporate power, even when corporations are supposed to be responding to certain non-economic, stakeholder-driven imperatives.
My final concern with the stakeholder capitalism model is about the way that it enables government to use corporate action to advance its objective, which is very clear in this bill. Those with regulatory power over corporations can achieve a great deal through the power of suggestion. Corporations understand that they are less likely to face hostile regulation if they are on the same page as governments when it comes to non-economic matters.
If the government tells social media companies to regulate speech or tells banks to deny banking services to certain kinds of people, then it is very much in the interest of those corporations to be helpful. Governments are doing this sort of thing more and more. Stakeholder capitalism provides the intellectual tool kit for governments to ask corporations to use their corporate power in a particular preferred way. In the process, by using corporate power to their advantage, governments can exercise far more power over people's lives than they would otherwise. When the government acts directly, it is subject to scrutiny and accountability mechanisms that do not apply to private corporations. By acting through corporations and using the power of suggestion, governments can achieve preferred outcomes with less scrutiny and accountability.
In general, a world in which political and corporate leaders establish common values and use corporate power alongside state power to push them is less democratic than one in which business sticks to business and common values are identified through democratic debate and advanced by regulators through transparent regulation. In the process, we must preserve a healthy skepticism of corporate power and recognize that a functioning capital system is one in which no single player dominates the field.
Instead of using the Canada Infrastructure Bank to push so-called stakeholder values, Conservative believe that we should eliminate the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which has been a failure by any standard. This so-called bank already represents a perverse structure for combining government and corporate interests because it involves the taxpayer assuming the risk associated with private investments.
The genius of a market system is that private actors must bear risk in proportion to their potential gains. The only thing worse than socialism is a policy that privatizes gains while still socializing losses—
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