The Corporation (2003)

Maude Barlow: Self - Chairperson, Council of Canadians

Quotes 

• Noam Chomsky : Privatisation does not mean you take a public institution and give it to some nice person. It means you take a public institution and give it to an unaccountable tyranny. Public institutions have many side benefits. For one thing they may purposely run at a loss. They're not out for profit. They may purposely run at a loss because of the side benefits. So, for example if a public steel industry runs at a loss it's providing cheap steel to other industries. Maybe that's a good thing. Public institutions can have a counter cyclic property. So that means that they can maintain employment in periods of recession, which increases demand, which helps you to get out of recession. Private companies can't do that in a recession. Throw out the work force because that's the way you make money.

  Maude Barlow : There are those who intend that one day everything will be owned by somebody and we're not just talking goods here. We're talking human rights, human services, essential services for life. Education, public health, social assistance, pensions, housing. We're also talking about the survival of the planet. The areas that we believe must be maintained in the commons or under common control or we will collectively die. Water and air.

  Michael Walker : Even in the case of air there's been some progress and that is the trading of pollution permits. And here the idea is to say, "Look, we can't avoid the dumping of carbon dioxide. We can't avoid the dumping of sulphur oxides, at least at the moment afford to stop it so we're dumping a certain amount of stuff into the environment. So we're going to say with the current tonnage of sulphur oxides, for example, we will say that is the limit. And we'll create permits for that amount and give them to the people who've been doing the polluting and now we will permit them to be traded". And so now there's a price attached to polluting the environment. Now, wouldn't it be marvellous if we have one of the prices for everything?

  Interviewer : It sounds like you're advocating private ownership of every square inch of the planet. Every cubic foot of air, water.

  Michael Walker : Absolutely. It sounds outlandish to say we want to have the whole universe, the whole of the earth owned. That doesn't mean I want to have Joe Bloggs owning this square foot. But it means the interests that are involved in that stream are owned by some group or by some people who have an interest in maintaining it. And that, you know, is not such a loony idea. It's in fact, the solution to a lot of these problems.