Frank Stronach

Narrowing the gap between rich and poor

July 18, 2023

In its latest report on the wealth of Canadian households, Statistics Canada found that the gap between the country’s wealthiest and poorest citizens is widening at a record pace. The report also found that most of the country’s wealth is held by relatively few individuals. According to the study, the wealthiest 20 per cent of Canadians account for nearly 68 per cent of the country’s net worth, while the bottom 40 per cent account for just three per cent. Those with the lowest incomes have been hardest hit by soaring inflation and stagnant wages, according to the study. Middle-class Canadians, meanwhile, spent an average of $1,306 more than they earned in income in the first quarter of this year. To

Who’s looking out for our small businesses?

January 17, 2023

Many Canadians have bought some lumber or kitchen and bathroom accessories at Home Depot over the years. The company, which opened its first stores just outside of Atlanta, Georgia in 1978, has grown into what is today the world’s largest improvement retailer with approximately 2,300 stores throughout North America. A few weeks ago, one of the co-founders of Home Depot said that if he were to start his company all over again in today’s suffocating business environment, he doubts whether it could have ever grown any larger in size than around 15 stores. I’ve often wondered myself if I were to start Magna all over again today, instead of more than 50 years ago, would I have been able to

Save the family farm

February 14, 2023

When you think about King Charles III, the last thing you probably think about is family farming. But Canada’s new monarch made an impassioned plea over a year ago for small family farmers in the United Kingdom and around the world to come together in a co-operative movement to better ensure their survival. A strong advocate of organic farming, Charles has also created what he calls a “Terra Carta,” a charter that lays out a roadmap for producing environmentally sustainable, healthy food, while ensuring the survival of small family farms. But in the U.K., as in Canada, many small family farms are barely scraping by, and those who grew up on such farms are increasingly fleeing the fields and barns

Fixing capitalism by mandating profit sharing

April 11, 2023

One of my favourite books published over the last few years is “Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few,” by Robert Reich, a public policy professor at UC Berkeley and secretary of labour in the Clinton administration. Reich’s main argument is that capitalism is damaged and that the rich are getting richer while the poor and middle class are getting poorer, creating the greatest income inequality and wealth disparity in nearly a century. He’s right that capitalism is a system that enriches only a few. I also agree with Reich’s call for a revival of corporate profit sharing, which was much more widespread in the 20th century, when some of America’s biggest and most well-known companies had profit-sharing programs.

Big business does best when workers get their share

October 10, 2023

I’ve been arguing in this column for a while now that large Canadian companies should have to share their annual profits with employees — and that it should be a cornerstone component of a new national economic charter of rights. Some businesspeople have said to me the last thing they want is the government telling them that they have to give up some of the company’s hard-earned profits. I can understand why they feel that way. When I was the CEO of Magna International, we introduced a profit sharing program with my managers, employees and investors that gave each stakeholder group a pre-determined percentage of our annual profits. After introducing the program, profits skyrocketed. My only regrets are that I

Whatever happened to balancing the budget?

February 28, 2023

The great British economist Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations that countries should be run like any well-managed household: they shouldn’t spend more revenue than they raise. It’s a time-honoured principle. Every family, farmer and small business owner in Canada knows that if you continuously spend more money than you make you’ll eventually go bankrupt. Why, then, does that same principle never seem to apply to governments, which routinely run deficits regardless of which party holds the reins of power?Most Canadians would agree that we have to begin paying down our national debt, but we can only do that if we first start balancing the federal budget. Following decades of budget shortfalls and an international credit rating downgrade,