Frank Stronach

Socialism is not the solution to inequality

January 10, 2023

Most of us seek balance in all aspects of our lives. But that same ongoing quest to attain balance should also guide the functioning of our society, our government and our economy. And right now, Canada is unbalanced in many areas that shape the quality of our lives. Take wealth, for example. According to a report from the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, in 2019, the top one per cent of Canadians held 25 per cent of the country’s net wealth, while the bottom 40 per cent of Canadian families barely owned more than one per cent. The report also found that the household wealth gap — the difference in the share of net wealth owned by households at

The case for an economic charter of rights and responsibilities

July 3, 2023

Numerous surveys taken over the years have shown that Canadians view the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as this country’s most important national symbol — ahead of hockey, the Mounties and our national anthem. What’s more, a national survey conducted by the Environics Institute last year found that an overwhelming majority of Canadians believe the charter has been positive for the country. The charter guarantees Canadians a wide range of rights, including freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of association and freedom of mobility, as well as the right to life, liberty and security of the person. Although it guarantees a number of important rights, the charter alone is not sufficient — it needs to be fortified with an

Government bureaucracy is the cholesterol clogging up the economy

July 11, 2023

Back in the early 1980s, when commercial computers first came onto the market, they were sold with a big promise: they could do the work of an entire floor of employees in a typical office building and could dramatically decrease the amount of paperwork and paper filing for businesses and organizations. But it never happened. If anything, the piles of paperwork, government forms and compliance reports that needed to be filled out increased enormously — and with it, so too did the size of our bureaucracy. As a result, today you see hundreds and hundreds more office buildings staffed with more people who devote a large chunk of each workday to regulation compliance requests. The facts bear this out: government

The national debt — a ticking time bomb for future generations

June 20, 2023

Canada keeps digging itself deeper and deeper into debt thanks to out-of-control government spending and the increased interest we have to pay on that ballooning debt. Warren Buffett once said that, “The most important thing to do if you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.” But most Canadian governments have not heeded that sound advice. They just keep on digging. According to the International Monetary Fund, the ratio between Canada’s public debt and its gross domestic product is 105 per cent. In plain English, this means that as a country, we now owe more money than the total value of all the goods and services we produce in a year. If Canada were a person or a

Socialism is not the solution to inequality

January 10, 2023

Is Canada still a business-friendly country?

December 13, 2022

When it comes to doing business, Canada may not be as friendly as it once was. Thirty or forty years ago, whenever my company opened a new manufacturing facility or R&D centre in southern Ontario, municipalities would bend over backwards to help us — offering everything from widening the road to installing new traffic lights. In the U.S., job-hungry local and state governments would go even further, promising major tax incentives and free land if we chose to locate there. But the business-friendly environment that existed in Canada years ago has largely vanished. Instead, businesses looking to open a store or factory get slapped with piles of paperwork and never-ending fees. I’ve been trying to get a business operation up