As I was scanning the latest documents describing WTO negotiations on itsservices agreement (the GATS — General Agreement on Trade in Services) Icame across a quote that reinforced for me how much corporations have cometo dominate our political life — in other words, how much power has beentransferred from citizens and democracy to CEOs and corporate boards. Thequote was from Thailand’s Supachai Panitchpakdi, the Director General of theWTO. He was taking questions from a gathering of CEOs of global servicecompanies and one asked him what it took it “get things going.”

While he acknowledged that governments and politicians had to “manage” theprocess, it was corporations who had to design and drive it. According toPanitchpakdi: “I think we need consistent pressure coming from theprivate-sector side. We need governments who understand what kind ofinterests you have in the round [of negotiations] … So I would say …when you have active participation from the private sector, the politicalagenda will be always more balanced.”

Needless to say the WTO head said this with a completely straight facebecause he absolutely believes it. But he revealed in his remarks that whathe thought needed balancing was the apparently undue influence ofgovernment. In designing a world trading system — but particularlycorporate access to and privatization of vital public services — it is thecorporations that count. Governments, who are supposedly mandated to lookafter their citizens’ interests, the public interest, are just there tomanage the process.

Panitchpakdi’s remarks in such private settings are rarely reported so thepublic is just as rarely made aware of how the world’s health care,education and municipal services are in the process of being handed over toglobal corporations. The parallel at the national level is more transparent,as we saw recently with the signing of the Security and ProsperityPartnership of North America by the leaders of Mexico, Canada and the U.S.The title of the accord — which sets the tone and structure for virtualannexation — was lifted almost word for word from a report by the mostpowerful corporate organization in Canada.

The Canadian Council of Chief Executives, founded back in 1974, consists ofthe CEOs of the 150 richest companies in Canada. This extraordinarilyinfluential organization is not a lobby group in the normal sense of theword. They have been dictating fiscal, trade and economic policy togovernments since the early 1980s. Moving beyond the old-fashioned approachof lobbying government each time their interests seemed threatened, the CCCE(formerly the Business Council on National Issues) sought to anticipategovernments’ moves and strike before government could.

They were stunninglysuccessful with the Mulroney government and in some cases — such ascompetition law — actually wrote the legislation they wanted and presentedit to the federal government. In this example, Mulroney passed thelegislation virtually unchanged.

In the spring of 1994 the then BCNI, furious that Paul Martin’s first budgetdid not cut billions from social spending as recommended, delivered itspolicy prescription to the finance minister: “A Ten Point Growth andEmployment Strategy for Canada.” The plan was an aggressive corporate wishlist that included huge cuts to social programs, a deliberate moderateeconomic growth policy, using any surpluses to pay down the debt (ratherthan reinvest in social programs), massive corporate tax cuts anddecentralization. Within four years Martin had delivered on almost everyitem.

The fact that our nation has been effectively governed according to thepriorities of 150 global corporations is now so “normal” that it is almostnever remarked upon. Yet there is an enormous disconnect here that goesbeyond the obvious question of just how anti-democratic this situation is. Iam speaking here of the irrefutable fact that the corporate sector which nowclaims the right to define our nation has reached unprecedented levels ofcorruption and social irresponsibility. For the past several years we havewitnessed the spectacle of almost unimaginable greed, fraud, lying andoutright theft from the men who were the heroes of capitalism.

The perverse nature of corporate culture tells us that those like BernieEbbers, had they not been caught, would still be heroes. Indeed from WallStreet’s and Bay Street’s viewpoint, getting caught was their only realcrime. The roots of this cultural pathology go to the relentless drive forderegulation and the resulting corporate contempt for the laws that remain.

Since the early 1980s ethical behaviour has even been equated by somebusiness theorists with violating fiduciary responsibility. University ofChicago law professors Frank Easterbrook and Daniel Fischel have taught thatwhen it comes to making profits, executives not only may violate the law butshould do so if it enhances the bottom line. And the fines and penalties ifthey get caught? Simply the cost of doing business.

While this view may be extremist, it has it roots in traditional corporatelaw which says that those who run corporations have a legal duty toshareholders, and that duty is to make money. If they fail to do sodirectors and officers are open to being sued by shareholders. Corporate lawnot only says nothing about directors and officers serving the publicinterest, it actually implies that absorbing the necessary cost of doing socould be seen as violating their fiduciary duty.

When the CCCE/BCNI dictates to Paul Martin about the direction of thecountry, it is speaking on behalf of an ethically corrupted and perverseinstitution: the modern, global corporation. Governments — and byimplication, citizens — crafted the laws that made them so. It’s time wechanged them.

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Murray Dobbin

Murray Dobbin was rabble.ca's Senior Contributing Editor. He was a journalist, broadcaster, author and social activist for over 40 years. A board member and researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy...