Who in Authority Will Stand Up for Canadians?

bikerdruid

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is the canadian government responsible to protect canadian workers?
should canadians be the managers of canadian resources and production?
here is an article that states that the answer to both questions is 'yes.
what say you?
http://cpcml.ca/Tmld2010/D40174.htm#1

from the article:

By banking the blast furnace at Hamilton Works, U.S. Steel has attacked the community of Hamilton, the Canadian economy and Stelco steelworkers. The mass media in Hamilton quote Canada's Industry Minister Tony Clement saying, "There's nothing the federal government can do... The Pittsburgh-based steelmaker is free to do whatever it wants... They can make decisions, good, bad or indifferent, according to their own timetable and their own responsibilities."

......................

The position and actions of the Harper government not only prove it is unfit to rule but that Canadians are confronted with a serious problem of an important institution of the state acting on behalf of a foreign power and refusing to use its sovereign authority to defend its people.

U.S. Steel's persistent attacks on Canada's steel industry since it seized Stelco in 2007 is but one example in a long list of assaults by global monopolies on Canada's manufacturing base, sovereignty and social fabric. Apart from certain municipal councils, no state institution has stood up and used its authority to defend Canada, its people, their economy and way of life from neo-liberal globalization. Almost all political institutions, the judiciary, police, military, mass media and academic experts have either remained indifferent and passive in the face of this assault by global monopolies or used their authority to defend these attacks on Canadians.
 
bikerdruid said:
is the canadian government responsible to protect canadian workers?
should canadians be the managers of canadian resources and production?
here is an article that states that the answer to both questions is 'yes.
what say you?
http://cpcml.ca/Tmld2010/D40174.htm#1
Click to expand...

What do you expect the Canadian government to do?

Are you suggesting they force US Steel to keep the plant open, at gunpoint perhaps? Are you suggesting they nationalize the plant?
 
drkitten said:
What do you expect the Canadian government to do?

Are you suggesting they force US Steel to keep the plant open, at gunpoint perhaps? Are you suggesting they nationalize the plant?
Click to expand...

The Canadian Government could hold US Steel to not close the Hamilton plant until October 29 this year per its commitment.

The Government should never have permitted the sale in the first place.
 
The world is flat, international companies are everywhere, there is no point whining about it. U.S. Steel, like so many other companies who do a lot of business with the U.S. auto industry, is not doing well. They are pulling out of ventures that they had hoped would work, this is normal business practice. After all, Canada is not the only place where they are cutting back.

I suppose Canada could go the nationalist, isolationist rout but that's not a very good position to take in the modern world economy. They could try tightening controls on foreign companies doing business in Canada but if those controls are too tight foreign companies will simply take their jobs somewhere else. They could punish U.S. Steel for having to pull out early but that would just cause other companies to consider not doing business in Canada. It's all a delicate balancing act and blind nationalism would cause the whole thing to come tumbling down.
 
Okay, show of hands time. Who here knows what banking a furnace means?

It means they loaded it with coke. That means they are protecting the furnace rather than just shutting it down cold, which would damage the lining. If the goal is to close the plant, banking the furnace is not useful. But that does not mean they intend to keep it going.

Now that also does not mean that US steel is run by a bunch of nice guys. They attempted to purchase the steel mill that I used to work at. They failed because a Russian company outbid them. If US steel has won they would have shut the place down.

Now here is the question. Who else besides US steel wanted to buy this mill in Canada? If the answer is nobody, then the place was already doomed. Keeping an old mill running just to save jobs is not a good thing to do in the long run. Smaller integrated steel mills have a hard time competing against larger ones.

Add foreign competition to that and the outlook is not good. Overproduction would be the likely result and that would force steel prices back into numbers where only the big mills ever get a chance to make a profit. That was the situation when I was in that industry. The end result would be a mill that cannot support itself, upgrade itself, and cost the government money it could us on other things.

A better strategy would have been what helped the Russian company buy the mill I was at. The mill went bankrupt and the company management and the judge in charge of the case structured the bankruptcy to make it hard for US Steel to buy the place. This was done because the management of the mill made sure there was a chance for the mill to continue.

No need for the government to take over at all if the mill is a viable unit. If it is not, then keeping it open would do more damage in the long run.
 
How many Canadian companies that buy steel source it abroad?
If your own companies are buying foreigh steel then maybe that's the problem.
 
Doubt said:
Okay, show of hands time. Who here knows what banking a furnace means?

It means they loaded it with coke. That means they are protecting the furnace rather than just shutting it down cold, which would damage the lining. If the goal is to close the plant, banking the furnace is not useful. But that does not mean they intend to keep it going.
Click to expand...

Could it mean that they simply want to preserve the value of a physical asset, with a view to being able to sell it at a better price?
 
ktesibios said:
Could it mean that they simply want to preserve the value of a physical asset, with a view to being able to sell it at a better price?
Click to expand...

There is no market for used blast furnaces. They are built on site. There is also no demand for new ones in North America.
 
bikerdruid said:
stalin, for example, was not a communist.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but when every political leader who calls themselves a communist follows in Stalin's footsteps, I think it's more than fair to say that yes, Stalin is a communist. I don't care if he didn't match your vision of what communism could be in some fantasy land, he's exactly what communism turns out to be every time it's actually tried.

Stalin was a commie. You can't disown him from communism.
 
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