Doing Business With Business
Steinfels, Peter
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 FROM CANADA THE FRENCH FACT Several months have passed since the elections that brought Ren6 Lrvesque's Parti Qudb~cois to power in the National Assembly. Mr....
...We are told that Quebec is too small to form a viable nation, that foreign investment would be driven out, that some large corporations would move from Montreal to Toronto...
...Its energy program was devised by a Republican technician who served in the last two administrations, and it met with the enthusiastic approval of John Sawhill, former GOP energy chief...
...Ironically, this involved some support of the conservative Union Nationale in Quebec, whose unexpected showing in the November elections may have made the PEquist majority possible...
...Ren6 IAvesque and his party do not appear to be impressed...
...Businessmen voted against Carter 8 to 1. Labor was his critical ally, lowerincome voters his margin of victory...
...But whether or not the tax rebates are inflationary, if some thousands of American business leaders think they are inflationary (and the group can number 10,000 or 500,000 without its being more than one.fourth of one percent of the population) then the power of this elite is such, that the tax rebates will be inflationary...
...That seems to be Carter's position vis-a-vis the business community...
...Yet it is obvious to everyone that the fortunes of the Liberal Party would suffer a dramatic reversal were Quebec to separate...
...The Liberal majority in the Commons depends absolutely on the traditionally Liberal vote (in federal politics) of Quebec, and for the moment at least, a Canada without Quebec could look forward to a solid Tory majority in Ottawa...
...Carter is still the engineer more than the businessman...
...The process began with Carter's appointments--Lance, Blumenthal and Schultze in the key economic posts...
...Trudeau placed much of the onus of maintaining Canadian unity on the English-speaking population...
...the "French fact" has yet to be accepted by many English-speaking Canadians, as was clearly shown by last summer's strike of English-speaking airline pilots and air traffic controllers, who objected strongly to anyone flying airplanes over Quebec "in French...
...he will give in...
...It will be instructive to observe the outcome...
...His administration has absorbed at least one element from the Democratic left, the middle-class consumer and ecology alliance...
...What then...
...Excavate down through the pile by the radiator, or finger carefully the precarious tower of items on the stereo speaker--whichever of my sophisticated filing systems I consult, the result is the same: fewer stories about international politics or Washington skullduggery, more about international trade, local unemployment and price indexes...
...Then commenced a period of wooing and reassuring business not seen since the "take-a-businessman-to-lunch" splurge with which the Kennedy administration tried to repair its run-in with the steel industry...
...he believes in a standard for fairness other than what the market decrees...
...tax credits for business, though the President withdrew them as well, probably will...
...I am not suggesting a conspiracy, a handful of robber barons huddled in a clubroom and deciding whether to make or break Jimmy Carter...
...Nonetheless, since his election Carter's major effort has been to propitiate the business community...
...Or is it just my mood...
...Trudeau very carefully avoided the use of the term "nation" to describe the people of the province...
...The entire energy program is heading towards that sieve now...
...But the pattern is not new...
...He put energy policy in the hands of someone whose political affiliations were less important than his technical orientation...
...But Lrvesque is now the premier in the National Assembly--the Quebec legislature has been so styled long before the present upsurge of Quebec nationalism--and has promised a referendum on the issue sometime before the end of his mandate...
...More and more of them are punctuated with bar charts and pie graphs...
...Both Conservative leaders worked hard--with little success--to build a constituency in Quebec...
...As the debate progresses, a number of Upper Canadian voices choose to speak in economic terms...
...The latest cause is, of course, the national debate over energy policy...
...In the Washington address the problem posed by Quebec separatism was described as the greatest single problem facing Canada today, aggravated by the fact that Canada has not yet created the conditions in which French-speaking Canadians have felt that they are fully equal, or could fully develop the richness of the culture they have inherited...
...but you are not going to try anything that might upset the pilot enough to send the whole plane into a tailspin...
...It continued with the relatively small dose of economic stimulants, about half the percentage of GNP that the Kennedy-Johnson tax cut of 1964 employed to spur an economy in which unemployment was considerably lower...
...One wonders whether the economy is the central issue, or whether the political separation of Quebec would really entail significant changes...
...Another question that appears to be beneath the dignity of most politicians committed to the Confederation is the political future of a Canada without Quebec...
...The consensus of the business community is like a sieve through which legislation must pass...
...For the In my first hundred days under the Carter presidency, I have noted a major change--in the nature of my news clippings...
...Indeed the economic goals the administration has set itself, as distinguished from those the Democratic platform announced, are not that different from Nixon's and Ford's...
...He needs their coopera13 May 1977:294 moment their most important task is to provide good government, and the PEquists have already discovered that an opposition program is not quite adequate for the conduct of a government...
...And while few have dared to say it out loud, it is possible that most of the economic arguments against Quebec's separation would apply with equal force to Canada's separation from the United States...
...Most recently Carter responded to the chorus of business wails about inflation by withdrawing his tax-rebate measure, but without doing anything directly about inflation except a voluntary program as unpromising as it is inoffensive...
...Stanfield, the former Conservative leader, and Mr...
...Yet the negotiations that have fascinated me are those with the American business community...
...Member of the Legislative Assembly) from Cape Breton, having predicted Levesque's victory in a book published shortly before the Quebec elections, goes on to discuss the future of the Maritimes: "There is no doubt that very soon, after Quebec independence, tion...
...With his insistence on comprehensiveness and long-range perspectives, he is taking us another major step towards national economic planning, not perhaps of the democratic sort I might welcome but of an intelligent, conservative cast...
...He has rarely spoken to the question except in response to direct questions from the press or audiences...
...All this makes perfectly good sense...
...During the election campaign, the Parti Qudb~cois campaigned for good government, not separation, and there is little doubt that the Pdquist victory was as much a rejection of the Bourassa Liberals as a victory for separatism...
...You may think that the pilot of an airplane is not doing a very good job, you may offer suggestions, dangle incentives, even cajole with a few threats...
...My guess --no more than a guessMis that, having forged no movement of Democrats on the left...
...It does not mean that Carter has gone to work for the "interests" rather than the "people...
...Yet the observation that Carter is "Gerry Ford with brains" is not fair to the extent that it suggests a personal abandonment of his former ideals...
...With congressional waters full of energy and auto lobbyists circling around his energy program he may soon arrive at that point...
...l'he business of Republicans is so obviously business that we tend to take for a party interest what is a national fact...
...More and more of them come from the business pages...
...He is simply respecting reality, and the reality is the overwhelming power of the business community...
...There is a real question as to whether Quebec's economy would be better oriented on a North-South axis, the present East-West relationship, or some combination of both...
...In a press conference the following day, Mr...
...Beyond Quebec--politically and geographieallymare the Atlantic provinces...
...Clark, the incumbent leader of the opposition, are committed to federalism...
...In fact, the Carter administration has surprised everyone with its international activism, however inconclusive its negotiations with the Soviets, with the Middle Eastern nations, and with white and black DOING BUSINESS WITH BUSINESS PETER STEINFEI~ Africa have been to date...
...All Carter's instincts tell him it is better to move with business rather than against it, and he is apparently willing to make a lot of concessions to that end...
...Democrats dissatisfied with Carter are remarking that he is the most competent Republican president we've had...
...That the real business of America is business is a lesson we relearn under Democrats...
...Tax rebates for consumers didn't make it...
...Both Mr...
...Is this what it means to have an administration focusing on domestic issues...
...The nation will have economic and social policy strictly on business terms...
...Up to a point...
...Neither Levesque nor his caucus are in any hurry...
...Trudeau, on a state visit to Washington, assured a joint session of the United States Congress that the separation of Quebec from the Canadian federation is unthinkable, supported only by a "small minority" of the people of Quebec...
...Paul MacEwan, a Nova Scotia M.L.A...
...Cmnmonweal: 295...
...In a sense the Washington address was a departure from the Prime Minister's approach to the question since the elections...
...He believes that efficiency will lead to profits rather than the other way round...
...Many observers, even in these days of recognized governmental responsibility for the "management" of the economy, have questioned the extent to which Ottawa can effectively manage an economy so dominated by the United States...
Vol. 104 • May 1977 • No. 10
