Christmas Wishes From Mel

While there will be someone staying here in my home, I will be away from December 23rd to January 11th and I would be grateful if during that period you did not send me any e-mails. Tom Axworthy recently reviewed Jim Laxer's book The Border in the latest edition of The Literary Review of Canada. Axworthy points out the Laxer anecdote showing that the first prize for the Stratton church building fund raffle for the Lady of Lakes Churches in Stratton, Maine was a 30-06 Remington semi-automatic rifle. Second prize was a 12-gauge Stoeger double-barrel shotgun. Good grief! Today Statistics Canada released a report downplaying concerns re the hollowing out of corporate Canada. Alas, the report failed to concentrate on what has happened to the head offices of Canadian firms taken over by non-residents. So if you read reports that hollowing out is not a major concern, ignore them. They're meaningless. What was rather amusing was the paragraph in today's report showing that "Employment growth was strongest in real estate rental and leasing, professional and technical services and finance and insurance." True, BUT ALL OF THESE SECTORS ARE HEAVILY MAJORITY CANADIAN OWNED AND CONTROLLED. Statistics Canada did this report because of "anecdotal" reports re hollowing out (Eric Reguly, Mel Hurtig, Isiah Litvak, David Crane, Harry Arthurs etc.) BUT, ALL of these reports dealt with the impact of foreign takeovers. I have explained to Statistics Canada that if they wanted to do a meaningful study of the hollowing out process, a study of the impact of foreign takeovers was in order. Mel Hurtig