Silent Coup: Confronting the Big Business Takeover of Canada

Duncan McDowall is a professor of history at Carleton University and the
author of Quick to the Frontier: Canada’s Royal Bank.

The Canadian people, we are told, have a problem, a “mental block”
that prevents them from realizing that they have elected governments
that are no more than “the puppets of big business.” Quietly,
deliberately, and concertedly, “corporate Canada” has had its way
with the nation over the last decade. Canadians have been duped by the
machiavels of Bay Street, exposed to the evil of free trade, squeezed
through the “Three-D wringer of downsizing, decentralization and
deregulation,” and now find themselves living in the “borderless”
world of a globalized economy.

All is not lost, however. These pages offer hope for Canadians who are
apparently finally seeing the light—“It’s the corporations,
stupid!”—and are now embarking on “citizen action campaigns.”
Through these, we will be able to recapture our economic freedom and
“re-regulate” the corporate agenda. And through such action, we,
inspired by the example of the people of India, will apparently drive
Kentucky Fried Chicken from our borders.

The above is the tight, seamless worldview of Silent Coup, a public
policy polemic by Tony Clarke, director of the Polaris Institute. This
is left-wing conspiracy theory, a naive, unidimensional analysis of the
last decade’s seismic shifts in macroeconomic and social policy in
Canada. The bogeyman throughout is the vaguely defined and infinitely
elastic “corporate agenda,” allegedly and nefariously crafted by big
business and its lackeys, groups like the Business Council on National
Issues. Jean Chrétien is cast in the role of the innocent dupe of the
“job killers.” In other words, what we have here is the left-wing,
populist counterpart—equally myopic, equally intolerant—of the
neoconservative outpourings of Globe and Mail columnist Terence
Corcoran.

This is, at least, well structured conspiracy theory. It begins with an
assault on the sinister doctrines of market-driven economists like
Friedman and Hayek and ends with handbook-like instructions for
regaining control of the national economy—consumer boycotts of
corporations and the like. For all its eye-popping revelations, the book
smacks of an unconvincing reductionism. Can anyone believe that public
policy in a mature democratic state is the product of one secretive
cabal? Like Mao’s little red book, Silent Coup demands devotion, not
analytical reflection. Intelligent debate of public policy demands more
than this. There are no footnotes, no index, and only a slanted
bibliography, all indications that this book is more dogma rather than
reasoned analysis.