07-03 Populism

I was a populist. Then I became an elite.
Here is a story that will help you understand just what they mean when President Trump is called a populist of the right and Bernie Sanders a populist of the left. Pretty confusing subject. There are so many different forms of populism.
In a former life I taught business at Ryerson University and took a leave of absence to fight a tax reform monster proposed by the Liberal government of the day.
Thoughtful academics called me a populist because I was a representative of a large constituency, the small business community, that felt squeezed by the forces of big business, big government and big labour.
Actually, I was just mad. And to be honest, I did not really know what I was doing. The government was proposing to tax small business corporations at a rate of 50% when the effective corporate tax rate paid by the big boys was closer to 25%.
And over a one-year period of rallies, speaking engagements and massive publicity, the government killed their package. I became an instant celebrity. But the smart moves were proposed by political advisers and my father paid a lot of my salary.
But as I moved up the learning curve, I turned this populist movement into a permanent political voice for small business. It is the story of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
But it turned out the elites were not politicians. It was four tax specialists in the Department of Finance. The Prime Minister only understood the basics of the reform package. And even the Finance Minister did not understand all the complexity.
Like so many issues, complexity makes it hard to figure out who is really behind what. Who are the bloody elites?
Sometimes it is the public service because of their special knowledge. And they have techy friends working for the power groups. Sometimes it is the experts in the think tanks that are all funded by corporations or wealthy individuals.
The politicians, of course, modify or delete provisions if their friends or funders are threatened. That is how the system works.
Then, after tax reform, the government went into the reform of the Combines Investigation Act, which was as complex as tax reform. This is about ensuring that big business does not act in a way that is anti-competitive.
Now the elites became obvious because a group of major corporations through a lawyer offered me $500K to fight this new legislation. In todays dollars that would be about $2 million. I took a pass.
Our new organization was becoming a real political movement and the Premier of one of our provinces saw us as a threat. So, he offered to force his suppliers to pay us a membership fee. But we would have to put one of his operatives on our Board. Big money involved. Passed again.
After four years, I became one of the elites in the sense that our organization was able to provide small business input on legislation. It was real. All governments are experts at pretending they want your input.
It also meant having access to the Prime Minister and his senior ministers, being invited to state dinners and meeting the real power brokers, and most importantly having access to special briefings by the public service. In the power business, knowledge is power.
Governments are always suspicious that populous groups are just fronts for their political opposition. So, it was no surprise that we were investigated twice by the RCMP to ensure there were no hidden sources of funding.
The value of this story is that all populist groups getting traction will go through the same process challenging the elites. First governments and their friends will fight, then corrupt, then accommodate, and then accept. It means changing the power structure.
Those big guys with their private planes never really appreciated my attendance at meetings with the Prime Minister. Small business often did not agree with big business or with big labour.
We were not proposing major changes to society like President Trump or Senator Bernie Sanders in the US. Both are populists that are challenging the global economic system that was put in place after WW2 for the benefit of American business. Now every nation is part of the system. However, China and others are not playing by the rules.
In Canada and Europe, the Green Parties would be called populists because they want to protect the environment and challenge the elites, especially the oil industry. They are dominated by young people. And, their message is becoming mainstream. They will be the elites of the future.
Then we have young people promoting gun control and safer schools. New populist groups are being formed and future leaders are in the making.
And the good news. People as workers can make as big a difference as people in leadership. Populism is democracy.