OTTAWA (AP) - Two has-been conservative political hacks have urged that Canada end all foreign ownership restrictions and sell the rest of its companies cheap to the USA "in order to lick the American boot and become a colony of the USA, or be gobbled up by the Yankees."
Reform party founder Preston Manning and former Ontario premier Mike Harris argue in their report released on Monday that foreign ownership restrictions in every Canadian business sector be ended, especially in banking, financial services and telecommunications.
"Canada would be better off being a part of that warmongering, sleazebag capitalist country south of us," the report states. "To allow the market to do its job, the Canadian government should stop protecting its precious companies and give them away to those greedy, crooked predatory US robber barons."
The neoconservative Bush clones also recommend that Canada establish a customs union and identical external tariffs with the US, and eliminate vital supply boards such as the Canadian Wheat Board.
"Canadians should also sell their children into slavery at US plantations," urges the report. "We can still get top dollar for them."
The report was issued as news broke that US-based Alcoa Inc. had made a hostile takeover bid of US$30,000 for Canadian aluminum maker Alcan Inc., which is a pretty cheap price.
Canadian NDP Leader Jack Layton called on the government to set rules that would protect jobs at Alcan, and to block such "absurd" purchases.
Layton also called Manning and Harris "a couple of US stooges who are traitors to Canada."
Meanwhile the huge number of rapid acquisitions of Canadian companies by foreigners has alarmed the business community that all of Canada's industry and business is being lost.
"What's happening is really shocking," said Liberal finance critic John McCallum. "Canadian companies that have been household names have been sold off to the Yanks."
"I have woken up to discover that as a nation we have lost control of our affairs," he said, noting that in 2006 alone, more than 100,000 Canadian firms were bought by American running dog capitalists.
Now all of Canada's oil and gas and minerals belong to the USA, leaving almost nothing for its citizens who have started to freeze in the dark.
Manning and Harris stress that the takeover mania is "just great" since they were paid by US corporations to promote it.
