Back in 2021, Carleton University professor James Meadowcroft said: “It isn’t true that governments can’t pick winners: They do pick them all the time all around the world.”

Meadowcroft added that Canadian governments should look beyond pipelines in this regard. This was a prescient observation, given that Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith have agreed to give “special exemptions from federal environmental laws and offer political support to a new oil pipeline.”

Let’s give careful thought to the question, “Who gets to pick the winners?”

Politicians? A Globe and Mail article says Ontario Labour Minister David Piccini’s political staff “overruled evaluations by non-partisan bureaucrats and doled out hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations with lower scores” on applications to the Skills Development Fund. The article adds that “successful applicants for funds from the program had hired consultants to lobby Mr. Piccini.”

It appears that Canadian governments don’t pick winners. They let lobbyists do it for them. No wonder “Canada’s productivity has been lagging its peers for many years.”

Governments can and should “invest.” But how they invest matters greatly.

Three NDP leadership candidates who attended the October 28 Douglas Coldwell Layton Foundation Mouseland Gala all spoke about this.

Rob Ashton criticized employers who receive government handouts and then close their operations.

“In every budget there’s cash for employers, and that’s okay, as long as it comes with a stick. If they leave, and they leave Canadians hanging, they pay all the money back,” he said.

Heather McPherson said “We used to own things as Canadians. You know that when we went through COVID-19 I was constantly reminded we used to have Connaught Labs. We used to have a capacity in this country to create vaccines. We used to own the things that we needed to manufacture in this country, and we don’t anymore.”

Avi Lewis followed with “It’s exciting to hear an emerging consensus around public ownership. I think it’s a popular idea in a time of market failure. And I think that the Liberals and Conservatives, the only idea they have to stimulate the economy is to give public money to private interests.”

Lewis then reminisced about the NDP’s “corporate welfare bums” campaign, led by his grand-dad David Lewis in the 1970s.

Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) senior economist Angella MacEwan describes the “The Power of Public Ownership” in a nine-minute video. She emphasizes the importance of making and buying things in Canada. Buying Canadian and public ownership makes good sense. But the left needs a broader vision of ecosocialism — combining public ownership with democratic planning and progressive environmental standards.

Yves Engler, who applied to join the NDP leadership race on November 10, is highly critical of the status quo.

“It’s remarkable how little discussion in NDP circles there has been of our wealth-concentrating, ecologically destructive economic system,” adding that “challenging capitalism is more important than ever,” he said in an op-ed on rabble.ca.

Economists — concerned with issues such as innovation and productivity — rarely analyze public ownership through an environmental lens. One recent academic study found that state-owned enterprises can be “more innovative than the private sector” and “do not generate any significant negative effect in terms of operational efficiency and performance.” An example: Saskatchewan’s publicly-owned telecommunications company (SaskTel) competes successfully with private telecoms by leasing its cell towers and fibre optics networks.

Overall, however, Canada lags far behind most nations in creative use of public investment, such as allowing our civil servants to run companies that compete in the marketplace. A stubborn adherence to neoliberal dogma (deregulation, privatization, free trade) contributes to our sagging productivity.

Many successful federal crown corporations disappeared during a wave of privatization in the 1980s: Air Canada, Petro-Canada, Canadair, de Havilland Canada, Teleglobe, Connaught Labs, etc. Provincial governments also sold profitable public corporations. Saskatchewan privatized SaskOil and Gas and PotashCorp in the 1980s. Alberta privatized liquor stores in 1993, Saskatchewan in 2023. Ontario is doing it piecemeal.

Reversing this requires a long-term vision of majority public control of key sectors such as housing, food, mining, energy, forestry, fisheries, and transport.

Along with majority public control, an ecosocialist society would put decision making power over economic activities in the hands of local and Indigenous communities. Projects would need to be ecologically sustainable in order to receive support.

With ecological sustainability as a driver for decision making, major changes would take place, especially in the agriculture and energy sectors. For example, industrial agriculture would be replaced by regenerative agriculture, fossil and nuclear fuels would be gradually phased out, renewable energy would be scaled up, and well-enforced standards for energy efficiency and conservation would be put in place.

Finally, the importance of public lands cannot be emphasized too strongly. It was a big loss when the federal Community Pasture Program ended in 2012. Urban national parks seem to be on a slow track, sadly. A healthy society needs to protect and preserve healthy natural spaces – places where all species, not just humans, can thrive.

Nature is a key part of our identity as Canadians. We should all be proud caretakers of our lands and waters, partnering with the Indigenous peoples who have looked after them since time immemorial. Stewardship of nature can go hand-in-hand with sound socialist principles.

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