Edmonton entrepreneur Peter Pocklington knew more than how to make a buck, he knew the proper role of government and how Canada was missing it..I shared in my previous column how Pocklington’s vision of free trade and fewer Crown corporations was fulfilled..And yet, much more could be mined from Pocklington’s life and observations. In 1982, he told Peter Gzowski right on CBC radio, that not only that the CBC be privatized, but health care should be too..“If you want to have a healthcare system that works, the government should look after the 5% who can’t look after themselves. Forget the other 95%; let the market look after them..And it works. You know, you can buy health insurance and instead of paying 80% of your income in taxes, you pay 20 as I proposed, then pay for your own health insurance,” Pocklington told Gzowski, the 80% being hyperbole..“People say health insurance, particularly in the US, is not perfect, but nobody dies in the States because they don’t have insurance. Poor old Canada, that’s why you’ve got a two-tiered system coming on strong.”.Two years later, the momentum was deflated with Pierre Trudeau’s Canada Health Act. Still, Pocklington’s reasoning of a bottom-up society instead of a top-down, centrally-controlled society makes sense. He also told a gathering at the Empire Club in Toronto about that back in ‘82..“There are those who have been stricken with illness or accident, those who have chornic or permanent disabilities, those with nowhere to turn. I believe we are our brother’s keeper, and we must help these people in any way we can. Whatever the task requires, it should be freely and creatively given by us all,” Pocklington said..“But I do not believe in making the safety net too comfortable. I do not believe you motivate people by offering to take care of them from cradle to grave. That isn’t helping them, that’s enslaving them. When a person is down, you give them opportunity, encouragement, a bridge to another job, not a lifetime of handouts.”.Pocklington also espoused “law that we all make, not law made by the judges.” He seemed to realize what the 1982 Constitution would do before its consequences had unfolded..The Brian Mulroney Conservatives let the courts do their thing, and the attempts to change the Constitution in the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords failed also..Even so, Mulroney said Pocklington embodied the memorable slogan of Panasonic in the early ‘80s: he was slightly ahead of his time..“Peter long approved of free trade with the United States, getting rid of the National Energy Program, which I did, getting rid of the Foreign Investment Review Agency. He was strongly private-sector oriented, pro-American in terms of opposing the anti-Americanism of Trudeau, establishing a good reputation internationally, cutting down on government spending, which we did, and so on,” Mulroney said..“He was a delightful, intelligent and straightforward guy. I felt that his views deserved to be aired and that he had every right to contest the leadership…Peter would have made a fine leader if he had won.”.Pocklington also could have continued as a fine businessman if the federal competition bureau in the Mulroney years had been more cooperative..In the 1990 film Pretty Woman, the character played by Richard Gere made a fortune buying companies and selling their component parts for even more..Pocklington bought Palm Dairies from Unicorp Canada for $52 million, all of it funded by the Alberta Treasury Bank. His plan was to sell parts of Palm Dairies operations to Ontario, Saskatchewan, and BC for a combined $95 million..The competition board thought that would be bad because it would create, wait for it — too much competition..“I could have made a fortune on that deal. But the Competition Bureau said, ‘Well if you sell off this and this and this, you are going to impact this poor little guy and this poor little guy,” Pocklington recalled in the 2009 book, I’d Trade Him Again..“A deal like the one they killed is good for the economy. It’s good for everybody. You create wealth. The guy who wins is the consumer and the guy that sells the most is the guy who sells it the cheapest and the best.”.This should make sense to everyone. Isn’t a competition bureau there to make sure that monopolies aren’t created? Why protect, as Pocklington called it, “an old, sleepy company?".“Dealing with these little communist peckers at the Competition Bureau was awful, believe me. Talk about having to suffer fools, but they had me by the you-know-whats. So I ended up paying a lobbyist half a million dollars… to finally get some semblance of a deal approved. I ended up selling Palm Dairies for maybe what I paid for it.”.Pocklington eventually sold off Palm Dairies for a $5 million profit, enough to pay off the ATB, leaving the net benefit of his efforts at roughly zero..“It’s unbelievable,” Pocklington said. “I really ended up with a bad taste for most government regulation.”.There’s no more Palm Dairies, only Palm Springs for the 81-year-old who relocated there years ago. Truth told, he was tempted to leave commie Canada a little sooner..“It’s government that kills Canada, it’s not the people. The people are hard-working, dedicated, smart, it’s not the people. It’s the damn system. The socialism.".“I finally gave up. I couldn’t stand the onslaught. You can’t fight every corner. Fighting the government, fighting the ATB, fighting the socialist ideals and ideas.".“There were times when I wished I’d sold the whole thing and moved to the States. The US, at least, is a free market, much more so than Canada. In Canada, boy, it can be tough sledding.”.Punish enough success and socialism prevails where everyone is equally poor and government is the industry..How many Canadian entrepreneurs have been robbed of some, if not all, of their potential success by overregulation?.In the 21st Century, as in the 1980s, Canada really needs to change..(Second in a series of three.)
Edmonton entrepreneur Peter Pocklington knew more than how to make a buck, he knew the proper role of government and how Canada was missing it..I shared in my previous column how Pocklington’s vision of free trade and fewer Crown corporations was fulfilled..And yet, much more could be mined from Pocklington’s life and observations. In 1982, he told Peter Gzowski right on CBC radio, that not only that the CBC be privatized, but health care should be too..“If you want to have a healthcare system that works, the government should look after the 5% who can’t look after themselves. Forget the other 95%; let the market look after them..And it works. You know, you can buy health insurance and instead of paying 80% of your income in taxes, you pay 20 as I proposed, then pay for your own health insurance,” Pocklington told Gzowski, the 80% being hyperbole..“People say health insurance, particularly in the US, is not perfect, but nobody dies in the States because they don’t have insurance. Poor old Canada, that’s why you’ve got a two-tiered system coming on strong.”.Two years later, the momentum was deflated with Pierre Trudeau’s Canada Health Act. Still, Pocklington’s reasoning of a bottom-up society instead of a top-down, centrally-controlled society makes sense. He also told a gathering at the Empire Club in Toronto about that back in ‘82..“There are those who have been stricken with illness or accident, those who have chornic or permanent disabilities, those with nowhere to turn. I believe we are our brother’s keeper, and we must help these people in any way we can. Whatever the task requires, it should be freely and creatively given by us all,” Pocklington said..“But I do not believe in making the safety net too comfortable. I do not believe you motivate people by offering to take care of them from cradle to grave. That isn’t helping them, that’s enslaving them. When a person is down, you give them opportunity, encouragement, a bridge to another job, not a lifetime of handouts.”.Pocklington also espoused “law that we all make, not law made by the judges.” He seemed to realize what the 1982 Constitution would do before its consequences had unfolded..The Brian Mulroney Conservatives let the courts do their thing, and the attempts to change the Constitution in the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords failed also..Even so, Mulroney said Pocklington embodied the memorable slogan of Panasonic in the early ‘80s: he was slightly ahead of his time..“Peter long approved of free trade with the United States, getting rid of the National Energy Program, which I did, getting rid of the Foreign Investment Review Agency. He was strongly private-sector oriented, pro-American in terms of opposing the anti-Americanism of Trudeau, establishing a good reputation internationally, cutting down on government spending, which we did, and so on,” Mulroney said..“He was a delightful, intelligent and straightforward guy. I felt that his views deserved to be aired and that he had every right to contest the leadership…Peter would have made a fine leader if he had won.”.Pocklington also could have continued as a fine businessman if the federal competition bureau in the Mulroney years had been more cooperative..In the 1990 film Pretty Woman, the character played by Richard Gere made a fortune buying companies and selling their component parts for even more..Pocklington bought Palm Dairies from Unicorp Canada for $52 million, all of it funded by the Alberta Treasury Bank. His plan was to sell parts of Palm Dairies operations to Ontario, Saskatchewan, and BC for a combined $95 million..The competition board thought that would be bad because it would create, wait for it — too much competition..“I could have made a fortune on that deal. But the Competition Bureau said, ‘Well if you sell off this and this and this, you are going to impact this poor little guy and this poor little guy,” Pocklington recalled in the 2009 book, I’d Trade Him Again..“A deal like the one they killed is good for the economy. It’s good for everybody. You create wealth. The guy who wins is the consumer and the guy that sells the most is the guy who sells it the cheapest and the best.”.This should make sense to everyone. Isn’t a competition bureau there to make sure that monopolies aren’t created? Why protect, as Pocklington called it, “an old, sleepy company?".“Dealing with these little communist peckers at the Competition Bureau was awful, believe me. Talk about having to suffer fools, but they had me by the you-know-whats. So I ended up paying a lobbyist half a million dollars… to finally get some semblance of a deal approved. I ended up selling Palm Dairies for maybe what I paid for it.”.Pocklington eventually sold off Palm Dairies for a $5 million profit, enough to pay off the ATB, leaving the net benefit of his efforts at roughly zero..“It’s unbelievable,” Pocklington said. “I really ended up with a bad taste for most government regulation.”.There’s no more Palm Dairies, only Palm Springs for the 81-year-old who relocated there years ago. Truth told, he was tempted to leave commie Canada a little sooner..“It’s government that kills Canada, it’s not the people. The people are hard-working, dedicated, smart, it’s not the people. It’s the damn system. The socialism.".“I finally gave up. I couldn’t stand the onslaught. You can’t fight every corner. Fighting the government, fighting the ATB, fighting the socialist ideals and ideas.".“There were times when I wished I’d sold the whole thing and moved to the States. The US, at least, is a free market, much more so than Canada. In Canada, boy, it can be tough sledding.”.Punish enough success and socialism prevails where everyone is equally poor and government is the industry..How many Canadian entrepreneurs have been robbed of some, if not all, of their potential success by overregulation?.In the 21st Century, as in the 1980s, Canada really needs to change..(Second in a series of three.)
