Wrong solution.

This video produced by the CPC: "Canada's Monopoly Problem" is nonsense.

"Investment" in startups by the Canadian finance sector, which in 2018 controlled $7.8 trillion in assets, will merely shovel more of this nation's wealth into the pockets of the 20% of our population who control 68% of Canada's wealth, while the bottom 40%, who control a mere 2.7%, are driven deeper into debt, wage slavery, impoverishment, and homelessness.

The corporate tax rate in Canada in 1980 was 50.9%. By the year 2000 it had plummeted to 26.1%, where it has stayed ever since. So-called "conservatives" sell their policies by appealing to the fear, ignorance, and greed of not-so-small business owners, who perceive themselves as billionaires-in-waiting if only they did not have to pay taxes and believe societal questions should be settled by "the survival of the fittest" in a battle of all-against-all where it is every man for himself.

The obvious solution to the price-gouging by Canada's monopolies is to nationalize them, run their operating profit margins at a reasonable level, and use their profits to finance housing that rents for what it costs to build and maintain, educate skilled workers for the future in every sector, provide affordable daycare for working families, train sufficient numbers of healthcare workers of every description to staff hospitals, clinics, mental health facilities, and addiction treatment programs adequate to society's needs. This is a partial list. The spirit of a mixed economy whose purpose is to satisfy the existential needs of a population drove Canadian economic and social policy from the post-WWII 1950s through the Lester. B. Pearson years, until 1980, when the neoliberal catastrophe – privatization and financialization – occurred.

In 2022, the operating profit margin of the Real estate rental and leasing and property management sector of Canada's economy was 47.2%. It had risen steadily since 2012, when it was 41.3%. By comparison, the operating profit margin of the Food services and drinking places (restaurants) sector averaged 4.4% during the same period – ten times less. One in five dollars spent in BC in 2021 was spent on rent. Intertenacy rents in Victoria increased 46% from July 2019 through July 2021.

Canadians have given up on Canadian values and been transformed into U.S.-style financial predators. This can change, and what it requires is for every Canadian to stop listening to finance sector pied pipers and rediscover the genuine sense of social responsibility that drove the development of the Canadian economy from the end of WWII to 1980.

Startups competing with gigantic established corporations is a ridiculous industrial policy. Nationalize and humanize Canada's corporate dinosaurs. Make them instruments of prosperity for the nation as a whole, not instruments of plunder for a tiny minority. Investment should be channeled into new industries, new technologies, new materials, new products. Novel enterprises agreed upon collaboratively should be subsidized, supported, and protected by every level of government. Not for the benefit of a few but for the prosperity of the many, in jobs, housing, healthcare, and other social services.

Social democracy is not an untested theory. It is the history of the post-war Canadian economy. In 1980, long-standing efforts by people at the top of the net-worth pyramid, who are addicted to money and can never have enough, captured control of Canada's government. They decimated the tax system to suit themselves, deregulated industry, and shredded social programs necessary to address Canadians' human needs – all so they could plunder the economy and surround themselves with what to them is "wealth".

Wealth, however, is an economy whose purpose is to house, educate, and serve the social, healthcare, and environmental needs of a population. You do not need to be rich in an economy whose purpose is to produce prosperity for everyone.