The biggest battle in the next federal election will not be fought, as you may think, over free trade, abortion, the Constitution, or flow-through shares. Another contest, less heralded, promises to eclipse them all: the looming world-historic clash between Frank Stronach and Sinclair Stevens for hegemony in York-Peel.
Neither titan is yet in harness, granted. Sinc, the incumbent, is busy appealing the Parker Commission's findings in Federal Court; he has declared for the Tory nomination, not won it. Stronach, meanwhile, has still to announce for which York Region riding he will seek the Liberal standard. But the poetry of it! Two old and dear friends, once united in mutual munificence, now divided by partisan allegiance. It's irresistible. Stronach may be rich, but he can't buck world history: it must be York-Peel.
The millionaire chairman of Magna International has lately become the darling of the Liberal left for his vehement opposition to free trade. Even some New Democrats are sweet on him. Professor Duncan Cameron makes the auto parts magnate a beacon of truth in a dark piece of conspiracy theory on ''who's behind free trade'' in this month's This Magazine. Sometime-playwright Rick Salutin reaches for JFK's Profiles in Courage to praise his heroism in Canadian Business for defying the mass of corporate opinion in favor of the deal. ''When the crunch came,'' Salutin throbs, Stronach ''stood against the flow.'' Whattaguy.
Except, Stronach used to be part of the flow. He even served on the government's 38-member private sector trade advisory group. It's only after it turned out the deal would not, as he and his industry hoped, stiffen protection against offshore auto parts that he started wailing about being ''absorbed in the American fabric,'' our ''unique beliefs and values,'' etc.
To show you he's sincere, Stronach allows that the deal will help his own business. And Stronach believes in competition as a rule. He just has a few exceptions. Society is best served, he says, if we ''limit, not eliminate, the selling of certain offshore products in North America'' - products like, oh, auto parts, for instance. This is needed to preserve programs to ''nurture'' depressed regions, $115 million of which, incidentally, nurtured Magna from 1981 to 1986.
But never mind. A little self-serving cant never hurt anyone, nor is Stronach unique in this regard. Besides, Stronach appeals even more to many who might support free trade, as the entrepreneur who built a billion-dollar business. It is as part of the phenomenon of the capitalist as superstar, stuff of best-selling biographies and fawning press coverage, that his candidacy deserves notice.
The swell of popular adulation is forever tossing up corporate heros into the crest and foam of politics. Remember Lee Iacocca for president? Or Peter Ueberroth? Or Donald Trump? Wasn't a good part of Brian Mulroney's initial appeal his executive aura? Or John Turner's? Or, after Turner, CSL Group President Paul Martin Jr.'s? We never learn, do we? However electorally bankable, however successful in their own endeavors, businessmen are peculiarly unfit for public office.
The economics of the average businessman, and in particular the sort of businessman drawn to politics, and most particularly the sort likely to be elected, is a haphazard amalgam of free enterprise rhetoric and dirigiste impulses, not so much pro-market as pro-business. It seeks not to submit business to the sovereignty of consumers, but to support and encourage production as an end in itself. Sinc came into politics as a chest-beating free enterpriser, but as industry minister was conspicuous in his devotion to protective trade barriers, slushy subsidies and grand industrial strategies. Stronach, too, is angling for the industry post in a Turner cabinet, as is Martin, each with his own economic symphony running through his head.
BETTER MANAGEMENT
The appeal of this hands-on approach to the successful chief executive is obvious. The classical corporation, after all, is the last bastion of the command economy, a pristine model of central planning. Looking through the other end of the telescope, the economy becomes Canada Ltd., and economic problems simply a question of better management - and better managers.
Even outside of politics, corporate hero-worship ought to be discouraged. In the first place, it's unnecessary - profit is its own reward. Success in business should certainly not be held in contempt, the mark of a stagnant society. But neither should a gaudy shrine be made in its honor: not only does this encourage too close affinity with business interests in forming policy, but it plants in the public mind the corporatist idea that the economy is some vast project, where production is a duty, and merit points awarded for exceeding the quota.
The healthiest view of the businessman is not as capitalist-realist hero, but as a useful household servant. It is the consumer whose welfare matters, and whose power should be absolute. We should, as masters of the house, treat the servants with a decent respect; they, in turn, should learn to keep their place.