''Absolute impotence,'' sighed an observer at another disastrous conference of the British Labor Party, ''corrupts absolutely.'' This (corrupted) aphorism we may take as our text in considering the role of the Opposition in the impending sale of Air Canada.

The Liberals are in the worst pickle, since the drift of policy under their own Transport minister, Lloyd Axworthy, was plainly toward privatization. This may account for the comparative ease with which the enabling legislation for the 45% offering was allowed to pass the Senate.

The NDP, meanwhile, has largely contented itself with reminding the public that Prime Minister Mulroney once opposed privatization. At the same time, it is thought particularly telling to denounce the sale as the work of blind Tory dogma - ''the triumph of ideology over ordinary Canadian common sense,'' I believe is how Ed Broadbent put it. The Prime Minister, apparently, is at once both a jellyfish opportunist and a stickleback ideologue.

Now that the prospectus has been filed, the Opposition critique again divides into two: the government is selling us something we already own; worse, it is not charging us nearly enough for it. The NDP adds that it would buy the airline back from us, presumably paying us a significant premium for something we would by then already own twice. Thankfully, however, both parties promise if elected to interfere regularly with management, thus ensuring that should we ever have the chance to buy the airline from ourselves again, shares will be priced to move.

PANIC THE MARKETS

Thus, lacking effective argument against the sale, lacking legitimate power to stop it, the Opposition parties have resolved simply to sabotage it. With the election campaign and the share offer headed for parallel launch next month, they have declared their intent to welch on the Tory promise later to sell the state's 55% holding, hoping to panic the markets into an embarrassing rejection of the issue.

That's not the only factor weighing down the price of the shares. The terms of the sale itself place absurd restrictions on Air Canada's operating freedom; the airline's profits were hit badly by last year's strike; its billion-dollar debt leaves it with an uncomfortably high centre of gravity; its competitors are well-positioned in a newly-deregulated environment; the industry is a weak performer in a shaky stock market in an increasingly uncertain economy.

A bargain in the making, in other words. There is no possibility of the government allowing the shares to be sold just before an election at anything approaching their true worth. While this heightens their appeal to the average investor, it still means an asset at least notionally held by all of us will be sold to a relatively wealthy minority at subsidized prices.

At the same time, the government will do everything it can to boost the shares' market value: it has already allowed Air Canada and its nearest competitor, Canadian Airlines International, to reshape the Canadian industry into a cozy duopoly, and while economic sense might now suggest letting foreign carriers into the domestic market to compete, fat chance of that.

In attending to Air Canada's management, its unions, its shareholders, as well as its own political standing, the government has lost sight of the two main reasons for privatization in the first place: to make the market more competitive, and, less often mentioned, to broaden radically the base of share ownership in Canada.

The great social divide in this country is not between east and west, or French and English: it is between those who own property, and those who do not. Capital ownership confers freedom, and responsibility; independence for the individual, and common values for society. Our aim ought to be universal capitalism, a spreading commonwealth of citizen shareholders, bonded by the experience of ownership, each with a stake in the freehold of the nation.

A preliminary price for the shares is to be set this week, and the final price by the end of next month. I have a suggestion: make it zero. Give the shares away, free, to every citizen of the country; Air Canada can wait six months for the revenue from the remaining 55% (if it can't, sell these now, and give away the rest).

The number of shareholders in Britain, after Margaret Thatcher's $50 billion in state asset sales, has tripled; it now has a greater proportion of capitalists than Canada. Privatization there is not merely a program, it is a social revolution. It has created a broad constituency for capitalism, which in part explains the Labor Party's feeble and distracted condition.

Mulroney should take her example further. A giveaway package, mailed to every household in a cellophane wrapper, containing a nicely balanced portfolio of shares in Air Canada, PetroCan, Canada Post, and the CBC, would be a quite responsible way to buy votes.