this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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What business domains, services, organizations should be nationalized to ensure Canadian sovereignty? (lemmy.ca)
submitted 4 days ago by cyborganism@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[–] Subscript5676@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I see a lot of comments are proposing for the nationalization of whole industries, which is somewhat concerning. There needs to be some balance, not to fatten the checks of those billionaires, and not to make the government too powerful.

For example, instead of (re-)nationalizing CN, nationalize the tracks themselves. The government can lay down tracks for places that need to be reached, and companies can then run their trains on them. It’s no different from how roads are public really. Companies can then focus on serving section of the tracks for areas that they understand best. Of course, there will be cases where there’s a need to consider if the investment from the government is worth it, cause what if they laid the tracks but no one’s willing to take advantage of that? Well, they can let companies bid, and there’s no bidder, they can choose to not take on the project. Of course, there’s always the option for the government to have its own train company to serve certain areas.

For telcos, instead of nationalizing the entire vertical, nationalize cell towers and cable paths. Allow companies to build their own towers if they so desire, but the main draw is that different providers can rely on shared infrastructure, and none of this Robelus bullshit that we have right now. Cable paths is probably odd, but these sorts of technology get changed quite often. The government can still own some cables, allowing smaller players to take advantage of those, but it would level out the playing field by a lot.

For the Internet and whole businesses within it, having our own cloud infrastructure, or AWS alternative, would be best. People can then run whatever on those. There is, of course, a concern of the government not respecting people’s privacies, and so it needs to be run somewhat independent of the government, allowing the government to set directions but not what exactly to do; sort of Crown-corp-y if you will.

In all my examples, the idea is simply this: nationalize the stuff that serve as the basis for a particular service. Think roads instead of cars.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I thin as soon as you let private companies into critical infrastructures, you run te risk of having abuses. Freight trains are critical for economic sovereingty. Even by having public rails but private train companies, you still run the risk of having a foreign company overcharging or simply stopping service during a trade, economic, or actual war. Same with transportation. It's such an essential service to have in a geographically large country like Canada, it shouldn't be left solely to private companies or risk geeting gouged.

And that's just for rail, trains, transport, etc.

For internet, make the infrastructure public and let companies use it to sell services. That's fine. But still offer a public alternative just in case.

As for cloud services, the government should definitely have its own cloud system, but it shouldn't be for public use. I would never store my personal files and information on a government cloud. That would definitely be a huge privacy risk.

[–] Subscript5676@lemmy.ca 0 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

If you’re running an infrastructure that many need, you could just say no to abusers, just like a healthy business would do.

And I know the times we’re in, but it’s just so odd to assume that businesses that serve the country are all owned and controlled by foreign companies. Why can’t a local player be in that place?

Public alternatives are fine, but they’ve generally stagnated in terms of improving their services and offerings, because, and I absolutely hate that I agree with the capitalists here even though I’m looking at it differently, at some point in their lifetime, the stability that a government-funded company offers will attract people who seek that stability without understanding how to achieve long term stability (which is to constantly improvement, instead of preserving the status quo). Income for these companies eventually drop, and we end up having to keep them afloat with tax money. That’s not necessarily a bad thing cause not all public services need to be profitable, but it’s still desirable to have them fund most of their activities on their own.

For cloud, it’s why mentioned that the government should be as removed as possible from its operations. These sorts of services can easily contain a lot of sensitive information, and the government should be kept at a healthy gap away from that data. Government-funded, yes, but let there also be a more direct mechanism from more grassroots and local organizations as well.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Look at the grocery business. They're mostly local players. Loblaws, Metro, Sobeys, etc. They're all gouging the fuck out of Canadians.

And as for public companies, good example is Air Canada. When it was a public crown company it was one of the best airlines there was until it was privatized. Now they're cutting everywhere and overcharging on every detail, leading to pricy services and bad quality of service.

Another example is the hydro electric companies in Québec. Before the private companies were nationalized, they would avoid investing in their infrastructure, avoid expanding their network and avoid maintenance as much as possible leading to frequent black outs. As soon as it was nationalized it became the pride of Québec because they not only expanded all over the province, they upgraded their infrastructure and ensured everyone would have world class services at a low cost.

Bixi, the Rent-a-bike service was going bankrupt until the city of Montreal acquired it and now they're expanding all over the globe.

So I don't know where you got this idea that public companies or services at stagnant.

[–] Subscript5676@lemmy.ca 0 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I get it. The grocery businesses and telco business that we know of exist and are local players. That has more to say about our policies for businesses, that it allows for oligopolies to fester, but it’s a weak reason to go to the extent of full nationalization imo. IMO government should not allow a singular group of people to fully control almost every facet of an industry. But governments should not have the power to stamp out its own competitors, lest it becomes the very thing we don’t like seeing now in these private companies.

And while those are examples, there are also some that’s for the other side. While not a national company, the TTC is one such example at the city + provincial level: service degradation has continued on, disruptions have become increasingly frequent, the Eglinton Crosstown is still under construction after more than 10 years (though the private sector is also to blame on this end), Line 6 is only finally here after 10+ years as well, and even with these two lines, Toronto is nowhere near the level of accessibility you’d expect of a city it’s size outside of downtown core, and it literally hasn’t changed much for the last 100 years. While the TTC isn’t to be fully blamed for these woes (because of car-centric developments that have taken over the national psyche), if you listen to transit advocates talk about the TTC, you’ll hear a lot of frustrating episodes, e.g. having outdated, error-prone rail infrastructure and repeatedly refusing to upgrade them.

And then there’s Canada Post with all its episodes, sagas even, in recent years. They’ve repeatedly refused to both improve services and pay better wages, even as the CUPW continually suggested to the management to better use their abilities.

I think this should tell us that you can’t rely on either nationalization or privatization alone. Either way has a possibility of slipping into stagnation once they’ve reached some kind of steady state.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

A lot of the problems you are mentioning is because of government cuts. In Montréal, the STM is also facing budget problems leading to strikes and projects taking longer and becoming more costly over time. But that's because the provincial gouvernent are a bunch of corrupt idiots with no ethics who are giving away are tax dollars to their business friends.

And as for Canada Post, the main ceo guy at Canada Post is also on the board of Purolator, a private courier company. He's been accused of conflict of interest and probably trying to sabotage Canada Post for his own corporate profits.

So.... yeah.

[–] Subscript5676@lemmy.ca 0 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

But isn’t that the point? If governments would cut public services to feed their own beast now, why wouldn’t they do that if we nationalize these services, so that they can then sell to people something better?

That said, I actually did not know that the CEO at CP is also on the Purolator board. Why the hell was that even allowed in the first place?

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 hours ago

Because many (not all) of these things provide a revenue to the government. Especially with natural resource extraction and transformation which is something that can be traded. And having nationalized services may come at a cost, but the way this helps society provides a return on the investment in other ways like increased business, reduced downtime, better produtivity, etc. Just like free education provides training for jobs, or free medical services can provide preventative care to avoid people getting sick or hurt and preventing them from working, or a nationalized rail and train service that ensures the transportation of important resources either internally or internationally to the US, Mexico, etc, at a reasonable price that won't hinder local businesses and ensure that foodstuff is also transported across the country to feed everyone and keep the cost of foods low.

The whole objective is not to generate profits for shareholders, but to have a functional society that can generate revenue that can be taxed and use that to pay for services that support society and ensure efficiency, uptime and growth.