Do You Support Canada's Current Board of Directors?

I’ve heard the comment that you can’t run a Country or a Province like a business. People’s lives and futures are at stake, there are social issues that need to be addressed and there are wants and needs that can’t be denied. These are indeed facts, but never the less, a government is, in essence, intended to manage and ensure that the best results are delivered for the Country. In this way running a Country can be equated to running a business.

As the people supplying the funds to run this country, through our taxes, we are in essence the company’s shareholders. We have an elected government that can be considered our board of directors. Each department in this government is much like the divisions or departments within a company. We have the Departments of Health, Defense, Finance, Industry, Natural Resources, etc and since we all ultimately work to build and grow this Country, we are not only its stock holders, but its employees as well.

If we consider Canada to be our business and every man, woman and child in Canada as both employees of this company and as the company’s stock holders, it may provide us with the ability to view our current situation with a little less passion and a lot more clarity.

As things stand, our company will be holding its AGM on January 23 rd. At that time we as stock holders will all be asked to review the performance of the current board of directors and decide whether or not they should be replaced.

You will need to ask yourself some very honest questions if you seriously want your company to grow and prosper.

Do you believe the current board has and continues to take your company in a direction you want it to go?

Are you receiving the sort of dividends that you believe you should from your investment in this company?

Do you have trust in your board of directors after it has been shown to have misappropriated millions of your investment dollars and perhaps even been involved in illegal financial activities?

Do you believe that your current Chief Executive Officer, who was the company’s Chief Financial Officer while many of the misdeeds took place, knew nothing about them?

If you don’t believe it, can you now trust him enough to allow him to remain in control of your company?

If you do believe it, then you need to ask yourself if he is fit to run your company when he couldn’t control its finances in the past?

Do you believe the kind of pre-vote spending undertaken by the current board just prior to this AGM was in the best interest of your company or merely a self serving attempt to curry favor with you as a stock holder?

From an employee perspective, do you believe the company’s current health and retirement plans are solvent, efficient and generous enough under current management to meet your family’s needs? In other words, do you think enough has been done by this board to maintain and improve your employee benefits?

Do you feel that your company is responsive to your family’s needs regarding child care, elder care or a myriad of other benefits issues?

After asking yourself these and other questions you may decide that the status quo is just fine, or you may not. Either way, the exercise of separating emotion from your decision and instead taking a long hard look at your Country from a purely business led perspective may help you see the direction you want to take.

We all have a major investment in this Country/company of Canada. Our income tax, sales tax, EI payments and CPP/QPP payments have all been invested in this company for many years. In fact, it is undoubtedly the single biggest investment many of us will ever make in our lifetimes. The AGM is only a few weeks away. This might be a good time, as company owners, to start thinking about how we plan to vote and who we want to run our business.