comes this announcement from Jim Bennett, the only declared candidate for the provincial Liberal leadership.
His idea is to have the government buy shares in Fishery Products International, in effect to nationalize the company in whole or in part.
There is little to commend Bennett's idea to any serious consideration, despite the support Bennett already has for it.
The Marxist-Leninist Daily, online organ of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) for example, already advocated nationalizing the company some time ago. So too, did Bill Callahan, a Liberal cabinet minister in the last Smallwood administration and one of Bennett's backers.
Nationalizing is the oldest of bad ideas that we have repeated over and over again, without success. The only places that tried it more often with less success than us used to fly the hammer and sickle and dream of the proletarian revolution.
One can only wait for the eye-glass factory or linerboard scheme or the Sprung Greenhouse to return.
Our province has seen enough of this sorts of politics, about $12 billion in provincial debt-enough.
Better to send these ideas back to the ash heap of history rather than hold them up as a plausible idea.
If this is the Bennett has to offer, Liberals can only hope someone else can raise the $10, 000 to get into the race.
Otherwise, the Liberal Party is doomed to the same obscurity as the other party espousing nationalization of industries long after that proved to be an utter failure as a policy.
