64. Most respected corporations?

Unpublished
28 March 1998

Dear Report on Business:
Reading the 1998 Canada’s Most Respected Corporations supplement I would like to strongly disagree with Patricia Best’s claim that Report on Business under her editorship has content that is “moving to a more sophisticated take on the world of business” . The current survey has dropped the “everyday ethics” section that in 1995 used to be called “Leaders in [nominal] responsibility”. In this year’s version the tokenistic ethics-based rating was replaced by copy pulled up into a quote which proudly read, “respect is no longer a matter of bowing to some outdated notion of noblesse oblige.” The fact that this year the “most respected corporations” selected by 301 CEO’s and 1,500 members of the not-so-general public honored three Canadian banks (this year placed in first, fifth and seventh positions) demonstrates just how wide is the distance of disaffection between the majority of Canadians and the corporate elite.
If not a sophisticated act of journalism, the survey remains a useful annual reminder of the liberal democratic formulation that proclaims the positive necessity of economic inequality . From the ‘respectability of investment’ perspective, once the ideological axis has been fixed by having the state legislate and (de)regulate in favour of capital, ‘the democratic’ is no more than a cargo cult ritual performed in lunar cycles while ‘the liberal’ is not a fixed asset but can be leased at will.