"We'll become a branch office - just like Canada".

• Author: Atkins, Michael
• Position: PRESIDENT'S NOTE - Viewpoint essay

If you run a business publication in Northern Ontario, you are never far from the politics of resources. We are always either discovering something new (say the Ring of Fire) or coming up against something closing (say, the copper and zinc plants in Timmins), either suffering the effect of low prices or getting almost no benefit from higher ones. Lately, of considerable interest is not just what is happening but who owns what is happening. We are living in an era of worldwide consolidation of the resource sector and this is having a tremendous impact on our prospects and profile. A couple of the consolidators are Canadian companies (say, Barrick Gold) but by and large Canada is disappearing as a serious player. We are pansies. We don't have the guts and we don't have the governance and we don't have the wherewithal to find the capital. We are drifting into irrelevance.

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We need look no further than the former chairman of Australia's BHP Billiton, Don Argus, who said the following a few years ago as he was politicking to buy Rio Tinto, another mammoth mining company that incidentally had bought out another great Canadian company, Alcan:

"Australia's position in global resources is not guaranteed. If we fail to remain competitive, Australia will incur a substantial opportunity cost and, in the worst-case scenario, our resources will fall into overseas hands and we will become a branch office--just like Canada. ... We have been losing competitiveness, but we are well-placed to increase market share and we have the resources to do it, so Australia in the new world order needs to work out whether we become a competitor or a spectator."

What renews the discussion is the proposed takeover of Potash Corporation by that same BHP. My views are no different on this transaction than on the ridiculous sale of INCO and Falconbridge. We need to be owners, not rentiers; players, not spectators; conscious, not somnolent; proud, not resigned; risk takers, riot couch potatoes; leaders, not followers.

To my surprise, I find the editor-at-large of the National Post Diane Francis in agreement. Yes, she of the National Post. Here is what she said in a column where she was interviewing Stephen Jarislowsky, a well-known money manager in Montreal:

"In "my view, and Jarislowsky's, it is time to realize that Canada is targeted by companies that are bigger than some of our governments and will hollow our the nation. For instance...