Another Daddy Government worshipper who wants to blow taxpayers money instead of doing something called critical thinking and researching.

The column itself presents a simplistic and childish solution: Stelco workers are facing layoffs, so let’s turn Stelco into a crown corporation and let someone else do the thinking for us! Hurray!

You mean like Canada Post? Or Candu? Or CN? Or Northern Transportation Company Limited? Or Canadian Arsenals Limited? Or Canadair? Or de Havilland Canada? Or Teleglobe Canada? Or Air Canada? Or Ridley Terminals?

How about CBC who know their fair share of job losses? Or VIA Rail? Or the Royal Canadian Mint?

What about Nordion International? Or Petro-Canada? Or Theratronics International?

The federal government has a lousy track record.

The bigger question is why don’t we have Canadian private sector companies that can run a steel company?

The realistic alternative isn’t simply “find one patriotic Canadian billionaire.” It would need to be a Canadian consortium: a domestic operating partner, Canadian pension funds willing to take patient equity, steel customers with long-term purchase commitments, perhaps Ontario and federal minority stakes, and worker/community representation.

That consortium could still face layoffs; domestic ownership does not create demand for steel. But it would at least keep decisions about capacity, reinvestment, procurement and plant survival in Canada, rather than making Hamilton and Nanticoke dependent on the priorities of a U.S. parent balancing assets across the border.

The failure, therefore, is less “why is no Canadian firm able to run Stelco?” than why did Canadian industrial policy permit the pool of Canadian firms and financiers capable of owning and operating strategic heavy industry to become so thin, and then rely on confidential promises from a foreign buyer as the substitute?

Hard problems require hard questions and then harder solutions. Canada’s penchant to throw everything to the government is catching up with this country. The problem is we still have people who are still doing it and demanding more at the worst possible time.