Yesterday, I went to my bank to get details about a car loan. Somehow the loans officer almost signed me up for the bank credit card, something I really didn’t need. Canadian banks have reached their saturation point for the market: there is not a lot of growth for new customers (stealing them from other banks). However, they offer new products to current customers, so there is always a lot of upselling when you visit a banker.
I took a great marketing course from Heriot-Watt University — and learned a lot about business. One of the better take-aways is that companies that are not trying to expand eventually contract and disappear. There is no staying the same. There might be a lot of truth to this statement, but I think this expand-or-die mantra is well drummed into the MBA training.
I took special note of your Item B: Lobbying.
As a former small business owner, I participated in the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce. I thought we had a fair degree of lobbying power with our municipal and provincial government. So it’s not quite right to say that small business has little lobbying power. There are ways for collective participation.
And I would say that not all lobbying is bad. Our politicians need to hear from all sides before making their decision. And lobbyists provide an efficient mechanism to do that. Politicians are more apt to listen to a chamber delegation that has 30 small businesses signed on than 30 small businesses each trying to get a half-hour appointment with the politician to state their case.
Having said that, there is a perception that business-runs-government, which has some truth to it. We need to change that reality/perception around. We need to develop a system of elected governance where the elected politicians are not dependent on business donations.
