On June 20, at the U.S. Shooting Academy in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Canada’s Bruce Power LLP Swat Team won the National SWAT Championships for the second year in a row. The Bruce Power Swat Team excelled in a range of multiple events including bus assault, multi-gun shootout and Taser team takedown.
As proud as Bruce Power may be of this accomplishment, there is something fundamentally chilling and ominous when corporate security is no longer bound or limited to defensive observatory tactics, dependent upon government -owned and -controlled law enforcement agencies answerable to the public.
Why should we be concerned?
Discounting the many decent obedient and subservient human beings that it employs, a corporation enjoys the distinction and legal definition as that of an “individual.”
The corporate “individual” has a legal mandate to relentlessly pursue its own financial interests on behalf of its owners.
Corporate managers and officers who fail to make money in this pursuit are subject to dismissal and possible lawsuits.
So in the name of competition, a corporation’s guile and successfully unbridled pursuit of its own financial interests is routinely celebrated; regardless of the harm it causes individuals, the environment, or society.
This is not an opinion; it is well-documented that corporate social responsibility is measured in dollars and cents.
Profitable illegal activities are measured against the legal and social penalties.
As long as the penalties incurred are less than the profits gained, the illegal action will continue and the penalties will be calculated as a cost of doing business.
The simple truth is there is no moral compass guiding corporate behaviour.
Corporations are incapable of empathy or concern for others and do not have a conscience. Corporations try to manipulate everything, including public opinion, solely for financial gain at the measured expense of all else.
Psychiatrists and psychologists tell us that individuals that exhibit this behaviour are clinically diagnosed as psychopaths!
So as Bruce Power LLP celebrates its second paramilitary SWAT victory, we need to ask ourselves as a civil democratic society, what if any limits do we want to put on corporate ownership of a paramilitary force with offensive capabilities. It’s a valid question!
Putting aside the debate on gun control and gun registration, do we really want a clinically diagnosed psychopathic individual (a corporation) owning and operating a paramilitary force, or is it time we re-evaluated the role and responsibilities of the corporate entity in our society with a view to redefining and limiting corporate size and power?
Joe Anglin
Rimbey