07) FIRE KEVIN O'LEARY
By Johan Boyden, General Secretary, Young Communist League of Canada
Speaking at an anti‑austerity campaign meeting in January, I was happy to hear spontaneous applause from the audience after announcing the launch of a new campaign to be led by the magazine of the Young Communist League, Rebel Youth.
"Fire Kevin O'Leary" is urging the CBC to dismiss this notorious venture capitalist "dragon." O'Leary appears almost daily as a business commentator and in various reality TV shows. O'Leary is abusing his position at the CBC to explicitly promote his own for‑profit businesses. He is hijacking the public broadcaster with a socially destructive message of corporate greed, privatization, selfishness, and austerity.
As most People's Voice readers know, Kevin O'Leary is a multi‑millionaire and owner of the asset management company O'Leary Funds. He has appeared with Amanda Lang on CBC's The Lang and O'Leary Exchange since 2009, and stars on the shows Dragons Den and its US counterpart, Shark Tank on ABC.
The CBC's administration likes to talk about how these shows are wildly popular. But I think they are really about catering to the Harper Tory government and its "slash-and-burn economic action plan". It is ironic that the CBC seems to have become a bastion of right‑wing commentators like Rex Murphy and Don Cherry. In this group, O'Leary stands out as a chief spokesperson for the vicious agenda of "money‑over‑everything" and "greed is good," which is being used as an ideological battering ram against young workers and all people in Canada.
Thus he is the face of the poverty‑creators, the job‑destroyers, the union‑busters ‑ basically, of the austerity agenda. I was not surprised to find that Google prompts the phrase "Kevin O'Leary is a jerk" when you type his name into the search engine.
O'Leary's nasty approach has got him into hot water more than once. Researching for the campaign, YCL Ontario organizer Drew Garvie found a series of cases where O'Leary called unions a "parasite" on business.
"Elect me as Prime Minister for 15 minutes," O'Leary says. "I will make unions illegal. Anybody who remains a union member will be thrown in jail." He adds that "Unions are sheer evil [...] Unions themselves are born out of evil. They must be destroyed with evil", and "no one could contain unions in hell. They were so evil they came out of hell and they came upon earth."
These remarks, which could have come out of the mouth of a fascist dictator, prompted several complaints. The National Union of Public and Government Employees wrote that "Trade unionists are beaten and murdered in many countries around the world, simply because they believe in workers acting collectively to improve workplace conditions such as pay, hours of work, health and safety, and job security. [...] Mr. O'Leary's wilful promotion of contempt and hatred towards unions reflects a viewpoint that has often ended in violence perpetrated against union members and leaders."
The CBC Ombudsperson, however, refused to intervene.
More of O'Leary's remarks are in the new issue of Rebel Youth. The campaign will also demand full restoration of government funding to the CBC. In its early stages, the campaign so far features an online petition and some publicity information, with plans to take it to the streets as well.
(The above article is from the February 1-14, 2013, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)