Research Paper on:
Elite Role in Government and Business Relationships of Canada

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
especially the transportation, agricultural and those businesses associated with natural resources. During the 1980s however, the corporate elites are said to have been especially influential in regards to the Mulroney  governments decision to promote free trade, the privatization and deregulation of industries in addition to the cuts in the welfare and other social programs. Since that time, the relationship between  the Canadian government and the Canadian business elite has remained strong, promotional and protectionist (Ornstein and Stevenson, 2003). According to Stephen McBride, author of "Paradigm Shift: Globalization and the  Canadian State", "Canadas capitalist class, historically always fragmented, became sufficiently well-organized and coherent in the 1980s to effectively pressure the then-Conservative government of Brian Mulroney to adopt free trade with  the U.S. manufacturers ... [and] within Canadian-based organizations such as the Business Council on National Issues, the consensus was that a free-trade arrangement would greatly reduce the potential for capricious  behavior on the part of the American trade authorities" (McBride, 2001; Bakvis, 2003, p. 141). McBride also argues that it was the same corporate elite which pressured the same government  to cut back on social programs in which these policies when combined with the growth in free trade have both led Canada to become more dependent on trade with the  U.S. than before (with 87% of exports and 75% of imports) in addition to Canadas social system being at risk in that American medical health care insurance providers may argue  that it is discriminatory if they are not allowed to enter the Canadian market (McBride, 2001; Bakvis, 2003). Rather than seeing Canadas shift into the free trade agreement as a  component of participation in globalization, McBride sees the shift as definitely the "result of decisions deliberately and freely made by Canadian governments (federal and provincial) and economic elites [but] the