Ontario Government may block stock exchange merger

Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan is pulling a Potash and saying that the TMX is a “strategic resource” and perhaps shouldn’t merge with the London Stock Exchange. His main rational against the merger is that a part owner will be the ruler of Dubai:

“We do business with the Middle East,” Mr. Duncan told reporters at Queen's Park on Friday. “I am just not sure I want them owning our stock exchange.”

Is it just me or does this sound vaguely prejudices? I don’t usually jump to the racist conclusion but there are two elements of this statement that makes it spring to mind. First that he is lumping a huge and diverse group of people together and second that he is denying any member of that group a right based on their membership in that group.

I would like Mr. Duncan to clarify if he meant that no one from the Middle East should be allowed to own a portion of the stock exchange, or did he mean that this particular person should not be allowed? And I would like to hear his justification in either case.

Another statement made by Minister Duncan has me scratching my head:

“If you went to try to buy the Dubai stock exchange, do you think you’d be able to?,” he said. “If you tried to by a resource based industry in China do you think you’d be able to?”

Umm…no you wouldn’t and the reason you wouldn’t is because neither country is a free society. There are a lot of things that I can do in Ontario that I couldn’t do in China or Dubai. This is not an argument for Ontario to emulate these countries. It is an argument for why Ontario is better than these countries.

It sounds like the Government of Ontario is preparing to use the same old tired xenophobic arguments to block freedom of trade.