Curtis: Should Canadian corporations be permitted to do business with corrupt and repressive regimes?
Adjunct Professor at Queen's University and Chair of Statistics Canada's Advisory Committee on International Trade Statistics
Canadian business, whether “permitted” or not, should not do business with corrupt regimes (governments and responsible private sector interests are working in different ways and through different mechanisms to stamp out corruption in every corner of the world), but doing business with so-called repressive regimes is a different matter. There is no definition of repression, every society has elements of it, and not doing business with such regimes, however defined, will take away an important instrument….that is, the instrument of “socialization.”