Seven Oaks Magazine.

Team Canada has thus far been a big disappointment at this year's Olympics, prompting widespread hand wringing about this country's lack of commitment to athletic excellence, at least as measured in Athenian metal wares. Lost amidst the recriminations, though, has been a truly gold-worthy performance in cynical corporate advertising by Air Canada.

The struggling, allegedly cash-strapped, formerly public company has somehow summoned millions of dollars to bombard Olympic viewers with advertising. The theme is simple and bears the trademark of so much vapid, focus-grouped marketing catch phrases: It's amazing what you can accomplish by welcoming change. And so, in one clip, a male diver decides to join a synchronized swimming performance and, to the announcers' delight, excels as the only male aqua-dancer. Welcoming change yes, who could be opposed to that?

But Air Canada's soothing, quirky, 30-second clips subtly push another agenda, that of dismantling the hard-won wages and benefits structure of the company's thousands of employees. The cost-cutting push being carried out by Air Canada has repercussions beyond its own employees' conditions, and acts to drive down wages in subsidiary and supporting services. The latest targets of restructuring are the 650 members of UNITE HERE! Local 40, who work for Cara Airline Services Division, the food provider for Air Canada. Workers have maintained picket lines since August 18, striking in opposition to company demands of up to $2/hour rollbacks. (A mediator's wage freeze, two-tier proposal was also rejected. For more information on the strike, see the Local 40 website.)

In effect, workers at Cara are being asked to welcome a paycheque that amounts to little more than change. For strikers tuning in to the CBC's Brian Williams and company in Athens, Air Canada's ads will likely prove more enraging than the controversial results of the men's vault competition, in which Calgary's Kyle Shewfelt finished out of the medals.

In terms of the competition for the top prize in cynical marketing, only the George W. Bush election campaign comes close. It's an ad you have to see to believe, but here's a quick summary. The clip opens with a shot of Munich 1972, while the voice over explains that at those Olympic games, only 40 democracies participated. Today, in 2004, we are told, 140 democracies are represented and that, thanks to the resoluteness of W. himself, that number includes two new ones: Iraq and Afghanistan. Members of the Iraqi soccer team took the lead in condemning the ad. Midfielder Ahmed Manajid told Sports Illustrated that if he weren't playing soccer he would be fighting the occupation, and he defended the Iraqi people's right of resistance, I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists?" (SI.com, 'Iraqi soccer players angered by Bush campaign ads,' August 19, 2004)

But an American presidential race is bound to throw up crass television spots, and we've come to expect such clumsy imperial arrogance from the Bush administration. The Air Canada campaign is more disappointing; it is a striking reminder of the extent to which this country's infrastructure -- especially in transportation -- has been privatized. Canadian National Railway, for instance, now bears an extremely ironic name, having been privatized in 1995. Under the guidance of American CEO E. Hunter Harrison, there have been widespread lay-offs and attacks on the company's unionized workers.

Air Canada's marketing spending spree brings to mind questions about priorities in a capitalist economy in both the private and public sector. For a company so bent on bullying its unionized workers to accept major concessions, how can it spend so lavishly on these ads?

And, for the country in general, with a number of voices clamouring for more public spending on Olympic athletes, wouldn't an important public investment be to invest in and have, again, a national airline that prioritizes regional services over private profit?

But I guess that would require 'unprivatizing,' or nationalizing, as I believe it was once called. Now that would be a change in political direction worth welcoming.