Abraham Rotstein

Abraham Rotstein    (economist)
Born	10 April 1929
Died	27 April 2015 (Age 86)
Nationality	Canadian
Ethnicity	Jewish
Alma mater	McGill University, Columbia University, University of Toronto
Spouse	Diane Whitman
Interests	Karl Polanyi
Canadian economist and proponent of Canadian economic nationalism who attended Bilderberg/1971.  Senior Fellow In office 1973 - 2008 Employer University of Toronto Preceded by Chris Donnelly, Jaap Kymmell Attended Bilderberg/1971

Abraham 'Abe' Rotstein was a Canadian economist and proponent of Canadian economic nationalism. He attended the 1971 Bilderberg conference.

Background

Rotstein grew up in a Jewish family in Toronto during the Great Depression. He was a leader in the local Zionist Habonim Dror youth movement and "he inspired and educated a wide range of young people in the Zionist idea".

He completed his BA at McGill University in 1949. He studied economics briefly at the University of Chicago, and then Columbia University before getting a doctorate from the University of Toronto.

He married Diane Whitman, a hematologist who had come from the U.S. to do research at Toronto's Princess Margaret Hospital, in 1965.

Career

After some time as an economist at Canadair (now Bombardier), he moved to academia, and got a position at the University of Toronto.

Intellectually, he was a student of Karl Polanyi, a Hungarian-Jewish economist who ended up in Canada and whose proposed that free-market capitalism is a historical rather than a natural phenomenon.

He was active in the teach-in movement of the 1960s against the Vietnam War.

He was one of eight economists appointed by Walter Gordon, finance minister in Lester Pearson's Liberal government, to a task force on Canadian industry. The resulting Watkins Report of 1968, which recommended strict controls on foreign ownership of Canadian resources and businesses, led to the establishment of the Canada Development Corp. and the Foreign Investment Review Agency.

He edited Canadian Forum magazine, and helped found the Committee for an Independent Canada in co-operation with fellow Bilderberger Walter Gordon.

Rotstein published The Precarious Homestead, perhaps his most famous book, in 1973.

Rotstein "became the leader of nationalism on the left", which had previously only been spoused only by Conservatives, like John Diefenbaker, who was toppled because of it. Rotstein was fiercely opposed to free trade and predicted that it would destroy Canadian industry and regress Canada to the status of exporter of primary commodities. Rotstein was concerned foreign corporations would buy up Canadian resources and corporations and that Canada would lose control over its own economic fate. In 1970, he wrote that the prospects for Canada liberating itself from the grip of globalization, or what he called corporate American control, were grim. "Of all peoples on earth, Canadians are least able to understand the process of Americanization."

He spent his last 25 years running the William Southam Journalism Fellowship program at Massey College, University of Toronto, where he was a senior fellow, advising scores of mid-career journalists.

In his late 60s, by which time social mores had become more relaxed, Rotstein came out as gay and joined a circle of older gay men – teachers, business executives, lawyers, accountants, people in the arts – who called themselves the Fraternity.

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/1971	23 April 1971	25 April 1971	US Vermont Woodstock Woodstock Inn	The 20th Bilderberg, 89 guests

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