Even a king's ransom isn't enough to silence all members of Canada's corporate elite from railing against high taxes.

Recently, two high-powered and high-paid captains of Canadian industry spoke out against our country's excessive tax burden. John Roth from Nortel, and David O'Brien from Canadian Pacific both lamented Canada's inability to stay tax competitive with the United States, where their firms are fast losing talented, young professionals.

It's encouraging to see that at least some of our business leaders may sympathize with the prevailing 'over-tax' sentiment shared by the majority of ordinary Canadians.

That being said, however, only a few of our country's top corporate executives have actually had the courage to step up to the plate and speak against Canada's high tax burden. Most of them are instead staying quiet, not wanting to ruin their chance to be a possible future beneficiary of federal largesse - one of the very reasons for our high taxes in the first place.

Ottawa, in fact, hands out billions in corporate welfare each year, with only a small fraction ever being repaid. It seems the federal government lavishes big business with subsidies and tax breaks to remind the corporate sector of their station, expecting them not to upset the apple cart.

But it's not just the feds that try to buy off the corporate elite. Our provincial government is also in the business of propping up business. The Saskatchewan government uses tens of millions of dollars of its resources (read: taxpayer's money) to provide grants, loans and loan guarantees to business every year.

And we are constantly reminded exactly where that gets us. Just flip open a newspaper and read about the downfall of the provincial government's Great Potato Project at Lucky Lake.

In the end, taxpayers are expected to suck it up in the name of the noble pursuit of nurturing "economic development".

Governments shouldn't be picking winners and losers in the first place. When they do, taxpayers are the first casualty. But the movement to cut taxes is often a close second. The isolated appeals of a few captains of industry will be no more successful than that of King Canute, the eleventh century Viking ruler, who sat on the shore commanding the tide to come no further.

The fight for lower taxes suffers a blow whenever business is bought-off by government. A recent editorial in the National Post amplified the point saying that, "the tax cut movement needs vocal advocates from the corporate sector, not weak-willed shills."

To be successful, the tax cut movement depends on the integration and co-operation of individuals, groups, and businesses to coalesce around the single most important reason for plunging worker's incomes and lagging corporate productivity - high taxes.

The movement must raise an army of tax-fatigued Canadians from all quarters who are prepared to fight for fair and reasonable taxes. Otherwise, our governments will just pick-off and divide each segment of taxpayers one-by-one with special deals, subsidies and tax breaks.