ABSTRACT
Privatization in Canada has occurred on a less dramatic scale than in Great Britain, New Zealand or France, far less than that under way in Eastern Europe. Canada has not embarked on a wholesale change in the economic order, although it has mirrored the 1980s’ fashion of scaling back and reshaping the state’s role in the market. It is perhaps because of the mildness of the Canadian shift that we have found it useful in our own research1 on the privatization process to subsume the many forms of privatization under the more general phenomenon of divestment. As Coyne and Wright (1986) observe, public sector restructuring through privatization is analogous to divestment in the private sector (Ellsworth 1979, Gilmour, 1973, Hamermesh 1976, Hayes 1972, Nees 1981, Porter 1976). The phenomena covered by private sector divestment are also diverse.
