There’s something beautifully simple about hot dog-eating competitions.
The winner simply has to eat more dogs than his competitors for Major League Eating glory (and yes, such a league exists) — 54 in 10 minutes for those of champion ilk.
However, such simplicity is absent from man versus corporation contests, which is what Ken Masse of Malartic, Quebec is about to find out.
Masse is the last man standing in a homeowner holdout, pitted against a mining company eyeing the gold under his floorboards.
More than 200 of his neighbours have taken the Osisko Mining Corp. up on offers of home relocation and, as with any good corporate citizen, the company has also promised community facilities, including a new school and a seniors’ residence.
Osisko’s business plans have hinged on the good faith of citizens willing to relocate, even though there is no obligation to.
Or is there? That’s the millionaire dollar question for Masse, who has been a major pain in the backside for Osisko. The company’s mining operation is already underway, albeit around the lone dissenter’s home, which is surrounded by steel fencing and has been vacated by everyone in family but the man who refuses to budge.
There’s a train of thought that although Masse’s David vs. Goliath battle is admirable in principle, it’s more about principal — as in a longer hold out equals more money.
He claims that Osisko offered him $4 million for the home, which a company spokesperson refuted in a CBC radio interview, while pointing out Masse’s minority position among the townspeople (96.6 per cent have cut deals with Osisko), lauding the company’s fair treatment of homeowners (as well as a $50,000 renovating/decorating incentive in one “fair value” offer to Masse), and heralding the looming economic boom for the community.
The wordplay serves to demonize Masse’s stubborn refusal to bow to corporate pressure, especially with jobs and economic prosperity on the line.
His one-man stand does seem to be nonsensical, but as he points out, what happens down the road when the gold extraction is compete? When the town has been raped of its natural resources and the economy stops booming?
A drive across North America would be a good primer about the aftereffects once the corporate road show leaves town.
Promises of jobs and economic prosperity often end ruinously when the party’s over, as some towns, such as Flint, Michigan know too well.
The double-edged sword of corporate salvation and abandonment is something to chew on in a world where the rich get richer, sometimes by relocating the
“little people,” placated with financial incentives, along the way.
In Malartic, Osisko is sitting on 6.3 million ounces of inferred gold reserves in an open pit that is two kilometres long, 750-metres wide and deep enough to fit the Eiffel Tower. The pit is expected to return $1 billion in net profits over a 10-12 year period.
But will it get the gold under Masse’s house, the house he grew up and has no plans of relinquishing to a private company?
I think  we’d all like to believe that our homes are safe to remain ours, even when standing beneath the shadows of a corporate behemoth.
But then we’d be ignoring our court system and the law of expropriation, which gives the Crown the power to reclaim privately owned land for some things such as roads, schools, post offices and other public uses.
Osisko is already playing the expropriation card in it’s dealings with Masse, who most experts advise to settle now.
“He’s basically playing chicken and at some point he’s got to take the big offer,” said law professor Matthew Harrington in a Canadian Press report.
With no neighbours, wire fencing and an open pit mine surrounding his property, there’s precious little left of the life that Masse knew. His days living on the street in the house he grew up in are numbered.
Cutting a deal seems to be the only logical conclusion to this last man standing battle, in which a plucky homeowner stands to lose.
“If you’re a big enough company, you can go run to the government and have the government steal it for you,” wrote P.M. Jaworski on the Western Standard’s Shotgun Blog.
We don’t have to like it, though, especially Osisko’s attempts to vilify a homeowner.
“...this whole mess is being explained away as though Osisko isn’t busy trying to steal Masse's property through expropriation,” says Jaworski.
Nevertheless, it will be a shock if individual property rights are upheld in this case.
A more likely scenario is another victory for big business, which will only serve to dispel any illusion that living in a free country of cherished democratic ideals does not come exactly as billed.