Jerry_ackerman

Jeff Green | Jan 19, 2006

Feature Article

Please send a note to The Frontenac News and your e-mail address will be added to our notification list.

Jerry Ackerman:Anti-NAFTACrusader

by Jeff Green

No one could call Jerry Ackerman a follower. He takes an independent view on every issue. Fortunately for him, and for the Canadian Action Party that he represents in this election, Jerry Ackerman agrees wholeheartedly with two of the party’s basic tenets: Canada should pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); and the Bank of Canada should resume the role it played before 1972, when it ceased to carry the national debt.

Jerry Ackerman was born and raised on the Wagarville-5th Depot road between Tamworth and Parham. He was the first person from his public school to go on to high school. He boarded in Tamworth and attended high school there, and then went on to Napanee for grade 13. His academic career did not end there, as he then received a scholarship to Cornell University in New York. After obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree at Cornell, he went to the Ontario Agricultural College, which was located in Guelph but was part of the University of Toronto. After receiving his Masters of Science in Agriculture from the University of Toronto, he went on to earn a doctorate at Purdue University in Agricultural Economics.

He worked in Alberta briefly for the Department of Agriculture before spending years on the faculty at the University of Manitoba. In the 1980’s he changed career paths, moved to Nova Scotia, where he owned a campground and restaurant, and fixed up an old motel. Through the years he has also worked as a financial analyst, and has written a book on do-it-yourself investing. He now lives during the winter on his family land at Wagarville and summers in Nova Scotia.

Jerry Ackerman has become so incensed by the “stealing of the country by the Americans” that he felt he had to do something. “It made me mad enough and angry enough to run for office. I won’t stop talking about this on January 24; this issue is too important to stop talking about.”

He says that NAFTA has made it impossible for Canada to maintain an independent economic policy. As well, the fact that the $500 billion Canadian debt is in the hands of the chartered banks and foreign interests has led to many of the budget problems facing the country.

As an ardent nationalist, Ackerman also laments the fact that Canada does not have a national oil company.

“It was sold off by the Conservatives and the Liberals. So even though we have tremendous oil reserves, we are paying high gas prices, and NAFTA forces us to sell oil to the United States at the same price we sell it to ourselves. We’d be much better off if we used the Venezuelan example. They have a national oil company, and they charge themselves 17 cents a litre for gas. Seventeen cents, think about it,” he says.

Jerry Ackerman is also concerned that the Canadian military budget is being managed from Washington and worries that this will escalate should the Conservative Party form a government after next week’s election.