Today the media are clamouring for Belinda Stronach to run for the leadership of the newly cobbled together Conservative Party of Canada. Once she declares, that will change. In the words of Toronto Star business columnist David Olive, "She will, of course, be torn to shreds."

Let’s hope so.

Casting a glance over her résumé, I find not one single achievement or public service credential to qualify as dogcatcher, let alone leader of a major political party and — potentially — head of state.

Her supporters beg to differ.

Some even say this is her greatest strength. The National Post, a paper not known to be hard on the united right or on billionaires, ran her smiling picture under the headline: "A blank slate". The subhead went further: "No one knows what Stronach stands for. That’s her appeal."

She is really, really rich which some say is credential enough. They usually go on to say that attacking Stronach because she is rich is a form of discrimination, as if billionaires are somehow an oppressed minority, poor babies.

If you are from the Billionaire’s Defence League, stop reading now. When it comes to billionaires, and especially billionaires who try to buy they way into political leadership, I’m downright bigoted.

She is CEO and President of Magna International, one of the world’s biggest producers of auto parts. And she thinks so well of her brilliance that she paid herself $12,578,675 in 2003, making her Canada’s fourth highest paid executive.

(She still has a way to go to beat her proud papa, Frank Stronach, Chair of Magna’s board. Frank is perennially Canada’s best-paid boss, "earning" $52,137,280 in 2003.)

She has also served for several years on something called the Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress, which reports to something called the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity (ICAP).

Created by the Mike Harris government in 2001, this is one of those "not for profit" bodies that is all for profit.

It is made up of Bay Street types as well as representatives of the education and health "industries". It is an ideological blunt instrument like the Fraser Institute or the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, an "objective" voice calling for more privatization, deregulation and restructuring.

As part of ICAP, Stronach participated in the World Economic Forum, the annual orgy of corporate honchos and the politicians who love them. The WEF picked Stronach as one its "Global Leaders of Tomorrow".

The WEF is not alone in admiration of Belinda Stronach. Fortune Magazine ranks her number two on its list of the world’s most powerful women in business. And high-powered executive hiring firm Caldwell Partners named her one of Canada’s "Top 40 Under 40".

So Stronach is rich, and other rich people seem to like her. And lots of real-life politicians seem to like her as well. Mike Harris has endorsed her leadership. So has Ralph Klein.

While Klein’s admiration may be unbiased, Harris’s is suspect. Stronach is his boss.

Frank and Belinda Stronach collect politicians like some people collect string. The Magna board of directors, past and present, stars a who’s who of political scumbags: Mike Harris, Bill Davis and Brian Mulroney, Brian Tobin, David Peterson, Doug Young, Ed Lumley, Dennis Mills and Bob Rae (as the Beaver.)

With character references like these, who are we, the Canadian people, to disagree?

Look, I don’t think Stronach is stupid, nor do I buy the idea that behind that bland, blonde face is a "blank slate". She has lots of ideas, inherited along with her wealth and corporate power from her father.

The Stronach fortune is based, not on the brilliance of Frank nor the business acumen of Belinda, but on union busting.

Magna grew thanks to the concession contracts that the auto industry won beginning in the 1970’s, that allowed the big carmakers to buy their car parts from outsource, non-union shops. Magna remains a bastion of anti-union corporatism, thanks in large part to the legislative backing of the above listed political hacks.

And Belinda, like father Frank, is a steadfast supporter and financier of the right wing. They helped fund the Canadian Alliance. They were major sponsors of the united right Conservative Party. They gave millions to Mike Harris’s "Common Sense Revolution".

Overseas, the Stronachs retain personal and business connections with the far right in Frank’s native Austria. They have funded rightwing Austrian Parties, including the Freedom Party of Nazi apologist and racist Joerg Haider.

I believe Stronach is no blank slate. I believe she is a fully functioning member of a tiny international class who believes without question in their right to rule over us. Their wealth is the measure of their superiority over us.

Is Belinda Stronach electable? How the hell do I know? I bet the people of California would turn thumbs down on Arnold.

But I do know that Stronach stands for some very clear values: she is for globalization; she is for privatization and profiteering; she is against unions; she is for corporate control over the admittedly limited institutions of our democracy.

She stands diametrically opposed to the real interests of the vast majority of Canadians.

Come to think of it, she’s not all that different from Paul Martin, is she?