Preserving Canadian sovereignty

Thursday, January 22 2004 @ 12:53 AM MST

Missile defence -- Mel Hurtig
Contributed by: sthompson

For those of you who may wish to pursue the vitally important NMD debate further, I suggest you go to www.ligi.ubc.ca and print out Canada and Ballistic Missile Defence (58 pages) by Ernie Regehr, the Director of Project Ploughshares, written on behalf of UBC's Liu Institute for Global Issues. (Try this link to the actual paper.) It's excellent, easily one of the best things written about the American plans for their dangerously destabilizing NMD program.

I also strongly recommend a book to be published next month by the University of Calgary Press, Canada and the New American Empire: War and Anti-War, edited by Professor George Melnyk, 255 pp, $19.95 trade paperback which may be ordered through any book store. You can check the www.uofcpress website.
Following is the unedited epilogue I was asked to write for the book:

"The Chretien government's decision not to join the American invasion of Iraq surprised and pleased most Canadians. Since the invasion, public opinion polls have consistently shown the majority of Canadians supported the government's decision and in recent months that support has grown even stronger.

As elsewhere, including in the United States, more and more the invasion is seen as an illegal and tragic imperialistic blunder which is well on the way to producing a Vietnam-like quagmire while generating widespread hatred and increasing terrorism around the world, with more and worse certain to come in the future.

The pressure on the Chretien government to join George W. Bush's ill-advised "pre-emptive" aggression was unrelenting. The threats from the likes of U.S. ambassadors Paul Cellucci and Gordon Giffin and Condoleezza Rice were blunt and arrogant. Canada was expected to join in and it would be "unthinkable" if we did not. Time magazine said "Canada could play a hefty price for the government's anti-war stance."

Meanwhile, our own plutocratic Americanizers were vociferous in their support for Bush,Rumsfeld and the pentagon. Most of our press weren't far behind. A Globe and Mail columnist wrote "Simply put, if we get too far from the Americans, we get punished."

Continentalist historian Jack Granatstein said that Canada has "no choice" but to cooperate fully with the United States. Stephen Harper and the Official Opposition were strongly in favour of going to war. So was virtually all of the powerful and influential big-business community in Canada, much of it foreign-owned and controlled.

Over and over, Canadians were warned about our vulnerability if we chose not to go to war. Our exports would be threatened, the border would be closed, further planned and anticipated integration in the form of "The Big Idea" and "The Grand Bargain" would be in danger.Our standard of living would be sure to plummet.

What was so remarkable about the Chretien decision was that since its election in 1993, the government has been the most continentalist, conservative Liberal government in modern Canadian history. With so many staunch American sycophants in the cabinet and on the backbenches, and with a foreign affairs department (DFAIT) that long ago forgot the meaning of words like sovereignty, independence and self-respect, it seemed that most likely "ready, aye ready!" would be the Canadian response.

Is there much doubt that that would indeed have been the Canadian response if Jean Chretien were not entering the last months of his reign as prime minister? I think not. Is there any doubt about what Paul Martin will do ? Once again I think not.

The public opinion polls continue to be revealing (despite some silly headlines in the National Post). Most Canadians want us to be independent of American domination, want us to support multilateralism, want us to preserve our own standards, values and quality of life. Yet, whatever pride we can take in relation to our principled decision re Iraq, the Paul Martin government will quickly trample in their uncompromising rush to join Bush's National Missile Defence plan, to integrate our military with the U.S. military, to join in behind "the perimeter", while selling off even more of the ownership and control of our country.

Anyone who is familiar with Bush's new Star Wars plan knows that it will result in the weaponizing of space, the destabilization of arms agreements, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the rapid development of more powerful nuclear weapons, and improved multiple-warhead missile delivery systems. For Canada to adopt a fawning, obsequious behavior in the face of such potential disaster will certainly end our ability to ever again demonstrate foreign and defence policy independence.

What agreements that Canada supports and in some cases helped initiate will we have to abandon because the U.S. doen't like them? Will it be the Land Mines Treaty? The International Criminal Court? The Small Arms Treaty? The U.N. Protocol on Developing, Producing or Stockpiling Biological or Toxic Weapons, or a long list of other international agreements the rogue Bush administration detests?

If Canada abandons its long-standing opposition to the weaponizing of space by supporting the NMD, and if we further integrate our military with the U.S. military, any proud remnant of our foreign policy legacy will be swept down the drain forever.

Paul Martin is a strong supporter of the WTO Doha round,the FTAA, the GATS, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, all with their mantras of privatization, deregulation and "the free flow of capial" (the euphemism for selling off the ownership and control of our country that is not already foreign-controlled).

This said, two-thirds of Canadians say that maintaining the sovereignty of Canada is the most important challenge facing our country, only eight per cent want us to become more like the United States, and three in five say that we are losing our independence from the U.S., while 89 per cent say that the quality of life is better in Canada than it is in The U.S.

Yet, with the Paul Martin government, we're going to be rapidly heading to even more integration, more harmonization, and more Americanizing policies, standards and values.

Timid Canadian continentalist cowards, and there are many of them in the federal government and in our business community, claim that we are so vulnerable to the U.S. that we really must toe the American line, or else. This is nonsense. 54 per cent of our entire trade surplus with the U.S. comes from our exports of oil, natural gas and electricity. We supply 99% of U.S. electricity imports, 94% of their natural gas imports, 17% of oil and 35% of their uranium used for power generation. To suggest that these exports are in any way vulnerable is absurd.

Then, if you subtract the huge annual U.S. surplus in services, mostly imports into Canada by American branch plants from their parent companies at inflated and very profitable non-arms-length prices, and then subtract the huge $30 billion-plus annual U.S. investment income surplus with Canada, our overall net surplus with the U.S. shrinks to well under one per cent of GDP.

Consider, too, that Canada is the number one customer of U.S. corporations and has been for the past 48 consecutive years.We buy more goods and services from the U.S. than all 15 European Union countries combined. U.S. exports to Canada, plus their investment income from Canada, exceed their income from any other country by an enormous $177 billion!

A proud, independent, self-confident Canada should be playing a much greater role in the United Nations, should be joining the post-Cancun group of nations (China, India, Brazil etc.) to counter the WTO establishment vision of corporate globalization, should quickly step up its foreign aid, should strongly support multilateral agreements to promote peace and disarmament, and should reject imperialism in all its forms. And say so loud and clear without reservation.

We can't do any of these things unless we stop the growth of the foreign ownership and control of our country. A colony doesn't have an independent foreign or defence policy. A colony's young men and women go off to fight the hegemony's wars, be it in the Middle East or in North Korea, or where have you.

Those of us who love our country, who value our freedom to chart our own future, those of us with children and grandchildren that we want to grow up to be Canadian, must do much more in the future than we have been doing if our wonderful country, so full of promise and opportunity, is to survive for our future generations.

And what a shining example we could be for other democracies. And what a tragedy it would be if we fail."

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