RoboContractors

If the Public Prosecution Service of Canada is so concerned that Michael Sona's nine month sentence for election fraud is "demonstrably unfit and fails to reflect the gravity of the offence” - so concerned in fact that they are appealing to have his sentence increased - why don't they direct that same concern towards investigating the Pierre Poutine perps behind him? 
Especially given both the judge and prosecutor in the case stated that Sona didn't act alone.

So reasons the Council of Canadians in their new formal complaint to the PPSC.

“PPSC is not an investigative agency,” responded PPSC spokesey Dan Brien. “It’s not in our mandate to initiate, conduct or direct investigations.”

Meh, said a spokesey for Elections Canada Commissioner Yves Côté, who now falls under the purview of the PPSC thanks to the Fair Elections Act, noting that the case is now closed as far as they are concerned unless someone submits a formal complaint or new information comes to light. 

“We conducted an investigation. All of the evidence that we found was presented to the Crown,” Michelle Laliberte told Global News.

"Asked if the office has received more information, Laliberte said, “Not at this point.”

Really?  
Andrew Prescott's immunity-protected testimony that he logged out of his own RackNine account on election day only to log back in again a few minutes later onto the Pierre Jones/Poutine account on the instructions of Guelph election campaign chair Ken Morgan who decamped to Kuwait after refusing to be interviewed by Elections Canada - that isn't "new" or "more" information? Isn't a new lead? Isn't worthy of further investigation, if not a few subpoenas?

You know, it's really too bad Canada lacks a national police force who could look into this kind of crime on our behalf when they aren't busy dragging a 61 year old woman off her walker and throwing her to the ground and handcuffing her for being unclear what was being asked of her, or protecting foreign oil corporations from local protesters or First Nations, or protecting themselves from the possibility of staples, or shooting a vet with PTSD twice in the back and killing him on his own property because they didn't have a warrant to follow him into his house or .... where the hell was I? Oh yeah ...

In the absence of any interest from the horsemen, and for an idea of how much help Council of Canadians can expect from the Elections Canada Commissioner this time round in their bid to have the Poutine case in Guelph re-opened, lets have a look at the commissioner's response to their request for help in their March 2012 election fraud court case, launched on behalf of six plaintiffs from six ridings :

In early August. Commissioner Yves Cote refused to give a federal court more details on its ongoing investigation into the robocalls scandal.

To avoid sharing the information, Cote filed for a special exemption, saying releasing it would “encroach upon the public interest,” and that “public disclosure of information from a partially completed investigation carries the serious risk of compromising the investigation by, among other things, influencing the testimony of witnesses, impairing the ability to verify information already obtained and affecting the willingness of witnesses to speak.”

And then, as far as anyone knows, some time after that they just stopped.

Jan 1 2015 Update : Elections Canada confirms total lack of interest in pursuing election fraud.

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RoboCon lawyers : It's all about Steve and money

... argued Con lawyer Arthur Hamilton today as he attempted to have the robo/live fraud calls case thrown out of Federal Court before it even begins.
Eight voters in 6 ridings, backed by the Council of Canadians, are asking the judge to overturn the election results in their ridings.

Shorter Arthur :
1) Council of Canadians doesn't like Steve.
2) The applicants' lawyer Steve Shrybman doesn't like Steve.
Therefore ... um ... I'm losing the legal argument here ...

Oh here we go : Pogge : You're only allowed to challenge an election result if you voted for the winner. 

Back in September, Arthur wanted the 8 voters to put up a $250,000 security deposit in order to get into court at all. Apparently in his view, defending democracy is a frivolous pursuit best left to people with a quarter of a million dollars to spare. 
Or as Judge Mosley asked him when he brought it up again today : "So we leave it to the wealthy?"
                                *cough* Court Challenges Program *cough*

Besides, continued shorter Arthur, the Council of Canadians stands to gain financially from backing this case, and from getting a brand new database of donors : "They're going to come out ahead." 
Thanks for the reminder, Arthur. Donate here.

Hamilton also unhappy that witness pollster Frank Graves of EKOS, whose statistical study on voter suppression is part of the applicants' case, donated $236 to Iggy or Rae or maybe the Libs but Graves' donation docs aren't clear which and neither is Graves.
Oh - brilliant witness credibility smackdown there, Arthur : Graves also donated to a Con candidate. 
Anyway, Arthur, please read Pogge again above.

So the election fraud case is all about Steve and money, according to Arthur so far.

I'm snagging all this live off twitter. 
To follow along at home :
CBC Laura Payton and Ottawa Citizen Liveblog

And a reminder of the 6 ridings represented in court here :

Nipissing-Timiskaming, Ont. won by Con Jay Aspin by 18 votes
Yukon, won  by Con Ryan Leef by 132 votes; 
Elmwood-Transcona, Man., won by Con Lawrence Toet by 300 votes  
Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, Sask., won by Con Kelly Block by 538 votes
Winnipeg South Centre, Man., won  by Con Joyce Bateman by 722 votes  
Vancouver Island North, B.C., won  by Con John Duncan by 1827 votes
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RoboConch! We're not in Guelph anymore, Robo

In August Elections Canada updated the total number of misleading phone call complaints in the last federal election to 1,394 complaints, alleging specific instances from people in 234  of Canada’s 308 federal ridings

Now we get some concrete evidence. Elections Canada obtained phone records from Shaw and Videotron to verify complaints in 56 separate ridings across Ontario, BC, Alberta, Manitoba, and Quebec. They were released to lawyers in Federal Court yesterday.

1,043 complaints are from voters who say they were directed to a wrong polling station by callers, 625 of them from live or recorded callers “claiming to emanate from Elections Canada.” 

And that's just from two phone service providers.
The new docs from outside Guelph, before and on May 2, detail a widespread vote suppression campaign : mostly robo and live callers pretending to be from EC as they direct people to wrong or non-existent polling stations, pretending to be the NDP phoning people up several times in a night between 2 and 5am, and rude canvassing from fake Liberals. 

Also in August we heard from McMaher that brand new EC Commissioner Yves Côté "declined to hand over robocalls investigation data to Federal Court", citing that it would "encroach upon the public interest".

So how come their big data release yesterday?
Well ...Council of Canadians posted last week's correspondence between EC and Steve Shrybman, lawyer for the plaintiffs in the six contested ridings. [Page 70]
Feel free to add Christopher Walken/Danny DeVito voices as you read my shorter version :

Shrybman : Yo, EC!  Those docs I asked for - the Guelph stuff with Allan Mathews' sworn statements - where are they? The ones the Con respondents say are inadmissible and all just hearsay. 

EC : It is all just hearsay. 

Shrybman : Sorry to hear you feel that way. I guess we'll just have to get Mathews on the stand to swear it isn't hearsay. Yeah, that way we can ask him a few more questions while we're at it.  

EC : Uh ... hey guess what! - we just scored these brand new docs for you today! 

Shrybman : Real nice doing business with you, EC.

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RoboCon : Margin of Victory Voter Fraud

As a follow up to my earlier chart showing Steve's Margin of Victory in ridings with the closest vote margins, I've adjusted it to include only the seven being contested in Federal Court for voter fraud and added two columns of polling data from an EKOS research paper based on a recent phone survey of 4,797 voters. It compares 106 ridings where there were no reports of suspicious activity to the seven ridings where there was a lot - election phone calls made to voters to identify who they intended to vote for followed up by a call falsely telling them their polling station had moved.
Only one of them - Vancouver Island North - had an actual polling station change.

So according to the Ekos poll, if you lived in Winnipeg South Centre, for example, where the Cons took the riding by only 1.8% of the vote, you had a 71% chance of getting a phone call asking you who you were going to vote for. And if you subsequently got a follow-up call regarding polling stations, you had a 30% chance of being told your polling station had changed even though it hadn't.

If however you lived in one of the 106 other ridings used as a control group, you had a 44 % chance of being asked your voting intention and only a 14.7% chance of later being given false polling station info.

From Council of Canadians, who commissioned the EKOS poll and are supporting the court actions :

Other key findings across all seven ridings:

• 16.9% of eligible voters received calls related to polling stations. Of those, 22.3% were told of polling station location changes (amounting to 3.77% of eligible voters).
• Of those who were told of polling station changes, the voter intentions were as follows: Liberals 32.6%, Greens 28%, NDP 25.6%, and Conservatives 10%.
• 42.5% of eligible voters who received calls related to polling stations had a call claiming to be from Elections Canada.

And I can already feel a chilly if friendly wind blowing from the infinitely more rigorous Alice Funke at Pundits' Guide who would never mix up apples and hand grenades like this in the same chart - adding a polling sample onto Elections Canada Official Voting Results.
But if the EKOS poll is accurate, then up to 15% of the vote in those seven closest vote margin ridings -some 50,000 people - received phone calls deliberately intended to suppress the non-Steve vote.


Here's one to a couple in Nipissing-Timiskaming - margin of victory : 18 votes.

During the campaign, Hearst received a voter-identification call from the Conservatives, to which she responded negatively. On election day, after he had voted, Ferance, 66, received a call from a 647 area code — in Toronto — that claimed to be from Elections Canada, telling him that his polling station had moved to a location about 20 kilometres away. 

"I said to him you're obviously a government employee, because that information is totally wrong," said Ferance. "It's wrong because A, I just voted, B, I live next door to the voting station, and C, I can still see people coming and going."

From the sworn affidavit of former RMG employee Annette Desgagne to the Federal Court of Canada :

"17. I also specifically recall that I made Change of Address Calls and talked to people in the riding of Nipissing-Timiskaming about changes of address for their polling stations because I could not pronounce the word "Timiskaming" and had to find out how to say it properly."

Margin of victory riding data from Elections Canada Official Voting Results Table 12.
Last two columns in chart taken from data in EKOS Study

OK-now-you're-just-screwing-with-our-heads update : 
PM's mail room may have shredded historical documents 
Why? Because the mail room was so swamped 3 days after the last election
Oh ---oopsy, a shredding incident.
Did the historical documents come from the Historica-Dominion Institute by any chance?
And Jesus Rose Mary Woods and Joseph, I'll bet even employees at friggin Dairy Queen have to initial registered mail packages they receive.
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Son of SPP : The Sequel

Well, it's back. The 'one security perimeter' deep integration SPP/FTAA zombie, now with new and improved emphasis on security.

You're shocked, I'm sure.

Like it ever really died.

The re-animators just learned not to dig it up and parade it around in parliament too often.

"Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Competitiveness"

"A Declaration by the President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister of Canada."

"We share responsibility for the safety, security and resilience of Canada and the United States and we intend to address threats at the earliest point possible, including outside the perimeter of our two countries"

reads a draft agreement yet to be signed by Harper and President Barack Obama.

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Les Whittington at The Star :

" In what could be the biggest challenge to Canadian sovereignty since free trade in the 1980s, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is secretly cooking up a deal with the Obama administration that would give Washington a much bigger say in Canada’s border security, immigration controls and information-sharing with American law-enforcement agencies."

Naturally there's a working group to handle the implementation -isn't there's always some extra-parliamentary working group to handle the implementation? This one - "Beyond the Border Working Group" - is staffed by officials from the Privy Council in Ottawa and National Security Staff in the White House.

The US is also currently negotiating a similar deal with Mexico called New Border Vision, and the foreign ministers from all three countries are meeting in Ottawa in four days.

Chris Sands of the Hudson Institute - and author of Negotiating North America, the closest thing we have to a manual on implementing deep integration security - says it's all about "trying to boost security by exchanging more information, rather than fortifying the border" :

"But it's taken us [Canada and the US] a while to see the world in the same way"

Sands is not always this diplomatic. Two years ago he addressed a security conference in Ottawa.

Sands :

"... homeland security is the gatekeeper with its finger on the jugular affecting your ability to move back and forth across the border, the market access upon which the Canadian economy depends.

In exchange for continued visa-free access to the United States, American officials are pressuring the federal government to supply them with more information on Canadians. Not only about (routine) individuals but also about people that you may be looking at for reasons, but there's no indictment and there's no charge."

Sands then recounted a conversation he had with Stewart Baker, the assistant secretary of policy at the Department of Homeland Security :

"Canadians have "had a better deal than anybody else in terms of access to the United States and for that they've paid nothing." Now "we want to give you less access, but we want you to pay more and, by the way, we're standardizing this (with other visa-free countries) so you're not special anymore."

Well certainly that's an assessment Harper would have no trouble with.

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Stuart Trew at Council of Canadians, yesterday :

"Canada has armed and secured itself to the teeth to satisfy the U.S. but no new perimeter plan can bring the U.S. economy back to life. That’s the real reason trade is down across the border."

John Manley, former Liberal deputy prime minister and now president of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, yesterday :

"The real question will be what do we get at the border in exchange for greater co-ordination on security."

Back in 2005 when he was Canada Chair of the deep integration project, 2005 Independent Task Force on the Future of North America, Manley wrote :

"The Task Force's central recommendation is establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community, the boundaries of which would be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter."

.Are we going to let them get away with it this time?

WELL, ARE WE ?

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James Laxer : Stop Fortress North America

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The SPP is dead; long live the PPA

Last week spp.gov, the official US home of the SPP, read:

"The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) is no longer an active initiative and as such this website will act as an archive for SPP documents. There will not be any updates to this site."

This week it seems they did think of an update after all. spp.gov :

"Going forward, we want to build on the accomplishments achieved by the SPP and further improve our cooperation."

We are then redirected to the Joint Statement by the North American Leaders (August 10, 2009) [excerpt mine] :

"Our three governments recognize that we cannot limit our efforts to North America alone, and we have agreed to instruct our respective Ministers to strive for greater cooperation and coordination as we work to promote security and institutional development with our neighbors in Central America and the Caribbean ...

We commend the progress achieved on reducing unnecessary regulatory differences and have instructed our respective Ministers to continue this work by building on the previous efforts, developing focused priorities and a specific timeline. "

So in other words - expanding some version of the SPP of North America to include Central and South America as well.

Didn't this used to be called the FTAA, the spectacularly FAIL Free Trade Area of the Americas ?
You know : "We, the democratically elected Heads of State and Government of the Americas, have met in Quebec City at our Third Summit, to renew our commitment to hemispheric integration." Followed by 100,000+ protesters, rubber bullets, and so much tear gas that the we-the-democratically-elected could smell it inside their summit.

Enter FTAA Plan B - Bush's final gift to Obama in Sept 2008
The Pathways to Prosperity of the Americas was announced at the headquarters of the corporate lobby group Council of the Americas.
Heide Bronke, U.S. State Department, in the Miami Herald in 2008:

''Eleven leaders in the hemisphere met with our president and stood with him in a project aimed at expanding economic integration. This is not just free trade, it's a political vision for the hemisphere."

Current member states : US, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay

The rightwing Heritage Foundation : Finding Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas

"The PPA is an attempt to re-energize U.S. government and regional efforts to enlarge a free trade area in the Western Hemisphere and create positive momentum for open-market policies that will carry over into the next Administration.

Styled in part after other current efforts to improve economic relations with key trade and investment partners--such as the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (U.S., Canada, and Mexico) - the PPA would provide a forum for not only finding avenues to improve the flow of commerce but also promoting greater coherence and consistency in the rules specified under the five separate free trade agreements (FTAs) that currently define trade between PPA members. With the basic trade agreements already in place, members of the PPA can focus on dismantling remaining barriers to trade and ensuring that business is able to take advantage of new opportunities brought by lower trade and investment barriers.

On a grander scale, success under the PPA could result in new momentum for concluding a broader Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA)."

So did the PPA manage to "carry over into the next Administration"?

Address of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State
Pathways to Prosperity Ministerial, May 31, 2009
US State Dept website :

"President Obama has emphasized that it's not important whether ideas come from one party or another, so long as they move us in the right direction. This meeting builds on the work of the previous U.S. administration, but the President and I are also committed to re-launching Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas and expanding its work to spread the benefits of economic recovery, growth, and open markets ..."

Elsewhere Senator Clinton has described the Pathways to Prosperity accord as "a multilateral initiative to promote shared security and prosperity throughout the Americas".

Alliance for Responsible Trade :

"The PPA bears many of the hallmarks of the SPP. According to the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade, the PPA is "based on two similar components to the SPP: on one hand an economic, mercantile and financial agenda covered by the term ‘prosperity', and on the other a ‘security' agenda of enhancing military and police powers to combat terrorism, narcotraffic, illegal migration, etc.." The PPA, like the SPP, is little more than an attempt to justify economic deregulation and to promote an escalation of militarism in the region."

Stuart Trew from the Council of Canadians writes The SPP is dead, so where's the champagne? :

"The NAFTA-plus agenda died in Guadalajara, Mexico last week. We killed it. And we should be singing it from the rooftops."

Ok, just one glass of champagne, Stuart, but then as you say : Back to work.
Because we don't care what it's called : SPP, North American Union, deep integration, the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny, Pathways to Prosperity of the Americas. We don't care. Really. Call it whatever you like.
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North American Leaders' Summit 2009 - an insider's view

With the next North American Leaders' Summit in Guadalajara, Mexico less than a month away, Canadian media have begun reporting snippets from a new report by Hudson Institute expert on Canada-US relations Christopher Sands : Toward a New Frontier : Improving the U.S.-Canadian Border.

And why should we be listening to him? Because he's an insider.

Sands is advisor to the U.S. Section of the North American Competitiveness Council, the corporate wing of the SPP, and a lecturer on North American integration for both the US State Dept. and the Dept. of Homeland Security. His Negotiating North America : The Security and Prosperity Partnership is perhaps the closest thing we have to a semi-official manual on the SPP.

In light of his latest policy recommendations for the Summit :

• rebranding a revived SPP,
• allowing environmental, labor and human rights groups equivalent NACC status to that so far only extended to corporations,
• increasing transparency of reporting
• decentralizing border security away from Washinton to the individual states, and
• implementing a common security perimeter

it's worth looking at some of his other recent assessments of Canada-US relations :

"Homeland security is the gatekeeper with its finger on the jugular affecting your ability to move back and forth across the border, the market access upon which the Canadian economy depends."

"In exchange for continued visa-free access to the United States, American officials are pressuring the federal government to supply them with more information on Canadians. Not only about (routine) individuals but also about people that you may be looking at for reasons, but there's no indictment and there's no charge."

Here Sands recounts a conversation with the assistant secretary of policy at the Department of Homeland Security :

"Canadians have "had a better deal than anybody else in terms of access to the United States and for that they've paid nothing." Now "we want to give you less access, but we want you to pay more and, by the way, we're standardizing this (with other visa-free countries) so you're not special anymore."

Canada's Peace, Order and Unreliable Government : [on Canada's minority governments]

"This does not mean that Canadians or their interests will be maltreated, punished, or maliciously ignored by Washington. U.S. policymakers will pity Ottawa, indulge it when possible, and ignore it only when necessary."

Afghanistan, Feb 2009 :

"Since the November U.S. election, Canadian editorialists have talked about the impressive Canadian contribution as a calling card with the new administration in Washington, sure to gain a hearing and possibly even concessions for Canadian interests.

The valuation of the Canadian contribution, however, is usually exaggerated.

The United States maintained 35,000 troops in Afghanistan until recently, when an additional 30,000 were deployed to join this force. Canada's 2500 are just 3 percent of the total Western force. ... In contrast, both India and even China have suggested they might offer ground troops to fight al Qaeda and the Taliban. That does not devalue or diminish the sacrifices of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan; but it may help to explain why President Obama is unlikely to lobby the Harper government to rescind its announcement of a 2011 withdrawal.

Canada is an oddity among US allies. Most countries have come to terms with their relative smallness when compared to the United States, and though they work to make respectable contributions to US-led security efforts and campaigns, they are realistic about what they can do. Canadians, flush with memories of outsized past contributions to international security, particularly during two world wars, expect to be treated as a junior great power. "

Good to know.

The Leaders Summit is less than a month away - Aug 8-11 - and the Canadian government has yet to make any public announcement about it at all, let alone what will be on the agenda this time round.

Council of Canadians are demanding that Canadians not be left out of the process yet again : Demand a say in North America's future.

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Good luck with that.

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Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement

Bill C-24 the Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement received royal assent last week.
By neatly avoiding the controversy that has temporarily stalled the Colombia-Canada FTA, Canadian mining companies in Peru now have the legal standing to challenge the few Peruvian laws standing between them and the 45 million hectares of the Amazon opened up to them by Peruvian President Alan Garcia.

Council of Canadians Stewart Trew : "About 50% of resource extraction in Peru is carried out by Canadian companies."

Earlier this month 30,000 indigenous protesters blocked roads, rivers and railways to force the repeal of Garcia's new laws opening up its oil, gas and forestry resources to foreign investors by privatizing community land plots and ignoring aboriginal rights to their land. A 10,000-acre African palm plantation to produce biofuels displaced the local inhabitants Garcia contemptuously referred to as "garden watchdogs". Garcia has also "framed privatization of the Amazon as a means of fighting drug traffickers".
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Protests. Massacres. Police in helicopters gunning down Indians. 24 police killed on the ground. Accusations of the government burning the bodies of unknown numbers of protesters. Prime minister resigns, president apologizes. Score one for the Indians.

Ben Powless from Six Nations Ontario was there.

Aside from a mention in the Senate as they ratified Bill C-24, Canada's official response to date has been to issue a travel advisory :

Minister of State for the Americas Peter Kent : "

"There were no Canadian companies involved or affected, so the linkage that folks might make shouldn't be made, because our free trade agreement and this tragedy don't have any obvious or visible connections."

Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae :

"The killings and dispute were internal matters for Peru. This isn't about the free trade agreement, let's not confuse things here."

UBC political science professor Maxwell Cameron :

"We're in exactly the same position as the U.S. [The US-Peru FTA was implemented this February] - that is that this agreement is designed to foster particularly Canadian investments, and Canadian investors are going to operate, and do operate in exactly this area and many other areas where there are conflicts. To have an agreement like this come out at the same time that there's a major massacre certainly no one would say that's good."

Well, no one but Stockwell Day :

"These agreements will help increase prosperity, help provide better working conditions, and improve environmental management."

According to Export Development Canada, over 30 Canadian companies operate in Peru. Canadian companies expected to "increase prosperity, provide better working conditions, and improve environmental management" in Peru include Petrolifera, Teck Cominco, Barrick Gold, ScotiaBank, SNC Lavalin, Dessau Soprin and Sandwell.

This might be a good time to mention that Canada has not signed the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights.
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Related : The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy
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Canadians plan physical escort of Galloway into Canada

CP : "Organizers of the four-city speaking tour of British anti-war MP George Galloway are going to challenge the decision to bar him from Canada in court.

Should that fail, a delegation of Canadian MPs, lawyers and activists is assembling to escort Galloway from the U.S., where he is on tour, across the Canadian border [on Monday March 30th].
A legal team, led by prominent immigration and refugee lawyer Barbara Jackman, has assembled support of more than 50 organizations.
Groups include the Council of Canadians, Canadian Civil Liberties Union, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, anti-war coalitions in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal, several large labour unions and many community organizations."

Galloway's 4 day speaking tour - March 30 in Toronto, March 31 in Mississauga, April 1 in Montreal and April 2 in Ottawa -will focus on the war on Afghanistan.
The CBC interview below from a couple of year's back clearly illustrates why the current Canadian government is not eager to hear any more of Mr. Galloway's opinions on the subject.



Defend Free Speech, Lift the Ban on George Galloway
For all you anti-war free speech mongers in Lotusland, there's a demo in Vancouver tomorrow : Monday Mar. 23 at 12:30pm in front of Immigration Canada at 300 W. Georgia, at the corner of Hamilton.
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Feb. 2 - Send-a-Mitten-to-Steve Day

The US has a national energy policy.

Mexico has a national energy policy.

Canada has....

Canada has transnational oil companies, NAFTA, and the SPP instead.

Despite exporting 70% of our oil and 61 % of our natural gas every year to the United States, we have no pipelines going east and thus are unable to provide for eastern Canada who must import their oil from Saudi and Albania. NAFTA also prevents us from ever reducing this outflow of our energy resources.

Today, Council of Canadians asks that we email a mitten to Steve, along with a short note demanding that consideration be given to the energy security needs of Canadians. Details here, and a list of cross-Canada action events here.

Yes, I too can think of many other alternative symbols I'd rather mail to Steve other than a mitten, but spare a moment's thought for the hapless posties and go read Five reasons why Canada needs a National Energy Strategy now! instead.

SPP : Water is "On the Table"

We need a national policy on water NOW.

"Both the 1989 Canada-U.S. Free-Trade Agreement and the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, which includes Mexico) were supposed to settle the water question. It didn't happen. As an afterthought, the Canadian, Mexican and U.S. governments issued a joint statement in 1993 saying NAFTA creates "no rights to the natural water resources" of any trading partner. To this day, the statement remains unsigned."

The above is from "On the Table", a research report released yesterday at a one-day panel on water sovereignty at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies.
One of the authors, Ralph Pentland, is a former director of water planning and management with the Canadian federal government, and he says Canada doesn't have a national water policy, leaving it up to the individual provinces to decide whether or not to begin the bulk water shipments to the US which would become impossible to stop, once started, due to NAFTA.
To date, Quebec, Ontario, and Newfoundland have made noises in that direction.

The good news is that the report is getting into the print media.

Edmonton Journal : Water exports to U.S. remain on table until we take them off
Ottawa must take clear stand against growing pressure
"Are Canadians ready for the next big trade issue -- a concerted effort by the United States to acquire Canada's fresh water, and a willingness by some influential Canadians to sell it?"

Ottawa Citizen : Down the river
"Despite claims to the contrary, water is on the table in trade negotiations -- we need to be clear with our neighbours that we intend to keep this precious resource"

Toronto Star : Canada's watershed moment: Let's take exports off the table
"National water policy should be based on stewardship, not commoditization"

This last was written by Tom Axworthy, notable for having been part of the Task Force on the Future of North America back in 2005 along with Michael Wilson, John Manley, and Wendy Dobson. They wrote that now infamous study sponsored by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the US Council on Foreign Relations - you know, the one which recommended one currency; one passport; one foreign policy; one set of environmental, health, and safety standards; one immigration policy; one security perimeter; and a North American brand name to be introduced in schools.

Odd how far along we are on all those now thanks to the SPP, huh?

To his credit, Axworthy appended a dissenting opinion on the security perimeter and the inclusion of water resources before he quit that committee. Interesting to read an insider's alarm on this issue.

Unlike say - John Baird, Peter MacKay, Jim Abbott and Int Trade Committee Chair Julian Benoit.
Prodded in June by NDP MP Peter Julian who rightly connects water rights with the SPP, all three opposition parties requested a note be sent to Mexico and the US asking for a clarification of their positions on the unsigned NAFTA afterthought statement. Baird, MacKay, Abbott and Benoit reacted as if an ugly family secret was being aired in public.

Baird said water was not a trade issue and thus didn't bear discussion and it was silly to even bring it up, while Abbott said it would be folly, even dangerous, to open the NAFTA can of worms and then try to close it up again.
OK, so the Con position is that it's both too insignificant and too explosive an issue.

And MacKay.....MacKay's response was interesting :

"On the issue of bulk water export, the government has no intention of entering into any negotiations behind closed doors, or otherwise, regarding the matter of bulk water exports."

Sounds pretty definitive, Pete.
How about provincial govs? We already have a Chapter 11 compensation court case going on since 1997 here in BC over the BC gov reneging on a water contract with Sunbelt in California. Does that count?
A US water bottling company has just bought the rights to a lake and its tributaries in Quebec. And what about US corpses with contracts to use massive amounts of water in Alberta tarsands operations? Does that count as opening the door to foreign ownership? Will we ultimately have to compete with US corpses on Canadian soil for our own water?

When the roguing of parliament is finally over, we have got to hold the GnuGovs hoofs to the fire on implementing a national water policy. And they are welcome to go on about '13 years of Lib misrule' as much as they like on this one as far as I'm concerned. We've already lost sovereignty over our oil and gas. Let's try and at least keep stewardship of our water.

Endnote : Like a family member you take entirely for granted, the Council of Canadians somehow never winds up being quoted or credited on this blog for their stellar work on bringing the vulnerability of our water into the public eye. Consider it done here - The Council of Canadians Water Page.
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SPP : Stupid Papineauville Policy

Does the Municipality of Papineauville, Quebec have any idea of the irony of pronouncing the authority of the US Army to deny the Council of Canadians the right to protest deep integration with the US on Canadian soil?

From the Council of Canadians :

"The Municipality of Papineauville, which is about six kilometres from Montebello, has informed the Council of Canadians that the RCMP, the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) and the U.S. Army will not allow the municipality to rent the Centre Communautaire de Papineauville for a public forum on Sunday August 19, on the eve of the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership Leaders Summit.

The Council of Canadians has been told that the RCMP and the SQ will be enforcing a 25-kilometre security perimeter around the Chateau Montebello, where Stephen Harper will meet with George W. Bush and Felipe Calderón on August 20 and 21."

The US Army will not allow the municipality...?
A 25K security perimeter? WTF?

From the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms :
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
a) freedom of conscience and religion;
b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
d) freedom of association.

No mention in there anywhere of these rights being subject to the whims of the US Army.
Note that Papineauville evidently didn't feel the authority of the RCMP was sufficient unto itself here.
Or have we officially given up bothering to distinguish between the policies of the RCMP and those of the US Army?

UPDATE : From Thursday's Ottawa Citizen :
"Mr. Patterson [of Council of Canada] said Frederic Castonguay, the town's general manager, reported that Guy Cote, of the Quebec police force in Montreal, had told him the council "is an activist organization opposed to the summit and that it would not be wise to have us set up in the community centre."
Mr. Castonguay yesterday confirmed he had been called by Mr. Cote, who told him that the police and U.S. army need the community centre as a base of operations for summit security."