On coalitions, mergers and aquisitions

Liberal MP Martha Hall Findlay stood three separate times in the House on Friday to beg the Cons for recognition of the "important work" the Liberal Party had done to ensure the expected passage of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement at third reading today.

MHF to TradeMin Peter Van Loan :

Mr. Speaker, could the minister speak to the participation of Liberal Party, in particular of my colleague from Kings—Hants, [Scott Brison] that resulted in an addition to this free trade agreement with respect to human rights, of which Liberals are very proud? I believe it was singularly important in being able to get our support for it.
Could the minister speak to Liberals' very constructive participation in the process?

Well we didn't really need your unnecessary figleaf of a human rights amendment that allows Colombia to do its own year-end reports on its human rights atrocities, Peter Van Loan did not quite answer, but then Van Loan's Parliamentary Secretary Con MP Gerald Keddy graciously acceded to her request that the Libs be given credit for it :

I would say that I appreciated the intervention by [LibCon Scott Brison] ... We were, quite frankly, stymied at committee. We were not moving forward. It enabled us to move forward.

Martha Hall Findlay pressed ahead for more pats:

I will point out that earlier, the minister had said that the addition in terms of human rights was not necessary. I am glad to hear my colleague now acknowledging that in order to move this through and to get approval, in fact, the work by my colleague from Kings—Hants [Brison] and the Liberal Party was instrumental in getting this to the point of getting it through the House, so I thank my colleague for that.

Bloc MP Jean-Yves Laforest :

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. Liberal member a question. How can she explain such a drastic change in the Liberal Party's position since last fall, both in committee and in the House, regarding possible support for a free trade agreement with Colombia?
This support was very clearly expressed at the Standing Committee on International Trade. Unanimous consent was reached regarding the need for an independent study—before Canada ratifies the agreement—on the Colombian government's respect for human rights and what it is doing to prevent human rights abuses. Why such a difference between the Liberals' position last fall and their current position?

Martha Hall Findlay now moves into full on Brison fluffer position :

In the end, we determined that it was better to adopt this position for Canada and for people elsewhere.
I would also like to say that the speeches given by my hon. colleague from Kings—Hants [Brison] on human rights greatly helped convince other Liberals that, as a party, we can now support that position.

Brison's speeches! LOFL.
NDP MP Peter Julian points out the very long list of Canadian and Colombian unions and aboriginal and African-Colombians that

"the Liberal Party systematically obstructed and refused to hear from. It shut off all debate before the committee. Two years ago, when we went down to Colombia, the trade committee came back with a unanimous recommendation to not proceed with this agreement."

Martha Hall Findlay says some more things about "the hard work and the excellent work" of Scott Brison and at least the Libs are trying to get along with the Cons, you know? Windows not doors, going forward and all that.

After QP, Transport Minister John Baird had one thing to say in response as debate on Canada-Colombia FTA resumed :

"Unanimous consent to resolve that Jack Layton is the leader of the official opposition, agreed."

Ouch.
I know - not quite the coalition/merger post you were expecting.
But it's the only one that's going on, as the Cons continue to ride the Libs for it.
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Tuesday Update : Libs and Cons - 188 votes ... NDP and Bloc - 79

Scant news coverage today of what amounts to Canadian complicity in a death sentence for trade unionists, small farmers, aboriginals, Afro-Colombians, and the 4 million displaced inside Colombia. In 2009, half the assassinations of trade unionists world wide - 48 out of 100 - took place in Colombia.

Oh wait. Canadian Business Online has something :
House of Commons passes controversial Colombia FTA :

A Human Rights Watch report last year on a massacre in Colombia, and an Amnesty International report, concluded that things have gotten worse in Colombia.

In December 2008, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights criticized the Colombian government for its public stance against human rights advocates on its own soil. The stigmatization of such groups puts their ``life, security and valuable work at risk,'' it said.

Thank you for that, Canadian Business.
I am past disgusted with the fools and knaves and opportunists who represent Canada today.
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The SPP is undead

Just three months shy of 2010 - the date by which the Canadian Council of Chief Executives originally projected the goals of the SPP would be completed - some people have been mourning or celebrating for years already.

The SPP is dead - a short history :

Oct. 10, 2007 "The Security and Prosperity Partnership is dead," wrote John Ibbitson in the G&M. "Nothing's going to happen anytime soon."

Aug. 1, 2008 "The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America is dead," says Robert Pastor, chair of the 2005 Council on Foreign Relations task force "Building a North American Community" available in book form with co-author John Manley.

Feb. 25, 2009 "The SPP is probably dead," Canadian Council of Chief Executives President Tom d’Aquino tells the foreign affairs committee, adding that "something else" will replace it.

July 13, 2009 "The SPP is in hibernation," - Chris Sands, Canada-U.S. relations expert at the Hudson Institute, in Toward a New Frontier which recommends "rebranding a revived SPP."
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Aug. 2009 "The SPP's Death Knell has Sounded" - Embassy Mag. "The Security and Prosperity Partnership, as we knew it, is dead. May it rest in peace."


Aug. 19, 2009 "The SPP is dead, so where's the champagne?" - Stuart Trew, Council of Canadians, at Rabble.

Sept. 24, 2009 "The SPP is dead. Let's keep in that way." - Murray Dobbin, Canadian author, long time foe of deep integration, and one of my personal heroes.

That's two whole years of announcements about the SPP nailed to its perch and pining for the fjords.

The most recent - Dobbin and Trew - do not imagine for a moment that the push towards deep integration is over by any stretch, yet Dobbin does not see any successor on the horizon:

"Some on the left are so accustomed to losing that they make the claim the SPP will just re-emerge with another name."

And indeed I do so here - Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas.
Bush's outgoing gift to Obama has been embraced and described by Hillary Clinton as "a multilateral initiative to promote shared security and prosperity throughout the Americas".
Stockwell Day has already begun dutifully using the phrase "pathways to prosperity" in the House, while exPM Paul Martin, Chris Sands, d'Aquino, David Emerson and other fans of deep integration assure us of the inevitability of some future SPP rebrand and relaunch.

But what worries me is : do we even need a rebrand and relaunch anymore?

In 2003 the Canadian Council of Chief Executives' came up with the North American Security and Prosperity Initiative to shape Canada's future within North America. It called for "reinventing borders; regulatory efficiency; resource security; and a North American defence perimeter."

Here's how that agenda has been achieved through the SPP so far :
Joint RCMP-Homeland Security “Shiprider” pilot project
Civil Assistance Plan signed in Feb. 2008 allows the military of one nation to support the other during a civil emergency
Passenger Protect no-fly list
Sharing military responsibilities in the arctic
"Smart Borders' and unmanned drones patrolling the Canada US border
The exile and/or detainment in Canada of persons of interest to Homeland Security
Canada's cats paw FTAs with countries the US hopes to reach
The Canada Israel 'Homeland Security' pact
Canada helps the US occupy Afghanistan
Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative
Biometric data into visas for foreign nationals
RFID drivers' licences - a de facto continental ID
Run-of-river projects and ramped up tarsands extraction for energy export
Proposal for national Canadian energy or water policy blocked
Streamlining regulations on food, drugs pesticides, genetically modified seeds.
"Intermodal transportation concept for North America"
Integrated North American energy and resource program

Does anyone really think just because 30 odd CEOs from the North American Competitiveness Council aren't meeting as a designated SPP group anymore that that's the end of it?

Ten days ago Harper stood in the White House and said :

"Today, Canada is announcing a major hydroelectric project, a big transmission line in northwestern British Columbia, which has the capacity down the road to be part of a more integrated North American hydroelectric system."

"Canada is not leaving Afghanistan; Canada will be transitioning from a predominantly military mission to a mission that will be a civilian humanitarian development mission after 2011."

So, no, I'm not celebrating anything until the SPP and the groundwork already laid by the CCCE - plus the unseen continued integration of its facets throughout the public service - can be stopped and rolled back.


Paul Manly is taking his film ‘You, Me and the SPP: Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule’ on the road.

The tour, which will visit 33 cities across Canada, will be launched with an Ottawa Premiere on Parliament Hill on October 1st. hosted by NDP International Trade Critic, Peter Julian.

The Ottawa screening will be followed by a panel discussion and Q & A, featuring, Peter Julian, Teresa Healy (Senior Researcher, Canadian Labour Congress), Bruce Campbell (Executive Director, Canadian Council for Policy Alternatives), Maude Barlow (Chairperson, Council of Canadians), Louise Casselman (Common Frontiers) and Paul.

The screening and panel will be streamed live by Rabble.ca - see promo page

From Ottawa, the tour will be working its way east to Newfoundland and then back across Canada to British Columbia. You can see all the tour dates on the film website here

Each confirmed screening date has a pdf poster, handbill and press release that can be downloaded and used to promote the screening. Please help out where you can. All of the screenings are either free or by donation.

This ain't over yet.
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‘You, Me, and the S.P.P: Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule’

You'll remember Paul Manly as the guy who shot that video of CEP union President Dave Coles exposing the 3 rock-toting Quebec police provocateurs at the Montebello SPP protest in Aug. 2007. Paul has finally finished his full-length feature film : ‘You, Me, and the S.P.P: Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule’, exposing "the latest manifestation of a corporatist agenda that is undermining the democratic authority of the citizens of North America".

Here are a few quotes from the trailer :

Naomi Klein :

"… after the shock of Sept 11 … that crisis was expertly manipulated by our political leaders to push through a range of policies they actually had wanted to push through before Sept 11, but didn’t have the political conditions that made that possible."

Gordon Laxer, Director, The Parkland Institute, Alberta :

"…if we go along with the Americans on their military, on their human rights, on their Patriot Act, on immigration and refugee policy, on energy, on all kinds of regulations over pesticides or whatever, then they will allow us access to their markets."

Murray Dobbin, Canadian author, journalist :

"… what the SPP really represents is a parallel government, so that the important decisions are either made outside of parliament and outside of legislatures or they make it impossible for those kinds of decisions to be made in those legislative bodies, so that democracy is slowly being gutted."

with more from Peter Julian, Michael Byers, and Maude Barlow.

And here's a portion of the film I posted this morning. To purchase your own copy of the whole film - $20 well spent - and for listings of local screenings, visit Paul's website at manlymedia.com. If we want this quality of reporting from independent journalists, we're going to have to support it. If you can't afford the $20 for your own copy, get your local library to buy a copy, leave him a message of encouragement, and pass on the word. As Paul says : I made this film for all of you.

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Oct 2009 Update : Paul and his film are on a cross-country tour of 33 countries across Canada. You can see all the tour dates on the film website here Each confirmed screening date has a pdf poster, handbill and press release that can be downloaded and used to promote the screening. Please help out where you can. All of the screenings are either free or by donation.

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The Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement - A licence to kill

I'm trying to imagine how well it would go down in Canada if we passed a law providing for a token fine to be paid - on a purely voluntary basis -whenever the government combined with Canadian corporations to murder union workers. Not too well I think.

So why are we again considering promoting this behavior from the over 20 Canadian mining and oil and gas operations already in Columbia, including Nexen, Enbridge, Petrominerales, Coalcorp and Vancouver's B2Gold?


In July 2007 Steve stood next to President Uribe of Colombia and proclaimed it would be "ridiculous" to refuse to enter a free trade agreement with Columbia based on the latter's abysmal human rights record - a record which is even worse in 2008 than it was in 2007.

In November 2008 Steve and Uribe shook hands on the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
Coincidentally this was the same month the world heard about high-ranking Colombian army officers involved in “false positives” - the execution and dressing up of civilians as FARC guerrillas and claiming they were killed in combat in order to collect a body count bonus.

On March 26, 2009, the Canada-Columbia Free Trade Agreement passed first reading in the House as Bill C-23.



Some notes from the excellent MAKING A BAD SITUATION WORSE -
AN ANALYSIS OF THE TEXT OF THE CANADA-COLOMBIA FREE TRADE AGREEMENT

Canadian Council for International Co-operation
Canadian Association of Labour Lawyers
Canadian Labour Congress
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

• Extrajudicial executions by security forces : 2007 - 330; 2004 to 2006 - 220; 2003 - 130 ; 2002 - 100.


• 270,675 people have been forced to flee from their homes in the first quarter of 2008 - the highest rate of internal displacement since 1987


• 1,015 people have disappeared over the past year – more than four times the total for 2007 and a 1300% increase over 2005. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, members of the country’s armed forces are suspects in more than 90% of the cases it is investigating.


• Fewer than 1% of Colombian workers enjoy the right to collective bargaining, hampered by the introduction of anti-union legislation
• Over 60% of the more than 3 million internally displaced people in Colombia have been forced from their homes and lands in areas of mineral, agricultural or other economic importance.
• As of October 2008, more than 60 parliamentarians – most of whom are part of President Uribe's governing coalition in Congress… were under formal or preliminary investigation for their suspected links to paramilitary groups..., several have either pleaded guilty or have been found guilty of association with paramilitary groups, electoral fraud, murder, and the organizing, arming and financing of paramilitary groups.”

In Feb. 2008, Daniel García-Peña, VP of the leftist opposition party in Colombia came to Canada and explained why a free trade agreement would be "very negative for Canada and Colombia." :

"Canadian companies would be attracted to Colombia for all the wrong reasons, namely to take advantage of the country's weak labour, human rights and environmental laws. Many companies will come to bypass the laws Canada has and take advantage of Colombian standards, which are much lower. In many ways [this could] promote the exploitation of workers."
Furthermore, Mr. García-Peña says, a trade deal could destroy the livelihoods of many small Colombian farmers by flooding the market with subsidized agricultural imports. "The small peasant farmer would be unable to compete with the cheap imports of food," he says. "[This] would wipe them out."
Those who would benefit, he says, are the large agro-businesses in Colombia that would buy up the land of destitute farmers for the production of biodiesel, palm oil and beef for export.
Worst of all, Mr. García-Peña adds, these large agro-businesses have ties to the paramilitary squads at the heart of the ongoing rights abuses and violence in the South American country."

Please join NDP MP Peter Julian in sending Michael Ignatieff a note asking him to do some credit to his former reputation as a human rights activist : IgnatM@parl.gc.ca
Top Ten Reasons Why Canada Should Cancel Harper's "Free Trade" Deal With Colombia.
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SPP - Canada Election 08

Paul Manley, the guy who shot this footage of police provocateurs attempting to start a riot at the Stop the SPP protests in Montebello Quebec, is working on a documentary about the SPP.
In the meantime he has produced this short vid about all the questions not being asked in this election about issues related to the Security and Prosperity Partnership and Canada-EU Free Trade Ageement. An excellent short history.

Why isn't this an election issue?

Go Nanaimo Blog!

Water wars

No, not with the US ; apparently we're still duking this one out with the Cons.

You remember those International Trade Committee hearings last month on Canada's water and energy security under NAFTA and the SPP? The one in which chairperson Leon Benoit stomped out with the three other Con members because he didn't like Prof. Gordon Laxer's testimony on just how vulnerable Canada is?
Yes? Then you'll remember how the rest of the committee continued to do their job.

Today the following motion was brought from that Int Trade Committee to the House of Commons for debate :

"Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), and the motion adopted by the Committee on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 your Committee recommends:

Whereas Canada’s water resources must be protected;

Whereas NAFTA covers all services and all goods, except those that are expressly excluded and water is not excluded;

Whereas this situation puts the provincial and federal laws concerning the protection of water including the prohibition of bulk water exports at risk;

Whereas a simple agreement by exchange of letters among the governments of Canada, the United States and Mexico specifying that water is not covered by NAFTA must be respected by international tribunals as if it were an integral part of NAFTA;

That the Standing Committee recommend that the government quickly begin talks with its American and Mexican counterparts to exclude water from the scope of NAFTA."

Yes! Thank you Bloc and NDP committee members, and particularly NDP Trade critic Peter Julian who has worked so hard to expose the whole SPP betrayal in parliament.

The Con members on the committee dissented of course.
And I'm sure, given their previous behavior on the committee and the outing of the Con's dirty tricks manual on how to shut down committees on subjects they don't like, you're not exactly reeling with surprise about it.

Down at the bottom :

"Dissenting opinion from the Conservative Party
The Government members of the Standing Committee on International Trade, for reasons previously stated by our members which appear in the evidence, [snip], choose to dissent respectfully from the Ninth Report."

Dissent away, ReformACons! Da motherfuckin motion is in da House!

SATURDAY UPDATE: From the Ottawa Citizen :

"A motion to open NAFTA talks to make sure bulk-water exports are excluded from the deal sparked an acrimonious three-hour debate in the House yesterday, with all three Opposition parties lined up against the Tories.

The Tories say a 1993 letter signed by the three governments specifically says "water in its natural state" is exempt from the provisions of NAFTA.
But water will not be considered to be "in its natural state" once it has been loaded into a pipeline, or onto a tanker, critics fear.

NDP MP Peter Julian says that in 1998, California-based Sun Belt Water Inc. launched a $10.5-billion lawsuit under NAFTA against British Columbia when a provincial ban scuttled its plans to ship water by tanker to the U.S. (The case is still pending.)

"As a foreign investor, all you need to do is apply for a permit.
You'll either get to export water, or you can sue for compensation, which taxpayers will have to pay. Either way, the investor wins, and Canada loses."

Water is protected not only by the 1993 NAFTA letter, but also by a federal-provincial pact and an amendment to the Canada-U.S. Boundary Waters Treaty, which protects the Great Lakes and other shared waters, he [Ted Menzies, Con from the Int Trade committee] argues.

But the Council of Canadians, an Ottawa-based advocacy group, says the U.S. never signed that amendment and notes that it doesn't cover water sources that are not shared with the U.S."

The quisling Cons are terrified to ask the fucking question : Under NAFTA, does Canada control her own water, or, as Peter Julian puts it, is it a choice between 1)exporting water or 2)paying compensation to each and every foreign company who applies for a permit to do so.

May 31 Hansard account of debate between all parties in the House..
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