What are we to make of the events at the recent summit in Montebello, Que.? The series of summits was initiated by U.S. President George W. Bush to promote his North American Security and Prosperity Partnership agenda to the Canadian prime minister and the president of Mexico. The meetings included closed-door sessions with corporate leaders.
Critics see the secretive meetings between political and business leaders as another example of the push by the corporate elite for increased North American economic and security integration.
Human rights
Canadians generally have a very positive impression of their country’s role in world affairs, but Canada’s relations with Haiti challenge that perception. It would be wrong to say that Canada has done nothing positive on the world stage, but we need to take a much closer look at the reality of Canadian foreign policy and its consequences. More often than many Canadians might like to believe, our government’s international role is nothing to be proud of.
Fundamental labour rights, pursued historically and recognized under international conventions, must be respected in Canada, according to the highest court in the land. In a judgment rendered June 8, the Supreme Court of Canada reversed itself and recognized that freedom of association includes the right to collective bargaining.
Collective bargaining complements and promotes the values expressed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, according to this major judgment affirming that the role of trade unions cannot be repressed “in a free and democratic society.”
As the Indonesian army and its militias set fire to Dili and killed thousands of East Timorese in September 1999, the Canadian government refused to stop the export of military goods to Indonesia. This at a time when even the United States, Jakarta's main backer, had suspended military sales to Indonesia, as had the European Union and Australia.
Since 1990, 35,000 Colombians have been killed in a horrific escalation of political violence. An average of ten political assassinations are reported every day. Colombia's state security forces and their paramilitary allies have been responsible for the vast majority of these killings. Many paramilitary death squads have been created by the Colombian military.
According to a recent report, Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., a Canadian company owned by Robert Friedland, is "raping the environment" and using forced labour in Burma.
Ivanhoe operates the US$90 million Monywa copper mine, Burma's largest mining investment, in a 50-50 partnership with the Burmese military dictatorship (known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). The mine is the centrepiece of Friedland's corporate holdings, which include properties in the U.S., Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, China, Australia, Fiji, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Angola, Sierra Leone and Namibia.
"I'm interested in land not [black people]." -- Cecil Rhodes
The Canadian government's Export Development Corporation (EDC) is assisting eight environmentally and socially disastrous projects in the Third World, says a recent report. These are the Antamina mine in Peru, the Chamera I and II dams in India, the Profertil nitrogen fertilizer complex in Argentina, the Bulyanhulu mine in Tanzania, the Urra dam in Colombia, the PT TEL pulp and paper mill in Indonesia, the Manantali dam (a joint project of Senegal, Mauritania and Mali), and the Ralco dam in Chile.
THE TRIAL OF HENRY KISSINGERby Christopher Hitchens, Verso, 2001, $35 (Book Review)
The United States' choice of Pakistan as an ally in its "war on terrorism" provides the spectacle of the two leading terrorist states on Earth "fighting terrorism." The U.S. has killed more than eight million people in the Third World since 1945, while Pakistan slaughtered almost three million Bengalis in the Eastern wing of the country in 1971. This caused the break-up of the state, with East Pakistan separating and becoming Bangladesh.