It was just over a year ago, on August 5, 2004, in the epicentre of Canada’s sacrosanct summer holidays, that the Canadian government ever-so-quietly initiated a major change to the NORAD agreement to add “missile defense” functions to the workload of this Canada-U.S. military pact.
International relations, peace and conflict
When Paul Martin met with George Bush and Vicente Fox in Texas last March to chart further continental integration (while Martin’s neo-liberal competitor for the Liberal Party crown, John Manley, was pushing for even further subordination of Canada’s economic and political sovereignty to American interests), all of Canada’s political-economic élite seemed blissfully ignorant that globalization, as we know it, is about to implode. Canada is increasingly tying itself to a falling star—the American Empire. The reason it’s falling? Peak oil and the related phenomenon of global warming.
The keynote speaker at the CCPA’s 25th anniversary banquet on May 27 was broadcaster and film-maker Avi Lewis. This is an edited version of his speech.
In our discussions about deep integration with the United States, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are mostly treated as add-ons, items in a list of policies that integration is dragging us into.
In fact, war is now the primary focus of the economy with which we are integrating.
As I prepare for a trip to Europe, I am relieved to know that Canada’s image there is one I can be proud of.
After all, not that long ago most Europeans were celebrating the Chrétien government’s decision not to join George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, and, more recently, Paul Martin’s decision not to participate in his highly questionable Ballistic Missile Defence scheme.
As a Canadian, therefore, I can hold my head high on the other side of the Atlantic. I might even wear a maple leaf pin on my lapel.
Empires collapse usually due to a combination of military overreach and economic weakness, and, judged by these criteria, the U.S. imperial order seems headed for an imminent fall. Washington’s occupation of Iraq has been a disaster. Even after two years, the U.S. military has failed to subdue the Iraqi resistance. A recent report by Knight Ridder Newspapers declared the war “unwinnable.”
OTTAWA—The federal government’s soon-to-be-released foreign policy review will say little, if anything, about one of its most important priorities—aligning its policies and regulations with those of the U.S., says the author of a report—Of Independence and Faustian Bargains: Going Down the Deep Integration Road with Uncle Sam—released today by the CCPA.