foreign policy

Marcia Ramirez and other local residents from Intag confront private security forces, most former military, Dec 1, 2006. (Photo: Liz Weydt)

By Jennifer Moore
Briarpatch Magazine
May/June 2010

Marcia Ramírez hopes to set a precedent in Canadian courts that will benefit peasant farmers and indigenous peoples across the Global South.

A community leader in her mid-20s, Ramírez is one of three Ecuadorian plaintiffs suing the Toronto Stock Exchange for over $1.5 billion. The lawsuit alleges that violence in their rural community could have been avoided had the TSX not listed the Copper Mesa Mining Corporation (formerly Ascendant Copper), which is also named in the lawsuit. The TSX Group and TSX Inc. are accused of causing or materially contributing to alleged violence committed by the company in response to local opposition to an open-pit copper mine. An environmental impact study had indicated that the mine would displace several communities and jeopardize the health of forests and rivers in the northwestern valley of Intag. The defendants have vigorously denied the allegations.

“I ask the noble people of Canada,” Ramírez stated in her comments when the civil suit was filed in March 2009, “that you demand from your elected authorities significant changes in your national legislation so that what has happened with Copper Mesa in Intag will never happen again, not in Intag nor in any other part of the world.”

The TSX is a principal source of global mining financing today and specializes in services for junior mining companies like Copper Mesa. According to the Mining Association of Canada, 55 per cent of the world’s publicly traded mining companies were listed on the TSX at the end of 2008, far more than any other stock exchange. Canadian stock exchanges also provided 31 per cent of the world’s mining equity and handled 81 per cent of financing transactions for the global mining industry between 2004 and 2009.

In Latin America, a prime target for Canadian mining investments, Canadian-listed companies operate roughly 1,400 projects and have been the focal point of widespread protests and human rights abuses throughout the region. Just in the past year, anti-mining activists have been reported killed in Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala in presumed relation to Canadian projects. In Argentina and Honduras, Canadian operations have led to complaints of water scarcity, contamination and illness. In Peru, a Canadian mining oper­ation has provoked opposition among northern Amazonian peoples who question why a national park intended to protect their territory was reduced by half, giving miners access to pristine forests in headwaters of great importance to them. Alleged human rights violations and abuses by such companies are seldom investigated and almost never brought to justice.

"Mining companies are prohibited here," reads the sign. "We don't sell our lands, we defend them."

As a result, Canadian mining companies have developed a reputation for human rights violations and environmental devastation that even the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racism has complained about. Members of the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability were also dismayed when the government released a belated response to a series of public recommendations on the Canadian overseas extractive industry in March 2009 that only reaffirmed its commitment to the status quo: voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility guidelines. The government’s position “falls far short of international human rights norms,” said Amnesty International. KAIROS, a faith-based organization advocating for human rights, ecological and ecumenical justice, complained that Canada leaves “mining-affected communities with no recourse.” MiningWatch added that the government’s complaint mechanism “undermines the principle of independent fact-finding.” One survey of Canadian mining companies has also demonstrated that adherence to international standards by our overseas extractive industry is “inordinately” low, especially among junior mining companies.

In other words, voluntary principles are not enough.

Intag, Ecuador, says no

The Ecuadorian community of Intag has a long history of opposition to large-scale copper mining, beginning with the expulsion of a Japanese mining company in the 1990s. In 1997, Bishi Metals left the area when locals balked after obtaining a copy of its environmental impact assessment, which detailed how its projected open-pit mine would cause deforestation, dry up rivers and displace at least four local communities.

Following this victory, Intag continued organizing, aware that although Bishi was gone, the copper remained. Various initiatives were undertaken to demonstrate that Intag could live without mining, including a local conservation organization, an ecotourism project, a women’s committee, a committee of all the rural parishes in the valley, a coffee co-operative, a community newspaper, a local radio station and a community development association.

By the time Copper Mesa acquired mineral rights in Intag in 2004, it was local organizations rather than the technical challenges of working in the remote area that would prove to be its greatest obstacle. As a result of the strong collective response, the company never managed to get a drill in the ground.

Intag, December 1, 2006: in response to local resistance, the heavily armed security forces spray tear gas at close range and fire shots at close range, injuring one man in the leg.

According to Polivio Pérez, president of the Community Development Council for the rural parish in which Copper Mesa’s project is situated, “the company came in trying to buy support and divide the communities” in an effort to weaken local resistance. When it could not gain enough support, he continues, “they tried to enter by force.”

Prior to listing the company in 2005, the TSX was warned that violence and human rights abuses could result from facilitating access to capital. Human rights abuses had already been documented by the well-respected Ecumenical Human Rights Commission in Quito (CEDHU), including physical mistreatment, death threats, persecution, slander, false charges against community leaders and intimidation. Such concerns motivated the county mayor to write a letter to the finance and audit committee of the TSX urging them not to list the company. The company’s own prospectus, which the stock exchange requires of companies before they are listed, also indicated “the potential of further escalating violence” given existing problems with its community relations in Intag.

It was no surprise, then, that things heated up once the company was listed and started raising funds.

The worst incident, both Ramírez and Pérez agree, occurred in December 2006 when heavily armed security guards were hired to reach the company’s mineral claims and set up camp.

Villagers blocked the only access road to the potential mining site with a single-link chain and stood guard. A sign posted on a nearby tree read: “Mining companies are prohibited here. We don’t sell our land, we defend it.”

The residents, including men, women and children, refused to let the private security agents pass. But the guards were impervious to their arguments and began to fire their weapons and to spray Ramírez and others at close range with tear gas. Israel Pérez, the third plaintiff in the case and Polivio’s brother, was shot and injured in the leg.

In response, local residents successfully carried out a peaceful citizen’s arrest and the guards were held in a local church for several days until local authorities arrived. “Despite being assaulted with tear gas and bullets,” says Polivio Pérez, “we were able to demonstrate once again the strength of our local organization and our decisiveness [against mining] here.”

The incident was captured on film by two German journalism students and is featured in Malcolm Rogge’s 2008 film Under Rich Earth. Ultimately, government authorities suspended the project and declared that they were unable to process the company’s environmental impact assessment.

Months later, after company directors had been personally informed about the December events and persisting tensions, individuals believed to be linked to the company assaulted and uttered death threats against Polivio Pérez. The statement of claim for the lawsuit alleges that the directors could have done more to avoid further confrontations, such as actually signing and implementing the “Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights” that the company publicly purported to respect.

Challenging Canada’s “judicial paradise”

The Toronto-based Klippenstein legal firm, best known for its defence of the Dudley George family against the province of Ontario, is representing the Ecuadorian villagers in their suit against the TSX and Copper Mesa. Their lawsuit, Murray Klippenstein says, seeks “the same level of corporate accountability that is expected in all other areas of Canadian life.” He anticipates a tough battle.

In 1997, the last time a mining company was sued in Canada, the plaintiffs were told to go elsewhere. Twenty-three thousand Guyanese villagers filed a class-action lawsuit against Cambior after the collapse of its tailings dam at the Omai Mine, which polluted their water supply. But the Quebec Superior Court ruled that it was not the best jurisdiction for the case. When the suit was later filed in Guyana, it was dismissed and the plaintiffs were ordered to pay the defendant’s legal costs.

In order to address jurisdictional issues, explains Klippenstein, the Intag lawsuit focuses on decisions that stock exchange and company executives made in Ontario, “rather than on the finger that pulled the trigger in Ecuador.”

This aspect of the legal strategy appears to be working. The Toronto lawyer says that the TSX and Copper Mesa have decided not to challenge the Ontario court jurisdiction. This puts them one step ahead and potentially trims years off the time they might have spent in legal battles before going to trial.

However, it is not just the reticence of Canadian courts to deal with cases of abuse beyond our own borders that this case aims to confront, but also the skittishness of an entire industry to subject itself to legal oversight.

Given the weak reporting requirements for listing on the TSX and the lack of relevant legislation in Canada, author Alain Deneault calls Canada a “judicial paradise” for our overseas mining industry. “Listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange,” writes Deneault, who co-authored an exposé of Canadian mining abuses in Africa entitled Noir Canada, “is a way of seeking shelter in one of the more permissive stock exchanges in the world, while taking advantage of the reputation of the rule of law in Canada – all the while knowing that one is outside of state control and regulation when operating overseas.”

The Toronto Stock Exchange openly markets itself to companies hoping to work in areas with weak governmental institutions and vulnerability to conflict and violence. Its own online promotional materials give the example of the Democratic Republic of Congo as one potential site for which it can help companies raise financing.

In other words, the Intag lawsuit is just the tip of the iceberg. Just as Klippenstein’s legal team will argue that members of Copper Mesa’s board of directors and the TSX had significant prior indications that further violence and human rights abuses could result from listing Copper Mesa Mining, it is highly possible that a plethora of other such cases exist for which this lawsuit could set an important precedent. Coincidentally, the same year that Copper Mesa was listed, La Presse reported that another junior mining company was allegedly implicated in the massacre of about 100 Congolese civilians.

Great expectations

MiningWatch Canada is a coalition of 18 faith, social justice, indigenous and union organizations. Communications and Outreach Coordinator Jamie Kneen told Briarpatch that if the lawsuit succeeds it could really “open the door” for other communities that have been harmed as a result of Canadian mining operations. From the Congo to Papua New Guinea to Guatemala, people who have faced illegal land appropriations, forced relocation, water contamination, threats or even murder could sue.

The lack of suitable mechanisms for addressing such disputes in Canada has also drawn the attention of parliamentarians and legal experts. Recently, Supreme Court Justice Ian Binnie, speaking at the 2008 Canadian Bar Association conference, urged Canada to draw up new legislation that would provide a forum for foreign citizens and companies to have such cases heard. In the spring of 2009, two Members of Parliament initiated attempts at legislative reform by tabling private member’s bills. NDP MP Peter Julian’s Bill C-354 aimed to replicate the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act, which allows foreign citizens to fight global human rights violations in U.S. courts, while Liberal MP John McKay’s Bill C-300 would make public financing for the extractive industry subject to government oversight. Up against a fierce industry lobby and government opposition, both bills were stalled when Parliament was prorogued.

“It’s not fair,” says Ramírez, “that a foreign company comes onto our land and violates our rights, when all we want is to live in a clean environment and to defend our water and our land.” She hopes, after the procedural battles are over, for a cathartic day in court when “the stock exchange will listen and understand that we’ve been hurt by a company of theirs.”

Ramírez, the other plaintiffs and the legal team will face a tough fight. But the underlying principle of their case is straightforward, says Klippenstein: “You shouldn’t harm somebody and you shouldn’t use your money to hire someone whom you know is likely to do harm” – a golden rule that Canadians would likely agree to in any other circumstances.

However, only time will tell whether Canadian courts are prepared to hear Ramírez’s voice and those of many others calling for a 180-degree turnaround in a sector rife with human rights and environmental abuses.

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By Mark Brooks
Briarpatch Magazine
May/June 2010

Last December’s Copenhagen climate summit fell far short of expectations. Explanations for the failure to reach a legally binding, fair and ambitious agreement to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions are legion but, in the end, the summit produced little more than the hastily negotiated Copenhagen Accord, a face-saving effort that does not commit nations to any binding emission reduction targets.

The accord does, however, call for the increase in average global temperatures to be limited to two degrees celcius (2 C) above pre-industrial levels. Many scientists believe that beyond this point, we may cross a climate threshold into potentially catastrophic and unmanageable runaway warming.

Achieving this objective is another matter and the path forward is plagued by uncertainty.

Since Copenhagen, 55 nations (including Canada) representing some 80 per cent of humanity’s annual greenhouse gas contributions have made voluntary commitments to reduce their emissions. Sounds promising – except for a couple of nagging details. First, even if fulfilled, these commitments added together leave the world heading for warming of over 3 C above pre-industrial levels by 2100.

Due mainly to fossil fuel emissions, we’ve already witnessed a temperature increase of 0.8 C during the 20th century. That leaves us just 1.2 degrees of wiggle room to remain within the 2 C limit endorsed in Copenhagen.

Second, many feel that the 2 C target is itself simply too high. An average global increase of 2 C means some regions in the developing south – much of Africa, for instance – will be subject to a 3.5 C or even 4 C increase. This, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has said, “is to condemn Africa to incineration and no modern development.” Many in the climate change struggle strongly believe that warming must instead be limited to a maximum of 1.5 C globally.

Finally, according to the 2007 synthesis report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), limiting warming to 2 C will require that the atmospheric concentration of carbon not exceed 450 parts per million at the very most. From the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm, we are now sitting at a precarious 390 ppm and rising fast. If we accept the 450 ppm limit, that leaves us a meagre 60 ppm to work with. Sixty ppm for all of humanity to share, including China, India and the rest of the Global South whose economies, fuelled by carbon-intensive energy, are growing at rapacious speeds.

It is safe to bet that these countries will not be content to fight over the atmospheric table scraps that now remain. Indeed, the battle for the atmosphere is shaping up to be the geopolitical struggle of the 21st century, dividing North from South, high emitters from low, industrialized nations from industrializing. And if recent developments are any indication, Canada is readying itself for one dirty fight.

Canada as climate pariah

Canada’s Conservative government has long maintained that full participation by both Global North and South in cutting greenhouse gases is necessary to tackle global warming.

In 2007, Prime Minister Harper blocked a consensus among 50 Commonwealth countries to endorse binding commitments by industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, noting that the declaration did not include developing countries. “Canada’s view is that we need binding targets on all nations,” Harper stated at last November’s Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Trinidad and Tobago. The government then proceeded to push for a new paragraph in the Commonwealth’s statement that called for further negotiations on climate change to be done “individually and collectively” and to “have respect for different national circumstances.”

This position, when viewed in combination with the frenzied development of Alberta’s highly polluting tar sands and with Canada’s abysmal record in living up to our past greenhouse gas reduction commitments, has made Canada a pariah of the climate change movement. Our country’s total emissions are now 34 per cent above our Kyoto targets and our per capita emissions are among the world’s highest. Prominent campaigners, politicians and scientists have even called for Canada’s suspension from the Commonwealth over its climate policies and failure to take meaningful action. “Stephen Harper’s position is that there is no history – we all start at zero from today,” journalist and author Gwynne Dyer told Briarpatch. As a result, Canada is now seen by many countries “basically as a climate change rogue state” he says. In December of last year, George Monbiot, columnist for the Guardian and climate change activist, wrote that Canada had become so obstructionist on international efforts to combat climate change that our fair country “now threatens the well-being of the world.”

The Canadian government has responded to these criticisms with a predictable refrain: Canada is a small player, contributing only 2 per cent to global emissions and, as Stephen Harper stated at last year’s APEC meeting, if emissions from emerging economies are not controlled, “whatever we do in the developed world will have no impact on climate change.” Moreover, the government says, countries and companies that are not subject to reduction targets may gain a competitive advantage over those that do face regulations.

It’s a persuasive argument and many Canadian media commentators (not to mention the general public) have swallowed it whole. But there is a problem. To accept this line of reasoning is to ignore the crucial historical context behind the climate crisis and to overlook one indisputable fact: the unsustainably high levels of carbon currently in the atmosphere are almost entirely the work of industrialized countries. In our fossil-fuelled development, the Global North has emitted roughly 75 per cent of total historical greenhouse gas emissions.

By asking poorer countries to bind themselves to diminishing emissions budgets before the rich have set their own targets, Canada is contributing to perhaps the single biggest impediment to progress in international climate negotiations.

For developing countries, acquiescing to such a demand would be “like jumping out of a plane and being assured that you are going to get a parachute on the way down,” as Yvo De Boer, the Executive Secretary of the UN climate negotiations, said just prior to Copenhagen.

Some have gone even further in their condemnation of Canada’s position. “The attempts by northern commentators to lay blame on some countries for derailing the result (in Copenhagen) . . . are seen in most developing countries as further evidence of an essentially colonial outlook,” Indian economist and columnist Jayati Ghosh told Briarpatch. “Colonialism was all about appropriating global resources – and climate change is really no different. With their emissions, developed countries are currently consuming much of the world’s resources and saying, ‘we did it in the past and now that we’re used to our standard of living, we’re going to continue to do it and we will prevent you from trying to have more for yourself.’”

Strong words indeed. But are Canada’s climate change policies really tantamount to neo-colonialism? Let’s take a closer look.

What is Canada’s fair share?

Very few would deny the fact that southern countries will have to rein in their carbon emissions if we are to have any chance of solving the climate crisis. After all, emerging economies now contribute close to half of all global emissions and that proportion will rise to two-thirds in the future.

But given the unequal emissions history and the fact that per capita emissions are still vastly higher in the Global North (even in China per capita emissions are still only one-quarter of Canada’s), how much can the South reasonably be expected to contribute?

We’ve seen that we are a mere 60 parts per million shy of the crucial 450 ppm atmospheric carbon threshold. To translate this into actual emissions, a recent study published in the journal Nature calculated that humanity can afford to put no more than one trillion metric tons of CO₂ in the atmosphere between 2000 and 2050. This is in addition to the 1.2 trillion tonnes we (mostly northern countries) emitted prior to 2000. Because CO₂ remains in the atmosphere for 50-200 years on average, one of the authors of the study, Myles Allen of Oxford University, said that what is important is the total emissions that have accumulated since the start of the industrial revolution. “To avoid dangerous climate change we will have to limit the total amount of carbon . . . not just the emission rate in any given year.”

One trillion tonnes. Sounds like plenty. Trouble is, more than a third of that amount was emitted globally from 2000-2009 and we still have 40 years to go.

That leaves only 650 billion tonnes for poor countries – 80 per cent of the world’s population – to share if emissions from the Global North stops immediately. Obviously, they won’t. Rich nations, after already benefitting enormously from unchecked emissions in the past, are now fighting for a bigger piece of the world’s remaining carbon budget as well.

Consider Canada’s emissions. The Canadian government’s most recent goal is to reduce emissions to 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020, making it one of the least ambitious targets of all industrialized countries. Setting aside the fact that the government has yet to issue any convincing plan on how it intends to meet this objective given the explosion of emissions from Alberta’s tar sands, let’s assume for the sake of argument that they succeed.

Based on Environment Canada’s own figures from 2007, we can estimate that total emissions from 2001-2020 will average at least 700 million metric tonnes per year (they will almost certainly be higher). That means that more than 14 billion metric tonnes will be emitted in Canada over this 20-year period.

Of the available 650 billion tonnes of total atmospheric space remaining until 2050, Canada, with just 0.5 per cent of the world’s population, plans to take at least another two per cent of the remaining global carbon budget by 2020. How much more carbon we will emit by 2050 is anyone’s guess.

And remember, this is to reach the 450 ppm (or 2 C increase) target. If we are to limit warming to 1.5 C, as many feel is imperative, the global target would then be 350 ppm. This would shrink the available atmospheric space considerably and make Canada’s share of the remaining carbon budget even more disproportionate.

Who then should sacrifice their emissions for the sake of Canada’s continued atmospheric expansion plans? Carbon intensive energy has driven our economy and made us rich, but if 2 C is the limit (and Canada has agreed to this), will we now deny these same benefits to those living in poverty in the Global South?

Of course, due to economic inertia, most of Canada’s emissions in the next few years simply can’t be avoided at this stage. But where does this leave southern countries? Quite simply, with almost no room left to expand.

If countries like Canada are unwilling to make deep cuts quickly, it’s very difficult for poor countries to see how they can reconcile their development aspirations to the atmospheric limits of climate stabilization at 2 C of warming. As Jayati Ghosh wrote in the Guardian, “even without trying to replicate western standards of living, just to provide every citizen with minimum decent standards that contemporary technology can offer, such as permanent housing, electrification, access to clean water, sanitation and sufficient food, will necessarily require more resource use and result in more carbon emissions.”

And so begins the battle for the atmosphere.

Climate justice

The historical legacy of inequitable resource appropriation by rich countries is deeply felt in the developing world. In his landmark 1971 book Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano wrote, “The strength of the imperialist system as a whole rests on the necessary inequality of its parts…The oppressor countries get steadily richer in absolute terms – and much more so in relative terms – through the dynamic of growing disparity.” For many in the Global South, the atmosphere is simply another resource that the North is seeking to appropriate disproportionately through international climate negotiations.

Partly in response to the position of some northern countries such as Canada, a climate justice movement has started to emerge around the world. Those involved believe that climate change cannot be separated from issues of equity, justice and the need for development. They refuse to accept the choice between developmental justice and climate stabilization and they insist that the Global North, through its past emissions, owes an ecological debt to the South.

Predictably, the call for reparations has been dismissed by governments in rich countries. Todd Stern, the chief U.S. negotiator in Copenhagen, said, “For most of the 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, people were blissfully ignor­ant of the fact that emissions caused a greenhouse effect.”

But if our past actions could result in grievous harm to others, whether through wilful negligence or otherwise, do we not have a profound moral obligation to act quickly to alleviate potential suffering? Moreover, we have known about global warming for over 20 years now, yet developed countries are still doing very little to reduce emissions and make atmospheric space available for other nations.

Responding to Stern’s remarks, renowned Indian environmental leader and feminist Vandana Shiva said, “I think it is time for the United States to stop seeing itself as a donor and recognizing itself as a polluter, a polluter who must pay for its pollution and its ecological debt. This is not about charity. This is about justice.”

North American media have for the most part utterly failed to recognize the ethical dimensions of climate change, and consequently most Canadians see little problem with judging our government’s climate change policies solely on the basis of our national economic interest. As a result, ethics and justice are the crucial missing ingredients in our national conversation about climate change. Gwynne Dyer put it this way: “The reason no deal was possible [in Copenhagen] is that public opinion in the Global North is still in denial about the fact that the final deal must be asymmetrical. It’s got to accept and account for the history. Until the general public grasps that, especially in the United States, there will be no real progress.”

The reason for this impasse is quite simple. Today, the only proven routes out of poverty still involve an expanded use of energy and, consequently, a seemingly inevitable increase in fossil fuel use and carbon emissions – unless more expensive alternative energies can rapidly be deployed.

Only when the North has committed to deep cuts and put sufficient money on the table, can we justifiably expect the South to commit to binding reductions of their own. As one climate change adviser to the Indian government noted, “The basic concern of the developing countries is not whether or not to initiate mitigation actions, but how the mitigation burdens will be distributed among nations.”

The Harper government surely knows that its demands of developing countries cannot be accepted and will only serve to further delay any meaningful global action. “Western nations are engaged in a lose-lose game of chicken with developing nations,” writes author Naomi Klein in Rolling Stone. And in the meantime, Canada’s emissions will continue to rise. The government’s ballyhooed Clean Air Regulatory Framework from 2007 still has not been implemented and the recent federal budget contained no new funding whatsoever for climate change mitigation.

Poverty alleviation and equitable forms of development are possible within the world’s small remaining carbon budget with existing clean energy technologies. But this will only become a reality if rich nations like Canada are willing to accept their historical responsibilities by implementing stringent domestic reductions that will free up atmospheric space for the rest of the world, and by paying developing countries to leapfrog fossil fuels and make the transition directly to cleaner energy.

Tragically, our current government has shown no such inclination. With the world sliding towards 2 C of warming and potentially catastrophic climate change, Canada seems quite content to simply fight for whatever atmospheric space remains.

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By Todd Gordon
Briarpatch Magazine
May/June 2010

Canada has been active indeed on the world stage of late, but hardly as the force for good many Canadians imagine their country to be. Since June 2009, Canada has supported a coup in Honduras; three Salvadoran activists who were organizing against Canadian mining company Pacific Rim Mining Corporation have been assassinated; one activist in Mexico has been assassinated for opposing yet another Canadian mining company, Blackfire Exploration; Foreign Affairs and International Trade has refused to advance a law to impose human rights standards on Canadian companies operating abroad; and Canada has taken a lead role in the free-market-oriented reconstruction of Haiti after the devastating earthquake in January, which follows Canada’s participation in the 2004 coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the imposition of an aggressive neo-liberal regime on the country. At the same time, of course, the Canadian military has been participating in the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan, propping up a profoundly corrupt regime whose members include warlords with atrocious human rights records.

I could offer many more examples of Canada’s retrograde behaviour around the world. But these cases should suffice in challenging the notion that Canada is a benign force on the international stage or that its bad behaviour is restricted to a few isolated cases. What we see instead is a systemic pattern of self-interested, violent and destructive behaviour that cries out for a deeper analysis.

To make sense of Canada’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy and to comprehend the wreckage that Canada and its business interests are leaving in their wake as they stampede through the Third World, it’s important to grasp the significant transformations Canadian capitalism has undergone over the last 20 years of neo-liberal entrenchment. Canada, we must finally recognize, is an imperialist power; members of its ruling class think and act like imperialists. Support for coups and violent conflicts with local communities aren’t accidents, nor should the Left expect a change in policy without serious popular mobilization.

A mere middle power?

Many Canadians who take for granted that the United States is an imperial power are still reluctant to describe Canada in the same way. The U.S. is indeed the global superpower, and has a long history of invasions and support for reactionary regimes abroad to protect its own interests. Given the prominent role it has played in international affairs since the Second World War, its actions draw a great deal of scrutiny and criticism. But imperialism isn’t the sole domain of superpowers. No one would claim that Britain was the only imperialist nation when it was imposing its empire around the globe a century ago, even if it was the most powerful such force.

Rather, imperialism is about relations of power and domination in which countries (usually) of the Global North systematically drain the wealth and resources of the South via economic, political and military means. It’s driven by the contradictory dynamics of capitalist accumulation – particularly the overaccumulation of capital, in which too many factories, big box stores, mines, etc. are created to be deployed profitably – that underlie the economy’s recessionary tendencies and create constant pressure on companies to expand geographically in search of new markets. Imperial relations, in other words, are embedded in the system of global capitalism. They transcend superpowers, however important the latter are in setting and enforcing the rules of the game.

So how does Canada fit into this picture?

Canada isn’t some mere middle power riding the coattails of our superpower neighbour. That view of Canada was never really accurate, even before the dawn of the neo-liberal age. Canada has always had a self-interest to promote; Canadian capital has always had a controversial presence in the Third World, whether in banking in the Caribbean, manufacturing in apartheid South Africa or mining in General Suharto’s Indonesia. But the neo-liberal era, with heightened competition among multinational corporations and the aggressive market liberalization imposed on the Third World by the North (including Canada) has seen an unprecedented international expansion of Canadian capital.

The best measure for assessing the degree of Canadian capital’s penetration of third world markets is foreign direct investment. Foreign direct investment is cross-border investment (usually by multinational corporations) that represents at least 10 per cent of equity in the targeted asset, whether it be a factory, mine or newly privatized utility. It’s an important indicator of foreign penetration of national economies because 10 per cent equity typically gives the investor some degree of managerial control. Often, though, the equity stake is much higher than 10 per cent. Foreign direct investment has been a driving force behind neo-liberal globalization. It has increased significantly in the last 20 years, more rapidly in fact than the world economy as a whole. As many observers point out, foreign direct investment is one of the principal ways by which capital from the North has gained economic power and influence in the South during the neo-liberal period.

Canada is now one of the world’s major foreign direct invest­ors. By 2007, the cumulative stock of Canadian direct investment had reached $514.5 billion, and Canadian investors were active in 150 different countries. Over the last several years Canada has consistently ranked in the top 10 of the world’s biggest foreign investor nations in absolute terms. Among G8 nations, Canada has the fourth highest ratio of outward direct investment stock to gross domestic product. But it’s not just the growth of Canadian direct investment that’s important here: the global distribution of these investments has changed in important ways in the last couple of decades, expressing shifting preoccupations of Canadian capital.

As third world economies were being pried open by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in the 1980s and ’90s, Canadian investors began to exploit the cheap labour, natural resources and sale of public assets in the region at an unprecedented rate. In the early 1950s, the Third World received approximately 10 per cent of total Canadian direct investment stock, but this has increased sharply since the early 1990s; by 2007 it received over 27 per cent. Canadian investment in the U.S. similarly reflects the overall shift in investment destination: from 1990 to 2007, the share of Canadian direct investment in the U.S. fell from 60 per cent of total Canadian direct investment worldwide to 44 per cent, even though Canadian assets in the U.S. tripled in absolute terms. In 2007, among G8 countries Canada had the second highest level of direct investment in third world countries as a proportion of gross domestic product. At the same time, income from direct investment in the Third World as a proportion of total investment income earned abroad has risen significantly, from just under 25 per cent for the years 1973-79 to over 45 per cent for 2000-07. In 2007, total after-tax income from Canadian direct investment in the South reached $18 billion.

Canadian investment is particularly strong in banking and mining, and Canada’s mining industry is the largest in the world. But Canadian companies are also prominent in sweatshop manufacturing, hydroelectric development and telecommunications, among other industries.

This dramatic growth of Canadian investment in the Third World has had serious repercussions for the communities where the investment is undertaken. Across industries and across regions, Canadian companies, often with the diplomatic and financial support of the Canadian state, are actively displacing indigenous and subsistence communities, undermining unions and engaging in ecological destruction. As a result, they face stiff resistance wherever they go. Conflict with local communities is a common feature of Canadian investment in the Global South, and has become increasingly well documented.

The necessary violence of imperialism

Canadian foreign and military policy developments over the past 20 years have been shaped by the rapid growth of Canadian capital’s presence in the Global South and the ensuing conflicts with local communities and anti-neo-liberal governments. Canada’s ruling elites have a clear stake in ensuring that the Third World remains a safe place to do business. Their aim is to ensure – to use the language of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) – “stability,” “predictability” and “transparency” for Canadian investors. Not surprisingly, imposing liberalized market relations (which constitute “stability,” “predictability” and “transparency”) and exploiting the South have become a central goal of Canadian foreign policy, as evidenced in policy documents coming out of DFAIT and CIDA. This in turn entails a more aggressive attitude towards any country or organization deemed to be threatening Canada’s financial interests or the sanctity of liberalized free markets more generally.

The aggressive pursuit of one-sided trade and investment agreements that lock in corporate rights over and above the human and environmental rights of local communities is a good example. This has been most advanced in Latin America and the Caribbean, where Canadian direct investment in the South is the strongest. Canada has 10 bilateral investment treaties and free trade agreements with six countries in the region.

Another weapon in the Canadian foreign policy tool kit is aid financing. Canadian aid policy has little to do with altruism towards the world’s poorest. Canada still imposes structural adjustment measures as a condition of receiving its aid. In line with Canada’s investment patterns, furthermore, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has shifted Canadian aid priorities away from Africa towards Latin America, where Canada has been funding such things as the neo-liberal reorganization of mining sectors (as in Peru) or the rewriting of mining codes to strengthen foreign investor rights (as in Colombia).

A supposed commitment to human rights and democracy promotion has also served as a useful cover for advancing Canada’s financial interests abroad. American writer William Robinson has discussed the move towards “democracy promotion” in American foreign policy in Latin America since the 1980s, coinciding with the emergence of liberal democracy in countries previously ruled by U.S.-backed dictatorships. American aid funding, typically channelled through the National Endowment for Democracy (and implemented by the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute) goes to parties and organizations sympathetic to U.S. interests. For Canada, democracy promotion has in practice meant funding right-wing “civil society” organizations like those that participated in the coups in Venezuela in 2002 and Haiti in 2004.

The Harper Tories, following suit, have plans for a new democracy promotion centre to better focus its activities in this regard. This comes, furthermore, as the Tories push the state-funded and supposedly non-partisan Rights & Democracy (aka the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development) further to the right with their recent appointments to its board of directors. Rights & Democracy was not a progressive organization to begin with, having supported the right-wing opposition to Aristide in Haiti. Now it will be even more staunchly in the pro‑imperialist camp, following the Tories’ appointment of Gérard Latulippe, the current resident director in Haiti for the National Democratic Institute, as its new president.

Security for capital

Like any good imperialist the Canadian state has put a premium on building up its war-fighting capacity in recent years. The Liberal government under Paul Martin (with its junior coalition partner the NDP) and the Harper Tories both committed billions of dollars of increased military spending in order to hire more soldiers and create a more efficient war machine with the capacity to deploy rapidly around the world. While the occupation of Afghanistan was used as the pretext for these spending increases, the reality is that the majority of new purchases won’t be obtained until after the military’s presence in Afghanistan has been scaled down considerably, suggesting the Canadian ruling class is thinking well beyond Afghanistan with respect to its military planning.

Since the end of the Cold War, military and political leaders have consistently stated that the world is more insecure and unstable than it was previously, while most of the potential threats to Canadian security, they suggest implicitly or explicitly, emanate from the Third World. It would be very short-sighted to think that the central place the South has taken in military thinking is merely coincidental to Canada’s economic interests. These interests are the main reason Canada is engaged in the Global South in the first place. There is zero risk of Canada being invaded by a southern country, and other supposed threats military planners sometimes refer to – terrorism, disease and an influx of refugees – are overblown and little more than racist tropes designed to promote fear of the areas and people we exploit.

The military interventions in Haiti and Afghanistan have demonstrated Canada’s willingness to employ dramatic levels of violence in order to be taken seriously by friend and foe alike, and, particularly in the case of Haiti, to promote the interests of Canadian capital. The Canada-as-peacekeeper myth – which was always a problematic narrative on a number of counts – can’t be sustained in the face of such violent military occupations, a fact which Canada’s ruling elite is happy to stress to both Canadians and the rest of the world.

The responsibility of the Canadian Left

Ecological destruction, violent conflict with local communities, support for unsavoury regimes such as the Lobo government in Honduras or Álvaro Uribe in Colombia, opposition to progressive governments such as Chávez’s in Venezuela, and military engagements – none of these things are accidental or the result of a misinformed policy. They’re the product of strategic decision-making by Canadian business and political leaders about how to best protect their interests abroad. And there’s no reason to think Canadian leaders will change their behaviour of their own accord. It’s simply not in their class interest. Our task on the Left, then, is to build a deeper anti-Canadian-imperialist consciousness, while fostering stronger bonds of solidarity with movements in the South struggling against imperialism in general and Canadian imperialism in particular. Only with these steps will it be possible to sustain the kind of movement that can challenge the destructive power of Canadian capital and the state abroad.

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Riots in Tegucigalpa on June 28, 2009, the day the Honduran military removed President Zelaya from office.

By Dawn Paley
Briarpatch Magazine
May/June 2010

For the last 10 years, Juana López Nuñez (not her real name) has spent most of her waking hours making T-shirts for the Canadian company Gildan Activewear at the company’s San Miguel factory in Honduras.

Today, at age 44, she has little use of her arms and experiences constant pain in her shoulders, neck and hands. She takes painkillers throughout the day, and has had one surgery, which didn’t ease the chronic tendonitis that keeps her up at night.

“I thought that when I started to work for a company, it would make life better. I didn’t realize that I was going to get injured,” she says, holding back tears. López is a single mother of five children, including a 10-year-old daughter who helps her with housework. She makes the equivalent of $47.50 a week.

López isn’t the only Gildan employee who is facing troubles at the workplace. “The others don’t want to talk. They are scared and they don’t say anything,” said López. “They are scared to talk to the management because they think they will get fired or get a lower grade of pay,” she said.

Maquila (sweatshop) workers are one segment of the Honduran population whose already difficult lives have gotten more so since the military coup last year.

Early on the morning of June 28, 2009, President Manuel José Zelaya Rosales was removed from the presidential residence by the army and flown out of the country to Costa Rica. Right-wing Liberal politician Roberto Micheletti Baín was quickly sworn in as interim president, a position he held through the November 29 elections until the inauguration of Conservative politician and landowner Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa in January.

Grassroots resistance to the coup was strong and widespread, and the repression was harsh. Between June and December of 2009, the Committee for Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) documented 708 human rights violations, including 54 murders. The coup regime also shut down opposition media, and journalists have been threatened and some murdered.

To place the blame solely on multi­national corporations or imperial foreign governments, however, is too simplistic. The coup in Honduras can be understood as a setback in the popular struggle against globalized capitalism. And while Canada has certainly played a role in legitimizing the coup, the actions of local elites empowered by transnational capital have often been glossed over by coup critics outside the country.

Placards of images of people murdered in Honduras since the coup line the Tegucigalpa office of the Committee for Relatives of the Disappeared.

Foreign investment and the coup

Six months after the coup, workers in the maquilas were facing much more difficult conditions than they previously were, said Maria Luisa Regalado, the director of the Honduran Women’s Collective (CODEMUH). Health and safety issues are falling on deaf ears now that industry friendly representatives have replaced people in the Ministry of Labour who possessed knowledge of the issues.

“They’ve fired all of the people who had an understanding of health issues,” Regalado, who works closely with Gildan employees, told Briarpatch.

“Public health in this country is in total abandon right now. It’s worse than ever.”

Before the coup, the situation for sweatshop employees was already difficult. Julio Zapata Paz (not his real name) lives in the city of Choloma and was fired from his job at a plant for trying to unionize the workforce, an act which is supposedly legal and protected in Honduras. Today, he’s on a “red list,” unable to find work because of his union activities. The family of four gets by on his wife’s income.

“To have a dignified – poor, but dignified – life, you need at least 7,000 lempiras (C$382) a month, and our income is only 4,000 lempiras (C$218) per month,” he said. “Our diet is precarious. We don’t have a balanced diet because of our economic situation,” said Zapata, whose family survives primarily on rice and beans.

After assuming the interim presidency on the day Zelaya was ousted, Roberto Micheletti promised to make Honduras an even more attractive destination for foreign direct investment, a proposal that doesn’t sit well with advocates for workers in the sweatshop sector.

“Creating a good investment climate means creating a climate against working people,” said Yadira Minero, of the Centre for Women’s Rights in Honduras (CDM). “Foreign investment isn’t our salvation,” she said.

Regalado expects the situation to get worse for the 103,000 sweatshop workers in Honduras through the remainder of Lobo’s four-year mandate. “They are already contracting temporary workers, even though there is no law that allows them to do this. What’s going to happen now is that the maquilas are going to fire permanent staff and later rehire people in a temporary way,” she said.

Further lowering labour standards is a move that the Honduran business sector can get on board with. The day after the coup, the National Business Council of Honduras (COHEP) released a statement that cheered on the coup. “What occurred today was not the changing of one president for another; today, framed in national unity, the respect for the Constitution, national laws and institutionalism was achieved,” it reads. Other powerful business and export associations followed suit.

“It really comes down to the so-called economic development model, and who does the country’s economy work in favour of,” said Grahame Russell, co-director of Rights Action, a small non-governmental organization that has worked in Honduras since 1998. Russell likens the Honduran elite to big fish in a small pond, similar to other oligarchies throughout the hemisphere.

The main economic sectors in Honduras, which are strongly linked to transnational capital, have largely been supportive of the coup. “Mining is a part of it, but it’s not even the major part,” said Russell. “The main stuff in recent history has been the textile stuff, the maquila industry, and then the land owners, and that includes Chiquita bananas, and the Facussé family with their African palm [oil].”

Globalization, structural adjustment and neo-liberal economic policies imposed with increasing efficacy since the Second World War mean that life in Honduras has gotten more and more difficult for a significant segment of the population. United Nations figures for 2007 indicate the average annual income was $3,796, with one-third of Hondurans living on less than $2 a day. Remittances from Hondurans working abroad make up a staggering 24.5 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product and outweigh foreign direct investment by more than three to one.

Canadian connections

According to the Canadian government, Canadian investors have injected more than $400 million into Honduras, mostly in textiles and mining. Bilateral trade between Canada and Honduras totaled $176 million in 2009.

Canadian involvement in the Honduran sweatshop industry surged in 2000, when the Canadian company Gildan Activewear, one of the world’s largest T-shirt companies, set up shop. In 2007, Canadian investment in the maquila sector surpassed U.S. investment in the sector for the first and only time. Sweatshops are located in export processing zones, where instead of dealing with governments, foreign investors rent tax-free space from private Honduran firms. The owners of these firms constitute Honduras’ new oligarchy, a transnational elite.

The transnational mining industry also plays a large role in the Honduran economy. Goldcorp, a mining company headquartered in Vancouver, has been operating a mine in central Honduras for 10 years and Vancouver-based Aura Minerals and Toronto’s Breakwater Resources both have active mines in Honduras.

Hondurans have every reason to be wary of foreign mining companies. Deposed President Zelaya had supported a mining law that would have prevented new gold mines involving the use of cyanide from opening in Honduras. The law had been drafted in consultation with community organizations, but hadn’t yet passed when the coup took place.

Canada’s junior foreign minister Peter Kent visited Honduras in February, when he met with Canadian business leaders and Honduran government ministers. “Since establishing diplomatic relations with Honduras in 1961, our bilateral relationship has evolved considerably,” said Kent. “As a result of Canada’s active involvement in efforts to resolve the political impasse in Honduras over the past several months, I believe that this relationship has only grown stronger,” he said in a press release.

Jeffery Webber, a Canadian political scientist and assistant professor at the University of Regina, participated in a fact-finding mission to Honduras in January. He interprets Kent’s statement as “a clear signal, both to Canadian cap­ital and to the Honduran state, that Kent and the Harper government are taking a far-right position.” Webber points out that Kent’s trip came at a time when anti-coup activists were continuing to be killed by pro-coup forces.

“Immediately before and immediately after Kent’s trip, when he was talking about all these democratic advances and national reconciliation, by a minimal count, the number of resistance activists killed, according to COFADEH figures, went from 36 to 43,” said Webber.

Canada’s prompt recognition of Honduras’ new President Pepe Lobo, even amid a climate of bloody repression against anti-coup organizers and supporters, echoes the demands of business and is aligned with the U.S. position. This pro-coup position sets North America apart from much of the rest of the hemisphere, which has not officially recognized Lobo’s government.

“I think Canada’s foreign policy when it comes to Honduras is illustrative of their general policy in the region overall,” said Webber. “It’s basically an overt promotion of the interests of Canadian capital and the support of right-wing regimes, whether they be ostensibly democratic or overtly authoritarian, which is the case with Pepe Lobo’s regime.”

Dr. Juan Almendares in his office in Tegucigalpa: "I am a survivor of torture. I was condemned by the death squads during the decade of the '80s, and it's important to remember that there are still some from that era who are today part of the coup d'état in Honduras."

Webber says that while the Canadian government made official statements opposing the coup and the usurpation of power, they later took a more ambiguous position that allowed the coup regime to carry on its business. “In practice, the [Canadian government] did everything they could to effectively rationalize the coup, to say that in fact there was violence on all sides, that Zelaya was conducting all these illegal actions, anti-constitutional actions, which is a complete falsehood well documented by everyone who is a serious researcher and a serious reporter,” he said.

For fear of a new constitution

The North American corporate media portrayed the June 28, 2009, military coup as a necessary intervention set up to prevent then President Zelaya from transforming into a replica of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frias, rather than as corporate and elite manoeuvring to maintain political and economic dominance over the country.

At issue was a non-binding plebiscite scheduled for the very day Zelaya was removed from office, asking Hondurans whether or not they’d like to see a referendum question about starting a process of constitutional reform added to the November 29 ballot. Zelaya’s insistence on holding a vote on the mere possibility of constitutional reform was one of the key policy moves that put him in the black books of powerful elites, including the judiciary and the military.

“For the first time in Honduran 20th century history and actually 19th century history, you have a president, who himself comes from the elites of Honduras, put out not only a discourse but even many policies that fundamentally questioned the political system of Honduras,” said Honduran historian Darío Euraque, who was working for the Honduran ministry of culture at the time of the coup.

Despite significant repression, Honduran popular movements carried out historic mobilizations against the coup d’état, the November 29 elections (which many boycotted) and the inauguration of President Lobo. These movements have rallied around a central demand: the formation of a constitutional assembly to write a new constitution for Honduras.

Honduras’ constitution was approved by Congress in 1982 following a U.S.-managed transition to democracy after a decade of military rule. It cemented the facade of democracy during a period when the U.S. was militarily reoccupying the country. The U.S. national security doctrine, a Pentagon plan that militarized the country, was implemented in the 1980s. It transformed Honduras into a staging area for U.S.-led counter-insurgency efforts on the isthmus, and included the construction of 12 military bases where hundreds of thousands of U.S. and third party soldiers were trained.

“That era was one of disappearances, of torture, of the organization of death squads,” said Dr. Juan Almendares, the former rector of the largest university in Honduras, who today operates a community health clinic in Tegucigalpa.

“I am a survivor of torture. I was condemned by the death squads during the decade of the ’80s, and it’s important to remember that there are still some [death squad members and members of the military and government] from that era who are today part of the coup d’état in Honduras,” he said.

But the de-escalation of the armed conflicts throughout Central America in the 1990s did not signal a return to peace in Honduras. In fact, demilitarization in Honduras signalled the rise of a new elite, working hand in hand with transnational capital through organizations ranging from the International Monetary Fund to USAID.

“Demilitarization occurred in the 1990s because the military and its far-reaching influence became both unnecessary and unproductive for the transnational agenda, and because a new fraction among the bourgeoisie and the bureaucratic elite was vying for hegemony over the internal polit­ical system and felt constrained by an omnipresent military,” wrote professor William I. Robinson in his 2003 book Transnational Conflicts.

The 2009 military coup in Honduras may be the latest manoeuvre by the trans­national elite that consolidated power in the country throughout the 1990s.

“The national security doctrine that was implemented [in the 1990s] is now being reimplemented with nothing more than some modernizations. It’s modernized those crimes in the name of democracy,” said Almendares during an interview at his clinic last December.

But Euraque, who may be the country’s pre-eminent historian, doesn’t think multinational corporations are the central reason the coup happened in Honduras.

“I still believe that the fundamental issue is not the fact that the trans­­national companies and imperialists dominate Honduras,” said Euraque. Instead, he said, an elite group of Honduran business people have used the military to reassert control over a political system that they saw as being forced into crisis by popular movements and the political opening under Manuel Zelaya.

For his part, Russell thinks that the consolidation of the coup in Honduras, achieved through violence and repression of popular movements, is part of a hemispheric pushback against even the slightest progressive reforms.

“It’s one more struggle of the Americas, where elite, wealthy sectors want to keep in place a certain economic model. If they can keep it in place in Honduras, it creates more space for them to impose it in Guatemala, and in the next country over,” said Russell.

For maquila workers like López, or unemployed folks like Zapata, the deteriorating political situation in Honduras has made an already difficult situation even more tenuous. Together with their colleagues and their communities, they have been forced onto the front lines of organizing against both an exploitative economic model and an illegitimate political regime.

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By Jillian Kestler-D’Amours
Briarpatch Magazine
May/June 2010

“It’s hard to find a country friendlier to Israel than Canada these days,” far-right Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman remarked last June.

Indeed, in its recent actions the Canadian government has only reaffirmed and intensified its full-fledged support for the state of Israel, while conducting itself with what seems like a total disregard for public opinion both internationally and at home.

“I’m ashamed of the new policies of this government, which is in the process of moving away from the values that Canada is known for,” Medhi Amor, a member of the Montreal-based Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, told Briarpatch. “There was a tradition of tolerance and human rights. Now on the international stage, we are much more pro-Israel than even the U.S. government.”

In February of this year, Canada’s Junior Foreign Minister Peter Kent was quoted in Shalom Life magazine making an alarming assertion: “an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada.”

A month earlier, Canada announced it would discontinue its financial contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). UNRWA provides support and resources like clothing, food and health services to approximately 4.7 million registered Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the occupied Palestinian territories, and relies entirely on donations from various organizations and governments.

“Canada was the seventh largest donor and it contributed an average of $15 million per year,” Amor said. “It is very sad to see that Canada is de-funding such an organization, especially when the United States government has funded UNRWA with $40 million.”

The removal of support for UNRWA is far from an isolated incident. Since it took power, Stephen Harper’s minority government has cut funding to many Canadian non-governmental organizations. Many of these groups had worked on issues related to Israel/Palestine in some way, or had spoken out against recent Israeli human rights abuses, but had maintained relationships with the Canadian government for decades.

“It’s impacted us in the sense that it scared our community,” Khaled Mouammar, the president of the Canadian Arab Federation, told Briarpatch. “Most of the members of our community are newcomers, and if an organization has been labeled anti-Semitic and is attacked by the government officials, people say, ‘We want to move away from this organization. We don’t want to be associated with it.’”

Canadian Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney has repeatedly alleged that the Canadian Arab Federation promotes anti-Semitism and hatred, but has never provided evidence to back up these claims. Still, in 2009, the Canadian Arab Federation’s contracts with the government – which helped finance language programs for Toronto-area immigrants (the majority of whom are of Chinese origin) – were not renewed.

According to Mouammar, who openly criticized the Harper government’s silence during the Israeli offensive in Gaza last year, these funding cuts were the first sign that Canada was embarking on the slippery slope of censorship.

“Internationally, it’s projecting a wrong image for Canada, which is one of bigotry. And domestically, it’s really a major threat to freedom of expression,” he said. “They think that by doing this, they can silence any criticism by NGOs of the foreign policy of Canada. They will not stop. They are doing this step by step. This government is using a stealth approach to really change Canadian politics and Canadian values.”

In 2006, shortly after Hamas, a Palestinian movement and party that is considered to be a terrorist group by the United States, the European Union and Canada won the Palestinian legislative elections, Canada was the first country after Israel to cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority. Canada was also the only country among 47 to vote against a UN Human Rights Council resolution condemning the Israeli attacks on Gaza that killed 1,400 people last year.

According to Yves Engler, activist and author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid, these government actions combined with recent NGO funding cuts clearly demonstrate Canada’s increasingly pro-Israel policy.

In the current government’s increasingly strident support of Israel, Engler sees a growing concern on the right over the growth and success of pro-Palestinian activism in Canada.

“The Palestinian solidarity movements [in Canada] have made some massive strides. I think part of the rabidness of the Harper government and B’nai Brith and other pro-Israel entities is that they’re increasingly nervous and frustrated with the extent of Palestinian solidarity activism in the country,” he said.

Alternatives, a Montreal-based NGO that works with justice and equity projects within Canada and around the world, has been without government funding since March 31, 2009. At that time, it had applied for renewal of its Canadian International Development Agency funding contract, with no response.

“We haven’t heard anything since July [2009]. The only news we received was through the media,” said Alternatives’ executive director Michel Lambert. “We’re going to keep working, but it’s had an important impact on our financial balance and the work that we do.”

Lambert said that while the government has not presented Alternatives with an official motive, rumors circulating in Ottawa are that “the main reason [for the cuts] is the position [of the organization] related to Israel.”

Alternatives Journal, a magazine published independently by Alternatives and the Alternatives International organization, has regularly published articles drawing attention to Israeli human rights violations against Palestinians.

Alternatives also has a partnership with the Teacher Creativity Center, a non-governmental organization based in Ramallah, Palestine that works to create an environment for teachers that promotes “human rights, democracy and civic education.”

“We are in front of an operation that is trying to silence civil society. It’s very dangerous. We have to tell this government that it can’t act in this way,” Lambert said.

But the more pressure to be silent there is, the harder the movement pushes back, Lambert said. “I think that [the government is] creating a movement against it. People won’t tolerate being muzzled like this.”

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Reviewed by Greg Shupak
Briarpatch Magazine
May/June 2010

It is commonplace even for critics of Canada’s role in Afghanistan and Haiti or of its vocal support for Israel’s recent military campaigns in Lebanon and Gaza to suggest that Canada has abandoned a long-standing tradition of being an honest broker in international politics. In her book Holding the Bully’s Coat, for example, Linda McQuaig condemns recent Canadian foreign policy choices because they no longer “champion . . . the United Nations and UN peacekeeping.” It is telling that even McQuaig, who has done commendable work criticizing Canadian policy, has internalized the idea that there is a mythical past in which Canada was an even-handed arbitrator of international conflict. Yves Engler’s The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy (Fernwood Press, 2009), one of the most import­ant studies of Canada’s international role in years, explodes this illusion.

Engler convincingly argues that, histor­ically, Canadian foreign policy has been to serve as the junior partner in British and then American imperialism and to favour corporate interests to the detriment of the Global South. Engler provides a thorough examination of, for example, Canada’s role in the overthrow of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, its assistance to the United States during the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, and its financial entanglement with apartheid South Africa. Moreover, Engler scrutinizes Canada’s consistently one-sided support for Israel and the use of Canadian “aid” money to leverage favourable contracts for Canadian mining companies in less-developed countries.

While Engler’s book debunks the smug self-image of many Canadians, it also functions as an iconoclastic critique of prominent figures like Prime Ministers Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Pearson’s actions during the Suez Canal crisis warrant scrutiny because the Nobel Prize that Pearson was absurdly rewarded for his involvement in the conflict is in many ways the origin of the myth that Canada has been a sober moderator of international conflict. Engler’s research demonstrates that Pearson supported British, French and Israeli aggression in the Suez Canal and his embrace of the UN was strategic rather than principled. He aimed to bridge a rift within NATO between the invaders and the United States, who deemed the attack unwise.

Engler shows that in 1957, when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser regarded UN troops as necessary to protect Egypt, Pearson threatened to withdraw them if Nasser did not abandon his program of reform. A decade later, when Nasser and UN Secretary-General U Thant decided it was time for UN forces to leave Egypt, Pearson was among those who fought to keep the troops in the country. Moreover, the record shows that Pearson oversaw the sale of Canadian-made weapons to the United States for use in Vietnam, including defoliants and navigation systems used by the Americans to burn the Vietnamese with napalm. The Pearson government has the equally disgraceful distinction of choosing to send more aid to Indonesia than to any other non-Commonwealth state in the aftermath of Major General Suharto’s slaughter of 500,000 people in 1965.

Trudeau, meanwhile, plainly preferred Pinochet to Allende: while the Trudeau government diplomatically isolated and financially subverted the democratically elected Allende, they were quick to recognize General Pinochet’s coup regime when it seized power on September 11, 1973, to support its bids for loans from the IMF and the Inter-American Development Bank and to sell it six Twin Otter aircraft. Trudeau was also on the wrong side of history in South Africa. Trudeau helped extend International Monetary Fund loans to the apartheid regime and, when Afro-Cubans volunteered to fight South African troops in Angola, Trudeau responded by ending the Canadian International Development Agency’s small aid program in Cuba. As Nelson Mandela has repeatedly noted, Cuba’s actions in Angola were instrumental in bringing down apartheid.

The primary weakness in Engler’s book is that, at times, his arguments could be better contextualized. For example, his discussion of Canada’s tacit support for the 1980 U.S. invasion of Grenada fails to illuminate the geostrategic importance of Grenada at the time and to situate that war within President Reagan’s broader terrorist policies in the hemisphere. Some readers might also find Engler’s prose overly mechanical, which is why I want to suggest that The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy is best served with a helping of Daniel Brooks and Guillermo Verdecchia’s 1991 play, The Noam Chomsky Lectures. The play is a memorable meta-theatrical exercise in agitprop that, like Engler’s book, interrogates Canada’s self-image as a benevolent player in global affairs. While the play is not and does not pretend to be a comprehensive overview of Canadian foreign policy, Engler’s book affects none of the artistry and postmodern levity that Brooks and Verdecchia bring to political discourse. Reading the two in tandem is an exercise in shifting between the playful and the solemn, two attitudes that much of today’s Left could balance more effectively.

The call to action at the end of Brooks and Verdecchia’s play is elliptical; one might say that Engler’s final chapter fills in their ellipsis. The course of action that Engler recommends for conscientious Canadians is, perhaps surprisingly, moderate, simple and, I suspect, likely to have mass appeal. Among initiatives such as withdrawing from NATO, he also calls on Canadians to pressure their government to operate in accord with basic ethical guidelines. These include the principles that “Canadian aid should do no wrong,” that it should be used for the benefit of the people of the Global South rather than for the benefit of companies like Barrick Gold, and that Canada must support governments that are democratically elected. The last part is particularly important given Canada’s shameful role in the disastrous coups against Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Salvador Allende, and in the siege of Gaza following the 2006 election. Engler’s capacity to weave together accessible, widely held notions of justice with a detailed historical critique make him one of the most important voices on the Canadian Left today.

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By Yves Engler
Briarpatch Magazine
May/June 2010

High-minded rhetoric aside, Canadian foreign policy is largely designed to serve hegemonic Canadian corporate interests abroad. To bring Canada closer to the status of a “peacekeeper” or “honest broker,” here are some specific policies that the peace and social justice movement should pursue.

1. Immediately withdraw Canada from NATO.

If there was ever any justification for this alliance “to combat the Soviet menace,” two decades after the Cold War it no longer exists.

2. Re-evaluate the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

Ottawa should begin to evaluate whether its numerous military arrangements with Washington, including NORAD, are necessary. As much as possible Canada should de-link itself from a U.S. military apparatus responsible for untold human suffering.

3. Drastically reduce the size of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Let’s start with a 10 per cent reduction in the military budget each year for the next five years. A Rideau Institute study released in 2008 found that 52 per cent of Canadians want a reduction in military expenditures. Of those polled, 27 per cent wanted programs to continue as planned and only 11 per cent believed in greater military spending (10 per cent had no opinion). The truth, unpalatable as it may be to some, is that there is only one nation on earth that could realistically invade Canada and that is the United States. This is not an argument for a military policy that views our neighbour to the south as a threat, but rather a strong reason for Canada to follow an independent, neutral foreign policy path that works for world peace and justice for all. In the unlikely event that our country ever faced a military threat, our best defence would be widespread respect for international law and the support of millions of people around the world who know Canada is not their enemy.

4. Proclaim that the Canadian Armed Forces will only be used abroad under a UN mandate supported by two-thirds of the 192-member General Assembly, not the Security Council.

Numerous surveys show the vast majority of Canadians support real peacekeeping as the primary goal of our military.

5. Support elected governments and truly democratic movements.

Support for democratic structures and movements must be real, not a cover for advancing Canada’s financial and strategic interests abroad. This means strengthening the capacity of other governments to provide the same sorts of things we expect from our own: education, health care and other public services.

In the name of avoiding corruption, much “aid” is delivered through non-governmental organizations. But rather than supporting private charity, Canadian aid should be targeted at strengthening democratic governments’ ability to deliver services. People become disillusioned with democracy when it does not deliver basic and necessary social services. The best antidote to extremism is responsive, democratic governance that meets the needs of the people and demonstrates its legitimacy on a daily basis.

6. Funnel foreign aid to where it’s needed most, not where Canadian investments are thickest.

Aid should not be tied to buying Canadian commodities or be used as a subsidy to Canadian companies and investors. Improving public education, and ensuring it is free for all, is one of the best ways to help break the poverty cycle. Let’s help poor countries build good public education systems.

Canadian prosperity was built on public utilities that provided safe water, sewage, electricity and communication systems. Let’s help poor countries do the same. Public health systems, including free health care for all, were also a key element in Canada’s development. This too should be a prime objective of Canadian aid.

The Golden Rule, versions of which exist in every culture and religion, is also apt in international affairs. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In other words, before we send aid to another country we should ask ourselves: is what we are paying for, and the manner in which we are doing it, something that we would want to see in Canada? We cannot allow ourselves to do things in the international arena that would draw a penalty on our home ice.

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Stephen Harper’s assertion last Friday that Canada has “no history of colonialism” has attracted widespread anger and ridicule. Calls for a retraction and apology (not to mention for Canada to finally sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) continue to build:

Harsha Walia, “Really Harper, Canada has no history of colonialism?”

Jorge Barrera, “Prime Minister needs to apologize for colonialism denial: Native groups.”

By Eric Margolis
Winnipeg Sun

PARIS — Pakistan finally bowed to Washington’s angry demands last week by unleashing its military against rebellious Pashtun tribesmen of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) — collectively mislabelled “Taliban” in the West.

The Obama administration had threatened to stop $2 billion US annual cash payments to bankrupt Pakistan’s political and military leadership and block $6.5 billion future aid, unless Islamabad sent its soldiers into Pakistan’s turbulent NWFP along the Afghan frontier.

The result was a bloodbath: Some 1,000 “terrorists” killed (read: mostly civilians) and 1.2 million people — most of Swat’s population — made refugees.

Pakistan’s U.S.-rented armed forces have scored a brilliant victory against their own people. Too bad they don’t do as well in wars against India. Blasting civilians, however, is much safer and more profitable.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Jeremy Scahill’s Alternet article: This Is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama’s White House.

2. Scahill and Mother Jones’ s David Corn on Democracy Now: Agents of Change or Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons? A Discussion about Barack Obama’s Advisers and Transition Team

“I think . . . this is the precise moment when this kind of journalism matters, when we have to remind people of the history and the previous policies implemented by the people that are at the center of Obama’s foreign policy team right now, because we’re going to be living with these people for the next four years running the show. And I think it’s incredibly important to be all over this right now, before they’re named.”