It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
In the true tradition of business unionism Canadian Autoworkers President Buzz Hargrove sold his members out for a bowl of pottage. Despite his pseudo-socialist bluster, which was really ghost written by Sam Gidden, and his so called political activist unionism, in the end like all other union bosses he sold out his workers for a contract today.
It makes one wonder why we need unions. Well actually the bosses need them more than the workers do, since they are used to curtail authentic class struggle, and to mediate on behalf of 'variable labour' with the owners of capital.
The recent record breaking settlement with the Big 3 auto companies was a sell out by Buzz as he prepares to retire.
While denouncing two tiered wage settlements agreed to by UAW and the Big 3 south of the border, Buzz agreed to a made in Canada two tier wage structure no different than those he was denouncing.
Economic provisions of the deals mirror those of the CAW's deal with Ford Motor Co., which was cemented May 4. New hires will be paid 70% of base wages during the first three years of employment before climbing into the full wage scale. The deal cuts a week's vacation in return for 3,500 Canadian dollar (US$3,485) one-time payments and increases to drug co-payments.
The sell out of principles began when Buzz and CAW agreed to a no strike deal with Magna.
He has now followed it up with a sweet heart deal with the Big 3 selling out autoworkers by tying them into a contract that does not assure them job security, but rather see's further lay offs and plant closures with a payout to the survivors.
The auto industry is bleeding and all Buzz got was a band aid, and he admitted it.
Elimination of cost-of-living adjustment until 2009.
Employee co-payments of 10 per cent on prescription drug costs, amounting to $250 in the first year and growing slightly in the next two years.
Newly hired employees receive 70 per cent of full wages and take three years to get to full level, compared to previous provision of 85 per cent and two-year growth to full wages.
Surrender of 40 hours of holidays a year in return for a one-time payment of $3,500 in 2009.
Chrysler
Etobicoke casting plant in Toronto kept open for 2½ years instead of being closed next year. Company and union will look for buyer or joint venture partner for Chrysler.
Confirmation that next generation of Chrysler's large sedans will be built at Brampton, Ont., plant.
Minivan plant in Windsor, Ont., will maintain three shifts as long as market stays healthy. Shift at St. Louis plant to be cut before any shifts in Windsor.
GM
New rear-wheel-drive car for Oshawa, Ont., to join Chevrolet Camaro.
Extension of Chevrolet Impala production at Oshawa plant to 2012.
New six-speed transmission for St. Catharines, Ont., pending government financial support.
New V8 engine for St. Catharines.
Retirement incentives up to $125,000 and a $35,000 vehicle voucher for workers at Windsor transmission plant, which will be closed in 2010.
Retention of second shift of workers at Oshawa Truck plant. Instead of layoffs, workers will go on two-week rotating shifts until September, 2009.
Ford
Adds new vehicle to Oakville, Ont., assembly plant beyond Ford Flex, which goes into production this year.
Extends life of St. Thomas, Ont., large-car assembly plant by three years from expected closing next year.
Autoworkers in Canada are marking time, as CAW rests on its laurels happy to have organized the Big 3 and now Magna. They have made little effort to take on the Japanese or Korean automakers in Canada who now outsell the Big 3.
It's a good thing he is finally retiring unfortunately while that will end the cult of personality in the CAW it will not end the entrenched bureaucracy of labour fakirs and pork choppers who dominate the organization.
CAW likes to claim to be a social union, a left leaning union, but it is in the end regardless of its ideological claims, a business union, structured to maintain capitalism.
As Marx pointed out years ago; Trade unions are not revolutionary organizations, but defense organizations of the working class. They call for a fair days wage instead of demanding the abolition of the wage system.
Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. The fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.
Under the Fordist model of mass production and with the post War boom they became the hand maiden of capitalism, bargaining with the bosses to get crumbs off the table for their members.
They abandoned any pretense to being agents of social change, instead they became the cops on the shop floor, halting wildcats and job actions by workers. Building permanent corporate style organizations paid for by workers, and populated by professional permanent non-elected paid representatives, they have abandoned the revolutionary aims of workers self-organization; the control of the means of production, the take over and self management of factories by the workers themselves.
Instead they accept the day to day operations of capitalism as inevitable, not worth fighting over except to try and ameliorate its worse excesses, which keeps the bosses happy.
Workers since the beginning of capitalism have organized themselves, when unions were outlawed or banned, workers still created them and used them to strike against the bosses.
This self organization of workers is the dialectic of the conflict between labour and capital. When capitalism boomed it offered unions labour peace, a greater share of the pie, through out the sixties and seventies this was known as the social contract, and was reflected in a trilateral approach to State governance, the unions joined the politicians and capitalists at the table of civil society, determining how the welfare state would function.
Capitalism created the welfare state, in order to avoid a revolution at the end of WWII, and the labour leaders gleefully joined the bosses and their state glad to be accepted as equals. But they never were equals they were bought off, as the eighties and nineties proved when the bosses tore up the social contract and went on the offensive attacking union gains and calling for the privatization of the state.
The unions still slow to wake up, like the door mouse at Alice's Tea Party, thought this assault was an aberration, a few bad apples amongst their friends the bosses. Instead it was a well planned and orchestrated assault on the State by capitalism which needed more capitals to expand, and saw public sector services as a waste of the that capital.
The class war had been declared when capital started calling for roll backs, give backs, started off shoring and contracting out, and creating two tiered wage structures. The unions gave up fighting back accepting Maggie Thatchers admonition that There Is No Alternative.
And we hear Maggie echoed in Buzz's departing deal with the Big 3.
The 64-year-old Mr. Hargrove described this year's set of talks as the toughest he has faced since he became president in 1992. He warned in an interview yesterday, however, that they will "look like a picnic" compared with what his successor will face in 2011 if Chrysler, Ford and GM continue to lose market share and are forced to continue slashing their Canadian and U.S. operations.
We can exist with out capitalism, with out hedge fund investments, workers self management of their factories, and of public services is the alternative. Unfortunately it is usually embraced after the fact, after capital has abandoned the factories and communities that surround those factories.
But it shows that workers can organize themselves to run things for themselves and for their communities, without capitalists.
It is the secret of capitalism, that without workers there is no capitalism, we create the beast which oppresses us. Our challenge is not to tame the beast but to end its existence by creating the conditions for real existing socialism.
The evidence of manufacturing job loss on a massive scale in Ontario where the Canadian auto industry is concentrated is clear and undeniable. Nonetheless a question must be asked. Is it accurate to characterize what is taking place here as a “manufacturing crisis?” Or is it something else?
In the face of a deteriorating economic climate and concerns about the ‘investment competitiveness’ of Canadian plants, the CAW leadership made a startling move this spring. It had an air of panic about it: the leadership quietly asked the Big Three – GM, Ford and Chrysler – to open their collective agreements early, offering a new ‘pragmatic’ settlement. ...
When Autoworker President Buzz Hargrove makes new pronouncements, they carry weight within and beyond the labour movement – even when, as has recently been the case, they seem to undermine what Canadian unions have always stood for...
In Bob White’s October 30th Op-Ed piece in the Toronto Star, the retired CAW president refers to the current Magna deal as a form of "innovation", comparing it to the 1980s fight against concessions and the formation of the new Canadian auto union...
In the discussions of the proposed Magna-CAW (Canadian Auto Workers) ‘Framework of Fairness’ deal, the focus has been on Magna as a components company. But what if Magna opened an assembly plant? Under the language of the ‘Framework of Fairness’, it too would be part of the deal...
On November 7, 2007, the CAW made an historic announcement. The first collective agreement under the new CAW-Magna Framework of Fairness Agreement (FFA) was ratified at Windsor Modules, a plant of some 250 workers...
About 75 per cent of the lumber products sold at RONA Inc. stores meet the environmental standards of three certifying bodies, a company spokesperson said. But of that 75 per cent, only 15 per cent of wood meets the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council, often considered the most stringent certification program.
Earlier this week, Greenpeace blasted RONA and other retailers for using suppliers that chop down trees from endangered areas of Canada's Boreal Forest.
Canada's forest companies are no angels. For more than a century after Confederation they were, in fact, looters. But government-mandated reforestation and advances in silviculture since then make it hard to swallow Greenpeace's claims that Canada's boreal forest is "indisputably" sick.
What's indisputable is that the boreal forest is a massive storehouse of greenhouse gases that covers 58 per cent of Canada's territory. That 70 per cent of it is commercially inaccessible. That only 0.5 per cent is logged in any given year. That Canada has a deforestation rate of zero. And that in Ontario and Quebec, Abitibi and Kruger are cutting much less than their annual allotment in the face of slumping lumber prices.
What's more, forestry engineers - a group that indisputably loves the forest every bit as much as Greenpeace - marvel at the boreal forest's capacity to regenerate itself more than any other type of forest in the world. Experts are also finding that self-regeneration - whether after natural fires, insect epidemics or logging by humans - may be a more effective way to promote biodiversity than intensive replanting.
All of which makes Greenpeace's attack on Abitibi curious enough. But why does Rona get blacklisted and not IKEA or Home Depot? Greenpeace says it's because the latter two retailers have made specific undertakings to source FSC products. But IKEA conceded in April that only 4 per cent of the wood used in its Chinese factories - the source of most of its furniture - meets the FSC grade.
Much of the wood used in Chinese furniture manufacturing is illegally logged in Russia and Myanmar.
Massive deforestation in Russia, Asia and South America is a real, verifiable, contributor to global warming. And when reforestation occurs, it's on plantations, as in China or Brazil, where such monoculture is biodiversity's worst enemy. Yet, those are the same countries whose low-cost lumber, pulp, paper and furniture are decimating Canada's forest industry.
RONA (TSX: RON), the largest Canadian distributor and retailer of hardware, home renovation and gardening products, has been made aware of a document published earlier today by Greenpeace and wishes to make the following clarification.
Sustainable development has long been a priority at RONA. The Company has a responsible purchasing policy that applies to all of its products. With respect to forest products, the Company does not buy any product derived from endangered species and favours the purchase of products that bear Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Canadian Standards Association (CSA) and Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) as well as ISO 14001 certifications. Furthermore, RONA ensures that all of the goods it procures, whether forest products or other, have been produced in conditions that respect human rights and the environment. RONA applies these principles in its choice of suppliers, sub-contractors and other business partners.
Over the past 10 years, RONA has recovered 3.6 million containers of paint in Quebec, or over 30% of all paint recovered in the province. Left unrecovered, old paint may be poured out into nature - a real threat to the environment. By promoting the recovery of these products, RONA is offering the public an economical and ecological alternative to burial in landfills or incineration.
From collection points at stores across RONA's Quebec network, the old paint and containers are then sent to the RONA distribution centre in Boucherville. From there, the old paint is sent to Peintures recuperees du Quebec. About 80% of the old paint is reconditioned and put back on the market. Leftover latex and alkyd paint, stain and varnish are all accepted in the recovery and recycling program.
RONA (TSX:RON), the largest Canadian distributor and retailer of hardware, home renovation and gardening products, has announced a 9.1% increase in sales and an 11.6% increase in operating income for the second quarter of 2007. This increase in sales and income can be attributed to acquisitions made in the last 12 months and additional measures taken at the beginning of the quarter to stimulate sales and earnings growth in a business environment that was more difficult than anticipated.
Net earnings increased by $6.2 million or 7.7%, from $80.0 million in the second quarter of 2006 to $86.2 million in the second quarter of this year.
Operating income reached $161.8 million in the second quarter of 2007, an increase of $16.8 million, or 11.6%, over 2006. EBITDA margin rose from 10.8% in 2006 to 11.0% in the second quarter of 2007.
Net earnings for the second quarter of 2007 stood at $86.2 million, or $0.74 per share, diluted, compared to $80.0 million in 2006 or $0.69 per share, diluted. This represents an increase of 7.7% in net earnings and 7.2% in diluted earnings per share.
Well its a back handed attack on Abitibi which is in merger talks with American forestry products company Bowater.
The activists charged pulp manufacture, SFK Pulp, with purchasing wood chips from destructive logging operations. Two of the main suppliers of wood chips to SFK Pulp, Abitibi-Consolidated and Bowater, log in the last remaining intact areas of the Boreal Forest, in the habitat of threatened species as woodland caribou, and in areas where industrial logging is opposed by local First Nations. "Logging companies like Abitibi-Consolidated and Bowater continue to deny that there's anything wrong in Canada's forests," said Ferguson. "But anyone who's seen the satellite images showing massive fragmentation, the scientific reports showing species extirpation, and the news reports describing closure after closure of mills and towns knows different."
A detailed new Greenpeace report,Consuming Canada's Boreal Forest: The Chain Of Destruction From Logging Companies To Consumers, traces the journey of clear-cut trees from virgin boreal stands to retail store shelves.
The group fingers what it calls the worst despoilers of northern timberland: Abitibi-Consolidated Inc., Bowater Incorporated and Kruger. The first two merged last month, creating a corporate colossus with cutting rights to an area of the Ontario and Quebec boreal as big as the state of Nebraska.
Also named are a list of retailers buying products from the three – part of a campaign to get firms to buy forest products made either from recycled material or from logging operations certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
The report release follows on the hanging of a massive banner from the Montreal headquarters of Abitibi-Consolidated two weeks ago. Canada’s Boreal Forest stretches across the north of the country, from Newfoundland to the Yukon. It represents a quarter of the world’s remaining intact ancient forests and stores 47.5 billion tonnes of carbon in its soils and trees. Ontario and Quebec's intact Boreal Forest represent 14% and 18%, respectively, of the entire country’s intact forest areas.
The demands of the Logging Companies are to: o Cease logging in all intact forest areas, caribou habitat, and mapped endangered forests immediately, and work with governments and nongovernmental organizations to formally protect these areas; o Shift to FSC certification across all tenures to ensure environmentally and socially responsible management of these forested areas, and ensure all products are FSC-certified; o Commit publicly to not pursue licensing and new logging activities in currently unallocated areas of the Boreal Forest; and o Refrain from logging without the prior and informed consent of First Nations whose territories are affected.
Left Nationalists like Mel Hurtig and Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians may want to ask Greenpeace if this really helps Canada. Attacking indigenous capitalist industries like Abitibi and Rona.
While we ponder the silence over the sale of Abitibi to Bowater in the MSM and among the politicians. You see that was yesterday's news. Before Alcanand Stelco.
"There are many issues underlying this announced merger which should raise alarm bells in Ottawa," said David Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. "Our forest-based industries and communities are already in crisis with the loss of some 10,000 jobs over the past few years.
"Our history with mergers and acquisitions has been that so-called 'synergies' really mean more mill closures, job losses and devastation in our communities," he said.
For example, Montreal-based Domtar (TSX: DTC) is expected to soon close a $3.3-billion deal to muscle up its operations by merging with the fine paper division of U.S.-based Weyerhaeuser, one of the world's largest forestry companies.
The marriage of Abitibi and Bowater is just the latest move in a tectonic shift that sees North America forestry players jostling to grow and compete with the rest of the world, said Bowater president and CEO David Paterson, who will move to Montreal to head the new corporate entity.
"This is a continuation of what I see as a long-term trend of a globalization of the market, that North American companies have to be able to compete with Asian, South American and European producers and they have to do that from a low-cost platform and that's what we're trying to create here."
Shareholders of Montreal-based Abitibi-Consolidated Inc. (nyse: ABY - news - people ) and Bowater Inc. (nyse: BOW - news - people ), based in South Carolina, approved a deal last month to combine the two companies. U.S. regulators still need to give approval before the two can become AbitibiBowater Inc., which would be the third-largest forest products company in North America.
The deal could close by the end of September, and may lead to plant closures.
"U.S. regulators are expected to require mill closures in order to let the merger go through," Banc of America Securities analyst George Staphos told investors in an industry update last week.
Since May, Abitibi shares have dropped 21 percent, Bowater fell 23 percent, International Paper by 16 percent and Weyerhaeuser 21 percent.
But in Roberval–Lac-Saint-Jeanit was a crucial issue, leading to the election of a Mayor who can get things done. Grease the palms, bring in a bit of largese; some federally funded development projects to offset in some small way the devastation occurring in primary forestry in the region.
Quebec's production has declined monthly by double digits since July 2006.
Producers face reduced overall harvest quotas from the provincial government. They have also reduced volumes to fit a quota agreed to under option B of the softwood lumber agreement with the United States.
As Jean Paul Blackburn has in the neighboring riding. After all Abitibi is the major employer in that region.
Abitibi-Consolidated and Bowater will now put the troops to work planning detailed integration of their global pulp and paper and lumber business. Both company’s Canadian mills are being bled by high energy and fibre costs and especially by the Canadian dollar’s surge – as all products are sold in U.S. dollars. “Costs will have to be cut right across the system,” said David Paterson, Bowater’s CEO who will become CEO of the new Abitibi/Bowater. John Weaver of Abitibi-Consolidated would not comment on possible rationalization in eastern Canada, where the highest cost mills are located.
While Bowater has to pay for a less than stellar environmental record.
Bowater Inc. will pay $42.5 million to Weyerhaeuser Co. to settle a dispute over costs at a Canadian pulp and paper plant Bowater sold to the company in 1998. Bowater and Washington-based Weyerhaeuser (NYSE:WY) have been arbitrating a claim regarding the cost of environmental matters related to the mill.
And while the Conservatives assert a lassiez faire attitude to corporate takeovers, try and pawn the disaster that their Softwood Agreement onto the Charest government, they realize that Quebec expects state capitalism in some form. And that is how you keep seats.
MONTREAL, Sept. 7 /CNW Telbec/ - A new Leger Marketing poll commissioned by Greenpeace reveals that 86 per cent of Quebecers support the suspension of logging in the last remaining intact areas of Boreal Forest in the province. Additionally, only 18% per cent of respondents believe that forest companies and the government of Quebec are managing forests in a way that serves the public interest and forest workers. "The public's lack of confidence in the government and logging companies is significant," said Melissa Filion, a forest campaigner with Greenpeace. "Without taking quick and concrete action to protect the forest, the government and logging companies will not regain the public's trust."
The site of a new road being cut into Wet’suwet’en territory by Coastal GasLink in October 2019. (Photo: Amber Bracken)
This story was produced in collaboration with The Narwhal, a non-profit online magazine that publishes in-depth and investigative journalism about Canada’s natural world.
On a snowy November day, Indigenous land defenders head out to hunt on Wet’suwet’en territory in northwest B.C. with hopes of catching a moose to feed their families and Elders. They still haven’t secured any moose meat this season and are starting to stress.
Soon after the small group arrives at their traditional hunting blind, which looks like a tree house, workers from TC Energy’s Coastal GasLink pipeline project move in on them and threaten to call the RCMP. It’s fight or flight.
The construction of the controversial natural gas pipeline across northern B.C. is opposed by Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs but supported by all 20 elected band councils along the route. It has led to a series of tense confrontations on the territory over the past few years. In February 2020, just over a month after the B.C. Supreme Court granted Coastal GasLink an injunction against land defenders blocking work on the pipeline, heavily armed RCMP raided several camps and arrested 28 people. This sparked the Shut Down Canada movement, which brought Canada’s rail system to a near standstill, just before the COVID-19 pandemic really shut things down.
Despite ongoing opposition, the pipeline pushes ahead, even during the pandemic. At the hunting blind last November, workers were tasked with clearing the trees—and the people—along the pipeline right-of-way.
“I’d like you to leave the area,” an unmasked worker in a bright-yellow jacket and white hard hat says as he approaches a young female land defender.
“Don’t get close to me. There’s a pandemic!” she yells, filming the incident. “Step back away from me!”
“We have the authority to work here,” he continues.
“You don’t have any authority,” the woman interjects. “I can feel your breath right now. This is a pandemic. Step away from me!”
As the pandemic gripped Canada in spring 2020, provinces and territories announced that only “essential services” that preserve life, health and basic societal functioning were allowed to continue operations. Across the country, the majority of industrial projects got the green light. Since then, there have been repeated calls from health care professionals, Indigenous leaders and environmental groups to shut many of them down.
Such critics point out that industrial projects bring hundreds—even thousands—of transient workers from across Canada into remote communities, where they typically live in shared accommodations. Meanwhile, Indigenous workers on such projects often go home to their families.
This has all put Indigenous people at higher risk of catching COVID-19 when they’re already more vulnerable to the disease due to long-standing health inequities, including disproportionate exposure to polluting industries and lack of access to health care. And, as predicted, there have been several outbreaks at industrial work sites across Canada, including at two Coastal GasLink camps. Some have spread to the Indigenous communities nearby.
“It’s like purposefully infecting our people with this disease that’s killing off our most sacred knowledge holders and language keepers,” says Sleydo’ (Molly Wickham). A supporting chief in the Cas Yikh House of the Gidimt’en Clan, one of five Wet’suwet’en clans, she has just attended the memorial of an Elder, one of several to have died from COVID. “We’re never going to be able to recover from those losses. I’m so angry because it was 100 percent preventable.”
Critics say allowing industrial projects to press on with full knowledge of how Indigenous people could be affected is exposing and exacerbating environmental racism. That’s what it’s called when governments and corporations disproportionately locate polluting industries and hazardous sites in Indigenous, Black and other racialized communities—particularly those that lack the economic, political or social clout to fight back.
Environmental racism has long exposed people to a wide range of health-harming pollutants that have been linked to serious illnesses, including cancer, lung disease and heart conditions. Those ailments, in turn, make people more vulnerable to COVID-19.
Now, as industrial projects continue on during the pandemic, COVID-19 itself can be seen as yet another pollutant being circulated by industry. And experts warn we’ll see more pandemics if we continue to exploit our natural environment.
Sleydo’, her husband and their three kids, aged one, five and 10, live in a cabin the couple built deep in the wilderness on Wet’suwet’en territory. Over the past decade, several land defenders have reoccupied the land and built traditional infrastructure, a healing centre and camps. The goal is to live a traditional lifestyle and protect the territory from industrial development and the people from environmental racism.
“We are the land and the land is us,” says Sleydo’, who is the spokesperson for the Gidimt’en Checkpoint, one of the camps that was raided by the RCMP. “And one is not well without the other.”
In 2019, Baskut Tuncak, then the United Nations special rapporteur on toxics and human rights, documented an epidemic of environmental racism after a visit here. “There exists a pattern in Canada whereby marginalized groups, and Indigenous peoples in particular, find themselves on the wrong side of a toxic divide, subject to conditions that would not be acceptable in respect of other groups in Canada,” he wrote in his report.
There are plenty of examples. In Alberta, oil sands development has encroached on two dozen Indigenous communities—home to about 23,000 people—since extraction began in the 1960s. In Ontario, more than 60 refineries and chemical plants have surrounded Aamjiwnaang First Nation since the 1940s, creating what’s known as “Chemical Valley,” one of the most polluted places in the country. In Nova Scotia, politicians plunked a dump in the heart of Shelburne’s Black community in the 1940s; it closed in 2016, but people are still worried about its lingering effects. And there have long been concerns that the pollution from these projects is causing serious health issues and killing people: Environmental racism also involves failing to meaningfully consult communities about such developments in the first place and then taking a long time to address issues that arise.
Nova Scotia’s industrial health hazards and its Mi’kmaq and African Nova Scotian communities
Compare the location of Nova Scotia’s industrial health hazards and its Mi’kmaq and African Nova Scotian communities, and a clear pattern emerges. (Source: The ENRICH Project. Map: Carol Linnitt)
In 2012, Ingrid Waldron founded the Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities and Community Health (ENRICH) Project to study environmental racism in Nova Scotia. In 2016, ENRICH created an interactive map of the province’s waste disposal sites, toxic industries and thermal generating stations juxtaposed with Mi’kmaq and African Nova Scotian communities. A clear pattern emerged.
A sociologist and associate professor in the faculty of health at Dalhousie University, Waldron says the map shows “the audacity of government to select certain communities to put something that’s not desirable.”
Waldron eventually turned her research into a book, There’s Something in the Water: Environmental Racism in Indigenous and Black Communities, and then a 2019 Netflix documentary co-directed by Elliot Page. She says environmental racism is rooted in colonial policies that allowed settlers to extract resources from Indigenous lands without permission—policies that continue to inform government decision making today.
“Environmental racism is a visible manifestation of environmental policy,” says Waldron. “And environmental policies are created by members of the elite, mostly white people, who hold perceptions about who matters and who does not matter.”
Sleydo’ agrees. “Environmental racism is based on this idea that we aren’t human enough to deserve a clean environment. Nobody cares if we get sick and die, because we’re just Indigenous people. And industry and government are banking on that.”
The 22,000-square-kilometre Wet’suwet’en territory—which is about four times the size of Prince Edward Island—has already been irreparably damaged by industrial projects. In the 1950s, Alcan dammed a river, leading some caribou to drown as they attempted to cross new bodies of water en route to their usual habitats. In the 1980s, toxic tailings from a silver mine seeped into a lake, decimating salmon populations. And throughout the decades, logging companies have scarred the landscape with clearcuts, destroying moose habitat. “Elders that have come out to the territory don’t even recognize it anymore,” Sleydo’ says.
Now, construction on the 670-kilometre Coastal GasLink pipeline—which is set to slice through old-growth forests, wetlands, rivers and habitat for endangered caribou—threatens Wet’suwet’en people’s food and water sources, their cultural sites and their ways of life.
Sleydo’ says work on Coastal GasLink is not only racist, it’s also illegal: The Wet’suwet’en never ceded their territory to the federal government. The Hereditary Chiefs have jurisdiction over it, according to Wet’suwet’en law. This is backed by the 1997 Supreme Court of Canada Delgamuukw decision, which stated that provinces can’t extinguish Aboriginal title (which includes rights to natural resources) and that oral history is legitimate evidence of land claims. According to the Hereditary Chiefs, the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline is a violation of their law and, as such, they’ve issued the company an eviction notice.
It’s also a violation of international human rights law, according to watchdogs. In December 2019, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called on Canada to halt work on the Coastal GasLink pipeline—as well as two other industrial projects in B.C.—until it receives free, prior and informed consent from Indigenous peoples. It also urged the country to stop removing Wet’suwet’en people from their lands and start removing police and security forces.
Yet while the pandemic offered the perfect opportunity to hit pause on these projects, they continue on with the blessing of the government and, in the case of Coastal GasLink, the help of the RCMP.
At a media conference soon after B.C.’s essential services list was released, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry explained why industrial projects made the cut. “I think it’s important to recognize you can’t just abandon a large mine or industrial site. That’s not safe; it’s not safe for the community or for the environment, as well,” she said.
Three weeks after initial COVID-19 safety guidelines for industrial work camps were released, a new public health order began requiring specific safety protocols. It didn’t limit the number of workers, although many projects, including Coastal GasLink, voluntarily reduced their workforces—at least for a while. The number of workers at Coastal GasLink camps went from about 1,130 at the end of February 2020 to 130 at the end of March. However, the number of workers on industrial projects fluctuates seasonally, and Coastal GasLink described the reduction as a “scheduled ramp-down.” By November, in the midst of the second wave of the pandemic, there were more than 4,000 people working on the pipeline.
While governments said it was safe for work to continue on industrial projects, some said, paradoxically, that environmental monitoring was unsafe. The Alberta Energy Regulator gave the entire oil-and-gas industry a months-long break from a long list of environmental activities, such as most ground- and surface-water monitoring and almost all wildlife monitoring. At a media conference, Alberta NDP leader Rachel Notley called the move “a cynical and exploitative use of this pandemic” and also tweeted, “So, people can get haircuts in most of the province right now, but we can’t test the water supply for cancer-causing agents?”
Critics questioned why industrial projects that don’t provide any essential services to Canadians (and never will) got the go-ahead. The Coastal GasLink pipeline, for instance, is being built to transport natural gas across the province to be exported overseas. LNG Canada, the export facility, is also under construction.
To many, the risks seemed unnecessary. Just over a week after B.C. declared a state of emergency, David Bowering, former chief medical health officer of northern B.C.’s health authority, released an open letter to Henry calling work camps “landlocked cruise ships” and “COVID-19 incubators” and urging her to shut them down.
Other letters followed: Front-line health care workers, Indigenous leaders and environmental groups all asked Henry to put people before profit. One of those letters was from Sleydo’ and her fellow female chiefs. “The economy cannot come before Indigenous lives,” they wrote.
Despite the pleas, Henry didn’t take any action until the end of December, after a series of cases, clusters and outbreaks at work sites in northern B.C., some of which spread to Indigenous communities. She then issued a public health order outlining a gradual return of the workforce to the sites following the Christmas holidays. Between November and January, there were outbreaks totalling 56 cases at Coastal GasLink sites and 72 cases at LNG Canada sites. (Henry was not available for an interview.)
Sleydo’ says Coastal GasLink workers and RCMP officers aren’t always following basic safety protocols, such as wearing masks and maintaining a distance of two metres from others. This can be seen in several incidents captured on camera and posted to social media, in which workers and officers approach land defenders who are hunting, holding ceremonies and patrolling the territory.
“They’re taking advantage of a global pandemic to further destroy our lands and put our people at risk, which I think is really disgusting,” Sleydo’ says.
Coastal GasLink did not reply to several interview requests. In an email, an RCMP spokesperson said officers should be wearing masks when interacting with the public.
After Yellowknife emergency room doctor Courtney Howard had her first daughter in 2011, she spent a lot of time breastfeeding and staring out her window at Great Slave Lake, which is downstream from the oil sands. She decided to do some research into how they affected community health. She figured she’d find a ton of peer-reviewed studies, but she turned up zero.
“The lack of research into the local health impacts of the oil sands is astonishing,” says Howard, who is past-president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. “It is so far beyond what any of us should consider acceptable as members of this country.”
Unfortunately, Howard says, that’s the norm for research into what effects resource-extraction industries might have on the health of those who live nearby. She can think of a few reasons for the data gap. Communities that are “out of sight, out of mind” may not attract the attention of researchers. Remote communities often lack continuity of care, so health care providers may not notice things like a cluster of a rare type of cancer. And they may face environmental racism. “When the communities raise the alarm, it is not always acted upon the way that it should be,” Howard says.
What is known about the local health effects of heavy industry isn’t good. For instance, a 2019 study in the journal Cancer found the rate of acute myeloid leukemia in one area of Sarnia, Ont., near Chemical Valley, is three times higher than the national average and suggested pollution from local oil refineries and chemical plants may be to blame.
And while there’s a lack of studies on communities affected by environmental racism, there’s ample research on the impacts of the pollutants they’re exposed to. Waldron recently combed through decades of research to pull together a report on the health effects of toxins found in waste sites, thermal generating stations, and pulp and paper mills. She found that the toxins—heavy metals, volatile organic compounds, fine particulate matter and mobile gases—are associated with a long list of health issues, including cancer, birth defects and damage to most of the major organs.
Air pollution has also been well studied and has been linked to heart, breathing and lung conditions. It contributes to an estimated 14,600 premature deaths in Canada every year. Emerging research from around the world also suggests that chronic exposure to air pollution makes people more likely to catch COVID and die from the disease.
Environmental racism can also lead to stress and mental illness, which can, in turn, result in physical harm. Waldron says many chronic diseases that were once thought to be primarily genetic, like diabetes, are largely influenced by structural inequities such as environmental racism. “We know now that racism gets under your skin and actually changes your biology,” she says.
In Canada, COVID-19 data on race is not being systematically collected at the federal level, but some provinces, cities and health authorities have started to crunch the numbers. In the United States, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows Black and Indigenous people are about five times as likely to be hospitalized for the disease as white people. Environmental racism is but one reason for the chasm.
Research shows that racialized people in Canada have worse health outcomes and higher rates of chronic diseases due to a number of social and economic factors, including poverty, food insecurity and unstable housing. They’re also more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as extreme weather and new diseases.
“There’s overlapping systemic discrimination that leads to overlapping health impacts,” Howard says. “It would be difficult to tease out what the exact impact of environmental racism would be—and that’s a frequent excuse we hear from industry.”
Another layer of discrimination is in the health care system: When Indigenous people do get sick, whether it be with COVID or another illness, they often face racism when trying to get treatment. In September 2020, Atikamekw mom of seven Joyce Echaquan died in a Quebec hospital after she livestreamed staff saying she was “stupid,” “only good for sex” and “better off dead” as she cried out in pain. In B.C., just two months later, an independent investigation found that 84 percent of Indigenous people have experienced racism in the province’s health care system.
“Every way you look, it’s like, ‘You don’t matter, we don’t care about your life, we don’t care about your land, you have no rights. You don’t even have the right to live,’ ” Sleydo’ says. “And then, when you do get sick, you’re put into this system that’s racist against you and you’re expected to somehow survive. And people aren’t surviving.”
Tackling environmental racism In February 2020, in the midst of the Shut Down Canada movement, Teck Resources withdrew its regulatory application for its controversial Frontier oil sands project in northern Alberta. When explaining why in a letter to Environment and Climate Change Canada, Teck president and CEO Don Lindsay said Canada needs to reconcile resource development, climate change and Indigenous rights. While Lindsay said the decision had nothing to do with a “vocal minority” opposed to the project, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and then federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer were quick to blame opponents, who were happy to take credit. The group Indigenous Climate Action, which campaigned against the project, called it “a win for Indigenous rights, sovereignty and the climate,” while adding that the fight against environmental racism is far from over.
For years, affected communities, environmental advocates and other groups have been pushing the federal government to update the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, including amending it to legislate the right to a healthy environment. More than 150 countries have already done so, and it’s one of 87 recommendations that came out of an extensive review of the act in 2016 and 2017 (many of which are also echoed in the UN report that called out Canada’s environmental racism). While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has asked the ministers of health and environment to work on strengthening the act, it could be yet another issue sidelined by the pandemic.
environmental racism. (Photo: The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan)
Meanwhile, Nova Scotia Liberal MP Lenore Zann has introduced a private member’s bill calling for a national strategy to redress environmental racism. The bill, which Waldron collaborated on, suggests collecting data on the problem as a prelude to amending laws, engaging communities in policy development and compensating individuals and communities for harms they’ve suffered.
“Grassroots warriors across the country have been fighting this fight for so long, but they were ignored,” Zann says. “It’s time that we listen and that we act.”
Waldron first approached Zann for political support in 2014, when Zann was a provincial MLA. The politician suggested developing a private member’s bill to redress environmental racism. She cautioned Waldron that private member’s bills rarely pass but said it would generate a ton of political debate, media attention and public awareness, which is exactly what happened.
“It got people talking about the issue, which was our main goal,” Zann says. “Environmental racism is like a wound. You have to bring it out into the light of day, dig out whatever is in there and clean it in order for it to heal.”
When Zann moved to federal politics, her first order of business was working on a national bill. The continuation of the bill’s second reading is scheduled for March 23. Zann says she’s “cautiously optimistic” the bill will move to the next stage.
Recent action to address environmental racism in the U.S. may give Zann’s bill the boost it needs. In January, President Joe Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to develop programs and policies “to address the disproportionate health, environmental, economic and climate impacts on disadvantaged communities.”
The spiritual and physical strength to keep fighting
A month after the incident at the hunting blind, on Sleydo’s son’s 10th birthday, her husband burst into the cabin and told his family to get ready: He’d caught a moose. They loaded into the car and radioed people at the Gidimt’en Checkpoint, giving them the coordinates and asking them to meet there without explaining why.
After the family arrived, two carloads from camp showed up frantically, expecting an incident with Coastal GasLink workers or the RCMP. Then they saw the moose. After a collective moment of relief and excitement, they paid their respects to the animal through ceremony, with the kids putting medicines in its eyes and ears, and then harvested it.
Back at the cabin, the family had an outdoor fire, cooked up the organs and played games. Sleydo’ felt a deep sense of satisfaction, security and reciprocity.
“I always tell the kids, ‘If you take care of the land, the animals know that and they give their lives up for you,’ ” she says. “I really believe that when we eat animals from the territory, it gives us the spiritual and physical strength to keep fighting.”
And the fight to protect Wet’suwet’en lives—during the pandemic and beyond—is far from over.
Canada’s “Jekyll-and-Hyde” Masquerade as Nation that Supposedly Supports Pacifism and Progressive Principles
How Canada’s military-industrial complex sucks up to and serves the American one
by Jeremy Kuzmarov / August 1st, 2022
LONG READ
On July 8, the Canadian government led by Justin Trudeau announced that it would send 38 General Dynamics-made armored vehicles to Ukraine as part of $500 million in military aid allotted to Ukraine that had been attached to Canada’s budget in April.
That budget saw a $6 billion increase in military spending from the $26.4 billion total in 2021, which was to be used to boost cyber security and strengthen the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), a joint U.S.-Canadian defense organization.
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said that “Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has reminded us that our own peaceful democracy—like all the democracies of the world—depends ultimately on the defense of hard power….The world’s dictators should never mistake our civility for pacifism. We know that freedom does not come for free, and that peace is guaranteed only by our readiness to fight for it.”
These comments display the priorities of Canada’s current leadership, which is committed to boosting defense spending by $18 billion over the next five years—when it was already ranked 12th in military spending—and to alliance with the United States against Russia and almost all of its other enemies.
Trudeau has also signed a $15-billion agreement to export light armored vehicles (LAVs) produced by General Dynamics Land Systems Canada in London, Ontario, to Saudi Arabia, which sustains the U.S. Empire by trading its oil in U.S. dollars.
A Montreal-based journalist, Engler has written 11 books that are mostly critical of Canadian foreign policy. In this one, he shows that the Canadian military has a long and bloody record going back to its subjugation of Canada’s native population and support for British imperial interventions in sub-Saharan Africa.
After World War II, the Canadian military became more tightly integrated with that of the United States, supplying troops for imperial interventions like in the Korean War, while developing its own military-industrial complex that served as an adjunct of the U.S.
The Canadian Army originated from the British army which conquered North America from the Indians and French with tremendous brutality. Halifax became Britain’s primary naval base in North America after the violent displacement of Mi’kmaq First Nation people who had their heads placed on stakes when they tried to resist.
The father of the Canadian army, William D. Otter, was known for his merciless suppression of Cree and Assiniboine warriors in Saskatchewan.
Otter went on to command Canadian forces in South Africa in the Boer war, which became intimately involved in some of the nastier aspects including search, expel and burn missions.
Canadian infantrymen fighting the Boers in South Africa in 1902. [Source: warmuseum.ca]
William Heneker, a native of Sherbrooke, Quebec, and a Royal Military College (RMC) of Canada trained officer who led expeditions to conquer West Africa for the British, published an influential British training manual which noted how “the great thing is to impress savages with the fact that they are the weaker, and…enforce the will of the white man.”
Nationalist mythology presents Canada as a uniquely pacifist and benevolent country; however, in World War I, which Canada joined out of its loyalty to the British Empire, Canadian troops developed a terrible reputation for violence against prisoners.
After Canadian troops invaded Russia in 1918 with five other countries including the U.S. in an attempt to quell the Bolshevik Revolution, they were rebuked by locals for the “calm skills with which they used shrapnel as a short-range weapon against [Bolshevik] foot soldiers.”
Canada’s Siberian expeditionary force in Vladivostok in winter 1919. [Source: thecanadianencyclopedia.ca]
When Canadian troops were found guilty of murdering or raping Korean civilians during the Korean War, they were usually released from prison within a year or two at most.
Fifty years later in Afghanistan—where Canadian troops fired an astounding 4.7 million bullets and deployed white phosphorus—Captain Ray Wiss praised Canadian troops as “the best at killing people…we are killing a lot more of them [Afghans] than they are of us, and we have been extraordinarily successful recently…we have managed to kill between 10 and 20 Taliban each day.”
In 1910, the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) was established with the aim of reinforcing the British Empire. It was repeatedly deployed in the British Caribbean and in 1932 lent support to a military-coup government in El Salvador that brutally suppressed peasant and Indigenous rebellions.
First recruiting poster for Royal Canadian Navy. [Source: rcinet.ca]
Thirty years later, in 1962, the Canadian Navy participated in the U.S. blockade of Cuba, while assuming responsibility for surveillance of Soviet submarines. When 23,000 U.S. troops invaded the Dominican Republic in April 1965, a Canadian warship was sent to Santo Domingo, in the words of Defense Minister Paul Hellyer, “to stand by in case it is required.”
Subsequently, the RCN planned and exercised an invasion of Jamaica that was designed to secure the Alcan bauxite facilities from rioters.
In the 1990s, the RCN sent warships to the Middle East to enforce brutal sanctions on Iraq.
RCN vessels also enforced a naval blockade of Libya and kept the Port of Misrata open during the 2011 Operation Odyssey Dawn, a U.S.-NATO operation that resulted in the overthrow and lynching of Libya’s nationalist leader, Muammar Qaddafi.
During the Korean War in the 1950s, RCN destroyers transported Canadian troops and hurled 130,000 rounds at Korean targets, while destroying trains and tunnels on Korea’s coastal railway.
A year before the outbreak of the war, the RCN sent a naval vessel to China as Maoist forces were on the verge of victory in China’s civil war. Part of the objective was to show the U.S. and UK that Canada was a “willing partner in the emerging North Atlantic alliance.”
Royal Canadian Navy in Korean waters, 1952-1954. [Source: legionmagazine.com]
Canada has been a faithful member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since its inception in 1949, currently providing it with about $165 million annually. Canada’s ambassador to the North Atlantic Council, Kerry Buck, boasted in 2018 that “Canada has participated and contributed to every NATO mission, operation and activity since NATO’s founding.”
Many of these missions were highly dubious, including a) NATO’s creation of underground anti-communist armies in Western Europe that carried out black-flag terrorist attacks that were blamed on communists in order to discredit them; b) NATO’s bombing of Kosovo in 1999; c) its 20-year war on Afghanistan; and d) its attack on Libya in which seven Canadian Air Force jets carried out bombing missions.
Canadian fighter pilots and ground crew in Libya during Operation Odyssey Dawn. [Source: rabble.ca]
In the 1990s, Canada strongly supported NATO enalrgement to the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary and has sent troops to Latvia and Ukraine as part of a belligerent policy toward Russia that has provoked a new Cold War and might yet cause a world war.
Canada and the CIA
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Canada’s Defence Research Board (DRB) had a formal relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which paid for classified research that was carried out by Canadian academics.
This research included CIA-funded psychological studies that were framed as a response to Communist Chinese brainwashing during the Korean War.
Canadian, British and U.S. officials met to coordinate this research at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Montreal on June 1, 1951, where the chairman of the DRB, Donald O. Hebb, suggested that the research focus on confessions, menticide and intervention in the individual mind, which was endorsed by other attendees.
Hebb subsequently received a secret $10,000 ($50,000 in today’s money) grant from the DRB to study sensory deprivation—or isolation of human beings—which was used as an interrogation technique.
The U.S. government and CIA subsequently put up half a million dollars ($2 million today) for McGill psychologist Ewen Cameron to build on Hebb’s psychological isolation research in ghastly ways—including forced isolation and administration of electroshocks on individuals and large doses of LSD and other hallucinogens.
The expressed objective of the research, carried out at Montreal’s Allen Memorial Institute from the early 1950s until 1965, was to erase existing memories and re-program individuals’ psyches. Hebb’s and Cameron’s research ultimately influenced the CIA’s 1963 KUBARAK Counterintelligence Interrogation handbook, laying the foundation for the CIA’s two-stage psychological torture methods.
Canada has assisted the U.S. allowing its landmass and many facilities to be used to test various weapons in the deadly U.S. arsenal, including chemical and biological weapons.
According to John Clearwater, author of the 2006 book Just Dummies: Cruise Missile Testing in Canada, “no matter how bizarre the weapon, no matter how dangerous the test, no matter how contrary the weapon to stated foreign policy objectives, Canada has never refused a single testing request from the United States.”
Starting in World War II, a super-secret germ warfare research facility run jointly by the U.S. and Canada operated at Grosse ÃŽsle, 50 kilometers from Quebec City, which produced rinderpest (a cattle virus) and anthrax spores.
During the Korean War, the Guilford Reed-led Defence Research Board laboratory at Queens studied mosquito vectors and how to produce mosquito colonies, and helped turn shellfish toxins into weapons that were subsequently used by the CIA to try to assassinate foreign leaders like Fidel Castro.
Dr. Guilford Reed in front of Queens University laboratory which helped develop weapons for the CIA that was used to try to assassinate Fidel Castro. [Source: queensu.ca]
Other biological weapons that the U.S. deployed against Cuba were also tested in Canada and, in July 1953, U.S. army planes secretly sprayed 6 kg of zinc cadmium sulfide, a carcinogen, on Winnipeg, and eleven years later did the same on Medicine Hat, Alberta.
When uproar developed in the U.S. over the testing and development of chemical and biological weapons, much of the research was transferred to a secret military research facility north of Suffield, Alberta, where the U.S. Army tested 25-pound shells filled with highly toxic sarin.
Between 1956 and 1984, more than one billion germs of Agent Orange, Purple and White were sprayed on or near a Canadian military base in Gagetown, New Brunswick.
Canadian scientists generally played a key role in helping to develop defoliants and herbicides sprayed by the U.S. in Vietnam and the British in Malaya. Among them was Otto Maass, Chemical Biological Weapons (CBW) director at Canada’s Defence Research Board and the Chairman of McGill University’s Chemistry Department from 1937 to 1955.[1]
During the Vietnam War, Canadian manufacturers sold the U.S. military significant amounts of polystyrene, a major component in napalm—a flammable liquid agent that burns the flesh.
The latter was produced during the Korean War at Canada’s Defence Research Chemical laboratories. Canadian scientists working at the time at Suffield discovered a thickening agent for flamethrower fuels (napalm), and worked on development of a flamethrower to deliver this new and improved fuel from tanks.
Napalm strikes in Trang Bang, Vietnam, in June 1972—made possible by Canadian scientists. [Source: apjjf.org]
More Complicity in War
Overall, Canadian industry sold some $12.5 billion in ammunition, aircraft parts, napalm and other war materials to South Vietnam and the U.S. for use during the Vietnam War.
American planes that dropped bombs and napalm were often guided by Canadian-made Marconi-Doppler navigation systems and used bombing computers built in Rexdale, Ontario.
The bombs could have been armed with dynamite shipped from Valleyfield, Quebec. Defoliants came from Naugatuck Chemicals in Elmira, Ontario, and air-to-ground rockets were furnished by the Ingersoll Machine and Tool Company of Ingersoll, Ontario. On the ground, American infantry and artillery units were supplied with de Havilland (DHC-4) Caribous built at Milton, Ontario.
Canadian products also included Beta boots for the troops and the famous green berets of the Special Forces which came from Dorothea Knitting Mills in Toronto.
1972 Green Beret hat manufactured at Dorothea Knitting Mills in Toronto. [Source: worthpoint.com]
Supporting the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Program
Even though Canada is not officially one of the nine countries possessing nuclear weapons, for years it has supported the U.S.’s nuclear weapons program.
Uranium from Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories and which was refined in Port Hope, Ontario, was used in the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Subsequently, Saskatchewan and Ontario mines supplied a considerable proportion of the uranium used for the U.S. nuclear weapons program.
A miner hauls a car of uranium-bearing ore at Eldorado Mine of Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, in 1930. [Source: cbc.ca]
In 1952, Canadian officials permitted the U.S. Strategic Air Command to use Canadian air space for training flights of nuclear-armed aircraft. Since 1965, nuclear-armed U.S. submarines have also fired torpedoes at Canadian army maritime bases and test ranges.
Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau (1968-1979; 1980-1984) claimed to be suffocating the arms race but allowed the U.S. to test cruise missiles designed for first-strike nuclear attacks at a Canadian army base in Cold Lake—a policy continued by Brian Mulroney (1984-1993).
In September 1950, the U.S. began storing nuclear weapons at Goose Bay, Newfoundland, while in 1963, Lester Pearson’s government (1963-1968) brought Bomarc missiles to Canada and gave Washington effective control over them.
Pearson had taken power after his Tory predecessor John Diefenbaker (1957-1963) had refused to station the Bomarcs in Canada, and was then threatened by Washington and fell from power in turn.
Canada received significant U.S. backing in establishing its signals intelligence (SIGNIT) capacities. A National Security Agency (NSA) history of the U.S.-Canada SIGNIT relationship released by Edward Snowden labeled Canada a “highly valued second party partner,” which offers “resources for advanced collection, processing and analysis, and has opened covert sites at the request of NSA, CSE [Communication Security Establishment] shares with NSA their unique geographic access to areas unavailable to the U.S.”
Canada is a member of the Five Eyes surveillance network. [Source: canadiandimension.com]
America First Foreign Policy
Canada has hundreds of military accords with the U.S. The most important, NORAD, has deepened the U.S. military footprint in Canada and committed Canada to acquiring U.S. nuclear weapons for air defense.
In 1965, NORAD’s mandate was expanded to include surveillance and assessment for U.S. commands worldwide, and in the 1980s and 1990s, it assisted in the War on Drugs.
Canadians posted to NORAD have helped research space weaponry while NORAD has also cooperated in missile defense work.
Many leading Canadian generals have trained in U.S. Army war colleges as the Canadian armed forces increasingly strives for what it calls “interoperability” with the Americans.
A March 2017 dispatch from the U.S. embassy in Ottawa to the State Department was tellingly titled “Canada Adopts ‘America First’ Foreign Policy.”
Chrystia Freeland earned her appointment as foreign minister, according to a memo uncovered through a Freedom of Information request, in large part because “of her strong U.S. contacts”; her number one priority was “working closely” with Washington.
Chrystia Freeland, center, and Justin Trudeau, right, with Donald Trump. [Source: thegrayzone.com]
The depth of the Canada-U.S. military alliance is such that, if the U.S. attacked Canada as in the War of 1812, it would be extremely difficult for the Canadian Armed Forces to defend Canadian soil.
According to Engler, Canada’s defense sector ignores the threat from the U.S. because it is not oriented toward protecting Canada from aggression; rather Canada’s “defense community” is aligned with the U.S. Empire’s quest for global dominance.
U.S. invades Canada in futuristic sci-fi series We Stand on Guard. Canada has no protection if this scenario comes true. [Source: usatoday.com]
U.S. Pushes for Higher Military Spending
After former Massachusetts governor Paul Cellucci was appointed U.S. ambassador to Canada in 2001, he revealed that his only instruction was to press for increased military spending.
During a 2016 speech to the Canadian parliament, then-U.S. President Barack Obama further called on the Canadian government to increase its military spending while, in 2018, Donald Trump sent Justin Trudeau a letter calling on Canada to improve its military preparedness.
A Rogue State
Canada’s status as a rogue state alongside the U.S. is evident in its non-compliance with a UN treaty outlawing mercenaries and the UN’s prohibition of nuclear weapons, which is supported by two-thirds of UN member states. Since 2007, Canada has also abstained on a series of UN resolutions concerning depleted uranium munitions.
Protesters ask why Canada has not signed onto UN treaty banning nuclear weapons. [Source: thecanadafiles.com]
Canadian companies meanwhile have followed their American counterparts in selling weapons to countries that have carried out significant human rights atrocities including Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Colombia and Israel.
Canada has also participated in illegal U.S. coups like in February 2004 when Canadian Special Forces “secured” the airport from which U.S. Marines forced Haiti’s elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide—a populist who tried to enact laws to benefit Haiti’s poor—onto a flight to the Central African Republic.
Canadian Special Forces guarding Port-au-Prince airport during Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s kidnapping in February 2004. [Source: reddit.com]
Canada’s Military-Industrial Complex
Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about a military-industrial complex in his 1961 farewell address applies all too well in Canada.
Canadian companies produce cutting-edge weapon systems and technologies that the U.S. military requires, construct and manage U.S. overseas military installations,[2] and even train the operators of Predator and Reaper drones.
The primary arms-industry lobbying group in Canada is the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI), which has 20 staff in Ottawa. It has adopted an intense engagement plan that includes hundreds of meetings with members of parliament, key ministers and the Prime Minister’s office.
Protest outside arms trade show in Ottawa in 2019. [Source: worldbeyondwar.org]
Top U.S. arms makers Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, BAE, General Dynamics, L-3 Communications and Raytheon all have Canadian subsidiaries and offices in Ottawa a few blocks from parliament.
Canada’s economy is dependent on shipbuilding, aerospace, high-tech and mining industries, which all benefit from higher military budgets and tighter integration with the U.S.
The only solution at this time is for American and Canadian peace activists to link up to challenge the military-industrial complex in both countries.
Detailed plans are needed to convert the U.S. and Canadian economies away from militarism and retrain workers and engineers who currently work in the defense sectors.
Restrictions on lobbying and foreign military sales should also be an urgent policy demand along with abolishing NORAD and NATO.
Peace mural in Nova Scotia. [Source: vowpeace.org]
Additionally, the peace movement should work to try to end the glorification of all things military and boycott Hollywood films, government propaganda initiatives and educational institutions that do so, and which dehumanize racial minorities and enemy countries like Russia and their leaders.
Yves Engler writes at the end of his book that “a peaceful world is possible if we want and work for it.” This is indeed true but it will require nothing less than a social revolution to achieve.