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Despite best efforts by the Conservative government to
keep it under wraps, news that the Canadian military intervention in
Afghanistan is more than $1 billion over budget leaked out just before
Parliament voted to approve a two year extension of the “mission.”
Documents obtained under Access to Information, as
reported in Montréal’s La Presse,
indicate the war and occupation have cost at least $7.5 billion since
2001, double what was budgeted. They say it cost $538 million more than
expected over the first six months of this fiscal year and is expected to
be $539 million over for the last half. (Just $300 million of that
over-run would repair Toronto’s crumbling stock of public housing units
in which over 200,000 people exist in unhealthy, deplorable conditions.)
But MP s from the Conservative government and the
Liberal official opposition shrugged off any fiscal embarrassment and
voted, after a farcically brief “debate” on March 13, to keep Canadian
forces in Afghanistan to December 2011. The Bloc Québécois and the labour-based New
Democratic Party opposed the motion.
As NDP defence
critic Dawn Black put it, MPs were basically asked to send a “blank cheque to the
military.” Now, to cope with a shortage of personnel, the military is
considering extending soldiers’ deployment in Kandahar from the current six-month
rotations to up to a year.
On March 15, thousands took to the streets in over 20
cities across Canada to protest the war and the vote to extend it. The
marches and rallies, timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the
U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, were organized by the Canadian Peace Alliance
and Echec à la Guerre, with
the backing of the Canadian Labour
Congress, the NDP, and a multitude of community, religious and
environmental organizations.
The Toronto Coalition to Stop the War stated that
3,000 demonstrated in that city. Many carried banners and placards that
read “Bring the Troops Home” and “End it, Don’t Extend it.” Close to 1,000
demonstrated in Montréal. Hundreds trudged through slush and falling snow
in Ottawa. Several dozen people turned out in Halifax, and over 400
rallied in Vancouver. In Calgary, what began as an anti-seal hunt protest
quickly transformed into a rally demanding troops out of Afghanistan.
The post-demo rally in a Toronto church revealed both
strengths and weaknesses in today’s anti-war movement. Speeches and
poetry performed by pro-Palestinian and anti-imperialist campaigners were
quite inspiring and advanced, but the overall political content was
tempered by Ontario Federation of Labour, CLC and NDP speakers who
stressed the need to replace NATO with UN forces in Afghanistan. In other
words, the foreign occupation would continue under a blue UN flag,
beholden to a U.S. veto.
Clearly, there is much more educational work to be
done, especially in the unions and the labour-based NDP — without which
anti-imperialism will not gain a broader audience, much less a broader
base in the population. That work will continue on many levels and in
many places, including in the lead up to, and at CLC and federal NDP
conventions in the coming months.
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