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Why Canada lost its bid for a UN Security Council seat
By YVES ENGLER
In a stunning international rebuke, Stephen
Harper’s Conservative minority federal government lost its bid for a UN
Security Council seat on Oct. 12. The vote in New York was the world’s
response to a Canadian foreign policy designed to please the most
reactionary, shortsighted sectors of the Conservative Party base,
evangelical Christian Zionists, extreme right-wing Jews, Islamophobes, the military-industrial-academic-complex,
mining and oil executives, and old cold-warriors.
Canada
was among a small number of countries that refused to recognize the
human right to water, or to sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples. Close to the companies making huge profits on the
Tar Sands, the Conservatives repeatedly sabotaged international climate
negotiations. They angered many in the British
Commonwealth by blocking a resolution
calling for a “binding commitment” on rich countries to reduce
emissions. At a UN climate conference in Bangkok
last year, many delegates from poorer countries quit a session in
protest after a Canadian suggestion to scrap the Kyoto Protocol as the
basis of negotiations.
The Conservatives’ extreme ‘Israel no
matter what’ position definitely hurt any chance on Oct. 12. “It’s hard
to find a country friendlier to Israel
than Canada
these days,” explained Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor
Lieberman, who emigrated from Moldova
when he was 20 but still feels fit to call for the expulsion of Palestinian
citizens of Israel.
The Conservatives publicly endorsed Israel’s
2006 attack on Lebanon,
voted against a host of UN resolutions supporting Palestinian rights,
and in February Ottawa
delighted Israeli hawks by canceling $15 million in funding for the UN
agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The money was transferred to
Palestinian security reform.
For the past three years Ottawa has been heavily
invested in training a Palestinian security force designed to oversee
Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and “to ensure that the PA
[Palestinian Authority] maintains control of the West Bank against Hamas,” as Canadian ambassador to Israel Jon Allen
was quoted as saying by the Canadian Jewish News. According to
deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Kent, Operation PROTEUS, Canada’s
military training mission in the West
Bank, is the country’s “second largest deployment after
Afghanistan”,
and it receives “most of the money” from a five-year $300 million
Canadian aid program to the Palestinians.
While Canadian ‘aid’ strengthens the most compliant
Palestinian political factions, the Conservatives reject any criticism
of Israel’s
onslaught against the 1.5 million people living in Gaza. Canada
was the only country at the UN Human Rights Council to vote against a
January 2008 resolution that called for “urgent international action to
put an immediate end to Israel’s
siege of Gaza.”
Later in 2008 Israel
unleashed a 22-day military assault on Gaza
that left 1,400 Palestinians dead. In response, many governments
condemned the bombing. Venezuela
broke off diplomatic relations. Israel
didn’t need to worry since Ottawa
was prepared to help out. The Canadian embassy now represents Israel’s
diplomatic interests in Caracas.
While Brazil
and Turkey
tried to dissipate hostility towards Iran,
Harper used his pulpit as host of the G8 to pave the way for a possible
U.S.-Israeli attack. A Feb. 17 Toronto Star
article was headlined: “Military action against Iran
still on the table, Kent
says.” The junior foreign minister explained that “it’s a matter of
timing and it’s a matter of how long we can wait without taking more
serious preemptive action.”
“Preemptive action” is a euphemism for a bombing
campaign. Canadian naval vessels are already provocatively conducting
maneuvers off Iran’s
coast. By stating that “an attack on Israel
would be considered an attack on Canada,” Kent is
trying to create the impression that Iran is
planning to attack Israel.
But it is Israel
that possesses nuclear weapons and threatens to bomb Iran,
not the other way around.
Ottawa
considers Iran’s
nuclear energy program a major threat, but Israel’s
atomic bombs have not earned similar condemnation. The Harper
government abstained on a number of near unanimous votes asking Israel to
place its nuclear weapons program under International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) controls. In September, the Bloomberg Business News cited
Canada as
one of three countries that opposed an IAEA probe of Israel’s
nuclear facilities as part of an Arab-led effort to create a
nuclear-weapons-free Middle East.
Ottawa
even prioritized the military over aid in the face of the incredible
suffering caused by Haiti’s
earthquake. Two thousand Canadian troops were deployed. But several
Heavy Urban Search and Rescue Teams were readied, though never sent.
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence
Cannon explained that the teams were not needed because “the government
had opted to send Canadian Armed Forces instead.”
Overthrown in February 2004 by a joint
U.S./France/Canada destabilization campaign, Haiti’s
most popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas, has been barred from participating in
elections. The Conservatives supported Fanmi Lavalas’ exclusion, and congratulated Haiti’s
puppet government for inaugurating “a period of stabilization” good for
“investment and trade.” Ottawa
backed up its words with deeds, adding tens of millions of dollars to a
Haitian prison and police system that has been massively expanded and
militarized since the 2004 coup.
Ottawa
gave its tacit support to the Honduran military’s removal of elected
president Manuel Zelaya in June 2009. Mexico’s Notimex reported that Canada
was the only country in the hemisphere that did not explicitly call for
Zelaya’s return to power. Canadian officials
repeatedly criticized Zelaya at the
Organization of American States (OAS). The ousted government complained
that Ottawa
failed to suspend aid to Honduras,
which is the largest recipient of Canadian assistance in Central
America.
Canada
has actively supported the U.S.-led campaign against the government of Venezuela.
In mid-2007 Harper toured South America
“to show [the region] that Canada
functions and that it can be a better model than Venezuela,”
in the words of one high-level foreign affairs official. During the trip,
Harper and his entourage made a number of comments critical of the
Venezuelan government.
After meeting only members of the opposition during
a trip to Venezuela in
January, Peter Kent told the media that “democratic space within Venezuela
has been shrinking and in this election year, Canada is
very concerned about the rights of all Venezuelans to participate in
the democratic process.”
One issue mentioned in a number of media reports
about Canada’s
loss at the UN concerns the Congo.
At the G8 Summit in June the Conservatives pushed for a major addendum
to the final communique criticizing the Congo
for attempting to gain a greater share of its vast mineral wealth.
Months earlier Ottawa
began to obstruct international efforts to reschedule the country’s
foreign debt, which was mostly accrued during more than three decades
of Joseph Mobuto’s dictatorship and the
subsequent civil war.
Canadian officials “have a problem with what’s
happened with a Canadian company,” Congolese Information Minister
Lambert Mende said, referring to his
government’s move to revoke a mining concession that Vancouver-based
First Quantum acquired under dubious circumstances during the 1998-2003
war. “The Canadian government wants to use the Paris Club [of debtor
nations] in order to resolve a particular problem”, explained Mende. “This is unacceptable.”
The mining industry increasingly represents Canada
abroad. Canadian miners operate more than 3000 projects outside Canada.
Many of these mines have displaced communities, destroyed ecosystems,
and resulted in violence. This doesn’t seem to bother the Harper
government, which is close to the most retrograde sectors of the mining
industry. Last year they rejected a proposal “agreed to by the Mining
Association of Canada under pressure from civil society groups” to make
diplomatic and financial support for resource companies operating
overseas contingent upon socially responsible conduct.
Despite countless horror stories suggesting the
contrary, the Conservatives claim that voluntary standards are the best
way to improve Canadian mining companies’ social responsibility.
Finally, the federal Conservatives have knowingly
supported torture in Afghanistan
and embraced an increasingly violent counterinsurgency war. Apparently,
Canadian Joint Task Force 2 commandos regularly take part in nighttime
assassination raids, which are highly unpopular with the Afghan
population.
Losing the Security Council seat will hopefully
cost the Conservatives some votes and temper their more extreme
international positions. But those working to radically transform
Canadian foreign policy see the consequences of the loss as much
greater. There has probably never been a bigger blow to the carefully
crafted image of Canada as
a popular international do-gooder, a mythology that blinds so many
Canadians to their state’s real role in the world.
See socialistaction-canada.blogspot.com for a
longer version of this article. Yves Engler
is the author of “The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy” and “Canada
and Israel:
Building Apartheid”. He’ll be touring Canada in
mid-November to speak on “Why Canada
lost its bid for a Security Council seat”, including at a Toronto
Socialist Action public forum on Nov. 12. He can be contacted at:
yvesengler@hotmail.com.
Why have
unions failed during the recession?
By BARRY
WEISLEDER
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Two recent concessionary labour
settlements—one in which the United Food and Commercial Workers
bureaucracy agreed to let Loblaw Cos. Ltd.
convert more of its outlets in Canada into superstores that will pay
up to 30,000 grocery workers lower wages, and another deal in the
U.S. where the United Auto Workers consented to General Motors
cutting wages in half for about 40 per cent of its work force at a
sub-compact car plant in Michigan—prompted a left-leaning Toronto
Star columnist to write a piece, with a headline similar to the
one above, that has activists talking.
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The Star’s Tom Walkom posits
that the difference between the 1930s and the present recession is that
unions were once “seen as the way forward” and represented the
majority, whereas now unions are “viewed as bastions of privilege” and
“exist only to protect the lucky few”.
Unfortunately, Walkom points only to
a symptom of the problem—the complacency of unionized workers. He does
not identify the deficiencies of union leadership that fostered this
attitude, and the lack of an alternative that can come only from a
class-struggle cross-union opposition to the existing pro-capitalist
union leadership.
In both Canada and the USA, unions have
never physically encompassed more than a minority of the working
population. But under the pressure of an organized militant left wing,
and the example of very powerful (though terminally bureaucratized)
workers’ states abroad, union leaders felt obliged to mobilize the
ranks for gains (and to resist concessions). Consequently, bosses felt
compelled to give workers some of what we demanded. That is what forced
arch-Conservative Prime Minister R.B. Bennett “to belatedly embrace leftish ideas such as nationalization” and why PMs King/St-Laurent/Pearson legislated social
welfare measures. They feared a radical socialist alternative.
Unfortunately, over the past 30 years most union leaders put
their members to sleep with tales of class cooperation and reliance on
‘fair’ legislation. Unionized workers, for the most part, only followed
the lead of their union officials. They focused on bread and butter
issues (economism). Some rank-and-file
workers who tried to fight for more than bread and butter (i.e., for
international solidarity, union democracy, organizing the unorganized,
improving the social wage, winning rights in the work place, and for
quality services and justice for all) were red-baited, targeted,
penalized, and bureaucratically excluded by union officials.
Now the rank and file, increasingly scrambling for basic bread
and butter due to the subservience and shrinkage of the labour movement, which resulted from passivity and
acquiescence to the disastrous practices of the labour
bureaucracy, can begin to see the need for a change of direction.
Unfortunately, Walkom neglected to
address this aspect. Certainly, the seismic shift in economic
activity from commodity production to service providing is part of the
picture of union weakening, but only part—unless you assume that the
working class is merely malleable stuff, which would make its past
gains inexplicable.
Without looking at the role of leadership, it’s impossible to
assess the larger political context, including the retreat of the labour-based New Democratic Party toward bourgeois
coalitions (whether in the outgoing Toronto municipal
government, or potentially, at the federal parliamentary level). The
problem is one of working-class leadership, and the lack of a
class-struggle fighting opposition, a left opposition that challenges
the right wing in union elections.
Those who argue that the current struggles of working people
should not just be about defending the gains of the unionized sector
are correct. But if we are to advance respect for the value of public
services to us all, along with a belief that a better world is
possible, we will succeed only if the past gains of the unionized
sector are defended. Undertaking that simple but weighty task will
require nothing less than a radical and sweeping change of the present
union leadership at almost every level.
Toronto left-labour defeat
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Many union and
progressive folks in Canada’s
biggest city were stunned by the victory of right-wing populist councillor Rob Ford in the race for mayor. A increased number of labour-haters
also captured City Council seats on Oct. 25, possibly enough for a
voting majority to implement an agenda of severe social and culture
cuts, privatization, and contracting-out measures.
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A turnout of 52 per cent of the eligible voters,
compared to 39 per cent in 2006, rewarded candidates who promised
“change”. Ford received 47 per cent of the votes cast. The chief victim
was the deputy mayor Joe Pantalone (backed by
the labour brass), who came in third place
with 12 per cent. Pantalone helped to steer
an informal Liberal Party-New Democratic Party coalition that ran Toronto City
Hall for seven years. That
regime raised taxes and user fees, reduced services, and forced 30,000
municipal workers into a bitter 40-day strike over wages and pensions.
It alienated workers and whetted the appetite of the corporate elite
for more concessions.
A stormy period of clashes over the fate of city
jobs and services is now in store. If there is effective mass
resistance to the corporate agenda, it may hasten the realization that
unions must break with the Liberals and fight for an up-front NDP-Labour slate of candidates committed to socialist
policies prior to the next municipal vote in 2014. — B.W
Aboriginals
oppose pipeline
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Aboriginal leaders in Canada are lobbying
Washington to deny
approval to TransCanada Pipeline’s
application for Keystone XL, a new 2739-kilometre pipeline that would
stretch from Alberta to Texas, with a
capacity of as much as 900,000 barrels of bitumen a day, more than
doubling current U.S. consumption.
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“White House policy makers need to know that their appetite for
this dirty oil is killing our river and destroying our way of life. The
pollutants and heavy metals don’t stop at the Alberta border—they
run more than 1000 kilometres all the way to
the Mackenzie River, deforming the fish along the way”,
said Francois Paulette of the Smith’s Landing Treaty 8 First Nation in
the Northwest Territories.
South of the border, opposition to the pipeline is almost
unanimous among Native communities living close to its proposed U.S. route. Marty Cobenais, a Red Lake Band of Chippewa member,
acting as the voice of American First Nations at the meetings in Washington, presented
resolutions from 12 tribes in Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Oklahoma urging the U.S. government to
find alternatives. It’s not only a matter of resisting the destruction
of Native burial sites for the sake of a few long-term jobs in traffic
control.
“The main message we want to get across is that this is the
time to start weaning ourselves off oil. Most estimates suggest we have
maybe seven more generations—about 150 years—before there is no oil
left anywhere,” said Cobenais.
In related news, Syncrude Canada has been
ordered to pay $3 million in penalties for causing the deaths of 1600
ducks in a tailings pond at its northern Alberta oil-sands
mine. It is “no more than a slap on the wrist,” said Greenpeace
spokesperson Mike Hudema.
Syncrude was found
guilty on June 25 of breaking provincial and federal wildlife laws when
it failed to stop the birds from landing on its toxic waste pond in
April 2008. The waste-water ponds contain a poisonous brew of water,
clay, leftover bitumen, and heavy metals. — B.W.
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