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Currently viewing articles in the Canada-USA category.
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Funding for Non-profit Media or Public Interest Activities
Today – with the mainstream media failing to adequately serve the public in many parts of the country, and with multitudes of people fed up with how corporate media manipulate the news – is an opportune time for independent media projects to be established or refocused. The question is, as always: how to get financial backing for the work?
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Exposing Canada’s Afghanistan “Mission”
October 7 will grimly mark the eighth anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. As the death toll mounts daily, reaching unprecedented levels this year, a sober assessment of Canada’s mission of folly is required. Exposing the crisis and corruption in Afghanistan and Canada, intellectuals James Laxer and John W. Warnock offer two scathing critiques of the war and the successive Canadian governments that poured oil on the fire. The Canadian anti-war movement is muted at best, so Laxer’s and Warnock’s latest publications must be read as a means of exposing the deadly and disgraceful policy of the Canadian government. A strengthened approach is required to end this war.
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The Final Takeover
On August 20, U.S. president George W. Bush, Mexican president Felipe Calderón and Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper met in Montebello, Quebec, for a two-day conference to ratify the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). The SPP, which was initiated in Waco, Texas, in 2005 by Bush, Canadian prime minister Paul Martin and Mexican president Vincente Fox, is a plan for continental integration or a North American Union along the lines of the European Union.
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A Modest Proposal to Curb State Terror
Many Canadians are outraged that the government has given its secret security and police forces new repressive powers to help conduct the U.S.-initiated “War on Terror.” A central aspect of these powers is the increased use of security certificates.
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Canada’s Contribution to “Democracy Promotion”
Since it signed NAFTA (1994) and joined the Organization of American States, the Canadian government has aligned its foreign policy with that of the United States more closely than at any point in recent history. At the same time, the Canadian government has taken an increasing interest in the affairs of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Some attention has been paid to things like joint military exercises in the Caribbean with the U.S. and other allies, support for the damaging practices of Canadian mining companies and the expanding presence of Canadian financial interests in the global South, but a newer area of Canada’s foreign-policy posture warrants scrutiny: Canada’s deepening involvement in the controversial field of international “democracy promotion” activities.
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Empire’s Ally
There has been much gnashing of teeth over Canada’s foreign-policy stance since the day Stephen Harper and his Conservative government was elected to office.
Canada’s relations with the U.S. on a phalanx of fronts have been at the centre of controversy.
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Communities, Not Corporations
The vast majority of water and wastewater systems in Canada are owned, operated and maintained within the public sector. Essential to our public health system, municipal water systems were one of the first major services to be publicly delivered in Canada. The reason why water infrastructure is overwhelmingly public is because the private sector could not be relied upon to deliver a quality service at a price that all residents could afford. It’s therefore ironic that water corporations from rich countries like our own are now trying to persuade developing countries not to develop water resources publicly but to experiment with the private sector instead. What’s more, the belief that the private sector can manage our public water resources is now gaining ground in Canadian government and policy circles.
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Turning on Canada’s Tap
When Prime Minister Stephen Harper sat down with President George W. Bush in their first White House meeting on July 6, one of the “unmentionable” items on their agenda may well have been the question of bulk water exports from Canada. After all, Bush himself raised the issue back in July, 2001, when he talked “off the cuff” to reporters about growing water shortages in his home state of Texas and elsewhere in the country, saying he would like to begin negotiations with Ottawa on water exports from Canada. In Texas, he said, “water is more valuable than oil.” “A lot of people don’t need it, but when you head south and west, we need it,” Bush declared, adding that he “looked forward” to discussing the matter with then-prime minister Jean Chretien.
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NO to NAFTA
When the U.S. government failed to abide by the decision of the NAFTA Extraordinary Challenge Committee (ECC) on the issue of Canadian softwood-lumber exports by returning $5 billion it collected illegally, the Canadian public finally got the message: the North America Free Trade Agreement is a scam.
It’s official, folks: NAFTA was never about free trade. By the time its predecessor, the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, was negotiated, tariffs had already been eliminated or were negligible for all but a few commodities anyway. For Canada, the free-trade agreement was really only about gaining a dispute-settlement agreement that would protect Canadian exporters from arbitrary measures blocking their access to the huge American market. For the U.S., it was about guaranteed access to our energy.
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Smart Regulations
Regulations are boring, bone dry and tedious, right? Red tape—better to get rid of it! That is the type of message you are likely to start hearing, as the “Smart Regulation” agenda for Canada rolls out. It is sure to get some support from those of us who feel we are under siege from constant demands for more paperwork. But take a closer look. Is “Smart Regulation” really smart?
Regulations are the rules that we make, via various levels of government, that define the scope and conditions of legal behaviour for businesses and individuals. The ability to regulate is a fundamental aspect of sovereignty. Regulation is the mechanism that makes the policy rubber hit the reality road.
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