And now:[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
From: Connie Fogal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: O CANADA...Part 1
PART ONE of A Speech Delivered by the Honourable Paul Hellyer
at the Save Canada Conference held in Ottawa August 20 and 21, 1999
O CANADA, WILL ANYONE STAND UP FOR THEE?...
What I�m going to say is not so pleasant. What I�m going to give you is a
frightening overview of the bad things that are happening to us as individuals to
Canada and to the world.
We are being led down the garden path. Sylvia Ostrey, who is one of Canada�s
better-known economists and who was one of our chief negotiators at the Uruguay Round
of negotiations at the World Trade Organization, is on record as saying that when they
started negotiations, she had no idea how much national sovereignty would be given up
and had no vision of what it would all look like when they were finished.
Just a few weeks ago, Dr. Ronald Lehman, a chief U.S. strategist for three
administrations, Republican and Democrat, addressed a group in Toronto for breakfast.
I�m not exactly sure why he was there, but I think it was to shore up Canadian support
for various American initiatives. What he said, in effect was that they do not have a
vision of what the world will look like after globalization.
Can you imagine starting out on a trip like that without a road map? Well,
that�s what we�ve done.
What Globalization Means
I can give you a fairly accurate picture of what globalization is
accomplishing. Universal access to health care is being cut back in Canada and around
the world. I don�t think there is a single exception. Universal access to education
is being cut back in Canada and all around the world. Concern for the environment is
being cut back in Canada and all around the world. Unemployment has been high in
Canada � 8 per cent, one million people, looking for jobs, eating their hearts out.
It�s absolutely, totally immoral and it�s the same all around the world� 350 million
people are unemployed and a total of about one billion people are either unemployed or
underemployed. It�s a genuine tragedy.
The only exception, of course, is in the United States which is using the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to blast its way into Third World
markets. And it has the added advantage of its currency being the international
currency of exchange. In fact, the only beneficiaries of globalization are the
officers, directors and principal shareholders of multinational corporations who don�t
seem to give a damn about anybody else.
Faulting Free Trade
A few weeks ago in Montreal at McGill University, there was a meeting that
could only be described as a love-in between George Bush and Brian Mulroney. It was
to mark the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Free Trade Agreement, and our
former prime minister boasted of his accomplishments. He said his trilogy �free
trade, the goods and services tax and high interest rates� had paved the way to
prosperity.
Talk about lies and half-truths! Pages and pages of propaganda in our papers
for days after, and there was scant mention that the 10 years since the FTA was signed
has been the worst decade for Canada since the Great Depression of the �30s� and the
second worst decade for this whole 20th century. Family income stagnated;
unemployment soared. If that�s Mulroney�s definition of success, I wonder what his
definition of failure would be?
In the 1988 election, the prime minister assured us that what he wanted was
guaranteed access to the U.S. markets. That�s what it was all about.
What a crock that was! Just ask the softwood lumber producers who have had
tariffs and quotas imposed on their exports. Ask the steelmakers. Ask the cement
makers. Ask the Manitoba farmers who had their trucks stopped at the border. There
is no such thing as guaranteed free access to the U. S. markets. As soon as imports
begin to impinge heavily on local industry, American politicians find some way of
impending the flow.
But that wasn�t Mulroney�s biggest deceit, however. His number one whopper
was to pretend that the Free Trade Agreement was a free trade agreement � that it was
about trade. The trade part of the deal was not the important part at all. Sure, it
affected some tariffs. But they were going to come down anyway under the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. It was an investment agreement. The Americans wanted
access to our industries and our resources and especially to our water. It was an
oversight of unforgivable magnitude and, had we been told the truth, we might have
rebelled at the time. Instead of saying, as he did that �Canada is open for
business�, he should have said �Canada is now up for sale�.
In allowing the Americans to insert the �national treatment� clause, which
was an absolutely new concept in international law, and gave U.S. investors the same
rights in Canada as Canadian citizens, Mr. Mulroney accomplished two things. First he
virtually guaranteed the demise of Canada as a nation state. Second, he allowed
Ronald Reagan, with one stroke of the pen, to do what American general and American
armies have been unable to do several times, and that was to conquer Canada. The
conquest is still tentative for perhaps two more years.
Time�s a-wasting
Yesterday, Archbishop Lazarre was kind enough to say that I had some gift of
prophecy. I seldom pat myself on the back, but I do have a pretty good instinct for
what is going to happen. I don�t know how anybody could listen to Richard Wolfson and
David Cadman and other speakers and know what�s going on in the world and think that
we�ve got many more years to get our act together � and that is the reason for this
conference. We are getting very, very close to the point of no return, after which
nothing can be done. So we have to find out now if anyone cares. Do you want to be
Americans by default? I hope not.
The national treatment clause is not only the provision that will kill
Canada, but it is the means by which transnational corporations and international
banks are colonizing the world. It�s been stated so often here today that we can�t
consider Canada in isolation from what�s going on in the world.
True, we�re all in this leaky boat together. They are using this clause to
make vassals of us all. Their powers under the national treatment clause are the
foundation of an evil empire every bit as bad and probably worse with its ultimate
consequences than the evil empire which was the Soviet Union.
Democracy or a new form of monarchy?
Several hundred years of experiment in popular democracy are going down the
drain. Democracy is being replaced by a new form of monarchy. A look at the American
experience tells us the story.
Incidentally, I�m not anti-American. My friends are not anti-American.
There are people there who think exactly as we do and it cuts right across the
political spectrum, from left to right. David Korten, who wrote that wonderful book,
When Corporations Rule the World, would have come today, if he hadn�t been on holiday,
in order to express solidarity with our concerns with what�s going on in Canada and in
the world.
Our quarrel is not with the American people. Our quarrel is with the
American government and the transnational corporations that run the American
government.
Well, the American War of Independence was about who was going to govern and,
allegedly, the problem with England about tea taxes. Benjamin Franklin tells us in
his memoirs that it was about money. London insisted the colonies could not print
their own money. They had, instead, to borrow from British banks and pay back
principal and interest in gold, which they did not have. There was a system of
financial slavery and you�ve been talking about it here today. It�s something that
not a lot of people understand and it�s absolutely fundamental to what�s going on,
both in our country and around the world.
While victory and battle transferred sovereignty from England and from the
monarch there to the people, not all Americans were treated equally, of course. The
landed white gentry had a great advantage; whereas the slaves, the natives, the women
and the poor were not considered as people. It took them a long time to achieve that
equality, to be known as persons, even in theory.
The birth of corporations
Their victory� if it was a victory� was short-lived because there was a
parallel development that made the advantage of the new rights an advantage that
didn�t last very long.
It was the development of the corporation as a vehicle for the production and
distribution of goods and services. At first, the corporations owed their existence
to the sovereign people. Consequently, their objects were limited. They could only
do certain things. Often their charters were limited and only allowed to run for so
many years, after which they had to account for their actions in order to have their
charters renewed. The directors were liable for misdemeanors. They had stakeholders
rather than shareholders.
In time, this accountability became irksome and so they [the corporations]
used their power and influence to remove the restraints, one by one. Their objectives
were broadened so that they could invest in anything and do just about anything. The
directors� liability was limited to a very narrow range and charters were granted in
perpetuity so that corporations would outlive the people they were designed to serve.
Most important of all, the United States Supreme Court granted corporations
the status of persons and this was a profound advantage. That was the beginning of
the Takings Law. This is a concept of law which was foreign to our experience and
which the U.S. rammed down our throats in NAFTA. It is the law under which we are
being taken to the cleaners under Chapter 11 of NAFTA and I don�t have to repeat the
consequences of that. [Chapter 11 forces governments to compensate corporations for
potential profit loss due to legislation. Ethyl Corporation launched a suit against
the federal government when Ottawa tried to limit use of the gasoline additive, MMT.
The Chretien government backed down.] Not only did we pay for their [Ethyl�s] legal
expenses, but I think, far worse, we had two ministers of the Crown stand and read
statements saying that MMT, the gasoline additive which was the contentions product,
was injurious to neither the environment nor health � at the ver!
!
y ti
me that the latest scientific evidence was showing us that just the opposite was true
and that it was, in fact, injurious to health, and especially to children.
It boggles my mind that we could give corporations enough power that they
could tell our Parliament to revoke a law, pay them damages and get up and read
something that isn�t true. Absolutely incredible! That�s what globalization is all
about.
In pursuit of absolute power
Well the power of transnationals is now so great that the whole purpose of
the American War of Independence has been aborted. Transnationals are now the kings
and queens of the world. Some laughingly call it market economics, but really it�s
the pursuit of unbridled, near-absolute power. That�s what it�s all about and
globalization is just a code word for corporatisation and colonization. The
transnationals want to re-engineer the world in such a way that they don�t have to pay
taxes to support social security and fix pot holes in the roads or maintain parks, and
don�t have to pay their employees decent wages.
What they�re doing is they�re re-creating the conditions that existed in the
time of Dickens, the Dickensian era. They�re moving production to places, such as
Honduras, where they pay women absolute starvation wages, working 13 hours a day, up
to seven days a week � no environmental standards, no health care. If they get
pregnant, they get fired. If they get sick, they get fired. This erases 100 years of
the legislation which gave workers rights, such as holidays with pay and pensions and
protection against injury and so on � and the benefits of unionization.
Dual governments
Well, the process has reached the point where Lewis Lapham, editor Harpers
Magazine, says the U.S. has two governments: the permanent and the provisional. The
permanent government consists of the Fortune 500 magazine�s largest companies, also
the largest law firms and public relations firms in Washington that work for those
companies, and the top bureaucrats, both civil and military and they�re the permanent
government. Then there is what they call an election every once in a while and they
elect the provisional government and they elect actors that come on stage and read the
script written by the permanent government.
You know, it used to make me so mad when people would say it doesn�t matter
who you elect, the Liberals or the Conservatives. The reason it made me mad was
because I knew there was a lot of truth in it. And now the permanent government picks
the provisional government to try to get actors who will go on stage without too much
improvisation. Some people read better than others, stick to the script, and the
permanent government gives them money and gets them elected and no one else need apply.
You were probably following the papers a few days ago where they had the
straw vote in Idaho. Who won? George Bush. Why did he win? He spent the most money
�because he had corporate backing. Who will be the friendliest president if he�s
elected to the corporate regime? George Bush. Absolutely!
As a result, the United States government has become little more than a big
bully enforcer for the big American corporations. If Time Warner says it wants a
bigger chunk of the Canadian advertising revenue, it tells the American government to
go get it and they do. Then they threaten to have a trade war with us. Finally, when
they don�t know whether we�re serious or not, we capitulate � and our government
calls it a victory!
Well it�s a victory all right, but not for us. Split run magazines are the
worst form of dumping that I can think of. If the shoe was on the other foot,
Americans would not put up with it for one minute. They would do what we should do
and just impose a dumping duty � the difference between what they pay for a page of
advertising in the United States and what they pay for a page of advertising in
Canada. That would end split run magazines. That�s what should happen to them.
If Dole and Chiquita should decide that they want a bigger share of the
European banana market, the American government goes to bat for them. It threatens a
trade war with Europe. What it does not take into account is the fact that the
bananas that are being sold there come from small producers in the Caribbean � most of
them women � and they will not be able to compete. If they lose their plantations,
they will lose their livelihood and their security. Their land will be taken over by
the big agro-businesses and they will be nothing but part time, temporary workers, the
rest of the year unemployed. That is what globalization does. People don�t matter in a
globalized society. Only corporations do. If the United States wants to open up
global markets for Monsanto, it just uses those pressure tactics.
Write Mr. Hellyer and the Canadian Action Party at Suite 302- 99 Atlantic Ave.,
Toronto, ON, M6K 3J8 or fax (416) 535-6325 or e mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
DEFENCE of CANADIAN LIBERTY COMMITTEE/LE COMIT� de la LIBERT� CANADIENNE
C/0 CONSTANCE FOGAL LAW OFFICE, #401 -207 West Hastings St., Vancouver, B.C. V6B1H7
Tel: (604)687-0588; fax: (604) 872 -1504 or (604) 688-0550;cellular(604) 202 7334;
E-MAIL [EMAIL PROTECTED]; www.canadianliberty.bc.ca
�The constitution of Canada does not belong either to Parliament, or to the
Legislatures; it belongs to the country and it is there that the citizens of the
country will find the protection of the rights to which they are entitled� Supreme
Court of Canada A.G. of Nova Scotia and A.G. of Canada, S.C.R. 1951 pp 32
Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine
of international copyright law.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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