This essay was first published in the Palestine Chronicles 2006 07 21

More and more frequently now Canada is being mentioned alongside the United States as a companion in arms and as a society of a similar nature. A recent on-line article describing the Israeli perpetration of horror and its denial by the mainstream media said that those that are horrified “cannot penetrate the shield of impassivity that protects the political and media elite in Israel, even more so in the U.S., and increasingly now in Canada.”[1] I have long wondered when Canada would reach a point where it capitulated and became the fifty-first state of the union – I no longer wonder as it has happened, right while I was watching. Canada, under the previous several governments, under the provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and under the foreign policy of the past four prime ministers, but especially with the current neoconservative-fundamentalist Harper government, has abrogated its rights of sovereignty and has become a de facto state of the United States.

There are several common features that have allowed this transition to occur, a soft transition without military intervention, and without diplomatic intervention, or even covert CIA intervention. Canadians were denied their interests by a similar corporate political relationship that exists within the United States, by two parties that in the field of foreign affairs and corporate business are essentially one party – the Liberals and the Conservatives (as the Republicans and Democrats are essentially the same in the United States). The voting results are always the same, one of the two parties will win and the corporate agenda will continue. Canada, at least its politicians and corporate players, have participated in this annexation willingly.

The prime ministers of Canada – Mulroney as friend of Reagan, Chretien as friend of Bush I and Clinton, Martin as nobodies friend but still a good corporate player, and now Harper, Steve, as he is known to his ideological buddy and leader, Bush II – have all accepted, promoted and worked for the implementation of NAFTA and the articles within that severely limit the role of Canada’s government in face of corporate America. A common interest has glued these politicians together across the border, an interest in the accumulation of wealth to the detriment of the social structures that support the masses of the people. All of the Canadian leaders have been corporate partners, except, ironically, Harper, but he fits the picture even better as a zealous political supporter of capitalist free market corporations combined with a religious zealotry that leads to an ignorance, perhaps wilful, of the situation in the Middle East. His initiation as a corporate partner cannot be too far away, perhaps, say, a directorship with Monsanto who are gradually gaining control of Canadian agriculture in all its aspects, or more likely with Lockheed-Martin and their handling of the Canadian census while subject to the demands of the Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act.

The United States has terrible standards of medical care in relation to the demographics of the whole population. It has decreased taxes to the rich, put in place regressive taxation for the poor (commonly called user fees), given corporations either a free ride or a minimal ride on the taxpayers’ dollars. Educational standards have become among the worst of the western countries, with ‘no child left behind’ being a clever manipulation that allows for the privatization of education (why else would those schools that do poorly be punished financially rather than being assisted financially to work better as the only proven co-relation between standardized testing and school scores is financial demographics). The structure that feeds the culture of militarism is fear, formerly fear of communism, now of terrorism, always of race, crime and drugs.

Canada has followed this lead, and while it is not in place as thoroughly as in the U.S. it is a work in progress, just as many American administrators argue that there is still much work ahead to downsize government and make the people responsible for themselves and their actions. Canadian provinces, in particular Alberta and B.C., are working towards privatizing medical services through the introduction of private services. The same is being applied to the education system where ‘accountability’ testing in the form of standardized testing is providing the lead in and encouragement for private education to the detriment of the public system. Once any degree of privatization is established, the door is open under NAFTA for American companies to come in and assume their dominant position, being larger and more powerful than any Canadian interest in theses areas. The governments cannot prevent this as NAFTA allows outside corporations full legal rights and beyond – the right to sue the government for intended and direct as well as expected future losses, the well known “Chapter 11”. This applies to all areas of trade, and not just education and health.

Energy

The big example, among many others that could be focussed on such as forestry, communication and media, and agriculture, is – as usual with the American Empire – oil. Canada has large reserves of natural gas, and within the Alberta tar sands has the capacity to supply up to three million barrels of oil a day (for U.S. requirements of 20 million per day), and possibly more as technology improves and prices continue to increase. Only Saudi Arabia has greater reserves than offered by the tar sands.

Great, one could say, as all the development money pours into Northern Alberta, filling the pockets of the workers with money, raising the GDP and keeping ‘growth’ and ‘progress’ going. Unfortunately, that looks only at the dollar side of the picture, which for a few will be good for a while (and they will need it to pay the ever-increasing user fees, hospital expenses and educational expenses, as well as save for retirement on their privatized pension scheme), and for fewer still will be great for a while, but for the most part will pump energy and money to mostly large American corporations and leave behind an environmental and cultural wasteland.

Environmentally, the tar sands emit enormous quantities of green house gasses, consume huge amounts of water, require enormous energy inputs from natural gas, and destroy vast habitats of the northern boreal forest. By 2010, the tar sands will be “producing seventy megatons – 12 per cent of Canada’s Tokyo target….Development of the tar sands could very well make it impossible for Canada to fulfill its Kyoto commitments.” No problem there as Harper intends to abrogate those commitments anyway, in order to tie into the American energy pulse.

Water is another concern as it “takes three barrels of water…to produce one barrel of oil [and] another forty-four barrels…to further refine the oil.” The Athabasca River extraction, combined with the neighbourly Peace River Power Project is well on the way to destroying the ecological waterway that flows north into the Mackenzie River, a waterway singularly important for food and transportation for the native people that live along its length.

The culture and way of life of the indigenous people will be destroyed as well. The large sudden influx of a money market, easy paying jobs, and the jewels and trinkets of modern society will readily distract the young away from their traditional lands and habits. They won’t have much choice, as a proposed natural gas pipeline to feed the tar sands will rip right down the centre of the Mackenzie watershed. Once the land is gone, the water is spoiled, the game are gone, then the culture dies and a way of life dies – many of the natives will also die, perhaps not literally, but within the diseases and drugs brought by the advent of a corporate money supply economy.

But the argument always circles back to oil as the U.S. “has long considered Canada’s energy to be its own and a key component of American economic and military security.” [2]. Before NAFTA, the U.S. ambassador indicated, “Canada’s energy reserves were the prime motivation on the American side for the first free-trade agreement.” Now with the deal more than a decade old, the results are playing out contrary to government and corporate expectations (at least as advertised to the people of the country) other than the bottom dollar line of a rising GDP. Within the agreement are statements concerning the rights of access to Canadian energy within a “proportionality” clause. In simple terms it means that the U.S. is guaranteed its energy sources – the oil it needs for its economy and military and the natural gas required to produce it – before the Canadians themselves are entitled to it. If Canada runs short, the taxpayer pays at the global going rate on the global market – Canadians simply do not own their own energy resources anymore. More than half of Canada’s exports are natural resources and a good proportion of the rest is no more than intra-corporate trade without any real industrial production.

The recent G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, has only supported these concepts. Harper has labelled Canada an “energy superpower” and we (the royal corporate we) “believe in the free exchange of energy products based on competitive market principles.” [3] Well, the only energy exchange is Canadian energy going south while Canadian taxpayers pay the full rate to import any shortfalls. [4] To support this growing tie, the U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman declared, “No single thing can do more to help us reach that goal [to reduce dependence] than realizing the potential of the oil sands in Alberta.” [5] The talk is all well and good as it is a fait accompli – Canadian energy is in the hands of the Americans already. [6]

Harper’s minority government, while it is much more dogmatic and much more vocally supportive of U.S. energy access and of U.S. free market access, has not acted alone and is within range of past Canadian governments in this respect. Harper is simply putting his neoconservative views up front and in your face, a political move that may or may not benefit the conservatives – it will certainly not benefit everyday Canadians.

Foreign Policy

Another area that Harper is being much more vocal about, and this is a turn away from Canada’s traditionally held view of participating within an international cooperative sphere of influence as a peacekeeper, is to flaunt Canada as a militant right wing force serving Americans unilateralism, pre-emptive actions, and the use of power as being a basic means towards a goal. As the U.S. militarism is supported by the fundamentalist Christian elements within the government and within the voting populace, Harper is supported and is a strong part of the fundamentalist Christian population within Canada. The end result is Harper’s ignorant and prejudiced responses to events in the Middle East since the capture of an Israeli soldier in Gaza and the capture of two Israeli soldiers in the disputed Shabaa farms region.

Since his election, Harper has supported the American based fight against the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. The Taliban are generally members of local tribes within Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan and are not in that sense a terrorist force, but one in a long line of tribal militaries seeking to gain power in the bedlam that Russia and America created in Afghanistan. Canada is acting as an American mercenary to support a puppet government that the U.S. hopes will retain power and support its hegemony in the region. Harper does not understand, or prefers to remain ignorant, or is wilfully ignorant of the causal conditions of the Afghanistan insurgency. He appears to be ignorant of the history of the Russian Afghanistan war and the Taliban’s subsequent rise to power. He is not ignorant of 9/11 but again appears to be ignorant of the Taliban offers to hand over or allow the U.S. to capture bin Laden that were spurned before the onset of the American Afghani war. More importantly, he is ignorant in a full social and emotional sense that criminal law needs to be applied to terrorist activity through the international courts, through international police procedures and not through mass bombing of a country’s infrastructure and civilian populations.

With the most recent actions between Israel and Lebanon, he is maintaining his George Bush gun-slinging persona, perhaps hoping pathetically to persuade someone of his steely manhood, of his true grit as a leader, as a sycophant for George Bush and Ronald Reagan combined, with a touch of Maj-Gen. Boykin thrown in for good measure. Granted, Harper is intelligent, in a crafty, sneaky, mean sort of way, but he has a narrow-minded view of the world that he wishes to help impose on the people of Canada and through the power of the U.S., on the rest of the world. He is the perfect marionette for the U.S. government and corporate bosses.

But back to Israel, where he says, “the current Palestinian government is not committed to a peace process.” That should be obvious as there is no peace process except for the reams of rhetoric that have continued to come from American and Israeli officials. The Israeli plan has been – at least as seen by its actions – to simply delay any actual final discussion of peace and borders and government until the settlements have grown in size and strength, and the Palestinian people have been thoroughly subjugated to the Israeli military, denied a sovereign state, denied any human rights, denied their homes, their farms, their wells, their education and when finally they have a democratically elected government, denied that as well. Ethnic cleansing at its cleanest.

The view of Israel as victim is recreated in Harper’s mind as he will not go “into the temptation of some to single out Israel, which was the victim of the initial attack.” Has Harper not been reading the news of the continued incursions into Palestinian territory, of the continued murder of civilians and destruction of infrastructure, of the denial of right to entrance of those who carry Palestinian citizenship? [7] Harper believes that “Hamas and Hezbollah remained primarily responsible for starting the conflict and must be primarily responsible for ending it.” He speaks here like the typical school ground bully, without being able to identify the reality of the situation. Does he not, or can he not, recognize that Hamas and Hezbollah did not start the war, they are a result of it – an insurgent group that provided hospitals, schools, and security within a region that was basically without law and order other than that of an occupying and colonizing military force?

Reprise

While we have yet to fully integrate with the U.S. in a formal political sense, Canada is currently very much a supportive part of the worst of the American empire and its minority government is fully cooperating with the militarism of American actions around the world. At the same time, Canada has surrendered its sovereignty through the NAFTA and its general support of the capitalist free trade market place, that supposedly benign structure that has created havoc in many parts of the world. The Alberta tar sands are becoming the grand strategic prize within North America. Finally, with support given to Israel as victim and the denial of Palestinian existence other than as a terror group in the way of a peaceful Israel, Harper has identified himself as a fundamentalist demagogue standing alongside George Bush in his conquest of the world.

Hopefully Canada will not allow Harper to continue alongside Bush and his militaristic pursuit of global dominance. There is not much that can be done about the integration of the economy as those deals are done and signed and firmed up over many years, but it would be easy to avoid the militaristic dominance and subjugation of other peoples of the world. Perhaps one year, with the environment degraded, the economy crashing as oil supplies dwindle, with the people tired of the rhetoric of corporate greed in the name of democracy and freedom, perhaps then Canadians will wake up and vote in a socially sensible government that will take care of our land and our culture and assist others of the world to do so as well.

[1] Christison, Kathleen. “Atrocities in the Promised Land” July 17, 2006. www.counterpunch.com

[2] Preceding quotes all from Barlow, Maude. too close for comfort – Canada’s Future Within Fortress North America. McClelland and Stuart 2005, Toronto.

[3] Blanchfield, Mike. “Harper declares Canada emerging energy superpower.”, Edmonton Journal, Saturday, July 15, 2006.

[4] As a side note, the tar sands are subsidized by the government – no taxes until investments are paid off, simply avoided by adding on more investments – the taxpayer is paying the whole shot for infrastructure development and the profits go to corporate headquarters.

[5] Schmidt, Lisa. “U.S. trumpets Alta. as stable oil supplier.” Edmonton Journal, Saturday July 15, 2006.

[6] I encountered another familiar face in Alberta in a recent trip, with the brief commercial advertisements from Halliburton (remember Dick Cheney, Iraq, et al) working for the “people, environment, and the future.” Nice spin. Their Canadian website motto: “Unleash the energy.” You got it.

[7] Harper quotes from Taber, Jane. “Harper refuses to budge”. The Globe and Mail. Tuesday, July 19, 2006.