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My Canada Includes War, Environmental Degradation and Lost Causes
In 1999, when I packed for a month in the Middle East, I made a point of bringing my Huron-made, deerskin fringed jacket.
Nothing, I thought, screamed “I am not one of you” like that jacket, which was mostly too hot and too heavy for a month-long trip clambering over the desert rocks and ruins. Although I am not much into jewellery, I also wore a red maple leaf stick pin.
I was a proud Canadian, smug and self-confident that my country was all mountains, moose, maple syrup and peacemaker in the valley.
Boy, was that ever wrong.
And it’s even more wrong now.
It took a distinguished diplomat such as Robert Fowler, who made news last year after his kidnapping by Al Qaeda in Niger, to slap not only the Liberal Party last weekend at its Canada 150 conference, but also the Conservative government and those Canadians who, still, cling to that Trudeau-era belief that we are the Dudley Do-Right of nations.
He attacked Canada for all but abandoning Africa, where war, starvation, disease, overpopulation, Islamofascism and other plagues are mixing together to make a toxic soup of terrorism that will spill across the continent, while we waste blood and treasure on the lost cause of Afghanistan.
Pointing to those who support the war, Fowler said: “Look, they say, at the number of little girls we have put in school — at a cost of 146 Canadian lives, thousands of Afghan lives, and, according to the Government website, an incremental cost, since 2001, of $11.3 billion, including $1.7 billion in development assistance from CIDA’s budget.
“My ..... think of the number of girls we could put in school throughout the Third World — particularly in Africa — with that kind of money! And we could do so without having to kill and be killed to get that worthy job done.”
It’s not just Afghanistan.
Over the past few years, Canada has been shifting its foreign aid priorities away from Africa to Latin America, where new free trade deals will protect Canada’s business interests in, among other sectors, the mining industry.
Canada’s hands are not clean there are either, as human rights activists insist. They’re documenting how workers and the environment are being exploited and devastated.
It gets worse.
Canada is also heavily into the weapons trade, an industry we hardly ever see covered in the business pages.
According to the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade, between 2003 and 2006, Canadian military exports totalled at least $7.4 billion, mostly to the U.S.Ö, where it went into the weapons used everywhere from Iraq to Gaza.
Fowler, who kicked open a can of foreign policy worms that, I hope, will crawl into Canadian’s consciousness and consciences, made it very clear that this country has lost its way. To simplify his message, there’s too much politicking, not enough policy.
But there’s no business like the war business, as the U.S. has demonstrated time after bloody time.
According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, in 2008, world “defence spending” hit $1.55 trillion (U.S.) — and that doesn’t count countries where the bombs are homemade.
Imagine how much misery that kind of money could eliminate.
Imagine how many terrorists would not be created as a result.
Fowler’s can of worms must not be put back under the rock where too many people in Canada would prefer to hide it.
But, if some initial reactions on Twitter and elsewhere are any indication, it’s only a matter of time before he gets slimed.
- Posted in
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18 Comments so far
Show AllI'm sorry to hear about Canada's imperfections but at least that country has a government that provides health care for all its citizens unlike the USA whose government washes its hands off caring for people except the wealthiest.
Canada having a healthcare system might be described as having a vestigial socialist structure that could not and would not be constructed today that is less than it once was. In some provinces we also have single-payer auto-insurance but the last province to attempt this, Ontario, had to give it up because of the rules of the free-trade agreement. Our independence is becoming more and more a vestigial structure.
To be clear...Canada has a government that would like nothing more than to bury single-payer and replace it with a USian style winner-take-all clusterfuck.
Unfortunately for them, Canadian citizens have been able to experience first hand the miriad benefits of a single payer system for a few generations and you would have to pry it from our cold dead fingers to get it away from us.
For those that say that the Canadian system will be unable to finance itself as the population continues to age...I say...Then go back to financing it with debt free Bank of Canada money just like we did when the system started.
If we can't afford it it is only because we borrow our money instead of spending it into existence, debt free.
That the US is so backward doesn't make Canada all right. There hardly are any clean developed Capitalist countries. The closest are Sweden and Norway, the rest often end up playing the side-kicks of the US/UK empire. Canada and France are 2 of the biggest backers of the war in Afghanistan. There is nothing socialist about these countries. It's capitalism with safety nets and regulation, and some have more of that than others. With that we get those things being constantly fought against, unsustainable living, raping of natural resources inside and outside the country, support for companies that are pitting people against each other internationally to drive down wages and working conditions, wars for natural resources and global dominance, etc. etc.
That is interesting what you say about Europe. I need to ask my niece some more on that when I get the chance now that she just returned from overseas. I still have some lessons to learn about getting out of that lesser evil trap.
swansong and RandB, thanks for the heads up on more info on the Canadian health care system.
Do not forget Finland. It has wonderful safety nets but it also has free enterprise.
It's interesting to see that NAFTA not only fucked up the U.S. but it's working its' magic in Canada too. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigned to reform NAFTA. I'm still waiting.
We are quite familiar with the campaign to the left then rule to the right system in Canada. The Liberal Party is notorious for this.
power goes wherever it wills, unless physically checked...the whole globe is at stake...
the tactics of violence, corruption and blackmail are successful for obvious reasons...
Canada has an economy based on private property, does it not?
land that must be paid for is land in danger, as anything goes to get the needed money...
let us not destroy the land to pay for the land...let us take the land back...take our lives back...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...
Well, if it makes you feel any better, you still have a very nice national anthem-- especially compared to Amerika's hyper-jingo esthetic train wreck.
that's right...and a cool flag, too...
who doesn't love a homey maple leaf?
The quote attributed to Robert Fowler says all you need to know about the Afghan war. American political calculus in Afghanistan has as much to do with the Taliban's treatment of women and girls as it does about terrorism.
Not to say that the issue isn't important, but rather that waging war has never done much for the rights or safety of women. To the contrary, they always suffer disproportionately from all forms of violence, state-sponsored or otherwise.
Food for thought:
The late June Callwood told the story of an early European visitor to York (Toronto) who asks some aborigines about the original meaning of the word -CANADA. They put their heads together, jibber jabber, and reply in English: "A collection of huts".
The national motto - "Peace, Order, and Good Government" - has always been interpreted to mean that the people exist for the state, with the obligation to behave properly and meet the state's needs when required. When trouble erupts in Canada cops arrive quickly in vast numbers, jump in with batons, and whack everybody regardless of gender, race, religion, creed, sexual orientation or political party. A bumper sticker saying "I SUPPORT OUR POLICE" will not save your noggin from stitches, even a gold coloured one.
Americans get upset about "F-bombs" by their elected officials. Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau was the f-bomber's f-bomber. He would later say, "You must be mistaken, all I said was Fuddle-Duddle" and turn his head to sniff the small red rose in his lapel.
Ostensibly Neutral during the Vietnam War, Canadian armaments industry reaped immense financial benefits. Canada sold CANDU nuclear power equipment and technology to both Pakistan and India. Guess what the wogs did with it.
At one point in the 1990s, Canada had peace-keeping troops in 16 parts of the world. Their population at that time was about the same as the State of New Jersey.
Here is a fact which is open to both interpretation and "projection". For more than a decade, Caucasian births in Canada have been a minority.
Trylon
I hope more left-leaning Americans wake to the fact Canada isn't the heaven they think it is. The fact they have better health care and aren't as ruthless as the US is doesn't make them saints. They often fall in line with the US government's global ambitions. They send troops to the wars the US engages in. They are environmentally destructive in their own ways. They allow for great economic disparity between people. The worst of the worst are the UK and US, but Canada is not far behind. Like Canada, France also often aligns itself with the US.
Dafoe
Canada has a national motto, "Peace order and good government" rubbish its real motto is "responsible government" for without that they would never have united upper and lower Canada. Canada never belonged in Afghanistan, they went as a sop to presdent Bush to chase Ossama and the neo cons have kept the army there, while they were kept busy dreaming up catchy phrases of why they were still there.
Canada may not be the heaven it once was but it sure beats the hell out of the states, human rights loom large there not property rights, oh there is a guvmint of noecons with a heavy leaning of puritans and other fundamentalists who have their collective noses stuck up the arses of the corporate socialists on both sides of the border, but that won't last.
Stanley 1979. For an excellent commentary on Canada's health care system check out the video with Natalie Mehra -" Healthcare Fact & Fiction" on the Real News Network.
Ron.
Ron, will do when I get back this weekend. Thanks.
Antonia Z,
Good article but very incomplete. You didn't even touch on some of the worst aspects of the "new Canada" including:
1) The Alberta tar sands: Here is an area which contributes more to global climate change than almost anywhere else on Earth. The process of oil extraction from this area is destructive almost beyond belief. It also makes Canada one of the worst contributors to global climate change -- much worse than one might expect given its size and population.
2) Politicized paranoia in border patrol policy: I'm not sure yet if this is just a fault w/ the right-wing Harper government, but it appears there is a rather severe (right-wing!) litmus test these days for entry into Canada. The border patrol has repeatedly harassed progressives with false accusations, etc. at the border by labeling them potential "terrorists", etc. Just a few examples: HARASSED/DENIED ENTRY: US CODEPINK and Global Exchange cofounder Medea Benjamin (Oct 2007), retired US Colonel and diplomat Ann Wright (Oct 2007), US progressive author and news anchor Amy Goodman (Jan 2010), UK Member of Parliament George Galloway (in early 2009); ALLOWED/WELCOMED: US right-wing hatemonger Ann Coulter (Feb 2010) who recently gave a speech at a Toronto university.
3) Torture policy: For years Canada has repeatedly handed over captured prisoners to the Afghan National Directorate of Security prisons where it is widely known they are being tortured. Alas.. it appears there's no space between the policies of Harper's govt and the Cheney/Bush regime of the US on these matters.
Indeed.. cheers to Canada.. and its race to the bottom.
--JRL