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Challenging the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America

A report by the Council of Canadians

BIOGRAPHIES

José Antonio Almazán, a Deputy with the Partido de la Revolucion Democratica (PRD), is a member of the Mexican legislature’s Labour and Energy Commissions. He is a long-time leader of the Mexican Union of Electrical Workers. He is currently a key organizer of the next tri-national meeting of legislators and popular sectors in North America.

Maude Barlow is National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project and a director with the International Forum on Globalization. She is also a fellow with the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, a board member of Food and Water Watch and a founding member of the European-based World Future Council. She is the recipient of the 2005/2006 Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship and in 2005 received the prestigious Right Livelihood Award, or “Alternative Nobel,” from the Swedish Parliament. She is author or co-author of 15 books, most recently Too Close For Comfort: Canada’s Future Within Fortress North America and Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the World’s Water (with Tony Clarke).

Dorval Brunelle is professor in the department of sociology at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and, since 2004, director of the Observatory of the Americas, which is attached to the Centre for International Studies and Globalization at UQAM. Over the past three decades, he has published extensively on Quebec and the Canadian political economy, law and social exclusion, NAFTA and globalization. His latest publication is a collective work entitled The World Social Forums and the Challenges of Global Democracy,
to be published by Paradigm Publishers this year.

John Foster is Principal Researcher (Civil Society and Governance) at the North-South Institute in Ottawa. He was previously Ariel F. Sallows Professor
of International Human Rights at the Law College of the University of Saskatchewan. He has participated and led organizations in civil society in Canada for 45 years, including head of OXFAM-Canada (1989-1997) and almost two decades in social justice with the United Church of Canada and the ecumenical justice coalitions. He was a co-founder of Common Frontiers, the Latin American Working Group and the Inter-Agency Coalition on HIV/AIDS.



Diana Gibson is Research Director for the University of Alberta’s Parkland Institute. Prior to joining the Parkland, she conducted research as a consultant to various community organizations, unions and governments. She has extensive experience as a social policy researcher and educator and has engaged nationally and internationally on topics varying from health care and education to energy and trade policy.

Peter Julian is NDP Member of Parliament for Burnaby-New Westminster and Critic for International Trade and Gateways, Transport, Persons with Disabilities and the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. He previously served as executive director
of the Council of Canadians, of which he was a founding member in 1985. He hosted the second Tri-National Forum to formulate people-centred alternatives to the deep-integration agenda, which included legislators and civil society representatives from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.



Antonia Juhasz is a policy-analyst, author and activist living in San Francisco. She is the Tarbell Fellow at Oil Change International and Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. She is a teacher at the New College of California in the Activism and Social Change Masters Program. She is also a guest lecturer on U.S. foreign policy at the McMaster University Labour Studies Program, a unique educational program with the Canadian Automobile Workers Union. Her most recent book is The Bu$h Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time (HarperCollins, April, 2006), and has begun work on a new book with HarperCollins tentatively titled, The Break-Up: The Case for Taking Apart Big Oil.



Rosa Kouri is National Director of the Sierra Youth Coalition, one of Canada’s leading youth environmental organizations and the youth arm of the Sierra
Club of Canada. She founded the Sustainable McGill Project at McGill University, bicycled the west coast of California to raise awareness about industrial agriculture and poor working conditions for migrant farmers, sat on the board of the national Sierra Club of Canada, and organized youth delegates at the 11th United Nations global climate summit. In September 2006, she was a founding member of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition and was recently recognized by the World Conservation Union for outstanding work on climate change issues.



Avi Lewis is one of Canada’s most controversial and eloquent media personalities. In the late ‘90s, he hosted and produced counterSpin on CBC Newsworld. Before that, he hosted City TV’s landmark music journalism show, The New Music, and was a Gemini award-winning political specialist on MuchMusic. More recently, his documentary about Argentina’s new movement of worker-run businesses, The Take, was nominated for four Gemini Awards and won the International Jury prize at the American Film Institute festival in
Los Angeles. His new television series, The Big Picture with Avi Lewis, which debuted on CBC Newsworld in September 2006, combines hard-hitting documentaries and town hall debates.



Bertha Lujan (Bertha Elena Lujan Uranga) is Minister of Labour for the Legitimate Government of Mexico. She participated in the founding of the Peoples’ Solidarity Front and the Peoples’ Defence Committee, has been an active member of the Authentic Work Front (FAT) since 1970, and sits on the boards of directors of the Vamos Foundation, AUNA-Mexico, CELAG, Foundation for Democracy, Citizen Power and Citizen Movement for Democracy. She is a co-founder and national coordinator of the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC), and acted as Controller General for Mexico City from
2000 to 2006.



Elizabeth May is an environmentalist, writer, activist, lawyer, and leader of the Green Party of Canada. She is a graduate of Dalhousie Law School and was admitted to the Bar in both Nova Scotia and Ontario. She held the position of Associate General Council for the Public Interest Advocacy Centre prior to becoming Senior Policy Advisor to the federal minister of the Environment from 1986 until 1988. She became Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada
in 1989, a position she held until March 2006, when she stepped down to run for leadership of the Green Party of Canada.

Ben Powless is a 20-year-old Mohawk from Six Nations in Ontario who is currently studying political science and human rights at Carleton University in Ottawa. He has been involved with the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition since its inception, working at both the national level and with the Ottawa Chapter. He also sits on the board of directors of the Youth Environmental Network and is
very involved in the local Aboriginal community.



Judy Rebick is a social justice activist, writer, broadcaster, speaker and founder of rabble.ca, an independent online news and discussion site. She currently holds the Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy at Ryerson University and is the author of several books and articles, including Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution (Penguin 2005), Imagine Democracy (Stoddard 2000) and Politically Speaking (Douglas & McIntyre 1996). She is a former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, Canada’s largest women’s group. She is also on the national advisory boards of Fair Vote Canada and the December 6 Coalition.



Steven Shrybman is a partner in the law firm of Sack, Goldblatt and Mitchell
and practices international trade and public interest law in Ottawa, Canada.
He has been actively involved in efforts to prevent the privatization of public services, including successful fights to defeat some of the largest privatization projects in Canada, including water treatment facilities for the Greater Vancouver Region and the proposed sale of Hydro One in Ontario.



Steven Staples is Director of the Rideau Institute in Ottawa and author of Missile Defence: Round 1. A frequent contributor to journals, magazines, and conferences, he is often called upon to comment on defence and public policy-related issues by the national and international news media including the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Time, CTV National News and CBC Television’s The National and the BBC. His years of work with popular organizations, including the Council of Canadians, has made him well-known amongst civil society organizations, and he speaks regularly to audiences in Canada, the United States, and around the world.



Maureen Webb is a Canadian human rights and labour lawyer, and author of Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post 9-11
World (City Lights, San Francisco). She works for the Canadian Association of University Teachers, is a co-chair of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, a founder of the International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance,
and coordinator for security and human rights issues for Lawyers’ Rights
Watch Canada. She was also a Fellow at the Human Rights Institute at Columbia University in 2001.



Hassan Yussuff was elected Canadian Labour Congress Secretary-Treasurer in 2002 and is now serving his second three-year term in this position. His CLC portfolio includes political action, human rights and anti-racism, free trade and immigration and refugees issues. He is also responsible for labour councils and sits on the Labour Commission for revision of the employment standards rules and of the health and safety provisions of the Canada Labour Code. He has served as director of the CAW Human Rights Department and was also a vice-president of ORIT, the American hemispheric organization of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.

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