Deep integration moving ahead with no debate

June 28, 2005

Hi Warriors... As you have probably seen in the news coverage, we are moving ahead on the 'deep integration' initiative just as we expected we would - incrementally, by stealth and with no debate.

The "annexation initiative" - which is what I think we should call it - includes as a major piece, the whole security issue - feeding into America's culture of fear and the militarism which takes advantage of it. We need to accomplish what we did in the free trade fight and that is, in stage one of the fight, to alert people to the plan so that we achieve a kind of critical mass of citizens who know about it and are opposed to it. Without that, of course, they won't - can't - act on it.

The key information re: the announced agreement and news coverage - from the G&M article:

• Canada will be participating in a new, wide-ranging North American security plan that Ottawa hopes will improve the response to internal and external threats while helping the flow of goods across the three countries, Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan announced Monday.
  
  The comprehensive strategy was developed following the formation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America at a meeting of U.S. President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Paul Martin and Mexican President Vicente Fox in March.
  
  
• There are over 300 specific recommendations
  
  
• The three governments have agreed to prepare a co-ordinated response to large-scale incidents,
  
  
• Some specific initiatives include testing biometric technology in screening travellers, developing benchmarks on visa issues and developing a co-ordinated strategy on threats to our food supply and agricultural sectors

There are several points you can make based on what we know:

• The whole process is totally undemocratic and requires a thorough and extensive national debate - in parliament, perhaps a royal commission, at the very least public hearings. We are changing Canada fundamentally with literally no input from Canadians.
  
  
• This so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America is nothing more than the annexation of Canada in effect if not legally. Any partnership with the US in its current mood of imperial domination means just one thing: we sign on to whatever they want. This is not a partnership - it is our federal government, at the behest of big business, voluntarily giving up our sovereignty.
  
  
• By signing on to this enhanced security program, Canada is essentially accepting US foreign policy and the likelihood that it will provoke more terrorist attacks. We should, instead, be taking a stand on dealing with roots of the terror threat - US foreign policy in the middle east.
  
  
• If we simply go along with every defensive measure the US needs as a result of its aggressive and bellicose foreign policy then sooner or later we will be targets as well. This is not being soft on terror - it is dealing rationally with the threat by critically assessing its principal cause which is increasingly, US foreign policy.
  
  
• A recent survey done for the Canadian Defence Department [By Ekos, this past February] shows that Canadian feel equally threatened by US foreign policy as they do by global terrorism. [see article following the first G&M piece, below.] After international organized crime (38%) "US Foreign Policy" and "Terrorism" were tied (at 37%) as the greatest threats to Canada's national security.
  
  
• This agreement is just the tip of the iceberg of Bay Street's plan for the defacto annexation of Canada. It will keep growing to include the gradual "harmonization" of social policy, a continental (read US) energy policy, bulk water exports, environmental regulation and food and drug safety. We all know that "harmonization" means Canada changing its laws to match those of the US and US needs.
  
  Always close these discussions of deep integration with a statement/declaration of Canadian values.
  
  
• Poll after poll and study after study show that Canada and the US are moving rapidly in the opposite direction as far as values are concerned. Canadians are proud of what they have accomplished and don't want it bargained/given away just to please George Bush/the US/American interests.

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