The Dominion - 71

Issue #71

Tim McSorley — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 20:55:29 +0000

Subhead:

October 2010

Cover Image:

issue71coverweb.jpg

Body:

Download Issue #71 (October 2010) [3 MB, pdf]

To read articles from this issue on the web, visit this page.

Issue #71 is formatted as twenty pages of letter sized paper (8.5x11").

(You need Acrobat Reader or an application that reads pdf files to view the print version of this issue.)

Distribution rights:

You are free (and encouraged) to download, print, and distribute as many copies of the Dominion as you like, with the following restrictions:

the content of the paper will not be modified
no advertising or additional content will be attached to the paper
15% of any profits derived from the sale or distribution of the Dominion will be paid to the Dominion
We ask regular readers for a voluntary contribution of between $2 and $10 per issue. See our donation page for details.

Exceptions to any of these restrictions may be granted on a case by case basis. Contact us with any questions.

Canada, Afghanistan, and Wikileaks

Tim McSorley — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 10:27:33 +0000

wikileaksweb.jpg

Farmland Frontier

Martin Lukacs — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:47:04 +0000

New wave of agricultural land-grabs reaches Canada

MONTREAL—In an age of escalating food insecurity and financial uncertainty, large corporations, investors, and even nations states have been stalking the globe in pursuit of an age-old and certain commodity: farmland. Bought up on a large scale to secure food for cropstarved countries or to make a safe investment, farmland is becoming the lucrative prize of a new resource frontier. The sweep of agricultural land grabs has stripped small farmers in Africa, Latin America and Asia of control over vital tracts of fertile land. And quietly, these modern-day land marauders are coming to Canada—undermining family farms, compromising local food sovereignty, and harming the environment.

This past July the National Farmers Union (NFU) sounded the alarm. In a report entitled “Losing Our Grip: How a Corporate Farmland Buy-up, Rising Farm Debt, and Agribusiness Financing of Inputs Threaten Family Farms and Food Sovereignty,” the union documents how foreign ownership of farmland in Canada is no longer a theoretical fear. It’s happening.

Investor group Walton International is buying up farmland across Alberta and has now moved into Ontario, converting farmland into “development-ready property”—what critics say is a euphemism for development geared towards urban sprawl. According to its website, Walton “manages approximately 36,000 acres on behalf of over 35,000 investors worldwide.”

News has broken recently about Quebec-based Monaxxion, representing Chinese financiers, which seeks to purchase 99,000 acres of land across Canada. La Terre de chez nous, the publication of the Union des producteurs agricoles, the Quebec farm union, has reported that Monaxxion describes its clients as “high net worth investors”—one investor, according to the report, is looking to pick up $30 million in land, and another has a personal wealth of $2 billion.

And Agcapita, a Calgary-based investment fund, has scooped up between 30,000 and 60,000 acres of farmland, mostly in Saskatchewan. “I’m convinced that farmland is going to be one of the best investments of our time,” US commodities guru and advisor to Agcapita Jim Rogers told Fortune
Magazine in 2009.

Kevin Wipf from NFU’s head office in Regina believes such sentiments are cause for grave concern.

“Farmland is food land and we believe protecting the family farm and protecting local food systems is vitally important,” Wipf said. “When you have foreign investors coming to purchase land solely for the sake of investing, you are losing the sovereignty over food land, those local food systems and control over your land base. And they won’t have the same concern for the environment and sustainability that we believe a local farmer would have.”

Devlin Kuyek is a researcher with GRAIN, an organization that supports the struggle of small farmers and social movements for community-controlled food systems and agricultural biodiversity. He has analyzed the global trends bearing down on Canada.

“These land grabs are happening on a large scale,” he said.

The overall numbers are staggering. GRAIN estimates that there is $100 billion sitting in global funds for the purchase or lease of farmlands. At least fifty million hectares of farmland has already been acquired.

“In 2008 the [food] prices skyrocketed and you had many countries who are quite dependent on food imports start looking at different ways to secure food,” Kuyek said.

The Gulf States, China, Japan, South Korea and most of Western Europe in particular have since been trying to increase their access to agricultural land in poorer countries.

“You also had the people in the financial sector start looking at farmland as a secondary assets class that they could invest [in] to give them returns that they weren’t seeing otherwise,” Kuyek said.

GRAIN identified 120 investment groups specifically set up to buy up farms. These include investment funds, investments from wealthy individuals and banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

“You have a bunch of apologists trying to frame this as some sort of agricultural modernization or some way to capture or harness private sector investment in agriculture,” he says. “There are larger forces that are bearing down, and Canada is definitely being targeted. People are not aware of what’s happening. Those looking to invest in farmland have access to millions of billions of dollars that they can mobilize rapidly and instantaneously.”

According to Wipf, such developments portend the demise of viable farming.

“The ability to produce food, the ability to have a local food system, is really what makes a community viable,” he said. “When you have foreign interests controlling a large part of an important resource like farmland—which is often not viewed as a resource—you lose your autonomy.”

The NFU believes a perfect storm of factors is undermining the family farm. Farms are burdened by a crushing debt—for each dollar earned, farmers are 23 dollars in debt. Under financial strain, farmers are forced to turn to agro-corporations that are increasingly financing farmers’ seeds, chemicals, and fertilizer—and farmers then return a share of their crop to the corporation.

Farmers who are in debt and bound by contracts to corporations are easily outbid by wealthy investors
who see farmland as a hot new commodity.

“We do know there are investors looking at Canadian farmland,” Kuyek said. “There are over 20 major investment funds that are being set up across the country. Some of them have been here for years, and others are more recent. Some are trying to find loopholes in the regulations in order to be able to channel private investor money in the acquisition of farmland because of provincial restrictions.”

Canada does not currently have any federals laws to protect against foreign interests investing in farmland. Provinces are responsible for regulating farmland purchases, with regulatory frameworks varying across the country. In 2003 Saskatchewan changed its provincial laws to allow out-of-province investment in its farmland.

According to the NFU, far from protecting small farms, the Canadian government has been paving the way for a non-farmer buy-up of Canada’s food land.

Crown agency Farm Credit Canada acts as the main financier for many of the country’s biggest farmland investment companies—providing multi-million-dollar loans and helping facilitate the sale or lease of land.

Michael Hoffort is a spokesperson from the agency and spoke with The Dominion regarding the NFU report.

“I wouldn’t say we are seeing a large amount of foreign investment coming towards farmland in Canada,” Hoffort said. “Often when it is a foreign investor, it is a farmer who is looking to immigrate into Canada, buy a farm and be a member of the community.”

But Farm Credit Canada has been very friendly to the largest Canadian farmland investment company Assiniboia, offering generous grants. The company has grown rapidly over the last two years, tripling its holdings to its current 100,000 acres.

Assiniboia’s primary source of capital is the taxpayer-owned Farm Credit Canada. In 2009, the company signed a mortgage agreement package that will see it receive an additional $9 million in borrowing capacity at “very low long-term rates,” according to an Assiniboia report.

When asked what data Farm Credit Canada has collected to compare how much foreign investment has been carried out over the last few years, Hoffort couldn’t give any figures.

“We haven’t done the analysis of crunching the numbers to find out how much farmland has been purchased domestically or by foreign buyers,” he said.

Hoffort explained that Farm Credit Canada only provides loans to applicants with a Canadian backer in the package, but he did not disclose what the percentage of the holding had to be Canadian.

“We lend to farms of all sizes,” he said. “The vast majority are family managed, and they come in many shapes and sizes. Farms in general have been growing in size for years—it is just part of the economy.”

Hoffort did have words to reassure the public. “Our focus is very much on agriculture, agricultural producers and the majority of those are by and large family farms. It has been in the past that way, and I can assure you that it will be that way in the future.”

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates there are currently over a billion people on the planet who suffer from hunger. The number continues to grow.

Kuyek believes the new phenomenon of agricultural land grabs provides important lessons about the failure of the market, and the failure of the global food system.

“We must get food production back in the hands of small farmers, ensuring their livelihood and ensuring that people are fed from the food system and that it isn’t about profit,” he said.

The urgency will only grow as these problems are compounded by climate change.

“The question is not ‘what do we do with all this private sector interest in farming that has sprung up,’” he said, “but rather ‘how do we create a system of farming, how do we create a food system that actually feeds people.’”

Amy Miller is a media maker and community organizer who resides in Montreal.

Land grab

Prison Farms on Death Row

Moira Peters — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 05:04:16 +0000

Feds invest $9B in prisons, progressive rehab program phased out to save "pocket change"

MONTREAL—The movement to save prison farms has intensified in recent months as increasing numbers of Canadians have voiced concern about the Conservative government’s overarching plans for the federal prison system.

Twenty-four people were arrested during protests on August 8 and 9 outside the Frontenac Institution in Kingston—one of the six prison farms across the country that the Conservative government has slated for closure. Correctional Services Canada (CSC) was attempting to transport Frontenac’s dairy herd out of the facility when protesters formed a human barricade to prevent livestock trucks from passing onto the prison grounds.

Police attempted to break the blockade, periodically grabbing and detaining protesters, but they remained numerically outmatched.

“Sunday was a major victory for the campaign,” said Andrew McCann, a member of Urban Agriculture Kingston and one of those arrested. “Over 500 people held the blockade for two hours. They started to drag old women and young women away to intimidate people, but the line just grew.”

By the next morning, an estimated 150–200 Ontario Provincial Police officers had been called in. Several more arrests were made and the protest was eventually broken up. McCann stated that he and the other 23 defendants plan to plead not guilty at their first court date on September 14, 2010.

The farms employed about 300 inmates, and their produce fed inmates throughout the neighbouring CSC institutions, while surplus was typically donated to food banks. The prison farms program has existed in Canada for well over a century.

In recent months a groundswell of support for the farms has spread—from environmental groups to prison activists and former inmates, to the National Farmers Union (NFU) and the Union of Solicitor General Employees (USGE), of which the prisons’ correctional officers are members.

“This issue touches on everything from food security, food banks, rehabilitation and self-sufficiency,” said McCann.

He emphasized the rehabilitative aspects of farm work, which research has corroborated. “I toured the farms back in June 2009. ...I met people who have murdered, and talking about the impact of working with cows, milking them, taking care of them while sick—it’s a really profound change in their lives, and I can’t think of a more effective way to make Canada safer.”

Part of the government’s rationale for closing the farms has been that less than one per cent of former participants enter the agricultural sector after their release from prison, though critics—and several former inmates—have argued that the work experience is broadly applicable.

“We think the skills you can learn in the prison farms are useful, even for those who don’t go directly into farming,” said NFU Executive Director Kevin Wipf. “We don’t see the sense at all in taking away such an important method of rehabilitation.”

The 2007–08 annual report of CORCAN—the rehabilitation and employment-training arm of CSC—indicates that prison agribusiness is costly in contrast with its manufacturing programs, which bring in more money than they cost.

In an email to The Dominion, CSC Senior Media Relations Adviser Lori Pothier stated that the decision to close the prison farms was the result of a “Strategic Review process” which she said is meant to ensure that “all existing government programs be reviewed on a four-year cycle to ensure the programs are effective and efficient, and are meeting the needs of Canadians.”

NDP MP and Public Safety Critic Don Davies stated that a program’s expense should not dictate whether it is scrapped. “It’s not unimportant, but it should be seen as secondary to the primary goal of rehabilitation,” he said, adding that the availability of rehabilitative training programs is already far too limited. According to the CSC’s 2008–09 financial statement, only 0.4 per cent of its $2.2 billion annual budget went to CORCAN programs.

The Ministry of Public Safety, headed by Vic Toews, emphasizes that the program loses over $4 million annually, but has refused to disclose the full cost of outsourcing its food services to the private sector.

“There’s a lot they’re not telling us,” said USGE Labour Relations Officer Fred Sadori. “They haven’t even disclosed the numbers, so they haven’t given us a very good reason to believe that [closing prison farms] is a good idea.”

In her email, Pothier stated, “CSC does not anticipate any increase in the annual cost of food procurement due to the closing of the CORCAN farms. CSC will purchase food and products through existing contracting authorities and mechanisms, including the government tendering system.”

McCann said the privatization of CSC’s food services might save some money at first due to competitive bidding, but would likely lead to cost overruns in the future as firms attempt to ratchet up the price of their contracts with CSC.

The $4 million annual expense, said McCann, is “pocket change compared to the billions of dollars they plan on spending on expanding the prison system.”

McCann was referring to the $9 billion that Treasury Board president Stockwell Day recently requested for the expansion of the federal prison system in early August. Day claimed that the expansion was necessary due to an “alarming” spike in unreported crime. After being pressed for his source on this, Day pointed to a 2004 StatsCan report indicating that 66 per cent of criminal activity nationwide went unreported, up from about 58 per cent in 1993. (Reporters and bloggers were quick to point out the irony that only minutes earlier Day had criticized the long-form census as unreliable for being as much as five years out of date.)

Two weeks before Day’s announcement, StatsCan released data indicating that the national crime rate has declined by 17 per cent in the past decade. This encompassed a 22 per cent drop in StatsCan’s crime severity index, and a marked drop in violent crime, with homicides, attempted murder, serious sexual assaults and crimes against children comprising less than one quarter of one per cent of all reported offenses.

The Harper government's approach to the prison system, according to critics like Davies and McCann, has largely been shaped by a policy paper released in October 2007 entitled “A Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety.” The document calls on several occasions for the CSC to “strengthen its partnerships” with the private sector, and recommends CORCAN in particular for private sector involvement.

The panel that authored the report was chaired by Rob Sampson, formerly the Minister of Corrections in the Ontario government of Mike Harris. Sampson was a staunch proponent of prison privatization during his tenure there, and established Canada’s first ever privately run prison. The Central North Correctional Centre was built to replace three older provincial prisons and was managed by the Utah-based Management and Training Corporation. (The Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty refused to renew Management and Training’s five-year contract once it expired in 2006, noting that publicly run jails offered better security, prisoner health care and rehabilitative programs.)

Following the precendent set by the Central North Correctional Centre, the Roadmap also calls for CSC to establish “regional complexes”—prisons that would accommodate several times more inmates than current federal penitentiaries, and encompass minimum-, medium- and maximum-security blocks. Neither Davies nor McCann have faith in the ability—or the intent—of such institutions to deliver meaningful programs to inmates.

“The Conservative approach to the prison system is entirely ideologically motivated, not empirically based,” said Davies, adding that he doubts the government will expand vocational, educational and rehabilitative programs in tandem with the rest of the prison system. “They just want to pursue their tough-on-crime agenda, which appeals to their base.”

Day’s push to expand the prison system has been matched with initiatives for longer prison terms and more convictions. One of the Roadmap’s recommendations is an end to statutory releases, and the implementation of a system of “earned parole.” (Under the current system of statutory releases, convicts are granted mandatory parole after two-thirds of their prison sentence has been completed, unless they have been identified as a significant threat to themselves or others.)

The Ministry of Justice under Rob Nicholson has also been angling to increase the country’s prison population. The day after Day revealed the planned prison expansion, Nicholson announced that crimes such as betting, keeping a bawdy house and trafficking in cannabis and barbiturates are now treated as “serious offenses.” This builds on legislation passed in 2007 that abolished conditional sentencing for serious offenses and enforced mandatory minimum sentences for gun crime, robberies and fraud.

Pothier stated that in the 2008 federal budget, “the Government announced its intent to fundamentally transform the federal corrections system, and one of the objectives was to provide more employment and employability skills for offenders.” She did not elaborate on what those skills would be, how much money would be allocated to those programs in the future, or what would be done to replace the prison farms program in the short run.

McCann noted that under Canada’s Corrections Act, the government has an obligation to offer some sort of employment training to supplement the farms program, but said he remains skeptical.

“I honestly feel that the Conservative government’s vision for the future of corrections in Canada is not to do corrections, but to do punishment.”

Niko Block is the Features Editor at the McGill Daily and sits on the Board of Directors of CKUT Radio in Montreal.

Prison farm blockade

Prison Farms Umbrella

New Minister a “Declared Enemy” of First Nations

Martin Lukacs — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 05:47:26 +0000

Indigenous leaders, activists raise concerns about John Duncan's track record

MONTREAL—John Duncan's appointment in August as the new Minister of Indian Affairs was greeted with praise and hopeful expectation from many mainstream Indigenous organizations.

“I look forward to working with him in his new role,” said National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Shawn A-in-chut Atleo in a press release.

“Minister Duncan understands the issues that he will have to address to deal with the many challenges First Nations are experiencing in this province,” said British Columbia Treaty Commission Chief Commissioner Sophie Pierre in another release.

But other First Nations leaders and activists believe Duncan's past tells another story, and they are forecasting a hostile course as he takes responsibility for steering the Canadian government's relationship with First Nations.

According to them, Duncan has established a record of words and deeds over the last thirty years, as a forester and parliamentarian, that amount to a crusade against Indigenous peoples—stoking flames of racial bigotry, attacking constitutionally-protected aboriginal rights, and advocating for their assimilation and permanent status as impoverished, second-class citizens in Canada.

Guujaaw, President of the Haida Nation on the north-west coast of British Columbia, recalls the First Nations struggles to end MacMillan Bloedel's clear-cut logging of Haida Gwaii's world-renowned old-growth forests.

Duncan was a forester with MacMillan Bloedel on Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii from 1976 to 1993, including a stint as chief forester on Haida Gwaii.

In those years, MacMillan Bloedel was the largest forest corporation in the province, and the Haida's campaigns alongside environmentalists established the archipelago as the key battleground in the coastal forest wars in the 1980s. The company was responsible for shaving bald entire islands, leaving the landscape scarred from poorly-managed clear cut operations and dumping logging debris into fish-bearing waters.

Ethnobotanist and author Wade Davis worked as a forestry engineer for MacMillan Bloedel in the late 1970s.

“Concern for the cultural heritage of the Haida was not even a remote thought,” he said in Ian Gill's book about the Haida, All That We Say is Ours.

Forestry companies fought tooth-and-nail against the Haida, who persevered and won an agreement establishing Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve in 1987, which saved the southern third of the archipelago from logging. They've since made strides with the provincial government, according to Guujaaw, but the federal government has only “stonewalled” them politically.

“If the intention of the present government is to put someone in there who will make sure that nothing happens, maybe they put in the right man,” he said.

“Sometimes it is better to deal with a declared enemy than a pretend friend.”

Duncan left his forestry work to run for election in North Island-Powell River, BC, in 1993 as a Reform Party MP, serving as their Aboriginal Affairs critic from 1994 to 1997. He filled the same role for the Canadian Alliance from 2003 to 2006, while representing Vancouver Island North. After losing his seat in 2006, he was reelected in 2008 and served as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minster of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

He used his parliamentary pulpit to take vocal positions on fishing disputes in British Columbia as First Nations dependent on sockeye salmon from the Fraser River began winning limited legal recognition of their fishing rights.

Ernie Crey, a member of the Cheam Indian Band and a policy advisor for the Sto:lo Tribal Council, which represents eight First Nations in the Fraser Valley, has vivid memories of Duncan “cheerleading” for the BC Fisheries Survival Coalition, an aggressive group that represented non-native commercial and recreational fishermen.

“Some people seem to have been struck by amnesia,” Crey said. “Duncan was one of the most vociferous critics of aboriginal people and their constitutionally protected rights.”

“His alliance with the BC Fisheries Survival Coalition says a lot about him,” Guujaaw said. “[The Survival Coalition] organization has never moved to protect fish from overfishing or offshore drilling or tankers, but rather have organized for the purpose of keeping the First Nations from regaining any rights to a livelihood.”

While Duncan was still working as a forester, the Sto:lo and other fishing First Nations received a boost from the Supreme Court in 1990 when the landmark Sparrow decision recognized they had a constitutionally-protected right to fish for food and for social and ceremonial purposes.

Panic set in amongst government policy-makers and industry. Suddenly there was legal uncertainty about fish sales and quotas, so the federal government responded with a plan to contain and control the aboriginal fishery. They created a commercial licensing regime for aboriginal fishing that included financial support for employment, but also caps on numbers of fish that could be taken by First Nations.

In 1992, the federal government introduced regulations for two native commercial fisheries, one on the Lower Fraser River and the other in Port Alberni.

Critics of the government policy noted that First Nations, by accepting the regulated fisheries, were essentially giving up most of their rights to property and full compensation for stolen resources, in order to be guaranteed a fragment of rights adequate to sustain their economies.

The BC Fisheries Survival Coalition saw it differently. They launched their own campaigns against the Native fisheries, saying they were “race-based," and organized illegal fisheries on the Lower Fraser to show their opposition.

“As a member of parliament, Duncan took up their argument,” Crey recalls. “He associated with groups like these that played the race card.”

“In some summers, I was witness to Indian boats being swamped by much larger commercial vessels apparently manned by supporters of the Survival Coalition,” Crey said.

“Trucks and boat trailers owned by Indian fishermen were damaged and trashed. There were buildings in Fort Langley, close to the mouth of the Fraser River, that were burnt as an act of vengeance.”

In Parliament in 1998, Duncan backed up non-Native fisherman who had engaged in illegal fishing.

“The fisheries minister keeps insisting that a race-based commercial fishery is legal,” Duncan said. “Will the minister ask the crown to drop the charges against 22 BC commercial fishermen who protested his racial policy?”

Provincial and federal courts have consistently ruled that commercial allocations for First Nations are not discriminatory but based on inherent rights that precede asserted Crown sovereignty and provincial legislation.

“My children grew up when Duncan held office,” Crey said. “I can remember my kids telling me, 'When we go to school people spit on us. People call us thieving, poaching Indians.' That was the kind of climate created by people using the race-card.”

John Duncan's office refused repeated requests for an interview.

As the Reform Party's Aboriginal Affairs Critic, in 1995 Duncan helped launch a policy statement, the Interim Aboriginal Policy, intended to transform the government's relationship with First Nations. It advocated for the conversion of reserve and treaty settlement lands into private property, the abolition of the Indian Act and tax exemptions, and an end to federal funding of aboriginal political associations.

In other words, he advocated “full-blown assimilation,” said Arthur Manuel, a member of the Shuswap Nation and a spokesperson for the Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade.

With Duncan as Indian Affairs Minister, the Conservative Government recently sent letters to select First Nations requesting their participation in a study on economic successes, a move Manuel says is the latest salvo in a campaign to insinuate private property ownership onto Native reserves, breaking apart and opening to encroachment lands that are still mostly held in collective tenure.

As an Aboriginal Affairs critic, Duncan became one of the most outspoken critics of Canada and BC's treaty negotiations with the Nisga'a Nation of 6,000 in the north-west of the province.

Signed in 1999, the first modern treaty in BC granted the Nisga'a $200 million, access to fisheries and wildlife, rights to a form of municipal self-government, and about 2,000 square kilometres of land, less than one-tenth of their traditional territory.

“I find it incredible that a package like this could be offered to that many people," Duncan told the Vancouver Sun in 1995. “Taxpayers have had it. They're at their wits' end. They're not being represented in this whole exercise. Who is looking after the non-Native Canadian? That's my concern.”

According to Manuel, Duncan was lambasting an agreement that undermined and extinguished the constitutional rights of the Nisga'a, but the terms of settlement were still considered too generous by the right-wing Reform Party.

“The objective was [to] eliminate aboriginal title and rights by replacing them with a new form of reduced and restricted treaty rights,” Manuel said. “Under this model, Indigenous peoples will have to give up their tax exemption, take their land in fee simple, and agree to be under provincial control.”

John Duncan on Aboriginal rights

In Parliament on September 19, 1995, Duncan called the peaceful protest by Stoney Point Ojibway in Ipperwash Provincial Park an “illegal occupation.” He demanded that the government reject negotiations and “enforce the law.”
His comments came two weeks after Ontario riot police had stormed the park and shot at dozens of unarmed protesters, killing Dudley George.

During the Second World War, the federal government had expropriated Stoney Point's lands, including a cemetery, and failed to follow through on its promise to return the land after the war.
When the BC provincial New Democratic Party revealed in 1995 that it had established a five per cent ceiling on restitution of lands in treaty negotiations with First Nations, Duncan called it “progress” and credited Reform Party pressure.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee has repeatedly criticized the Canadian and provincial governments for only recognizing rights to small portions of First Nations' traditional territories while extinguishing their rights to the majority of their land.
When the Supreme Court handed down the Marshall decision in 1999—a landmark ruling that affirmed the Mi'kmaq's treaty right to maintain a moderate living from commercial fisheries—Duncan demanded the government repeal it.
“The Marshall decision establishes a race-based commercial fishery on the East Coast,” Duncan argued in the House of Commons. “Why will the government not ask the supreme court to stay the Marshall decision, and clarify it?”

Duncan floated the idea of Reform MPs using their free-mail privileges in Parliament to shower British Colombians with a 14-page document that attacked the Nisga'a deal.

Such a suggestion won him the label of “dinosaur” from John Watson, then Director-General of the Department of Indian Affairs' Pacific region.

Duncan also spoke out frequently against the British Columbia Treaty Process, province-wide negotiations over unextinguished Aboriginal rights and title to land that began in 1993. The Nisga'a "extinguishment" agreement is widely considered a template for these negotiations, which the federal and provincial governments are eager to complete.

“The public is clamouring for a new approach,” Duncan claimed in 1998 in Parliament. “What will the minister do to create an affordable process and reduce Aboriginal expectations so that BC can support modern treaties?”

Reducing aboriginal expectations, Manuel said, is a euphemism for the federal government's continuing strategy to keep Indigenous peoples impoverished, which he believes will continue with Duncan's appointment.

“Bluntly put, they want the province to be rich and us poor,” he said. “The federal and provincial governments want to maintain exclusive jurisdiction over our lands. The results we'll get from Duncan and his bureaucracy will be the same as we got from Indian Affairs Ministers Jean Chretien, John Munro or Chuck Strahl."

Since his appointment as Minister, Duncan has toned down the rhetoric, and in late August issued an apology to Inuit from northern Quebec who were forcibly relocated to the High Arctic in an attempt to establish claims of Canadian sovereignty in the 1950s.

Ernie Crey, for one, isn't convinced.

“Just because 20 years later he is putting on pleasant appearances—that’s not good enough,” he said. “It's hard to believe that people can turn around and say the leopard has changed his spots. I think he needs to be held to account for all the things he did and said.”

Martin Lukacs is a member of the Dominion editorial collective.

Indian Affairs Minister John Duncan

Testing

Invasion

Moira Peters — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 05:28:26 +0000

Heatherm Meek.Invasion.Levels adjusted.jpg

Solidarities of Resistance: Liberation from Education

dawn — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 05:04:38 +0000

Reflections on education, colonization, and freedom

VANCOUVER—In today's society, school is sometimes spoken about as a necessity for a happy life and as an inherent good. The concept of education is thought to be synonymous with learning, and separates those who are knowledgeable from those who are deficient. This is true even in radical pedagogy circles, where education is portrayed as a universal need and a means of liberation.

Only at the edges of radical movements are people calling the very concept of education into question, creating a culture of school resistance they say rejects the commodification of education and its connections to state building, and even genocide.

“Education is a concept that co-evolved with capitalist society, which has long been known by dissenters to be a tool for streamlining capital accumulation, with classrooms that resemble factory floors, and bells that mirror the break-time whistles,” says University of Victoria professor Jason Price. In his book In Lieu of Education, Ivan Illich pointed out that the word “education” only appeared in the English language in 1530, at which time it was a radical idea and a novelty.

“Schools have been functioning for some time to create students with obedient minds, rarely pondering beyond the controlled learning habits they promote,” says Dustin Rivers, an Indigenous youth from the Sḵwxwú7mesh Nation.

Before the process of education was commodified, says Rivers, “learning was present everywhere in my traditional culture. Even our word for 'human being' can be deciphered into a 'learning person'.”

Important skills were demonstrated through mentorship, and were inseparable from culture. “Some of these aspects of the traditional culture remain” says Rivers, "but it often does so in spite of institutions like schooling, politics, and occupations attempting to dissuade or direct focus towards lifestyles that don't reinforce traditional ways of life."

A look back through history indicates that the separation of learning from community and the natural world is not only intertwined with the rise of capitalism, but also with the formation of nation-states. “All nation-states practice a continual effort to homogenize, using for this purpose the institutions and particularly education,” writes Gustavo Esteva, author of Escaping Education.

In his book, Esteva notes that of the 5,000 languages left in the world, only one per cent exist in Europe and North America, the birthplace of the nation-state and where education is most prevalent. Thus, says Esteva, where education goes, culture suffers.

A Mexican study shows one impact of education on culture: In San Andres Chicahuaxtla, Oaxaca, 30 per cent of youngsters who attend school totally ignore their elders' knowledge of soil culture, and their ability to live off of the land; 60 per cent acquire a dispersed knowledge of it; and 10 per cent are considered able to sustain, regenerate, and pass it on. In contrast, 95 per cent of youngsters in the same village who do not attend school acquire the knowledge that defines and distinguishes their culture.

Schooling as a tool to homogenize Indigenous youth into national patterns is especially obvious in Canada and the United States, writes Ward Churchill in his book Kill the Indian, Save the Man. In both countries, says Churchill, genocidal policies designed to “compel the adoption of Christianity, reshape traditional modes of governance along the lines of corporate boards, and disperse native populations as widely as possible” were carried out through compulsory boarding schools. According to Churchill, these schools were administered with such vigour that the survival rate of children was roughly 50 per cent. According to the Assembly of First Nations, the last Canadian residential school closed in 1996.

“What came down through compulsory schooling was very harsh, very damaging, and very brutal for our communities,” says Rivers. “It still is to this day, because it is all a part of the assimilation process. There is a responsibility for us to find new paths, and new ways.”

“I have a lot of suspicion about the entire school model," says Matt Hern, a long time advocate for school resistance. "I think pretty much all its basic premises and constructions are suspect—bound up with a colonial and colonizing logic aimed at warehousing kids for cheap and efficient training of industrial inputs.”

School resistance is a movement that attempts to undermine dominant narratives around school, and to broaden the deschooling movement to create new ways of engaging and learning together. “I strongly believe we need counter-institutions, ones that can support people and their passions, assist different types of learning, introduce people to new subjects and experiences, pass knowledge down (and up!), provide meaningful work, pay fair wages if possible, build a community infrastructure, reach out to people from different backgrounds,” says filmmaker Astra Taylor.

There are many people in the deschooling community who are doing just that. Hern co-founded the Purple Thistle Centre with eight youth 10 years ago. Today, the Thistle is a thriving deschooling centre in Vancouver.

“We need to be building alternative social institutions—places for kids, youth and families that begin to create a different set of possibilities,” he says. “Something new that begins to describe and construct a different way of living in the world, and a different world.”

Unschooling is simply defined as life-learning. Unschoolers spend their time exploring, learning and doing their passion, often with rigour and on their own time. Unschooling does not mean anti-intellectual; in fact, according to proponents, it is the opposite. “Unschooling is that very moment when you are really sucked into something, whether it's an idea or project and you just want to study it or be involved in it, master it,” says Taylor.

There is certainly a strong emphasis on deschooling at the Thistle, but that does not mean the centre is only run and used by youth who are unschoolers. In fact, most of the youth are local schooled kids. Of the 25 youth on the collective, five are unschoolers, and a few have college degrees. Out of 200 plus youth who use the space, the ratio is the same.

The Thistle is not anti-school per se, rather it is about creating something new, according to Hern. “We wanted to rethink it all—rather than start with 'school' as the template—let’s start over entirely and create an institution that is for kids, by kids, has their thriving in mind, and takes that idea seriously, however it might look,” he says.

While there are also alternative schools with mandates aimed at undermining and changing conventional school, Hern says they are often part of the problem. “These schools are inevitably lovely, nurturing inspiring places, but if they are providing one more great opportunity for the most privileged people in world history, then they are regressive, not progressive projects. They are making the fundamental inequities of the world worse.”

Even the schools that challenge that status quo in a meaningful way are subject to corporate and government interference, he says. Although Taylor and Hern describe deschooling as a collective, grassroots effort, it is still very much on the fringe of society and social consciousness. The reasons are many; primary is the belief that school is inherently good for us.

“The stigma around drop-outs and incomplete graduations is daunting, and you rarely hear of a positive outlook on leaving school,” says Rivers. Despite this, he left school and became a thriving unschooler who has spent the past few years reconnecting and building his community. He currently runs Squamish Language workshops for his community on his reserve.

Indigenous people face an especially difficult stigma for resisting school. Cheyenne La Vallee, from the Sḵwxwú7mesh Nation, also left school to become an unschooler. “It’s considered shameful if you don't finish high school,” she says. “In my experience, I did face a lot of resistance to the idea of unschooling from family members and friends.”

La Vallee knew that schooling and colonization went hand in hand, but she had never "thought it through that the act of unschooling can be a direct link to begin the process of decolonization.”

“Once I left school I found a deep love for my family and myself, my community and culture, life and my landbase, where I got to actually learn my culture, language and land," says La Vallee. "Going back to my land taught me about how my ancestors lived and I saw that as a way to decolonize.”

“As an unschooler I felt very empowered as a citizen—I volunteered, I wrote a zine, I protested, I read widely, I made stuff—but when I briefly attended public high school I suddenly became a student, my interests were compartmentalized and my sense of agency was dramatically diminished," says Taylor.

Schools can be a barrier to ones own cultures and values. “School does everything in its power to make you feel disempowered and ashamed for being Indigenous, for being a youth, for being alive,” says La Vallee.

But leaving school isn't easy for many to imagine. “Narrowly describing de/unschooling as simply 'getting out of school' tends to privilege those with resources, time and money. Generally, middle-class, two-parent, white families,” says Hern.

The same can be said for homeschooling, says Hern. “I think there are some things that many schools do well and are worth considering and respecting. Schools tend to put a lot of different kids together and when you're there you are forced to learn to deal with difference: people who don’t look, act, think or behave like you do. That’s really important, and often deschoolers end up hanging out with a lot of people who are very similar to themselves.” Which is why he thinks deschooling needs to be a form of active solidarity and activism.

An important part of decolonizing education can come from settler communities. “The solidarity work would have to begin at promoting, or help promoting, this ideological alternative to the status-quo way of perceiving education,” says Rivers. The youth who are already thriving without school can go public and undermine the importance of school in society. “The prejudice will need to be challenged. In achieving this, the hope is more families will identify with the obvious wrongs and injustices within schools, and look seriously into alternatives,” says Rivers.

As Esteva writes in his call for liberation: "We join in a call for solidarities of resistance; of liberation and autonomy from the tools, technologies, and economics of the educated. It has taken us decades to decolonize our minds; to start seeing with our own eyes; to learn how to take off the spectacles of the educated.”

Carla Bergman is an activist, and the co-director of the Purple Thistle Centre in East Vancouver. Mike Jo Brownlee collaborates on projects at the Purple Thistle Centre and is a writer and activist.

Unschooling

Stopping the Flow

Cameron Fenton — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 05:24:19 +0000

Quebec Climate Action Camp takes on the Enbridge Trailbreaker project

DUNHAM, QC—From August 7 to 23, the Quebec Climate Action Camp took root in Dunham, QC—an hour drive southeast of Montreal. The camp aimed to continue to build opposition to the construction of a pumping station in Dunham, a key piece of infrastructure in the Enbridge Trailbreaker project.

The Trailbreaker pipeline project would reverse the flow of existing pipleline infrastructure, moving tar sands oil from Alberta through the United States, Ontario, and eventually crossing through Montreal and Quebec's Eastern Townships region. It would then be piped to Portland, Maine, to be loaded onto tankers destined for Texan refineries.

Community organizers from Dunham joined the Climate Camp to build momentum in a growing local movement against the pumping station. On August 15 over 100 people marched from Parc L'Envol, down Dunham's Rue Principal to Town Hall. Dunham Mayor Jean-Guy Demers ended the march by voicing his support for the camp and for the campaign opposing the pumping station.

Over the two weeks of the Climate Camp, over 300 people visited the camp from across Quebec, eastern Canada, the northeastern United States and coming from as far as California and Austria. The visitors came not only to take action themselves, but also to work towards building a broad, empowering climate justice movement. The camp, powered by solar, wind and kinetic energy, was organized as an exercise in collective self-management.

Climate Camp ended with a march to the site of the proposed pumping station, and the launch of the Trailbreaker Pledge of Resistance. The pledge states that "because of the grave threat the Trailbreaker project poses to the climate, the community and all others in its path, we pledge to engage in non-violent direct action to stop the pumping station should they ever attempt to follow through with its construction without community consent."

systematic changes

March leaving 2

Marching through Dunham

Pledge of Resistance

campsite

Fiyah

Less Than Animals

hillarybain — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:46:24 +0000

Palestinian women imprisoned by Israel speak out

JERUSALEM—“The Russian Compound...” said Jehan Dahadha, before trailing off. Her gaze shifts to the floor and the 23-year-old Palestinian woman sighs before continuing.

“The level of pain that the prisoners suffer inside the Russian Compound, whether it is psychological or on a physical level, made it so that we call it the ‘Butcher Shop.’ It is not suitable for humans to live there. Even animals, it is not healthy for them.”

At age 19, Dahadha was arrested under Israeli suspicion that she belonged to the Islamic Jihad movement, and was taken away from her home and family in Ramallah, West Bank.

She spent several days being interrogated at the Russian Compound prison facility in Jerusalem before being sentenced to 16 months at Ha’Sharon prison in northern Israel.

“We as Palestinians are all subject to becoming prisoners: my sister, me, my mother, my brother. There is not a single Palestinian house that [does] not suffer whether from demolition or arrest,” said Dahadha, sitting in the offices of Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association in Ramallah.

Dahadha says the real reason she was arrested was because she engaged in non-violent demonstrations against the Israeli occupation, visited the families of Palestinian political prisoners and helped these prisoners get in touch with lawyers.

“What's behind [the Israeli process of arrest and detention] is not to maintain order or to punish people for violations of laws or committing crimes; the idea is to crush the mentality of resistance or the idea of rejecting the occupation in your mind,” explained Ala Jaradat, Programs Director at Addameer.

Approximately 700,000 Palestinians have been arrested or detained under Israeli military orders since 1967. This accounts for about 20 per cent of the total Palestinian population in the occupied territories, and nearly 40 per cent of the male population.

Over the same time period, nearly 10,000 Palestinian women have been detained.

Presently, 7,000 Palestinians—including over 300 children and 34 women—remain in Israeli prisons. According to Jaradat, the small number of Palestinian women in Israeli jails makes it much more difficult for the prisoners to demand better treatment and rights, as compared to their more numerous male counterparts.

“[Male Palestinian prisoners] can organize themselves in such a way and actually negotiate and resist and struggle to have certain rights and to have a certain level of relations because of the larger number,” Jaradat explained. “With Palestinian women, it's harder to be able to organize because of the smaller number. Whenever they try to [negotiate] they are subjected to harsh treatments."

Dahadha says that despite the research and information she gathered before entering prison, she was shocked by what she saw there.

"I used to read in newspapers and on the Internet about prisoners in prison. But no matter how much you read, you will never understand it until you go there,” she said, explaining that poor lighting, unhealthy food, and the constant presence of insects and cockroaches characterized daily life in Ha'Sharon prison.

“They treat you very badly, not as humans. They make committees for animal rights. But humans for them, especially the Palestinians, are less than animals,” said Dahadha.

According to Jaradat, Israeli prisons sorely lack a gender-sensitive approach and issues such as personal hygiene and medical needs are rarely addressed.

Further, sexual harassment and intimidation are widespread and used as a means to coerce confessions out of Palestinian women during the interrogation process, he says.

While Palestinian women may have a unique experience, many of the injustices widespread in Israeli prisons are shared by both men and women—and are forbidden by international law.

Hiba Hamidat is originally from Jalazone refugee camp, seven kilometers north of Ramallah. She spent 32 months in Ha’Sharon prison in Israel for her participation in demonstrations and support of Palestinian prisoners.

Released just over a year ago, Hamidat explains that the hardest part was being separated from her family, especially her mother, who didn’t have an Israeli ID card and therefore could not enter Israel to visit the prison.

“While I was serving my sentence, my mother couldn’t visit me for one year. For one year, only my father visited me. It was very difficult to see that all the other prisoners had their mothers visiting them, while my mother couldn’t visit,” explained the 24-year-old.

According to Israeli human rights lawyer Lea Tsemel, Hamidat should never have been held in an Israeli jail.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power are prohibited."

Hamidat’s case is yet another example of how Israel blatantly disregards international law, says Tsemel, especially when it comes to arrest, interrogation and detention procedures for Palestinians.

“[Palestinians] are not recognized prisoners of war. They are held in different prisons within Israel which again is contradictory to the international Geneva Conventions, [which state] that people from the occupied territory will not be shifted to the occupier's territory,” explained Tsemel.

Jaradat, who does prisoner support with Adameer, says that a prisoner’s plight does not end with his or her release from prison. "Once a Palestinian has been to prison, their life will change. The punishments or violations of their rights and restrictions on their lives continue forever by the Israeli occupation," said Jaradat. "It’s never over."

Dahadha can speak to this reality first-hand.

"My life changed," she said. "I was engaged to someone in Jordan, but after I was released they prohibited me from leaving the country. Every time I try to cross the border they turn me back and give me an invitation for interrogation."

Newly engaged and planning her wedding for the fall, Dahada says her new fiance has been threatened with imprisonment by Israeli authorities for his connection to her.

"Even after a prisoner is out of prison," she said with a soft smile, "the torture and sentence does not stop there."

Originally from Montreal, Jillian Kestler-D'Amours is a human rights activist and multimedia journalist presently based in occupied East Jerusalem.

Jehan Dahadha

Central Prison

Tamils Welcomed in Vancouver

dawn — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 05:24:54 +0000

Hundreds support Tamil refugees on the MV Sun Sea

VANCOUVER—Two hundred people assembled at the Vancouver Art Gallery on the afternoon of August 22 to show solidarity with the 492 Tamil refugees detained and being processed by Canada Immigration. The refugees arrived together on the MV Sun Sea, a ship which docked near Esquimalt, BC.

"People all across the country are saying that we're with the refugees; let the boat stay," said Harsha Walia, an organizer with No One Is Illegal. "[To] every single person who says the boat should go back: we will overcome your dehumanization."

Text by Isaac Oommen; photos by Murray Bush. This photo essay was previously published in two parts by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

TamilSupport01

TamilSupport02

TamilSupport03

TamilSupport04

TamilSupport05

TamilSupport06

Guatemalan Women Speak Out Against Rape

dawn — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 05:05:42 +0000

Soldiers, police, security terrorized residents who live in nickel-rich area

EL ESTOR, GUATEMALA—It was the middle of May, just days into the rainy season, when I made the trip to Lote 8, one of the dozens of Maya-Qeqchi villages scattered about the steep and perennially green Santa Cruz mountain range in eastern Guatemala. Clouds formed and dissipated over the Western Highlands, reaching by dusk the lowlands around Lake Izabal and the Polochic River basin. Then the stagnant heat broke, in storm. In the weeks to come, the rains would increase, scouring the mountains of their red-tinted earth, forcing it to the valley below, and eventually out to sea.

Roughly 100 years ago, the Maya-Qeqchi of Izabal began to occupy the marginal lands. Many still live on these lands—on the narrow sloping tracts beneath the mountain, within view of the sprawling lake and the distant mist-shrouded ridges of the Sierra de las Minas to the south. Others, like those from Lote 8, fled the lowlands below, higher into the mountains. Despite the steep slopes and rugged terrain, they took root, grew with family, endured flood and drought, had plentiful harvests and practiced the ancient ways.

Nathan Einbinder is a graduate student in the field of geography. Much of his work focuses on the impacts of development on Indigenous and marginalized people, particularly in Central America.

Guatemalan Women Speaking out against Rape

Guatemala 1

Guatemala 2

Guatemala 3

Guatemala 4

Guatemala 5

Guatemala 6

Guatemala 7

Guatemala 8

Guatemala 9

Guatemala 10

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation: A Myopic Watchdog?

Moira Peters — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:02:35 +0000

Anti-tax group setting up in Atlantic Canada, critics says it's all rhetoric

HALIFAX—A self-described “taxpayer watchdog” group with offices across Canada is poised to open an office in Halifax this fall, according to recent media reports. But critics say the organization is little more than a right-wing media mouthpiece.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) advocates for “lower taxes, less waste, and more accountable government,” according to Kevin Gaudet, the group’s federal director.

CTF’s website highlights the federal long-gun registry, the amount paid to elected officials, and “eco-taxes” as examples of wasted taxpayer money.

But Larry Haiven, a professor in the faculty of management at Saint Mary’s University, says most of CTF’s stances on issues—and particularly their relentless calls to lower taxes—are “the most simplistic garbage.”

“It assumes that nothing that is purchased with our taxes is of any use for us,” said Haiven.

Despite CTF’s anti-tax, spending-is-out-of-control rhetoric, said Haiven, taxes are lower now than they’ve been in decades, leaving governments struggling to provide essential services.

“Provinces and the [federal government] have been cutting taxes frenetically, frantically, for the past 25 years... Governments across Canada are taking in about $250 billion less than they did 15 years ago.

“You have to weigh that against everything the Taxpayers Federation says,” said Haiven.

Erin Weir, an economist with the United Steelworkers’ Union who has publicly debated and frequently published online commentary about CTF, said the organization “represents the right-wing fringe of Canadian politics” and most often chooses which issues to emphasize based on ideology and not their impact on taxpayers.

CTF “uses issues like gun control and politicians’ salaries—which have almost no effect on overall government expenditures or tax rates—to foment distrust of public institutions,” said Weir.

Gaudet said CTF stands up for taxpayers against “special interests,” which he defines as “anybody who’s taking money from government, to a certain extent.”

“We look at all issues, all political issues, all public policy issues through a lens of government spending,” he said.

However, some of the Harper government’s most expensive recent policy decisions barely figure on CTF’s radar.

Gaudet was reluctant to criticize the federal government’s package of "tough on crime" legislation, even though, by the government’s own admission, there is no data to indicate that the new laws will reduce crime in Canada—while the cost of building new prisons and increasing sentences is estimated at $10 billion.

“Legislation ought to have cost impacts put out with it,” stated Gaudet, stopping short of more specific criticism of the legislation.

In comparison, CTF led an extensive campaign against federal prisoners receiving old-age pensions; the group claims the costs associated with inmates’ pensions total $14 million per year.

Gaudet did not question the government’s decision to purchase new F-35 fighter jets from a US multinational, despite a $16-billion price tag; although he did post to his Facebook and Twitter accounts saying the contract should have gone to tender. Several analysts have criticized the purchase on such grounds as the Canadian military's lack of need for such jets.

“I find that type of question [of whether the fighter jets are needed] usually to be the type of refrain from those interests who generally...don’t like Harper, period,” said Gaudet. Opposition comes “from a bunch of people who like to pretend to think they’re experts on the unique service requirements of the Canadian Air Force, as if they had some unique perspective into the minds of the generals that run the show,” he said.

On most issues, CTF indeed camps out on the far right of the Canadian political spectrum. Along with the Fraser Institute and the National Citizens’ Coalition, CTF was one of the few prominent voices in Canada to support the decision to abolish the mandatory long-form census, even though the replacement voluntary household survey may well cost more.

On the issue of climate change, CTF justifies its opposition to all government initiatives to reduce carbon emissions with a straightforward argument: “We don’t believe there’s such thing as man-made climate change,” said Gaudet, adding that initiatives such as “cap-and-tax” are in no way proved to reduce CO₂ emissions.

When it was noted that 97 per cent of scientists support the theory that greenhouse gases emissions are changing the climate, Gaudet challenged the Media Co-op. “I think you’re probably very selective, and this is part of the problem with the movement,” he said. “You get a bunch of Kool-aid suckers who choose not to actually do much work, and mainly focus on that amount of stuff that gets published that suits their own interests. I disagree with the characterization that there’s consensus [among scientists about climate change].”

It is worth noting that some of CTF’s campaigns could be seen to align with the political left. The group’s website denounces “corporate welfare,” and Gaudet listed the aerospace and automobile industries among the “special interests” it accuses of begging at the public trough, noting the millions of dollars doled out in government subsidies.

The group is “fairly consistent” in this respect said Haiven. “They just don’t think government should be spending money on anything.”

The group's website claims 74,000 supporters—a phenomenon Haiven chalked up to the financial situation many Canadians find themselves in.

“Average earnings of Canadians...have not kept up with inflation,” noted Haiven. “[People are] looking for ways to save money, and one of the easy places to look is taxation. That’s part of what’s driving the anti-tax movement... The average person is earning less money...and so the appeal to somehow save some money is very attractive.”

But, he said, anti-tax advocates are barking up the wrong tree. He pointed to a study he co-authored in 2008 with economist Mathieu Dufour that shows that although Nova Scotia’s economy grew by 62 per cent over 20 years—11 percentage points more than the national average—and workers’ productivity increased, their paycheques still shrunk by five per cent.

“The province is getting richer [in terms of GDP]...but working people are not getting richer—they’re poorer. So where is that money going? It’s obviously going into the hands of a few,” said Haiven. His 2008 study noted that across Canada, the incomes of the top five per cent of Canadian families increased sharply between 1982 and 2004 while those of the bottom 70 per cent declined.

“The Taxpayers Federation will tell you that government is getting richer, but that’s not true,” Haiven added. “Government has shrunk...all across the country—the size of government, compared to GDP, has shrunk.

“Their pronouncements tend to be sensationalist, so the media gravitates to it. Media feeds the public perception that we’re somehow overtaxed and government’s too big,” he said.

Christine Saulnier of the Nova Scotia office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), challenged the notion that CTF’s anti-tax message resonates with very many Canadians.

The Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation at a Glance

Self-description: A citizen’s advocacy group dedicated to lower taxes, less waste, and accountable government.

Origins: Formed in 1990 through the merger of anti-tax groups in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Ideology: Though Federal Director Kevin Gaudet rejects ideological labels, finding them “not useful,” he says the best tag to attach to the group might be “libertarian.” Political scientist Brooke Jeffrey has written that CTF has a “neo-conservative approach to the role of government.”

Political partisanship: “All CTF staff and board directors are prohibited from holding a membership in any political party,” reads the organization’s website. Gaudet mentions that CTF is often accused of being a front for the federal Conservatives; however, he points to a “long list” of CTF’s criticisms of the Harper government. Some CTF staff have had ties to political parties – Gaudet himself worked for the Reform party, and Jason Kenney, current Conservative minister of Citizenship and Immigration, was president and CEO of CTF in the mid 1990’s.

Structure: Although CTF claims 74,000 “members,” critics charge CTF is not a member-run organization in the traditional sense of the word – Larry Haiven compares it to the Canadian Automobile Association, calling it a “franchise.”

Kevin Gaudet says CTF is run “the way Greenpeace is run.” The Media Co-op contacted Greenpeace Canada and found that like CTF, Greenpeace is a member-supported organization that accepts neither corporate nor political donations. Unlike CTF members, however, Greenpeace members can vote on resolutions at an Annual General Meeting, according to spokesperson Brian Blomme. Also unlike CTF, a summary of Greenpeace’s financial statement is available for download on its website.

Gaudet says CTF has a policy of not revealing its employees’ salaries, “like any private company.” (Though he did reveal his own annual salary when asked—$77,500.) As of press time, Greenpeace had not responded to a request for its top employees’ salaries, though a “campaigns coordinator” position on its website lists a salary of $50,297.

She pointed to a national poll commissioned by the CCPA in the fall of 2008, in which the overwhelming majority of respondents agreed that government should take concrete action to reduce poverty, raise minimum wages above the poverty line, and provide affordable housing—even if it meant “higher taxes or cuts in spending in other areas.” On nearly every question, Atlantic Canadians polled higher than the Canadian average.

“Yes [lowering taxes] resonates, but not with as many people as they say it does,” said Saulnier. “We’re not talking about the full implications of what it means to lower taxes. If we did, that would be a fairer debate. Then we’d see if it actually does resonate."

Saulnier is lukewarm about CTF’s pending arrival in Atlantic Canada.

“We’re about opening this debate,” she says. “We want to have a discussion about taxation.

“Having said that, I’m not sure it’s the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation that can have that debate. We can’t have a discussion on taxation without talking about public services,” she said.

Weir noted that unlike think tanks, “the CTF does not produce research or analysis. Instead, most of its employees are essentially full-time media spokespeople.”

Weir remarked that while “the CTF presents itself as a grassroots movement...individual Canadian taxpayers cannot become members of the CTF, vote on its policy positions or elect its leadership.”

Gaudet defended the organization’s structure and grassroots credentials. The CTF functions “the way Greenpeace is run,” said Gaudet. “We don’t take government money. We exist by virtue of cheques from 74,000 people, usually small cheques, in the $50 to $300 range... [from] small businesses, mom-and-pop shops, farmers, for example.”

Saulnier hopes media coverage of CTF’s stance on issues will be fair, and the group’s aims transparent.

“We’re more often than not presented in the media as left-wing,” she said. “We are open about what our mandate is and we’d like the same from the other side.”

“I think we agree with some of [their priorities], like accountable government,” she added. “But we’d like to talk about who’s holding government accountable, and for what.”

Ben Sichel is a member of the Halifax Media Co-op, where this article wasoriginally published originally published.

Tax Monopoly

Canadian Companies Out For Colombian Oil

dawn — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:48:54 +0000

CCFTA among a host of initiatives that create "huge opportunities for easy profits"

VANCOUVER—Canada has been involved in oil and gas in Colombia since the 1920s, when the Canadian-based International Petroleum Corporation (IPC)—then a subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey—owned Tropical Oil and the Andian Pipeline Company. When ownership of these companies was due to revert to the Colombian state in 1951 (concessions at the time were for 30 years), IPC feared it was going to lose both companies. So the foreign company tricked the Colombian government into believing that Andian was a separate company from Tropical, even though they shared a parent company. These shenanigans earned Andian National a new concession, and the company established its new head office in Canada until the 1970s.

A new free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia, and the strong presence of Canadian companies in Colombia’s oil and gas sector, indicates the Colombian government no longer has to be tricked into handing over its natural resources to Canadian corporations. Instead, it will do so willingly, in the name of increasing foreign direct investment. On June 29, the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CCFTA) went through the final stages of legislation in Canada, effectively becoming law. The final legislative legwork is with the Colombian Congress, which has to implement a series of laws in order to finalize the agreement.

In Canada, unions and human rights organizations led opposition to the CCFTA, but they failed to rally popular outrage against the agreement. The passage of this controversial agreement, however, cannot be attributed only to ineffective opposition, especially not when those actively organizing in its favor constitute a powerful swath of Canada’s corporate elite.

The day after the CCFTA became law in Canada, Perrin Beatty, CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, stated, “Our members are pleased with the government’s commitment to move this trade agreement forward.” When Beatty wrote a letter to encourage the government to pass the CCFTA in May 2008, nine Chamber members signed on in support. Three were representatives of oil companies—all of them based in Calgary where Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party has an important base of support: Enbridge, Nexen and Talisman.

While Colombia doesn’t have the oil reserves to compete with Venezuela, it is estimated to have the fifth largest reserves in South America. According to a 2010 report by Oil and Gas Journal, Colombia has 1.36 billion barrels of proven crude reserves. This year, Colombia’s National Hydrocarbons Agency estimates that the country will produce 800,000 barrels of crude per day.

Over the past years, Colombia’s oil and gas sector has grown rapidly. The country is becoming an increasingly attractive destination for foreign investment in the oil and gas sectors for various reasons, including better security conditions for operators, and legislation introduced in 1999 that encourages investment.

In 2003, the United States announced additional funding of $98 million to have US Green Berets and private contractors train the XVIII Brigade, an elite unit of 2,000 Colombian soldiers deployed specifically to protect the Cano Limon-Covenas pipeline. Pipeline attacks and acts of sabotage were down to 32 in 2009, compared to 106 in 2006.

In 1997, the Canadian International Development Agency and the Canadian Energy Research Institute, based in Calgary, teamed up with a Colombian law firm and a number of oil companies to draft a new set of laws governing private investment in the oil and mining sectors in Colombia. New Colombian legislation favoring foreign direct investment in both sectors was approved in 2001.

By 2003, $300 million in foreign direct investment in Colombia went to the oil and gas sector. Compare this to 2008, when 32 per cent ($3.4 billion) of the $10.6 billion in foreign direct investment in Colombia was in the energy sector. Following oil and gas, mining attracts 18 per cent of foreign direct investment; manufacturing, 17 per cent; and the financial sector, 10 per cent.

Recent developments have made the oil and gas sector even more appealing for foreign investors. Ecopetrol is the largest corporation in Colombia; since 2007 it has acquired much of the country’s pipeline infrastructure. The company controls 100 per cent of Colombian refining, 55 per cent of oil production, 60 per cent of gas production and 79 per cent of existing pipelines—equivalent to 8,815 kilometres of pipeline. Though Ecopetrol was founded in 1951 as a state company, it is now a mixed corporation with 89.9 per cent owned by the Colombian state and 10.1 per cent ownership by shareholders. The company is listed on the Colombia Stock Exchange (BVC) and the New York Stock Exchange.

Ecopetrol has promised to invest $60 billion in exploration, infrastructure, transportation, refining, production, marketing and acquisitions between now and 2015. This year alone, the company will spend $6.9 billion. One of the first projects will be the construction of a new, $3.5 billion pipeline from the city of Ariguaney in the department of Meta to the port of Covenas in the department of Sucre.

These developments make Colombia “one of the world's fastest growing and most important energy development stories,” according to Luke Burgess, writing on an energy sector website in May. The billions of dollars that Ecopetrol and the Colombian state plan to invest in oil and gas infrastructure and exploration mean investors have “huge opportunities for easy profits.”

Earlier this year, Colombia’s National Hydrocarbons Agency carried out a massive public relations push to encourage investment in the country’s oil and gas sector that included presentations and trade fairs in New York, Houston, Calgary, Toronto, Singapore, Sydney, Madrid and London, among other cities.

In addition to favorable conditions for investment, the government promised that the military would train a battalion of soldiers to assist companies in obtaining and transporting seismic testing results in parts of the country with potential operational risks. This is the first time the Colombian army will provide troops to companies in the exploration phase; previously it was limited to protecting oil and gas production and transportation in the exploitation phase.

In June, the National Hydrocarbons Agency put 168 oil and gas concession blocks covering over 50 million hectares of land on auction to foreign and national exploration and production companies.

As companies bid for concessions on June 22 at the Cartagena Convention Center in Colombia, Energy and Mining Minister Hernan Martinez made a special announcement:

"I have some good news for our Canadian friends. The Senate has just approved a free trade agreement... so that opens the way for a lot of opportunities and our government is very happy about that,” said Martinez.

In total, 78 concessions were awarded to Ecopetrol along with companies from the United States, Brazil, Norway, and elsewhere. Four Canadian companies—Pacific Rubiales, Alange, Gran Tierra Energy and Petrominerales—won exploration blocks as a result of the auction. The Canada-Colombia FTA is an added incentive for these corporations to maintain their headquarters in Calgary, as it provides investment protection clauses that guarantee the security of their investments in Colombia.

These companies will join other Canadian firms in making haste to expand their interests in Colombia. Talisman Energy just announced it will partner with Ecopetrol to purchase all of British Petroleum’s operations in Colombia for a total of CAD$1.9 billion.

But it is also clear that oil and gas projects in Colombia operate with the direct support of the scandal-ridden Colombian Army, and often in close cooperation with paramilitary, guerrilla and private security forces whose hands are covered in blood. Any attempt to hide these atrocities behind a Canadian flag will be a failure, as these companies and both governments are already well aware of the high social and environmental costs that will accompany increased oil and gas development in Colombia.

This article was originally published by the North American Congress on Latin America. Dawn Paley is a journalist based in Vancouver. Follow her on Twitter @dawn_.

Oil Death Jeans Improved

August in Review, Part I

dawn — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 10:00:38 +0000

Pickton history revealed, Tamil migrants arrived, First Nations marched against tar sands

The Attorney General of Alabama announced the state would sue BP for the oil spill, which experts say has released at least 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. BP was also fined $50 million for safety violations for a 2005 explosion that killed 15 workers and injured 170.

The Indian Coast Guard responded to an oil spill off the coast of Mumbai, caused when two cargo ships collided in rough seas.

A Turkish oil pipeline which transports oil from Iraq to the Mediterranean Sea was targeted by saboteurs, killing two and shutting down the flow of oil.

An Ontario judge ordered the release of Abdullah Khadr after more than four years in prison in Toronto without bail. Khadr is the oldest brother of Omar Khadr, a Canadian youth imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. "This government has been totally unreasonable," said Khadr's lawyer. His release contravened an extradition request from the US Ottawa has one month to appeal the decision.

Meanwhile, Omar Khadr's US Military Commissions trial took place in Guantanamo Bay, where the youth has been held without a trial for the last six years. Though evidence emerged that Khadr was coerced and intimidated during interrogation, the Military Comission Judge admitted the testimony gained under these circumstances.

The publication ban was lifted in the case against Robert Pickton, a Coquitlam BC pig farmer and serial killer. New information revealed that he had been previously charged with attempted murder in 1997 but the court stayed the charges because the woman, a sex-trade worker who suffered multiple stab wounds and lost three litres of blood, was said not to be a credible witness.

A California judge overturned Prop 8, an anti-gay Proposition that prevented gay marriage in the state of California. Supporters called the verdict a temporary victory, as the decision will be appealed. In Mexico, supreme court justices voted 8-2 to uphold a ruling that grants the right of marriage to same sex couples.

A ship carrying an estimated 490 Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka arrived off the waters of Vancouver Island. Mainstream media quoted a discredited "expert" who connected the passengers with the Tamil Tigers, but advocates contested media claims. "We saw a similar unfounded hysteria last October with the 76 Tamil migrants. All were eventually released when Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) was forced to admit they had no evidence of a connection to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In fact, based on a lack of evidence, CBSA consented to the release of the last group of 25 detained refugees in January 2010," said Harsha Walia of No One Is Illegal Vancouver.

Kelly Pflug-Black, who turned herself in to authorities in July after learning she was wanted on a number of charges related to G-20 resistance, was granted bail. Activist Erik Lankin remained in prison, marking six weeks inside since his arrest on June 26. "This continued detention and politically-motivated charge is setting a dangerous precedent in the intensifying criminalization of dissent and political speech since the G-20 protest. This is an attempt to intimidate and harass and is a serious assault on freedom of expression and the right to assemble," said Gary Kinsman, a Professor at Laurentian University.

An internal report by the Montreal Police Department found that racial profiling was being used at an "alarming" rate by the force. Among other things, the report revealed that in northern areas of the city in 2006 and 2007, approximately 40 per cent of young black men had been subjected to identity checks, compared to only five to six per cent of whites.

The Vancouver Sun exposed the conditions faced by migrant workers in a remote work camp near Golden, BC Workers laboured 10-12 hours a day, lived in a squalid camp with insufficient food and without proper bathing facilities, were threatened and subjected to racist remarks by employers. "We were really, really tortured," said one man. The company that had hired them, Khaira Enterprises Ltd, was carrying out a $280,000 government contract to clear the brush.

The United Nations began an inquiry into the flotilla massacre, in which Israel attacked an aid convoy bound for Gaza, killing nine people. Observers declared that the inquiry was bound to fail, given the appointment of outgoing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe as vice-chair of the investigation. Uribe was president of Colombia for eight scandal-ridden years, during which time the army carried out thousands of false positive assassinations and the government carried out systematic attacks on human rights activists and land defenders.

Israel carried out air strikes in Gaza, killing at least two and wounding dozens of people. "For many in Gaza, last night’s attack was a traumatic reminder of the onslaught during Operation Cast Lead when three hundred F-16 bomb attacks took place during the first two minutes of the campaign," read a release from the International Solidarity Movement.

NATO admitted to killing civilians in a series of bombings in Afghanistan. Al Jazeera reported that the violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since the 2001 invasion of the country.

Iraqi government figures showed that July 2010 was the bloodiest month of violence in Iraq in the past two years, in which 396 civilians were killed along with 89 cops and 50 soldiers.

In Mexico, over a thousand journalists marched to demand an end to escalating violence against their peers. "Many here believe the government is not doing enough to protect their colleagues, as more than 60 journalists have been killed in the last four years," said Al Jazeera journalist Franc Contreras.

Protesters set up a blockade near Halifax, demanding that the predominantly black community of North Preston be granted access to a shortcut around a construction site that had previously only been extended to 10 white families. The blockade was later lifted after a meeting with officials, who closed access to the shortcut to everyone.

Workers in Goose Bay, NL, marched on the one-year anniversary of the miners' strike at the Voisey's Bay nickel mine.

Hundreds of Guatemalans launched a case against a supreme court justice for falsification, through which he granted 22 square kilometres of public land to Vancouver-based Goldcorp.

First Nations communities downstream from the tar sands announced a healing walk leaving from Fort McMurray and traveling along the Athabasca River.

Vancouver residents tore down a fence erected around Grandview Park, a community gathering space in East Vancouver. The City of Vancouver is embarking on a program to renovate the park, which some say will displace the diverse communities that frequent the area.

Oil Spill on the Gulf Coast

Let them Stay