I'd like to invite you to a very special online event on November 1. It's a teach-in called "Pros & Cons: Policies for People and the Planet," organized by the Council of Canadians and Common Causes.
FEATURING: Maude Barlow (National Chairperson, the Council of Canadians) David Suzuki (Scientist and environmentalist) Crystal Lameman (Beaver Lake Cree Nation) Jean Lortie (Secretary-general, Confédération des syndicats nationaux) Andrew Nikiforuk (Author and journalist) Jim Stanford (Economist, UNIFOR) Brigette DePape ("Rogue Page," writer and activist) Paul Moist (National President, Canadian Union of Public Employees) Michael Harris (Writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker) Chief Theresa Spence (Attawapiskat First Nation)
Moderated by Bill Phipps (Author and activist)
From October 31 to November 2, the Conservative Party of Canada will descend on downtown Calgary for the party's national policy convention. On the heels of the deepening Senate spending scandal, the court decision that found widespread fraud during the last election, and the ongoing environmental devastation caused by extractive industries, this convention will set the Conservative agenda heading into the next election.
At the convention, Conservatives will debate policy resolutions that would:
"move to a less progressive tax system"
"support the sale of public assets"
restructure the CBC with the aim of the "elimination of all public funding of the corporation"
"integrate our foreign policy with policies on trade and national defence"
support "right to work legislation" while severely limiting how unions can spend members' dues
gut public sector benefits and pension plans
unilaterally change how land on First Nations' reserves is governed
push for even more so-called public-private partnerships
Join us online to learn about the potential impacts of these policies. Hear from a range of provincial and national speakers about a different vision, one that focuses on progressive policies for people and the planet.
This event is brought to you by the Council of Canadians and Common Causes, an assembly of social movements dedicated to defending democracy, the environment, and human rights.
I hope you’ll join me in watching the livestream of this incredible event!
Garry Neil
Executive Director, the Council of Canadians
Earth Policy Release
Plan B Update
October 30, 2013
Offshore wind power installations are on track to hit a seventh consecutive annual record in 2013. Developers added 1,080 megawatts of generating capacity in the first half of the year, expanding the world total by 20 percent in just six months. Fifteen countries host some 6,500 megawatts of offshore wind capacity. Before the year is out, the world total should exceed 7,100 megawatts. Although still small compared with the roughly 300,000 megawatts of land-based wind power, offshore capacity is growing at close to 40 percent a year.
In 1991, Denmark installed the world’s first offshore wind farm, a 5-megawatt project in the Baltic Sea. The country’s offshore wind sector has since alternated between lulls and bursts of activity. Since 2008, Denmark’s offshore wind capacity has more than tripled, topping 1,200 megawatts by mid-2013. Over 350 megawatts of offshore wind power were plugged into the grid in the first half of the year—all of it to complete the 400-megawatt Anholt project, which is expected to meet 4 percent of Danish electricity needs.
Denmark already gets more than 30 percent of its electricity from wind—onshore and offshore—and aims to increase that share to 50 percent by 2020. At about one third the size of New York State, Denmark has the world’s highest wind power capacity per square mile, so it will rely mostly on offshore expansion to hit the 2020 target.
Denmark was first to put wind turbines in the sea, but today it ranks a distant second to the United Kingdom in total offshore wind generating capacity. More than 500 megawatts of new offshore wind power went online in U.K. waters in the first half of 2013, bringing the country’s grand total to over 3,400 megawatts—enough to power more than 2 million U.K. homes.
The bulk of this new offshore capacity went to completing the 630-megawatt first phase of the London Array, now the world’s largest offshore wind farm. It overtook another U.K. project, the 500-megawatt Greater Gabbard wind farm, which was finished in 2012. In all, the United Kingdom has some 12,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity under construction or in earlier development stages.
Belgium’s offshore wind capacity grew 20 percent to 450 megawatts in the first half of 2013, placing it third in the world rankings. Germany reached 380 megawatts of offshore wind and will have at least 520 megawatts by year’s end. Beyond this, the German offshore industry expects another 1,000 megawatts will connect to the grid in both 2014 and 2015.
Countries in Asia are starting to make offshore wind power more than just a European affair. China, for example, brought its first offshore wind farm online in 2010. Since then, China has quickly climbed to fourth in the world, with 390 megawatts. The official goal is for 5,000 megawatts of wind capacity in Chinese waters by 2015, ballooning to 30,000 megawatts by 2020.
Richard Jefferson was talking fast, too fast for me to take notes. He was trying to explain what’s wrong with our food system, and what to do about it, but there was too much to say, and we’d already stretched the lunch hour past its breaking point. He kept moving forkloads of salad toward his mouth, but the food couldn’t swim up the cascade of words. It always ended up back on his plate.
Mark Coulson, 5th World Conference of Science JournalistsRichard Jefferson.
Jefferson talks this way because he’s passionate, and because he’s a polymath. He was on the team of public scientists that created the first transgenic plants (one day before Monsanto did it). He invented a genetic marker that earned him notoriety in the field. Then he became an intellectual property expert and created a framework for open-source biological invention. Now, he’s trying to radically transform the entire system of innovation to make it more inclusive and local: He wants a system that empowers farmers in Africa to invent their own solutions, rather than looking to multinational corporations for fixes.
This sounds like it falls somewhere on the spectrum between shooting at the moon and tilting at windmills, but he’s been able to persuadesome serious funders — the Gates Foundation, the Lemelson Foundation, and others — to back him.
“The real problem with GMOs is not about science, it’s about business models,” he said. Actually, he said, the problem isn’t limited to GMOs: The real problem is that the people who need new solutions most, like farmers in developing countries, are isolated in a system that discourages ground-level innovation. Instead, we have a small group of companies in rich countries, with a stranglehold on patents, designing all the solutions to fit their own business models. This system works primarily to bring in money for these companies, to maintain their privilege, and to exclude competition.
So are patents the problem?
They’re a big part of it, but, patents aren’t intrinsically bad, Jefferson said. The whole point of the patent system was to get people to share their secrets. The very word patent comes from the Latin patere: to lay open. You tell the world how to make your invention, and in return, the people who use it have to work out a deal with you. If someone uses your invention without your permission, you can sue them — but only for a while, and only in the country where you have the patents.
The problem is that the patent system has grown so complex that only a few experts understand it. It’s impossible for normal people to navigate the patent thickets to discover the treasures there, or see the dangers. And these days everything from a cellphone to a seed requires dozens of separate patents for the component parts. The solution, he said, is mapping it out: what he calls “innovation cartography.”
At this point, Jefferson could have tried to convince me by trotting out arguments in the abstract, but he didn’t do that. Instead, he decided to tell the story of the Dutch clerk who stole the Portuguese maps.
Jan Huyghen van Linschoten.
In the 16th century, the Portuguese had the best maps. Well, the Portuguese and the Spanish (“makes a better story if you focus on the Portuguese,” he said). In any case, the Iberian peninsula controlled all the information needed to send merchant ships to Asia (and, to a large extent, the New World as well). The Iberians had invested heavily in research and development, sending out De Gama, Magellan, Dias, Columbus, all those explorers to map the world. And because they were the only Europeans with reliable maps of the East Indies — these maps were state secrets — the Iberians had a monopoly.
Once this monopoly was in place, three things happened: The Iberians became rich; they pillaged their colonies with increasing ferocity; and their innovation stalled completely. When there’s a monopoly, Jefferson said, there’s no incentive to act well, or to improve. Shipbuilding techniques plateaued, navigation science stagnated, and the evolution of financing stalled.
Linschoten’s map of India.
During that time, our hero, Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, was working as a secretary for the Portuguese archbishop in Goa, India. In that capacity, he traveled all over the world. Somewhere along the way, he got his hands on the Portuguese maps, and he copied them. Then he returned to Holland. It took him a while — he was attacked by pirates and stranded in the Azores for two years — but by the time he got home he had written down all the information he’d gleaned (or stole) from the Portuguese.
Then he did something unusual: Instead of using the information himself, or selling it to a Dutch merchant house, he published it. This was after the invention of the printing press, but before the invention of copyright, so the maps multiplied freely. And this publication triggered a cascade of world-changing events.
One of Linschoten’s maps. North is oriented left.
Linschoten published the maps in 1596. The British East India Company started in 1600; the Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602. The Dutch East India Company also represented an innovation in financing: It was the first joint stock company, and its formation gave rise to trade in options and derivatives. Once the maps were available and the Iberian monopoly was broken, new ideas flowered, and new investment flowed.
Now we have a similar situation, Jefferson said. There is a tremendous opportunity — not in mapping Asia and the Americas, but in mapping the patent system and all of its related knowledge. There’s currently a “clergy” (Jefferson’s term) of patent experts, who help big companies navigate the patent system for big fees. It simply costs too much for small inventors to see what’s already out there, “or what reefs and shoals to avoid,” Jefferson said.
The really crazy thing, Jefferson said, is that anyone can look up patents and grab recipes for creating technologies. This is especially true of the people who need innovation most, because patents don’t apply in most developing countries. Patents can only stop use of an invention in the country in which they’re granted. An enterprising Ugandan company could look up the instructions for Monsanto’s seeds in the patent literature, and build them tomorrow, without breaking the law, Jefferson said. The innovators and entrepreneurs are out there, he said — they just need the maps to show investors that the technology exists and their plans are legal and feasible. So he and his team created Lens.org, which works as a cartography tool for navigating patents and, ambitiously, all human innovation.
The Linschoten story sounded too good to be true. But when I looked it up, it checked out. The monopoly, the pirates, the theft of intellectual property, it all actually happened. (Here are some selections translated into English — there’s much more to his story.)Historians even agree that Linschoten’s maps were instrumental in breaking the Iberian hegemony.
Linschoten’s first book.
I don’t know if Jefferson is really a latter-day Linschoten, but I do think this analogy is useful for thinking about GMOs. We live in a time where agricultural innovation is done primarily by a small handful of companies that invested heavily in research and development early on. And innovation is stagnant: We see lots of variations on the Bt toxin, all kinds of recombination of a few other transgenic traits, and not much else. The investment dollar follows the proven moneymakers. There’s little incentive for truly creative thinking about the problem of agriculture.
Of course, the comparison extends beyond GMOs: Plenty of agricultural technologies are patented. GMOs are just the most obvious target; they are often used to represent the whole mess. As Jack Kloppenburg Jr. shows in First the Seed, for most of history, seeds defied the rules of capitalism as Marx defined them. Capitalism depends on separating the consumer from the means of production. But if you are a capitalist in the business of selling seeds you have a problem: A seed contains its own means of production. You plant a seed and, instead of using itself up, it produces … a lot more seeds.
So for most of history, farmers shared seeds, and innovators got prestige, but not much money. That changed with the introduction of hybrid seeds: Hybrids don’t reproduce their superior traits in subsequent generations. For the first time there was a powerful, inarguable, reason for farmers to stop saving seeds. GM technology completed this transformation of seeds into a commodity. Few modern farmers in the U.S. control their means of production anymore; they rely on seed companies and plant breeders to take care of that for them.
There’s nothing wrong with this division of labor, except that it means that fewer people are tinkering. We’ve centralized the responsibility for agricultural innovation among a few engineers, even fewer investors, and just a handful of corporations.
The impenetrability of the patent system gives these firms a virtual monopoly. As Kloppenburg puts it, “In what is frequently likened to a nineteenth-century style ‘land grab,’ vast tracts of the genescape … are being appropriated via patents.” There are few routes of passage left, and any innovator who wants to traverse this landscape has to contend with overlapping property rights and the constant threat of attack by hungry lawyers. The big companies have the same problems, of course, but they have the money to hire the intellectual-property clergy to make deals. Now the big players have cross-licensing agreements. Smaller inventors can’t even afford to sit down at the bargaining table.
The result is an Iberian peninsula of farming technology. It has tremendous power, but no incentive to try crazy new things. It stifles innovation and is unresponsive to the needs of its consumers.
Jefferson wants to disrupt this system the capitalist’s way, with newer, wilder ideas. Kloppenburg argues for — and has helped start — an open-source system for plant scientists. It will take someone smarter than me to figure out the best answer to this problem. My point, in recounting this story, is simply to note that this is a way that today’s handful of market-dominating GM seeds are linked to a real problem. They’ve led to a consolidation of power, and an increasingly confused patchwork of patents. They’re an integral part of a sclerotic and narrowly focused system.
As Jefferson puts it, “The real problem is the inertial forces of big business driving out strategies and models that would create a vigorous, decentralized and democratized innovation capability.”
If there’s something that can be done about that, it’s worth giving up lunch and talking till we’re blue in the face to make it happen.
I have the impression that the Prime Minister thinks Canada is his company and we all work for him. He's therefore free to make arbitrary decisions.
Thank you for your email of October 2, 2013, regarding the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT).
As you are aware, on April 2, 2013, the United Nations General Assembly voted on a resolution (154 to 3, with 23 abstentions) to allow the ATT to be opened for signatures. Canada worked closely with its allies and partners during the development of the treaty to help move the international community closer to Canada’s world leading standards. This was in order to develop a treaty that would keep arms out of the hands of criminals, terrorists, and those who abuse fundamental human rights.
At the same time, it is important that such a treaty should not affect lawful and responsible firearms owners nor discourage the transfer of firearms for recreational uses, including sport shooting, collecting and hunting. That is why Canada took a leadership role at the United Nations to try to ensure that the ATT acknowledges legitimate trade and lawful ownership, and use of certain conventional arms for recreational, cultural, historical and sporting activities.
The Government of Canada will now take the time to review thoroughly the final ATT text and undertake domestic consultations, including with civil society, industry and firearms users, before making any decisions on next steps. We will also be consulting with provinces and territories on this matter.
"Mr. Duffy now says he is a victim because I told him he should repay
his expenses. You're darn right I told him to repay his expenses,"
Harper said.
Such rabid self-righteousness, anyone so full of hubris, is always suspect. I want to know what he's done, what he could be hiding behind his intense rhetoric.
on the street dressed in pressed, quality slacks, equal shirt neatly tucked in, sharp loafers and I was so surprised at this unusual phenom I followed him for a short time, even watched to see where he came from---I was so amazed.
Every time a prime minister proudly pulls Canadians into a trade treaty, thousands, perhaps millions, of people on both sides suffer horribly. But, the government of the day never accounts for that or even feels responsible, the case for the few who become obscenely rich on the backs of the many carrying all the significance whenever the it is cross examined.
We need to have this government act responsible before CETA goes any further and journalists must ask the right questions not settling for talking points. In fact, in this case, with this government, I personally don't want to hear anything from them but an arm's length third party who has thoroughly examined all the documents, nothing hidden, and reports independently. That would be the right thing to do for us--Canadians. Is there a free agent in the media that can and will do that?
Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks of surveillance secrets
have already prompted concerted efforts to reform spy laws in the United
States. But now a burgeoning international attempt to rein in the mass
surveillance is taking shape.
Led by the German government, a loose coalition of privacy chiefs
from countries across the world is pushing to update an influential
international human rights treaty that enshrines the right to privacy.
German officials first wrote to their counterparts in other European
Union countries with the proposal after Snowden’s revelations about the sweepingscope
of spy programs operated by the NSA. They were seeking support for an
attempt to protect citizens’ right to privacy in the Internet Age—and
the effort is now beginning to gather momentum.
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The intention is to draw up an additional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
a 1966 multilateral treaty that is part of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and is endorsed by more than 160 countries, including the
United States. Article 17 of the ICCPR already states that citizens
should not be “subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with
[their] privacy, family, home or correspondence” and contains a vague
so-called “general comment” that says the collection of information from
computers must be “regulated by law.” But the German government wants
to broaden and update Article 17, adding an additional protocol for the
“digital sphere” that specifically covers the conduct of spy agencies.
It may as well be named the “Snowden Protocol,” as it is being put
forward as a direct result of the backlash sparked by the NSA
whistle-blower’s disclosures.
Data protection chiefs in Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, and
Lichtenstein were quick to back the plan, which the German government says
was initially proposed in a letter it sent to other EU member states in
July. On Tuesday, however, the proposal received a major boost at the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners
in Warsaw, Poland. The annual conference was attended by a diverse
selection of privacy and data protection officials from across the
world, with representatives attending from countries including Japan,
New Zealand, France, Slovenia, Uruguay, Belgium, Ireland, Finland,
Spain, Australia, Germany, Burkina Faso, Canada, the United States, and
the United Kingdom.
During a closed session at the conference open only to the privacy chiefs, a resolution was put forward
for a vote on the proposal to update Article 17. They voted
overwhelmingly in favor of the idea, recognizing a need to “create
globally applicable standards for data protection and the protection of
privacy in accordance with the rule of law.” Notably, only one country
did not approve of the resolution: the United States. A representative
from the Federal Trade Commission abstained. I sent an email to the FTC
asking why it refused to endorse the proposal, but had not received a
response at the time of publication.
At this point, the proposed Article 17 protocol is still a long way
off. It will eventually need to be put forward at the United Nations and
voted on by member states, and that could take time. But the growing
appetite to amend the international treaty in light of the Snowden
revelations is highly symbolic if nothing else, reflecting widespread
concerns about the power of mass surveillance technology in the digital
age to trample over basic universal privacy rights. Dutch data
protection chief Jacob Kohnstamm, who also chairs the European
Parliament’s working group on data protection issues, told me in a phone
interview Wednesday that he believes there is a need for the U.N. to
tackle the transparency and proportionality concerns raised by the
surveillance programs. “One of the problems that we are facing is that
there is no supra-national regulation,” Kohnstamm said.
Of course, even if an update to Article 17 of the ICCPR is eventually
accepted by countries at the United Nations, there is no guarantee that
it will have a substantive impact. The ICCPR is enforced by the U.N.’s
Human Rights Committee, but its recommendations are not legally binding,
making the committee mostly just a moral authority. As the various
dragnet spying programs exposed by Snowden have shown, the United
States, the United Kingdom, and the three other partners in the
so-called “Five Eyes” network—New Zealand, Australia, and Canada—have
for years ignored what international treaties and human rights law says
about the right to privacy. However, the coalition led by Germany is at
least trying to recognize that it is a problem to have intelligence
agencies aggressively eavesdropping on millions of communications
daily—and that is a significant development in itself.
In the meantime, more serious options are still on the table that
could have a tangible impact on the spying in the shorter term. Several
politicians in the European Parliament are pushing to suspend or radically reform data-sharing agreements with the United States, and angry leaders
in countries like Brazil and Mexico, which were reportedly targeted for
surveillance, may force the Obama administration to make assurances
that it will cease or at least limit its politically-charged
eavesdropping in these countries. On Obama’s home turf, too, the debate
about snooping is still raging, with freshly proposed reforms seeking to rein in the scope of NSA surveillance.
Snowden said
that his biggest fear about leaking the secret files was that “nothing
will change.” But it seems clear at this point that he can rest easy,
because change is already in motion.
Recently I made a decision to make the great leap from a land line to a mobile phone and I was reminded of the scumminess of business. If it is for the advancement--that is an increase in net
income--anything goes. Business never needs to moralize, just economize.
I had a mobile phone because the telephone line in my building died and the owner wouldn't repair it so for a short time I bought and used the phone from Bell for about $35. but went back to a land line as soon as I could (long story). That was about two years ago so I figured on using it again. But--first I heard about locked phones when I went to Telus (because they had the cheapest rate I could find). So I went to Bell who tell me they will no longer service this particular phone. They will sell me another for $100 plus a minimum monthly charge of $35. Back to Telus who sold me the same phone Bell refused to service for $60. They find ways to add another entry in the balance sheet and principle is not part of the decision in the boardroom. Another way to make money, purely for the sake of money, to gouge the public and force them to buy and buy and buy, and it's still not enough.
But that's what business has become since WWII when Canada started pretty well from scratch to develop industry. People were quite decent then. No one knew anything, we all had to be trained and by someone else who was learning. But most people weren't overtly avaricious, they would have been embarrassed to show greed. The few who did were thought to be from the underworld and best kept at a distance.
But in the early 70s Milton Friedman made an entrance in global economics with neoliberalism and gave businessmen the right to be unabashedly greedy. From the outset it was clear it was no place for women. We were used for jobs men wouldn't dream of doing and it was what kept companies together. Girlfriends, mothers, sisters, aunts were the machines used to start new businesses, the tedious, monotonous administration work that no one wants to do, and they never got paid although it was promised when the company was "up and running." It was assumed by entrepreneurs that their female contacts would become their free office managers. I was there. We weren't asked, we were told to answer the phone with the company name, keep the books, and be there when called. We didn't think we could refuse and we never did. We assumed, as men did, that we were on the planet to serve men and at their pleasure.
So things got dumped on us and as we worked for established business we were paid a subsistence income, just enough to get by. That's still true. And if you were to try to talk to a business owner about this, he would tell you you should be grateful that he has given women work. Where would we all be without the charity, the generosity, the patronization of business owners.
Business now is pretty cocky. Now they openly declare that whatever
the problem with the client, we would take it, because no one would
dare cause of the loss of a customer. Regardless of principles, or lack
of them, or what everyone knows about him or the customer, we serve
them, entirely for the sake of the owner's profit, none of which we will ever realize.
We subsidized business then, and still do, and have never been compensated.
The predators should absolutely be exposed. That's the main part of the problem. All-bullies-are-cowards. There are no exceptions! If they had any clue they would be exposed they wouldn't do it, but forever they have walked away while the victim is exposed, which is precisely the plan. We need to hear the bullies' names, see their faces, where they live and work----and the victims must be protected!
The police and the media have the responsibility to do this and they are not impressing me by not doing this. It puts them in the company of the bully.
3.1 Public Procurement There was a strong point of disagreement between one of the experts – Mr Chaitoo – and the European Services Forum2 regarding the prospects for growth in public procurement trade under the CETA. Whilst the European Services Forum said that they expected strong growth in the number of opportunities for their members in Canada, Mr Chaitoo was more pessimistic about the growth opportunities in this field due to the control of services by professional bodies; it was Chaitoo’s view that the CETA would not impact on the public procurement of services, unless specific provision was made in the agreement to overcome these issues. By contrast, Ambassador Plunkett and Mr Dupuis argued that the provisions currently being negotiated over public procurement (and big procurement projects) were wide, unique, and offered a tangible example of the gains that should be made under the CETA. One of the MEPs who spoke was supportive of the efforts to open up public procurement, but wanted to ensure that all Canadian provinces would be subject to these provisions. 3.2 Pharmaceutical industries Representatives from the pharmaceutical industries were present at the workshop. Whilst being covered by the common umbrella of ‘big pharma’ they demonstrated the diversity within their industry, which has to be captured either in the negotiation or in the implementation of the CETA. There were speakers from the Canadian generics industry (those manufacturers who cheaply mass-produce medicines which are out of patent protection), and from the EU’s research intensive pharmaceutical industries who rely on restrictive patent periods to not only recoup the cost of their research and development but also to create sufficient surplus for profit and further research work. The representative from the Canadian generics industry was particularly concerned by two (linked) issues: 1) that the European regulatory system affords up to 15 years of patent protection (which is out of kilter with the Canadian average patent protection period of 12.4years, and the US average of 11years. The concern here was that if the negotiations settled on an adoption of the EU average the generics industry would be denied two and a half years of revenue from any particular manufactured medicine. Countering this claim, a Commission represenative stated that the coverage of the patent did not equate to time on the market – there were many regulatory hurdles that prevented pharmaceutical companies bringing drugs to market quickly. 2) that the EU does not have a system of ‘patent linkage’, which means that a manufacturer can claim 24 months of patent protection without having to provide any evidence of originality, which again the representative from the Canadian generics industry feared would damage the Canadian pharmaceutical industry if adopted within the CETA. It is important to note that the opinion polling data compiled by IPSOS Reid in September 2012, showed that the support from CETA amongst the Canadian public dramatically dropped fifty points to 31%, with now 35% saying that they were strongly opposed, when the respondents were given the proposition that Canadian drug-pricing could potentially increase because of the CETA. Whilst these figures are stark, they merely demonstrate the sensitivity of the negotiations to certain sector-specific interests within the contracting parties. The representative of the European research intensive manufacturers said that his industry was 2 See, the European Services Forum website: http://www.esf.be/ (accessed 22 October 2012). 10 3.3 EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement sensitive to the need to reduce healthcare costs, particularly in this age of austerity, but that better health outcomes were served by advanced research into drugs technology. Anti-globalisation NGOs, Business and Trade Union opinion It should be noted that there was representation from non-governmental organisations at the workshop. Those who spoke from civil society activist groups broadly held positions that were both opposed to the CETA and concerned – more generally – with free trade. This opposition to free market globalisation has manifested itself in this instance to concerns about the proposed EU-Canadian CETA, and in particular has clustered around three areas of concern: 1) the accusation that the negotiations are opaque, 2) the accusation that the negotiating parties are seeking to reactivate the rejected ACTA provisions through the CETA, and 3) that the CETA will have a particularly detrimental impact on the environment in Canada. The INTA Chairman, Professor Moreira, the Commission negotiator Philippe Dupuis, and the Canadian Ambassador Plunkett all replied to the accusations around transparency by pointing to the opportunities that had been afforded to all interested stake-holder parties to contribute to the policy process (including the workshop to which this report refers). Moreover, all international negotiations require a degree of trust between contracting parties which mitigates against an on-going public discourse about the state of the negotiation. Commission negotiator Dupuis rejected outright the accusation that the CETA was an attempt to bring ACTA back onto the legislative table, and his view was supported by Members such as Professor Moreira. The civil sanctions attached to the CETA concerning intellectual property were a matter for member governments, and whilst the Commission had recommended to member governments that these be removed they cannot compel them to do so. The true weight of opposition presented by the anti-globalisation NGOs is difficult to judge. Whilst the ability of NGOs to project the impression of a large internet presence is not in doubt, particularly after the campaigning on ACTA, the degree to which these groups present a useful contribution to rational policy making or to representing a constituency of public opinion is open to challenge. The focus of scholarly and media attention around the public perceptions of CETA has unfortunately focussed on these NGOs, and has shied away from scrutinising the views of the business and labour community. The business community on both sides of the Atlantic has warmly welcomed the progress being made on CETA, with strong evidence of support being provided by the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters body, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce to name but a few. Similarly this research found that every major Canadian newspaper had published editorial comment supporting the liberalisation of trade with the EU. A Joint study from the European Federation of Public Service Unions, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the National Union of Public and General Employees and the Public Service Alliance of Canada, published in 2010, focused on standard trade union concerns such as their desire to protect jobs on both sides of the Atlantic (from an analytical concern that free trade equates to a reduction in workforce numbers) and equally that they judge that free-market measures equate to a reduction in workforce protections and terms and conditions. This particular issue was not touched upon during the workshop, but in response it might be noted that the operation of the European single market has resulted in many additional protections for the European labour force (such as the working time directive, for example). 11 Policy Department DG External Policies 4. SUMMARY The European Parliament and the Canadian Parliament have important roles to play within the CETA process in providing technical scrutiny and a forum for stakeholder interests to be openly played out, prior to the CETA becoming a fully-fledged international treaty. This workshop was one of the ways in which the European Parliament, in particular, discharges this function. In taking a lead role in scrutinising and providing technical support to the negotiations both Parliaments are taking strong steps to creating a new pattern of mature trade agreements across developed trading states. It is clear that there would also be strong reasons for the EU to open talks with the United States to enter into a CETA with them as well. This would overcome some of the regulatory convergence and standardization issues that were raised during this workshop. The Canadian delegation stated during the workshop that they believed that they were a good entry point for the EU into a negotiated process with US. Either way, additional CETA are clearly desirable for the EU as it seeks to overcome its economic stresses at this time. The involvement of the European and Canadian Parliament in providing scrutiny to these negotiations is the kind of advanced engagement that also makes it more likely that such a partnership would achieve its final goal, which is the creation of jobs and growth so that the voters can experience and improvement in their quality of life from EU ventures. The workshop heard an update from representatives of the negotiating parties of the Commission and Canadian government and all the participants offered a frank appraisal of where the current successes lie, as well as the current frictions and obstacles in the negotiations. The negotiators have set themselves an ambitious timetable for agreement, and there is every indication that they will meet these goals despite the challenges in converging divergent regulatory regimes. The importance of reaching such an agreement is clear though: He argued that the urgency of the situation is self-evident; the task is clear; now it is the responsibility of political leaders to show that progress is possible. 12
How far are we away from losing our rights and freedoms?
We have moved further and further away from a liberal democracy in the last 20 years until now everyone working for the government fears for the loss of their job if they do not do and speak exactly as dictated by the PMO. No one--the Cabinet, MPs, the Executive, Justice, public servants--is free to speak about anything contrary to Harper's personal beliefs in the same way as the Chinese president Xi Jinping and the Russian president Putin control their government. Harper has even had journalists fired. Anything connected with the federal government is high risk so a relative of someone in government will not do anything to jeopardize a job.
Everything is done without consultation, Harper makes arbitrary decisions and as the head of the national government leaves everything domestic to the provinces without adequate funding. But he takes no interest in what the provinces are doing or the constituents in them, knowing that the multinationals and big business will pay for the votes he needs to keep the party in power. And as long as he refuses to reform the electoral system (and the tax system) he thinks he is guaranteed his place in the sun. And he may be.
He has become so lofty that he moved away from MPs in the Senate Red Room during the Throne Speech to a chair beside the GG, as in next to the Queen and entirely separate from Canadians. He's all but crowned.
Monday, October 14, 2013
How
big of Harper who refuses to ratify the landmines treaty, a Canadian
initiative, so he spends our money to remove a few cluster bombs while
anyone in the country who wants to is warmly welcome to keep
manufacturing and selling all manner of landmines. Things come out of
both sides of his mout
Canada is planning to answer a plea by the tiny South Asian
country of Laos and restart funding to help it clear the deadly remnants
of the millions of cluster bombs that were dropped on the
nation during the Vietnam War and still litter the country, The Canadian
Press has learned.
Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird is to announce a $1-million
contribution, to be managed through a United Nations agency, during a
trip to Laos on Tuesday.
Canada cut its funding to the international effort to help clear
cluster munitions from Laos in 2012 after contributing more than $2
million between 1996 and 2011.
The announcement comes after The Canadian Press travelled to Laos
this past spring to document the country's chronic cluster bomb problem,
a modern-day legacy of the Vietnam War.
Louis CK sums it up best:
"There is no greater threat to women than men. We are the number one
threat to women. Globally and historically, we’re the number one cause
of injury and mayhem to women." And I worry that he’s right.
Now that I am a father, this question constantly sits before me: How
do I raise a son of compassion and dignity? A man who respects women?
How many times--I've tried to make men understand that it begins at
home and drops into every generation thereafter unless some man in some
generation sees what his family has promulgated for generations and
stops it. There is no safe place in the world from this element of the
male population for women and girls, and even boys. This screw up in men
is so wide spread that it permeates every culture on the planet and it
has grown over centuries because "other" men, esp those in power, have
turned their backs on the victims--women and girls--out of cowardice,
ignorance, laziness, or they are doing it themselves, until it is an
epidemic. I'll never understand why. They will start a war on a whim
that someone is stepping their territory sending all the young men to be
killed and maimed but won't protect the most vulnerable. And, in fact,
that creates another level of violence in men that is perpetrated
through generations.
What a mess! What a hellhole they have created for women to endure!
You must be aware that that we have serious problems politically in this country. People are not voting because there is no point; it's not efficacious. The worst of it is young people are not voting and it has proven to be in your favour. How can it be a good thing when only a third of the country is participating in the government, a great many of whom, 1.3 million, can't get a job? Although the only source of revenue, Canadians in general feel as if they have been dissed in the modern vernacular, as if we don't exist.
If you are not providing services for the very people for whom you govern, if a government of a country is concentrated on trade, deregulation and privatization, it is not providing for the greater good. It is entirely for the support of big business. All its tenets are geared to cater to commerce which will in turn keep the party in power. All of that has nothing to do with us.
Now, social services, the infrastructure, housing are all crumbling under financial straits because the federal government has (for 20 years) increasingly reneged on its responsibility to the provinces to provide a fair share of our taxes for them. Hospitals and schools can't cope with the weight of demand all over the country, the rapidly escalated cost of tuition is prohibiting promising young people from entering university, bridges are rotting, housing is a sad mess, and too many people, especially young people, are living on the street. All in a country like Canada.
I might add that we also need reform, and we need it now, because our situation is clearly rapidly deteriorating. We need tax reform: removed from government and made fair to everyone so that no manipulation can take place; and we need election reform so that votes are fairly counted. And then there's the Senate. Those things would help immensely to bring voters back to the polls.
All of this is factual, we know the country is being run down in favour of business and probably the military too, that when you leave power someone will have to repair the damage and start again. As well, our position in the world will have to be restored; we will need a genuine statesman at the helm for that. All the political rhetoric in the world will not change any of this.
It is so unfair to play power games with Canadians, to take our needs and crush them in favour of an obscenely profitable company, the subsidy for which would take care of most of the above short-changed services.
The history of your leadership leaves little hope for change and it's very depressing.
On April 2, 2013 Canada, together with 154 other states, voted in favour of a global Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) at the UN General Assembly. The ATT will prohibit states from transferring conventional weapons to countries when they know those weapons would be used to commit or facilitate genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. The treaty also requires governments to assess the risk of transferring arms, ammunition or components to another country where they could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. Where that overriding risk is real and cannot be mitigated, the transfer will not happen.
But where is Canada? Once a champion of arms control, the Canadian government stayed in the background throughout the treaty negotiation process and remains non-committal about signing the ATT. Among the excuses given is a need to consult Canadians to ensure that implementation of the treaty does not interfere with lawful, domestic gun ownership – an issue which they know full well to be outside the bounds of the ATT, which focuses on international trade. Canada also contends that current export controls are already strong enough. But there is a bigger picture that Canada needs to consider.
Signing a treaty not only indicates a willingness to develop capacity and overcome obstacles around implementation, it also sends a signal to the international community about the value of the treaty itself. The ATT will set a new standard for the arms trade and help prevent the human rights crises we have witnessed in conflicts including Syria and Darfur.
We need fair taxation and to get that we need to move it away from the government to an arm's length commission which sets tax according to assets, preferably at 10% across the board. That would make it impossible for corporations to lobby and donate to parties for reduced taxes.
As well, sources need to be reviewed: new ones added like the Robin Hood tax and some situations ought to have taxes reduced. And the convoluted system we have now is ridiculous and obfuscated; it needs to be simple and straightforward, not giving you something here but taking it back over there.
The middle class, or what's left of it, is paying for the gap in revenue created by those who give the most to the ruling party with which they acquire more votes. If this whole institution was removed from the government and fair and equitable assessments were enforced by law, it would change the way campaigns are run and we are taxed. Both would be far more equitable.
Of course, it would take some real political integrity to table the bill and not something this ruling party would be anxious to do. But, we can lobby, too.
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