OPEN LETTER TO ALL MPs FROM A WWII VETERAN

Election promises are now worthless. The 1992 Liberal platform vows to end the GST and to re-negotiate NAFTA were both abandoned without apology or explanation. The country is now faced with a Christmas election campaign which no-one desires, because the Prime Minister has refused to meet his election commitment to make the preservation of public health care his first priority and has rejected the proposal to pass legislation forbidding further privatization in the system. How can the public be expected to believe any promises, which will be made in the coming campaign? However, most disturbing of all, is the matter of the Report on North American Integration prepared by Mr. Manley, who together with Mr. d’Aquino, his fellow Canadian representative on the Trilateral Committeee responsible for the report, are both prominent members of the Canadian corporate sector. The Report proposes the elimination of North American borders, the introduction of a common North American passport, the adoption of a common currency and the establishment of a common North American military command structure by the year 2010. It virtually recommends, in effect, the termination of Canadian sovereignty in that time frame. The Report has been in Government hands for the past six months and although its existence was mentioned briefly in the press, there has been no analysis of its content and no Parliamentary debate. However, certain measures, approved behind closed doors, regarding FDA approval for the Canadian sale of pharmaceutical products, the use of a U.S. corporation to collect sensitive information from Canadian citizens in next year’s census, and hints from Canada’s U.S. Ambassador that military integration is already under way, seem to indicate that implementation of the Report is on the Government’s agenda. Yet the vast majority of Canadians are blissfully unaware that their national identity is threatened. We are about to start an election campaign, in which this proposed integration should be the foremost topic of debate but all parties in Parliament remain silent on the matter. All M.P.s as our democratically elected representatives, responsible for the protection of Canadian sovereignty, have a duty to make their positions on integration crystal clear to the electorate before the election. Canadians can then choose freely whether or not they wish to relinquish their nationality. Mr. Manley has made the comment that the differences between Canadians and Americans are minor only, a statement which alone should be sufficient evidence of his incompetence to justify the immediate disposal of the Report in the shredder. The following are only a few of the differences which appear to escape Mr. Manley, none of which are by any stretch of the imagination, minor: - Canadians have no sense of manifest destiny, unless it be for the whole of humanity [assuming it can escape a nuclear Armageddon]. We do not possess weapons of mass destruction and wish to see them eliminated from all national arsenals. We do not approve of weapons on space vehicles. We do not believe in the concept of Fortress America or any other continental fortress. We do not manufacture, sell or use personnel land mines and we actively campaign for their prohibition. We believe that international disputes should be resolved by diplomatic means. We believe that no nation, except in response to actual military attack, should declare war on another unless authorized by the U.N. Our politicians do not publicly advocate the assassination of democratically elected foreign heads of state with whom they might disagree, and they reject completely the concept of the torture of political prisoners. We live in a non-violent multi-cultural society and this is reflected in our films and television. Our citizens have no constitutional right to carry arms and we would not wish it so. We have abandoned capital punishment, in common with most other democracies. We have signed the Kyoto Accord. All our electoral processes are manually tabulated and scrutinized. Etc. We have a close, friendly relationship with the U.S. as should be the case with all neighbours, and wish it to continue, but like all such relationships, it works only at arms length with neither party having control of the opinions or actions of the other. In the matter of defence, our sovereignty is guaranteed by NATO, of which the U.S. is but one member, the Commonwealth and finally by the U.N. The integration of our forces with the U.S. could seriously compromise our ability to take independent action with any of these organizations and thus could prejudice our ability to follow a foreign policy different to that of the U.S. Any comparison with the European Union is pointless, because that is a contract between equals, in which each maintains policy independence. We have a public health care system, already under internal attack, which could be overwhelmed by possible access to the system which could be made available to the 40 million uninsured in the U.S. and the tens of millions in Mexico, should open borders and common passports become a fact. A common currency would eliminate our independent economic options and expose us to the dangers posed by the $ hundreds of billions of annual deficit currently generated in the U.S. Our national identity, which guarantees our citizens a warm welcome anywhere in the world, would be lost forever with a common North American passport. >From every point of view, the adoption of Mr. Manley’s report would be a terminal national disaster. Why the delay in its public rejection? To sum up, how can our democracy be ensured and refurbished? By the public evaluation and its inevitable of the Manley report. By the initiation of free votes, without attendant non-confidence motions in the House. By the formation of public policy, in debate, on the floor of the House. By the equalized public funding of election campaigns. By the introduction of tighter lobbying legislation. By the adoption of proportional representation. By the overhaul of our school system to produce enlightened, educated graduates. We may then be close to the democracy for which my generation fought. Bill Fisher. [WWII veteran]. [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on December 3, 2005]

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