Vive Le Canada

Tell The New Industry Minister And Prime Minister To Cancel The Lockheed Martin

Posted on Wednesday, January 28 at 15:23 by sthompson
Lockheed Martin is the largest weapons contractor in the world. The company manufactures ballistic missiles and other weapons of mass destruction and is also a key contractor for U.S. President George W. Bush's "missile defence" program, aka Star Wars.

Vive le Canada.ca has already sent about 2500 of your emails to former Industry Minister Rock asking that our census information NOT be given to this giant U.S. military contractor because of concerns about sovereignty, privacy and confidentiality. Although Rock did not reply, the Chief Statistician of Canada assured us our information would be safe.

Now the Washington Times is reporting that 5 million records from the 1990 U.S. census were used by NASA as part of a study to test terrorist screening, without the knowledge of U.S. citizens and despite assurances from the U.S. census bureau that the data was safe. See "Study used census information for terror profile", by Audrey Hudson, January 19, 2004, and "Inquiry sought into airline's data transfer to NASA", by Audrey Hudson, January 21, 2004.

In light of the new information it's more important than ever that we tell our government that we do NOT want to pay a giant U.S. military contractor to gather information about Canadian citizens.

We also have a new Industry Minister and a new Prime Minister who both need to know that Canadians want the Canadian census to be handled by StatCan or at least a Canadian company.

Finally, it is still vital to tell our government that Canadians do NOT want to support U.S. military companies and programs such as the proposed "missile defence" which threaten both our sovereignty and security with our tax dollars--just as we did not support the war on Iraq.

Please join us in our renewed action to oppose using Lockheed Martin to conduct the 2006 Canadian census. Just click here.

The easy-to-use email form will let you send an email to the new Industry Minister, the Honourable Ms. Lucienne Robillard. It will also automatically send a copy to Prime Minister Paul Martin, the Chief Statistician of Canada, NDP leader Jack Layton, and Vive le Canada.ca.

A few key points about filling out the email form:

  • You must be logged in to use the email form. This is to prevent abuse, since there was some abuse last time we used an email form without this requirement. If you are already a member of Vive, just be sure to log in before using the form. If you are not already a member of Vive le Canada, this means you must become a member by creating a new user account (free). To do that, just click here.
  • Please be sure to add your name to the body of the email after "Sincerely".
  • Including an address or other contact information will get your email taken more seriously.
  • We encourage you to replace our sample letter with your own polite but pointed thoughts and comments.
Just visit Tell the Government to Cancel the Lockheed Martin Census Deal to take part!

Thank you for your help with this important issue. If you have a moment, please take time to email this story to a friend (see right).

Vive le Canada! This country is not for sale.

----
PS: If you would rather send an email without using the form, or send an actual letter to the Industry Minister, here are the relevant addresses:

To the Honourable Lucienne Robillard,
Minister of Industry
Industry Canada
11th Floor, East Tower
C.D. Howe Building
235 Queen Street
Ottawa ON K1A 0H5
Canada
Tel.: (613) 995-9001
Fax: (613) 992-0302
minister.industry@ic.gc.ca

cc: Prime Minister Paul Martin
pm@pm.gc.ca

cc: Ivan Fellegi, Chief Statistician
fellegi@statcan.ca

cc: Jack Layton, NDP leader
jack@fed.ndp.ca

cc: Bill Blaikie, MP
blaikie.b@parl.gc.ca

cc: Susan Thompson, Vive le Canada.ca
susan.thompson@vivelecanada.ca

Note: 2500 of your emails asking that our census ... Chief Statistician of C... Study used census infor... Inquiry sought into air... new Industry Minister new Prime Minister click here Honourable Ms. Lucienne... click here Tell the Government to ...

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Comments

  1. by avatar whelan costen
    Thu Jan 29, 2004 3:34 am
    Great letter, thanks for posting it and hopefully with all the news, on this issue and vive\'s involvement we\'ll get more signatures this time. Perhaps they think we\'ve forgotten and the minister may claim he didn\'t know we objected. I would have liked to print a copy for myself, it\'s very difficult to do, can\'t print it all together, is there a way to do it? It\'s nice to be able to cite the original letter when subsequent letters are required.

  2. by sthompson
    Thu Jan 29, 2004 3:38 am
    Hmm...printing is a question for Jesse the tech director: <a href="mailto:jesse.vanherk@vivelecanada.ca">jesse.vanherk@vivelecanada.ca</a>. <p> And yes, let's try to match or exceed the emails sent last time--so the goal is 2500. The best way is to let people know about it and encourage them to send an email.

  3. by sthompson
    Thu Jan 29, 2004 3:40 am
    PS I believe the new Industry Minister (Lucienne) is female.

  4. by avatar whelan costen
    Thu Jan 29, 2004 4:51 am
    Ouch, so I guess, saying Dear Sir, didn\'t help the cause...well to defend myself, I\'ll just say they should have introduced \'her\' to us properly and then I wouldn\'t have erred. Also, my letter might just piss her off enough to read it, or she might be one of those women who likes to be called \'sir\'...fat chance. Well sorry for the assumption.

  5. by tifani
    Thu Jan 29, 2004 8:13 am
    Thanks very much for this. I\'m not sure if I would have taken the time to compose my own from scratch. I hope it does some good.

  6. by Indefual
    Thu Jan 29, 2004 2:48 pm
    I am greatly distressed to see that you require people to login in order to send that email! Many Canadian will not be willing to sign up. As I recall, the last email on this issue I did not have to sign up for it. I\'m really worried that you won\'t meet your goal of over 2500 emails.

    Please consider setting it up so that people don\'t have to log in. You probably wanted to more users, but you\'ll just be turning people off.

  7. by tifani
    Thu Jan 29, 2004 6:36 pm
    People can always send the letter from their own e-mail accounts; all the e-mail addresses are there, and they can copy and paste the letter if they want to.

  8. by sthompson
    Thu Jan 29, 2004 11:15 pm
    The reason the tech director decided to code it so that you have to be logged in is that last time we had some abuse of the email form, and we\'re trying to prevent that this time. It\'s less an issue of gaining users (after all, people can sign up and then never come back to the site agsin) than of trying to keep people from sending junk mail, joke mail, or negative mail through the form.

    I agree, it may mean that fewer people fill out the form; but then it will also mean that all of those emails will likely be well-written and sincere (BTW, the 2500 count is not including the junk letters).

    And we do potentially have until 2005 to get emails sent, so I think we can still meet our goal; it\'s just better to send more now, when there\'s more of a chance the contract will be cancelled (the closer we get to the census, the less chance that the LM deal will be cancelled).

    Of course we have no problem with people copying and pasting the information into their own email, and I\'ll be sure to provide that info in the main article.

  9. by sthompson
    Thu Jan 29, 2004 11:17 pm
    Thank YOU very much for taking the time to take part! I hope it helps too.

  10. by sthompson
    Fri Jan 30, 2004 12:12 am
    Actually, thinking about it, the census test is scheduled for May of this year (2004)--so it really is crucial to get as many emails as we can now.

    However, I do feel we can still do that while maintaining the better security on the form.

  11. by Anonymous
    Fri Jan 30, 2004 1:25 pm
    Don\'t forget to provide ankle and wrist measurements when the census people come around to ask you questions. That way, when they haul you to the gulag for not participating, the things will fit.

    actually, they are hoping for mass amounts of non-participation. The new age weapon is Financial Technology Terrorism. As punishment for \'rebelling\' they will simply offload government and public debt on to you, the gullible public.

    Your value to the elites is your ability to be burdened with their debts.

    don\'t forget kiddies,

    Privatize profits, socialize debts

    thank you,
    and carry on STATISTS

  12. by Perturbed
    Fri Jan 30, 2004 9:18 pm
    I like the way you think.

    Keep up the insights, and sign up for an account if privacy ever becomes less important.



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