Take Action Against The Deep Integration Agreement Announced Today

If we love our country, honour its past and have faith in its future we must reject that which can diminish our present and betray our past. Canada's fate may be linked inextricably to America's but that does not mean that deeper economic integration is necessary or that harmonization should take place without important and appropriate debate and transparency.

If I know the feelings, trends, aspirations, and sentiments of the Canadian people, they will not want to see the weakening of the national government or the erosion of its powers over defence, trade, immigration, communications, or anything else, to be diluted.

Those government ministers and representatives right down to the smallest bureaucrat who persist in ignoring Canadians' desires regarding our sovereignty will be making a terrible mistake and will raise the wrath of millions of Canadians.

Canada is a particular kind of society with its own specific roots in the past, with a defined "character and personality". We have developed into a country where all citizens cherish their democratic rights, their equality rights, their legal rights, their mobility rights and their language rights. And I am sure all Canadians also enjoy and appreciate their fundamental freedoms of religion, thought, expression, peaceful assembly, and association.

I would like to remind you that these freedoms and rights that we enjoy so much are very delicate. We must not take them for granted.

In the spirit of the words of "O Canada", standing on guard for Canada means many things and deeper integration with the United States is certainlty not one of them.

To quote some wise words by the Rt. Hon. John G. Diefenbaker “The Canadian people need to have the facts so that with knowledge and wisdom the decisions regarding Canada's future will be made for the benefit not of the few, but for all Canadians.” He said that 37 years ago and it still applies today.

And to quote Sir Charles Tupper one of our Fathers of Confederation and 6th rime Minister of Canada from
May 1, 1896 - July 8, 1896 (that's right just a couple of months) "The human mind naturally adapts itself to the position it occupies. The most gigantic intellect may be dwarfed by being cabin'd, cribbed and confined. It requires a great country and great circumstances to develop great men." So I close by asking two questions. Who's mind has been cabin'd, cribbed and confined and made to think this was a good idea? And who did the cabining, cribbing and confining?



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Canadabob

I could never be as articulate as this writer, but I would like to echo his sentiments entirely. We desperately need a national debate in this country on a whole host of issues, of which deeper continental integration is certainly one of the most urgent.

Our media has failed us entirely in this important respect. All we ever hear from them is how our governments must cringe in compliance with the latest corporate demands lest our our economy dissolve instantly into ashes or; if we do not buy unequivocally into globalism and neo-liberalism, even to our considerable personal detriment, Canada will become a lost backwater and disappear from world maps entirely. Of course that's nattering nonsense, just another ridiculous self-serving lie, but when I look out at the world this fine June morning and see what our awe-inspiring capitalist masters have wrought, it doesn't seem like a such a bad idea!

I wholeheartedly agree. There must be no further integration of Canada with anybody or anything until there is a full and open national debate and discourse. We must do everything we can to bring this about. It should be eight times as long and ten times as loud as the debate on same-sex marriage. And existing media prejudices and biases need to be removed by whatever means and at whatever cost to ensure that all voices and points of view are heard equally. I hope we soon see a flood of ideas on how to accomplish this.

If not a flood then even a trickle of ideas on how to accomplish this would be welcome. Your reference to the need for debate as being eight-to-one in importance when compared with the debate on same-sex marriage is a good one to help put this in perspective. It is hard to understand why this is only getting 1/8th the attention when it should be getting 8 times more attention.

One of the problems we are dealing with that is keeping the debate to a fraction of what it should be is that as Economist Andrew Jackson of the Canadian Labour Congress has said "he's been following theis initative for months and has seen no opportunity where public-interest groups can engage with it at all." Most of the changes are regulatory, not legislative, meaning Pariliament won't necessarily get a chance to debate them. As Jackson has already asked " If we're talking about harmonizing product-safety standards, for instance, is this just going to be industry plus officials? Does anybody representin the public interest get anywhere near the process?

Those are disturbing questions considering at a news conference packed with business leaders and officials Prime Minister Ann McLellan said "we are setting out over 300 specific, concrete milestones in our work plans"

That leads to these questions:
1) How many over 300?
2) How many of these will be debated and by whom and when?
3) Why can't the details of 100% of these be put on a government website for all Canadians to read and comment on?

Keep in mind that this report, and the "partnership" as it is being called, marks the three month followup on a meeting between Prime Minister Paul Matin, President George W. Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox in Waco Texas in March. That summit produced what the leaders called the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The US secretary of commerce said last week "There's been a lot of work done and we are just getting started". So a reasonable question to ask is the following - Does this mean 300 specific concrete milestones are just the beginning?

What is also alarming is that business leaders who attended
the event have been refered to as enthusisatically endorsing the iniative, with the only quibble being that governments are moving too slowly. That leads to the questions - How fast do they want this to go through and how much pressure are they bringing forward and who are they pressuring to speed things up? ONe of these people would be Industry Minister David Emerson who has already refered to this and addresses a "tyranny of small differences" between the 3 nations. What it is important for David Emerson and many others to understand is the pushing through fast changes on over 300 important issues is does not simply address many small differences but adds up quickly to become major policy changes in internationally and nationally.

In summary then, senior Ministers are invloved on the outskirts of this while major undertaking as business leaders and "officials" are hammering out large quantities of "specific concrete milestones". And then they get a briefing and a sales pitch telling them how wonderful the progress is. But they may be looking at the positive and not the negatives related to each of these concrete milestones.

Therefore it is reasonable to say that all Canadians and all Canadian politicians need to be concerned about what is being hammered out and by whom and how fast. Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan and Industry Minister David Emerson do not slow down and consult the Canadian people I suspect there will be hell to pay and Canadians will be paying a very big price.

Canadabob







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Canadabob

It is time people power took over. I urge everyone to email or write to Paul Martin and other key Parliamentarians and demand that implentations of this traitorous initiative be halted until open Public Hearings have been heard on this issue.
With the bombings in London it is evident that the closer we get to Washington, the greater the threat that we will be victims of terrorist activties. Thus our security is threatened by integration.