To Dance With A Leper

We will have traded our resources and ability to make our own decisions in exchange for a profit driven and socially bankrupt programme of neverending exploitation of that part of the biosphere contained within the perimeter of Fortress America. When you try to amalgamate two entities that have a size disparity of 10 to 1 it is not hard to see whose priorities will govern in every circumstance. We should expect different interpretations of agreed regulations North and South of the current border, witness NAFTA. We should expect outright disregard for international agreements if they do not suit U.S. interests, as for instance the Nuclear Antiproliferation Treaty and the World Court. Speaking of borders, there is a strange anomaly in the fact that common immigration and customs legislisation will be applied at the North American perimeter while internal regulations for the internal border will be rigorously enforced to prevent easy Canadian access to the current United States. Who is equal to who here? Plans are already being promoted for a common currency, the Amero, which will be controlled by the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. When Canada loses control of its monetary policies it will have lost control of its destiny. Canada, despite our enormous natural wealth, will no longer count on the world stage. One has to ask, what blind insistence on a policy with such negative outcomes would lead our federal government to persist in an association that may provide short-term gain for the already wealthy few but a total disaster for us all in the long run? Why do we want to dance with a leper? Derek Skinner, Member Canadian Action Party, (CAP) (250) 381-7553, 920 Park Blvd., Victoria, B.C. V8V 2T3 [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on August 30, 2006]