Thinking The Unthinkable About Canada's Future

Neo-conservative apologists in academia and media continue to applaud the high levels of direct foreign investment, federally and provincially, even though the bulk of it is in takeovers and acquisitions. Foreign direct investment has more than doubled in Canada since 1990. The Ontario governments’ website boasts that “Canada puts no restrictions on the repatriation of capital or profit by foreign investors – one of the reasons the country attracts a high level of foreign investment.” In a speech this January in Utah, former US vice-president Al Gore said “the election in Canada was partly about the tar sands projects in Alberta… and the financial interests behind the tar sands project poured a lot of money and support behind an ultra-conservative leader in order to win the election... and to protect its interests.” (Under Chapter 6 of NAFTA, Canada agreed to a “proportional sharing” provision. A fixed proportion of our energy supplies to the United States are guaranteed into the future. Even in the event of a national crisis, Canada cannot reduce the 65 percent of its oil and 61 percent of its natural gas which it now exports to the US.) The suspicion that our nation is being bought out from underneath our feet, with complicit or ignorant silence of big media, appears to have little evidence to contradict it. In fact, the disassembly of Canada is proceeding on several fronts simultaneously: economic, political, cultural and military. While South American nations are disengaging from the “Washington Consensus,” (the IMF/World Bank prescription for open markets described by critics as a Trojan horse for keeping poorer nations in economic servitude), Canada’s leaders are doing quite the opposite, bringing us into tighter orbit with the US. A number of informed commentators, among them former Progressive Conservative candidate David Orchard, Connie Fogal of the Canadian Action Party, Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians, and University of Ottawa economics professor Michel Chossudovsky, the overall plan appears to be nothing less than the elimination of Canada in all but name. Citing publicly available documents, these critics foresee the replacement of Canadian public and private institutions with the cuckoo’s egg of a militarized, branch-plant economy, with many of the traditional social welfare roles of government either eliminated or outsourced to private contractors. It’s a choleric vision of a future that’s two parts Orwell and one part Huxley, with a shrunken middle class toiling under the thumb of a borderless corporate oligarchy, and monitored by unrestricted electronic surveillance. In her paper The Metamorphosis and Sabotage of Canada, Connie Fogal writes “This union is planned, directed, organized and coordinated by unelected, unaccountable people of the military/industrial complex with a few academic apologists thrown in for good measure. It is being facilitated by all three elected governments. This is the same military/industrial complex that General Eisenhower warned against. This group is creating a despotic regime for the pursuit of their interest (rapacious greed and power) which is diametrically opposed to the needs and interests of the citizens in all three countries. Their plan is to make all of North America their power base acting in their interest only.” Fogal doesn’t mince words on the elites’ end game for Canada. “It is the end of a nation. It is the end of decisions by ourselves over ourselves. It is a reduction of our standard of living: a decline of the middle class, an increase in poverty, homelessness and destruction of our social safety net. It is the militarization of the country. It is the creation of a police state.” The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=2761 © Copyright 2005 GlobalResearch.ca [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on September 27, 2006]

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