An Open Letter to All Members of Parliament

Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Box 168 Slocan BC
V0G 2C0
1 250 355 2669
Email: editor@focusonsocialism.ca
Website: www.focusonsocialism.ca

January 20, 2009

Canada is the first country US President Barack Obama will visit following his January 20th Inauguration.

Canadians will be watching closely to see if during President Obama’s visit, there is a single Canadian political leader that will have the courage to publicly repudiate the long record of collusion of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative minority government with the President George W. Bush Administration’s policies of pre-emptive war and regime change.

President Barack Obama’s visit to Canada will be the opportunity for all Members of Parliament to call for a new direction in Canadian US relations based on the restoration of Canadian sovereignty lost during the long bleak years of the Bush Republican-Harper Conservative collaboration.

The opportunity has been presented to the Liberal, NDP and Bloc coalition to publicly enunciate a new direction for US-Canadian foreign, military, economic and political relations that can begin by disengaging Canada from the ruinous affects of membership in NAFTA, SPP, NORTHCOM and NATO and to align Canada with people’s progressive movements in the USA and around the world that seek peace and economic development that provides full employment, affordable housing, food, public medical care and education, child care and pensions for the millions that do not now have such basic needs.

It is important that the leader of the official opposition be sent a message. If Michael Ignatieff leader of the Liberal Party of Canada intends to become Prime Minister it can only be as the Prime Minister of the majority of Canadians that have consistently rejected the Conservative Party. Anything less, risks more years of minority Conservative government rule.

Should Mr. Ignatieff continue to equivocate, there is nothing preventing the NDP and the Bloc, leaders of organized labour, the peace movement, democratic and patriotic organizations of the Canadian people from speaking out resolutely for Canadian independence from US imperialist oversight.

In welcoming President Obama the left democratic peace and progressive movements are called upon to restate some fundamental truths for the benefit of the new incoming Barack Obama US administration and those in Canada who will greet him in our name.

Canadians are a sovereign people. From coast to coast to coast including the far arctic, all of the nations that inhabit this land, all those who labour in its economy, all those who contribute to its accomplishments, all those who value and seek to conserve its vast natural resources, its grandeur, wilderness and natural beauty, all those who believe in the youth and in their right to a future, all those who dream and fight for peace and justice for all people of the planet, all those who do not live in envy of anyone; the people of Canada who call this place our home and native land will decide its destiny.

Left Turn Canada!

Don Currie Chair, Canadians for Peace and Socialism