New Possibilities for Labour Unity

Sixty years have passed since the Canadian Labour Congress and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) gave its support to the founding of the New Party formalized at its Convention August 3^rd 1961.

The New Democratic Party will hold its virtual convention on April 9-11, 2021.  The virtual Canadian Labour Congress Convention will take place two months later, June 16-18, 2021.

What will be accomplished by delegates at virtual conventions, reliant on new information technologies, is impossible to predict.  That is a heavy responsibility for convention organizers.  Socially aware Canadians will be watching closely.  A well organised fully open pre-convention discussion reaching out to the rank and file is what is needed right now.

Much is at stake for millions of Canadians impacted by the dual calamity of economic depression and pandemic.  They didn’t create such calamities and refuse to be its victims.  Millions of Canadians are looking for alternatives and a way forward to full employment and health.  Wage earners have the right to expect that the NDP and the CLC will move into political action in their interest.  That can happen if the convention delegates insist “this is the time”. 

Everything must be done to enable delegates to do their work.  Nothing must be allowed to impede the adoption of decisions and campaigns supporting the demands of workers, the unemployed, the youth, farmers, small business and all oppressed and racialized Canadians confronting the ruinous affects of economic depression and a pandemic.

NDP-CLC conventions more often than not have been top-down managed events geared to preparations for the next federal election.  The cynical game of photo-op politics will reduce not increase voter support.  Such outworn and discredited convention maneuvering will perpetuate the cynicism of working-class voters fed up with Lib-Cons and who will see no difference in the NDP.

To ignore such realities is willful blindness and electoral opportunism of the worst kind.  

The NDP is the largest social reformist electoral expression of voter rejection of the policies of the parties of big business, the Liberals and Conservatives.  The 3.3-million-member CLC is the voice of organized workers.  Unorganized low paid marginalized workers, especially the youth, look to it with some hope.  Capitalism is not working for them.

The NDP-CLC convention can limit their vision to becoming better managers of the capitalist system or begin to talk about the urgent need to replace it.  The depression and COVID-19 pandemic fully expose the failure of the capitalist system to answer the needs of Canadian wage, salary earners and self-employed, women, youth and children.  Such calamities are viewed by big investor classes as a business opportunity who cynically profiteer out of illness and the impoverishment of millions.

The NDP-CLC leaderships are called upon to go beyond exposure and denunciation of “unfairness” and catch up to the militant extra-Parliamentary struggles already in action and challenging corporate power.

The overarching consideration for any major gathering of reform and labour must be to demand and enunciate a new Canadian foreign policy of peace and nuclear disarmament.  The survival of humanity is at stake.

The threat of a major US-NATO instigated war is once again upon us.  Everyday the reckless and revenge seeking far right is given mass media platforms to promote war on Iran, Russia, China, North Korea and Syria.  Such neurotic voices applaud sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela and applaud Sinophobia.

WW1 and WW2 and all of the major wars since, provide historical evidence that major war is not a single event but a series of events allowed to mature develop into global conflicts.  In the age of nuclear weapons such a calamity would end civilization as we know it.  

The specious argument that there are ideologies and existential threats worse than global annihilation is the preserve of fanaticism and the insane.  It is implausible and reckless to denounce Lib-Con social economic policies at home and support Lib-Con US-NATO war policies abroad.

Sixty years ago, analyzing the significance of the formation of the New Party (NDP), Tim Buck Communist Party leader said this:

“There are sharp differences concerning the aims that the founding convention should set for the New Party, and the differences are expressed already in two distinct and opposing trends.

“The trend which is dominant at present is that headed by the right-wing aiming to make the projected party “new” in name only.  They want to compete with the Liberal and Conservative parties for the popular vote without having to take a stand for repudiation of the basic theory that is supported by both of those parties – expressed in Canadian membership in NORAD and NATO, in permitting U.S. nuclear warheads in Canada, in the over-all policy of “Canada-U.S. integration”; in short, the subordination of Canada’s national interests to those of the United States as part of that country’s preparation for nuclear war.

“The opposing trend expresses, in varying ways and degrees recognition of the necessity for the New Party to rally All Canadians who desire far-reaching social reform, expansion of employment by freeing the Canadian economy from its subordination to U.S. interests, disengagement from the insane drive to war, withdrawal from NORAD and NATO, the banning of nuclear weapons, world disarmament and. In general, policies which correspond with peaceful co-existence.” Quoted from the May June 1961 issue of Marxist Review, Vol. XVIII (179)

Tim Buck had it right in 1961 and the same message is valid in 2021.

CSIS Takes the Political Stage

CSIS Director’s speech is grounds for convening SECU

A speech by CSIS Director David Vigneault reported by Canadian press Tuesday, February 9, 2021 would suggest that he is willfully ill-informed about China Canadian relations.

The speech was delivered to the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) a Waterloo based think tank that receives major funding from the Government of Canada. CIGI and CSIS are presently engaged in a collaboration on cybersecurity issues.

The CSIS director and CIGI imply that China, having progressed to the status of the second largest economic scientific and technological power in the world, is technologically deficient and actually needs Canadian cyber-technologies. It apparently hasn’t occurred to CSIS-CIGI analysts that it might be the other way around. 

The CSIS Director said, the technologies China needs are largely developed, “within academia in small start-ups, which are attractive targets because they have modest security protections and are more likely to pursue collaborations that can, and sadly are, exploited by other countries” meaning China.

Either the CSIS Director doesn’t know or doesn’t want Canadians to know, that Canada and China signed a bi-lateral treaty on science and technology on January 16, 2007 which was ratified on July 17^th 2008 and is still in force.  

CSIS Vs. PCO

The CSIS Director offered no proof that China has engaged in any joint research with Canadian institutions that falls outside the framework of the treaty. Such proof would be reason for the Privy Council Office (PCO) to consider a breach of the treaty. The CSIS Director’s speech should cause the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) and Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (SECU) to be convened to ask for proof of CSIS assertions.

The CSIS director is making public speeches that impinge on the functioning of Canadian Government treaties. Is that what CSIS is mandated to do? Canadians understand that to be the function of the elected Minister of Foreign Affairs. Apparently the CSIS Director doesn’t know that.

Is it not fair to ask PM Trudeau and FM Minister Garneau, who is running Canadian foreign affairs, CSIS or the Government of Canada? That is a question the NDP foreign affairs critic, the Greens and the Bloc should also be asking.

A SIRC-SECU  inquiry might also help to explain why Canada no longer produces its own vaccines and spends hundreds of millions on foreign supplies including purchasing supplies of PPE equipment from China. Such a hearing might put to rest the CSIS accusation that the PRC seeks or needs Canada’s research in pharmaceuticals and health.

The UN and WHO have provided ample evidence of the high level of PRC’s cooperation and compliance in the global effort to contain and eradicate the Corona virus.

The proprietary assets, patents, technical expertise, and research that CSIS asserts China seeks to acquire by stealth is being routinely exchanged by all reputable science and technical agencies and much of it is available on line. That is how science progresses as a joint international collaboration among scientists from all nations. That truth comes as a surprise to the CSIS director who seems to believe that science is exclusively a western phenomenon.

The CSIS Director is fond of warning Canadians about “foreign state actors” interfering in Canadian politics. The Director’s speech came hours after newly elected US President Joe Biden’s February 4^th speech published on the US Canadian embassy website.

“As I said in my inaugural address, we will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again, not to meet yesterday’s challenges, but today’s and tomorrow’s.  American leadership must meet this new moment of advancing authoritarianism, including the growing ambitions of China to rival the United States and the determination of Russia to damage and disrupt our democracy.”

Stage Managed

Right on cue the CSIS Director delivered his April 9^th speech to the CIGI.

CSIS and the CIGI seem to consider China’s presence in global affairs as not only sinister but illegitimate and Canada’s without blemish and legitimate.

Canada is a member of the UN and its agencies, the IMF, World Bank, WTO, OECD. So is China.

Canada is a signatory to the aforementioned organizations which have mandates that can be read by anyone interested. So is China.

Both countries have functionaries working in these organizations whose bios and curricula vitae can be read on line.

Consider the position occupied by the People’s Republic of China and its 1.4 billion citizens in today’s world.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a state member of the World Bank having joined in 1945. It is now the second largest global economy. Its engagement with the World Bank can be read here.

The PRC is a permanent member of the IMF and participates in the work of all of its agencies which can be read here.

The PRC is a non-member participant with an agreed working relationship with the OECD which can be read here.

The PRC is a member of the WTO having joined in 2001 and its engagement at the WTO can be read here.

The PRC is a founding member of the UN and permanent member of the Security Council. The PRC participates in all its agencies and programs which can be read here.

The PRC has diplomatic relations with 178 countries.

Canada officially recognized China on 13 October 1970 and suspended diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan. In the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 Canada supported the People's Republic of China (PRC) as the successor state of the Republic of China.

On the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of Canada-China recognition, then Foreign Minister Phillipe Champagne said:

“The bedrock of our relations—in the beginning and as it is now—remains the people of Canada and China. Together, we share long-standing connections that took root well before the establishment of diplomatic relations. These connections and the extraordinary contributions of Canadians of Chinese origin to Canada will outlive political cycles and continue to bring diversity and depth to our relationship for decades to come.”

The CSIS federal budget for 2021 will come in around $650 million.

It would be better spent on the Canadian health care system and its overworked health care workers.

Workers Math and Statscan Fog

Delving into Statscan numbers leads to a quip attributed to Samuel Clemens better known as Mark Twain, that “figures lie and liars can figure”.

Before going further, here is where a worker can read the 2020 2021 $304 billion Federal Government budget estimates by organization.[1]  Noteworthy is 10% for the military, policing and intelligence services organizations and about 4.1% for the agencies responsible for coping with a pandemic.

Let’s consider Statscan January 2021 report on Labour Force and unemployment numbers.

Wage earners know something about numbers

Working class families count every penny to pay the bills and survive.

A pencil and paper and a cell phone and trades math can turn up some basic truths about how well capitalism is working for us.

Phd. Economists can tell us where we have erred!

Let’s start with total wealth produced in Canada, who creates it and who gets it.

GDP and Wages!

Using total wages paid to 17,000,000 wage and salaried earners at an average salary of $52,500/year is $892,500,000,000 divided by a total GDP of $1,900,000,000,000, wages as a percent of GDP is 47%.

Who got the 53% of GDP, $1,007,570,000,000 that is not wages? [2]

That enormous value created after wages are paid, occurred during a period of rising unemployment and a 4% shrinkage in GDP.

Such data must mean something!

We conclude that it means that fewer workers in 2020 worked harder and longer and created a surplus of value over wages of 53%. Using Statscan numbers we calculate that out of a 7 hour day a worker works 3.45 hours a day without pay. Karl Marx called that surplus value the source of profit!

From a wage earners point of view the stat that matters is; - “am I employed or not, is my family well or sick?”

Work and wages give working class families a fighting chance to get through a pandemic and depression and without it are its certain victims.

Unemployment falls on all age groups and both genders with the poorest among our class, the most vulnerable, suffering many tragedies. Without work the youth are robbed of a life with a purpose.

The savings of unemployed Canadian working-class families, their equity in homes, their RRSP retirement funds, foregoing family sports, recreational and personal development pursuits to pay bills is the reality of millions. In effect previously earned workers wages are subsidizing banks and the richest investor classes who prosper in times of expansion, depression or pandemics. 

If workers get some CERB they have earned it. 

Unemployment is used by employers to drive down the price of wages for employed workers, and a pretext to eliminate health and pensions benefits. Health and pension benefits for workers are a form of voluntarily deferred wages, insurance against tragedy and for retirement income. To a capitalist, workers benefits are an unnecessary loss of profits. To right wing governments pension funds exist to be plundered.

What are governments for?

For workers what matters is; - “what are governments doing for wage earners?”

Governments opine, “We, meaning workers and capitalists, are all in this together”. Every wage earner knows that is a lie.

As unemployment afflicts 9.4% of Canadian wage and salary earners the global elites off wealth and privilege are prospering.

Which Side Are You On?

MP’s, MLA’s; - are either for profiteers who view social tragedy as a business opportunity, or with the workers who know depression, mass illness, and war as a curse.

Organized labour and the responsible left demand that governments act for wage earners at the expense of monopoly profiteers. Full stop!

Using worker’s math, the January 2021 Statscan unemployment figure for workers 15 and over is closer to 15% than 9.4%. [3]

For ages 15-24 Statscan figures are, 545,000 or 19.7% of youth out of work. Worker’s math puts the number at 24.9%. Rate of growth of youth unemployment is an alarming 215% since January 2020. By that measure by January 2021, 1,172,462 young men and women will be jobless. [4]

The Takeaway!

Corporate profits are rising as the number of employed workers decreases. Fewer workers are working harder for less.

That reality is the result of a political economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production which compels workers to sell their only commodity, labour power for wages to survive.

The capitalist buys labour power, sets it to work for a given period of time each day. Part of the day the worker works for wages to provide for the necessities of life and for the rest of the day labours for free for the employer, a period of unpaid labour time which adds surplus value to all products and services which the employer appropriates and realizes in the market as profit. Marxism 101!

As it involves a labour force of 18 million Canadians, capitalism is the system of social production and private appropriation of total wealth produced less wages paid to the producers.

Unpaid labour time of tens of millions of Canadian workers, over and above what capitalists pay in wages is what has allowed the 1% to manage more than 50% of GDP that they use in a conspicuous display of wealth and privilege and the rest as new capital to buy labour power and do it all over again and again and again.

What Statscan helps to do is cover up this exploitative reality with facts that are essentially a snap shot in time of how the profit system is working for the profiteers.

Unemployment is something capitalists need. A large reserve army of unemployed serves big capital to drive down wages without a concern that it places at risk the incomes and well being of millions of working-class Canadians and their families.

What Marx also revealed some 154 years ago was the fact that with the growth of capitalism there is the growth of the working class, in the new age of 21st century science and technology, growing in ways and in forms that no one of his time could have foreseen.

Form and essence, a category of dialectical- materialist contradictions need constant study

Nothing that Musk, Bezos, Gates, Zuckerbeg are doing to amass obscene wealth is unique or some ultra-capitalism that alters the essence of capitalism in the imperialist stage of its development.

The invitation by a new crop of liberal radicals who believe exploitation started when they discovered it, invite us to believe that if we rid ourselves of the “bad capitalists” we can live with the “good capitalists”.

No thanks!

A Worker’s Government

Full employment at wages that can provide all workers and their families with the purchasing power to live a full and worthwhile life is possible and it is possible right now.

To achieve that requires a worker’s government empowered to act for all Canadians who create all useful goods and services that make life truly human and civil.

Such a government will devote all of the GDP to the needs of those who produce it.

---

[1] The total federal budget estimates, that means what is about to be spent, totals $304,577,541,941.  Department of National Defense is allocated $23.3 billion, RCMP $3.5 billion, CSIS and CSE $1.36 billion, accounting for a cool 9.25% of total estimated spending. Add in Canada Border Agencies budget of over $2.2 billion, almost 10% of total estimates.  Occupational Health and Safety, $11.3 million, Food Inspection, $729.6 million, Health Research $1.2 billion, Public Health Agency $641.8 million or 4.1%.

[2] Gross domestic product (GDP) is defined by capitalist economists as the total monetary or market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific time period. From a wage-earners standpoint the operative word is value.

[3] Statscan reporting for January 2021 puts the unemployment rate at 9.4% a startling 858,000 increase of jobless since this time in 2020. Statscan’s total labour force number for age 15 and over at January 2021 is 20,171,000. Total number employed is given as 18,272,000. Total number unemployed using worker’s math is 1,899,000/18,272,000 or 10.39 % unemployed. Statscan uses the total labour force number of 20,171,000 as the divisor and gets 9.4% unemployed.

The percentage growth in unemployment 2021 over 2020 using worker’s math and Statscan’s magical 67% participation rate would be .67 X (20,171,000 - 858,000)/858,000 = 14.75% increase in unemployment.

[4] Statscan gives the available work force among youth 15 – 24 as 2,770,100.

Statscan gives the total of employed youth as 1,227,900 fulltime + 996,600 part time = 2,224,500. Statscan then reports that 545,000 of this number are unemployed. Once again Statscan chooses the available work force number of 2,770,100 as the divisor and gets 19.7% unemployment rate among youth.

Worker’s math again using the Statscan number of actual employed youth we get, 545,000/2,224,500 = 24.49% of youth unemployed right now.

The participation rate for youth is given as 62%. Then workers math gets .62 x 2,770,100 = (1,717,462 -545,000)/545,000 = or a 215% increase in the rate of youth unemployment.

The number 215% means that this time next year there could be 2.15 x 545,000 or a possible 1,172,462 youth looking for work. Workers math tells us that at a 2.15 increase for one or two years will see millions of young men and women on the streets or tramping the country looking for work unless something more than CERB is done and now.

Water Meets Money – Part Three

Global Water Summit May 16 – 18 Madrid Spain.

Prime Minister Mulroney 1987 – PM Justin Trudeau 2019 - Thirty-two years of Failure

Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1987 mandated Minister Tom McMillan, P.C., M.P., Hillsborough Minister of the Environment to enunciate his government’s fresh water policy. 

Thirty-two years later in 2019 Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mandated Jonathan Wilkinson MP for North Vancouver Minister of Environment and Climate Change to enunciate his government’s fresh water policy.

The two documents are similar, in fact the Liberal 2019 document relies heavily on the   Conservative 1987 document. What is obvious in reading the documents is this; that after 32 years and several Conservative and Liberal governments later the problems of fresh water management and supply remain serious and unresolved.

As we mentioned and documented in Part 01  and Part 02, the issue is capitalist profiteering from a publicly owned irreplaceable resource. The intent of both Canadian and US investors to fatten their portfolios from exploiting Canada’s vast fresh water resources is unrelenting and must be opposed whenever it arises. It is urgent that we do so.

P3 for profit companies have made inroads on public water utilities.

Water is trading as a commodity on the futures market of stock exchanges.

International conferences of private water providers entitle their agenda as “Water Meets Money”.

Utility rates for water are rising all across the country falling most heavily on wage earners and pensioners.

Public services such as schools, hospitals, recreational facilities and municipal water suppliers confront rising budgetary costs for water use and upgrades.

First Nations communities continue to be without clean fresh water for drinking, sanitation and cooking, a country-wide scandal and disgrace.

The 2019 Liberal document entitled “Canada Water Agency Discussion Paper” contains sections describing serous threats to fresh water supplies and use, followed by a series of bland questions the public is invited to comment on and submit replies to by May 21st 2021. The document makes clear the public is asked for comments with no commitment on the part of the government to act on the findings.

The Council of Canadians (COC) who have taken the lead on the movement to safeguard Canada’s fresh water is calling upon Canadians to respond to the questions posed in the discussion paper to and send replies to the Trudeau-Freeland Liberal government and the ministers responsible.

The (COC) appeal for action can be read here.

We call for full support for the (COC) campaign and take the opportunity to re-state, in addition to the COC appeal, what we consider the fundamental changes that must occur to ensure Canadians retain sovereign ownership and control of our vast and irreplaceable fresh water supplies.

Conservative and Liberal Government trivializing the issue of Canada’s fresh water as one of management rather than sovereign ownership must be condemned and rejected.

What is needed is to take the matter into our own hands and demand federal laws that safeguard Canadian ownership and control of fresh water and its development as a not for profit common good.

Canadians can answer the questions posed in the Trudeau-Freeland- Jonathan Wilkinson Canadian Water Agency Paper.

A People’s Plan for Fresh Water Development and Use 

1.      The Canadian Water Agency that is needed is one that has the power to administer and enforce, by an Act of Parliament and a constitutional amendment, laws and legislation, that upholds Canada’s sovereign ownership and control of its vital water resources.

2.      Such a law must commit Canada to uphold and implement the UN Declaration on Water as a Human Right.

3.      Such a law to be effective must prohibit foreign or domestic finance capitalist interests to develop, divert, export or profiteer from Canada’s fresh water resources.

4.      Engaging in trading, stock market speculation of fresh water as a commodity by any entity must be banned in Canada and violations treated as a crime.

5.      Accompanying such legislation must be a publicly owned and controlled plan of water development in the public interest to resolve all of the problems identified in the 1987 and 2019 Federal government policy papers and be fully funded from a reduction in arms spending and corporate subsidies.

6.      Such a law must prohibit the present wanton and unaccountable industrial, resource extraction and manufacturing industries use of fresh water.

7.      Such a law must provide for assistance to all cities and towns, rural and indigenous and First Nations communities who urgently require new infrastructure and improvements to existing infrastructure such that it enables every community in Canada that lacks adequate and clean water to have it.

It Takes a Fight to Win

Such a people’s plan for water development and its use will be realized if it is organized and fought for as part of the urgent needs of all of the labouring people of Canada. Such a struggle to win is proposed in the full knowledge that it will bring every genuine anti-monopoly organization that participates, into a sharp confrontation with private investor capital and the governments that serve its interests.  

That confrontation is unavoidable and the only path that will lead to the care and protection of Canada’s magnificent abundant water resources and guarantee it will be there for future generations of Canadians.

 

Water Meets Money – Part Two

Global Water Summit May 16 - 18 Madrid Spain

Water and Politics

Protecting Canada’s water is one of the issues that no federal or provincial government dare ignore. Whenever the issue has arisen, it engenders passionate political disputes.

That was the case in the recent NAFTA 2 – Canada US Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) where US negotiators attempted to define Canadian fresh water as a commodity that would open the way to its privatization and its exploitation and export as any other tradeable commodity. 

A lead organization on the matter of Canadian water sovereignty is the Council of Canadians (C of C) who in February 2020 preceding the July 1^st 2020 ratification of the new Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) expressed the concerns of millions of Canadians about the effect of the new NAFTA Agreement on the definition of Canadian fresh water as a commodity.

While the C of C campaign helped to prevent an abject surrender by the Trudeau-Freeland Liberal Government to US pressures for unrestricted continental trade in water as a commodity, the threat remains. The weak language in the agreement remains open to violations and costly tribunals to fight off US challenges to Canadian sovereignty over its own fresh water resources. What happened in the near past will happen again.

Pipelines to the west coast and the potential for oil spill disasters on pristine west coast has aroused mass protest that is ongoing.

In the 1950’s and 60’s a big US private investor, enlisting the US Corp of Engineers, was permitted by the federal government to explore altering major Canadian basins and divert major river systems from the Canadian north to the US border to satisfy US needs. The scheme entitled the North American Water and Power Alliance, (NAWAPA) aroused mass protest and was shelved.  

The St. Lawrence Seaway, vital to the economic interests of both Canada and the USA fared better and along with the 1906 Great Lakes Treaty is managed by joint US Canadian treaties.

The Columbia River Treaty  was an entirely different matter and aroused a grass roots mass opposition and Parliamentary crisis. The scheme permitted the construction of a series of dams on the Canadian Columbia River system to provide hydro electric power exports, flood control and irrigation benefits downstream to the USA in exchange for some US dollars.

The treaty was rammed through the BC Provincial Legislature by Socred Premier W.A. (Wacky) Bennet with the support of the Diefenbaker Conservatives over a mass democratic opposition extending from the British Columbia Communists led by Nigel Morgan, to NDP BC MP Bert Herridge to the WW2 General A.G. L. McNaughton. All news media covered the issue at the time and the McLean’s Magazine article by Peter C. Newman of November 1962 provides an overview of the dispute as it impacted Parliament.

The renegotiating of treaties between Canada and the USA are always contentious. The Columbia River Treaty renewal talks, now underway confront fresh demands by US negotiators to reduce or eliminate its responsibilities under the treaty to pay British Columbia for the down stream benefits the dams in Canada provide to the USA.

P.M Justin Trudeau Politics of Water

Immediately after the federal election of 2019 the Trudeau Liberals pledged to organize a discussion about the management of Canadian water. “Toward the Creation of a Canada Water Agency Discussion Paper Environment and Climate Change” was authored and published inviting public comment.

The discussion paper begins with a disclaimer that the Mandate of the Prime Minister to the Minister of the Environment Jonathan Wilkinson is not intended to be understood as soliciting Canadian opinion about the enactment of legislation to create a Canadian Water Agency which amazingly does not exist.

The mandate is designed to foster a time-limited public discussion of how to “manage” a water crisis rather than solve it.

There is a lot of water to manage.

The following excerpt is taken from the discussion paper.

“Canada has more than two million lakes and rivers—more inland waters than any other country. Canada has 20% of the world’s fresh water and the third largest renewable supply of fresh water at 7%. The country has 25 major watersheds (see map in Annex 1). These waters flow to all three coasts, crossing international, provincial and territorial boundaries. Canada also has one quarter of the world’s remaining wetlands, covering 13% of the country.”

Sixty percent of all Canadian fresh water drainage systems flow north and just one, the McKenzie River system drains 20% of the area of Canada, a land mass the size of Europe.

In spite of an abundance of this priceless water resource many Canadians, in the first place First Nations, and most urban and rural communities confront serious deficiencies in the availability of clean water for drinking sanitation, nutrition and irrigation.

At the same time the internet overflows with reports of privately owned industries engaged in the wasteful use of water, depleting aquifers and public outrage at the pittance it pays for its consumption. The Nestles scandal is ongoing.

Less Talk and More Solutions

The struggle to provide fresh water to Canadians and for its rational and restorative uses goes hand in hand with the needs of billions around the world who are denied it.

The UN Declaration on Water as a Human Right hints at the root of the problem but dares not offer the obvious solution.

“The roots of the current water and sanitation crisis can be traced to poverty, inequality and unequal power relationships…”

That is a shamefaced way of avoiding the obvious, that unequal power relationships beg the question, which class has the power and which class lacks it?  To achieve the noble UN goal requires a reversal of the unequal power relationship that is the cause of the problem by making it even more unequal in favour of those who need water as opposed to those who seek only to profit from it. 

Big investor interests think of Km/hectare/m of water as they think of bbls of oil, tonnes of ores, board feet of timber or lbs of pork bellies. It is all the same to investors who invest in resource commodities listed for trading on stock exchanges.

What the May 16 -18 2021 Global Water Summit in Madrid Spain and the Trudeau-Freeland Liberal’s Canadian Water Agency Paper focussing primarily on the opportunities for corporations to profiteer from a global water crisis won’t do, the organized labour movement, the organizations for sovereignty, First Nations rights activists can do. Develop a people’s plan for preserving Canada’s water resources.

The Fundamental Principle of A People’s Plan for Water

The Canadian Water Agency that is needed is one that has the power to administer and enforce by an Act of Parliament and a constitutional amendment, laws and legislation that upholds Canada’s commitment to the UN Declaration on Water as a Human Right by banning and criminalizing all attempts to engage in the trading of Canada’s fresh water as a commodity. Accompanying such legislation must be a plan, funded from a reduction in arms spending and corporate subsidies to carry out all of the infrastructure improvements that will enable every community in Canada that lacks adequate and clean water to have it.

A people’s plan for water development and its use would be undertaken in the full knowledge that it will bring every genuine anti-monopoly organization into a sharp confrontation with private investor capital.

That confrontation is unavoidable and the only path that will lead to the care and protection of Canada’s magnificent abundant water resources and guarantee it will be there for future generations of Canadians.

Next: Part Three - A People’s Plan for Water Development and Use 

 

  

 

Water Meets Money - Part One

Global Water Summit May 16 – 18 Madrid Spain.

Water is life.

The following is an excerpt from the UN Fact Sheet 35 UN Rights to Water which can be read in its entirety here.

“Water is the essence of life. Safe drinking water and sanitation are indispensable to sustain life and health, and fundamental to the dignity of all. Yet, 884 million people do not have access to improved sources of drinking water, while 2.5 billion lack access to improved sanitation facilities. While these numbers shed light on a worrying situation, the reality is much worse, as millions of poor people living in informal settlements are simply missing from national statistics. The roots of the current water and sanitation crisis can be traced to poverty, inequality and unequal power relationships, and it is exacerbated by social and environmental challenges: accelerating urbanization, climate change, and increasing pollution and depletion of water resources.”

Fresh water availability and oceanic use under capitalism inevitably leads away from the UN Declaration of Water as a Human Right to a media led discussion of its market value as a commodity.

That will be the theme of an international conference in Madrid Spain in May entitled; “Water Meets Money”. The meeting brings together the major water for profit providers in the world.

All of the constitutional guarantees, laws, protocols and international agreements governing water use confront ongoing efforts of domestic and foreign finance capital to subvert people’s sovereignty over water resources with the aim of privately appropriating this priceless resource and exploiting it for profit. Futures trading in water is now underway.

Water use owned and controlled by private investors as a source of profit is the major contributing cause of its unavailability to humanity as a life giving common good and as a restorative imperative for nature. Water for profit has expanded to crisis proportions in the era of state monopoly capitalism, imperialism. The degradation of all water is the result.

Here is a partial list of the legacy of water use in the capitalist era.  

·        War and Conflict: Oceans, inland seas, major rivers, tributaries, gulfs, basins and canals have become sites for military bases and theatres of modern warfare, communications and freedom of the sea conflicts, off-shore sovereign development and global trade routes disputes among rival imperialist powers.

·        Natural Moisture Cycles: Industrial and agricultural use of oceanic and fresh water is distorting the natural surface and subsurface and atmospheric interaction of moisture affecting global warming, aridity and flood and fire events, species and habitat loss and soil fertility.

·        Pollution and Waste: Oceans, inland seas, fresh water lakes and basins and major rivers systems are stressed and degraded due to the discharging of industrial, agricultural, human, animal, military and commercial air and sea transportation waste. The result is massive waste disposal disasters, ocean acidification, oil spills and radioactive contamination problems for the people living in the midst of such calamities.  The effect of plastic particles on marine life and fish stocks is rising beyond the natural ability of ocean systems and currents to absorb it. 

·        Private Industrial Abuse: The percentage of water used by industry and subsequently restored to its natural state and returned to its original source of extraction is largely uncontrolled. The Canadian Water Agency Discussion paper estimates that industrial recycled water is less than 40%. Such recycling is undertaken by industry as it is profitable to reducing the costs of production and resisted or simply ignored when it is vital to communities or beneficial to the restoration of nature. Restrictions on the industrial and military uses of water is considered by investors as a hindrance to profiteering. 

Science, in What Interest?

Science and water specialists can prove the socially beneficial uses of water and devise elegant plans, including proposed legislation for its rational uses but fail to study in depth the economic and political root causes of the persistent and expanding global oceanic and fresh water crisis.

The Water Meets Money conferences May 16 -18 2021 in Madrid Spain is forthright in its invitation and agenda that it is primarily about opportunities for corporations to profiteer from a global water crisis.

Such conferences must be high on the awareness list of working-class Canadians and their organizations.  Governments are adept at adopting corporate think tank solutions to sugar coat legislation that opens the way to P3 water utility development that accords low rates to industry and imposes escalating hydro electrical and water utility rate increases on working class families. Accompanying every utility bill is a pious plea to wage earning families to conserve, in effect to pay more and use less.

Water utility costs to households in all major cities in Canada are rising with no end in sight.

Stats Canada is the starting point of credible research that leads directly to the truth that in spite of an abundance of oceanic and fresh water Canada is afflicted with the same serious problems as nations who lack it. 

Financing Water Use In the System of Capitalism

It is startling fact that much of the water infrastructure in Canada was built at the end of WW2 and has lagged the necessary expansion, improvements and maintenance to keep it ahead of population growth and satisfy urban and rural demands.

Visit the website of any major Canadian city, municipality, Indigenous community urban, rural or reserve, and there one will find a conflict over water use, its affordability, availability and purity. The costs of upgrading and modernizing all water delivery and water purification systems as well as flood control infrastructure is a critical issue. 

One of the most enthusiastically promoted solutions to funding new water systems is the P3 model. The other is the habit of senior levels of government to download costs related to new infrastructure, upgrades and flood control on the ledgers and tax base of cash strapped cities and municipalities, ensuring that problems remain chronic and unsolved. Most of the revenue to operate water treatment, delivery and sewage systems is provided by home owner and apartment dweller utility rates. The opposition to rising utility rates is answered by authorities with schemes to measure use without addressing the urgent need to lower utility rates to wage dependent families. 

On the other side of the ledger is a long history of high volume cheap and wasteful use of water by big industry and big ag.

Next: Water and Politics

Defend Canada Post Employees and Uphold Canadian and World Health Organisation (WHO) Health Guidelines – Part 2:

US-CSIS obtrusion in a Canadian health emergency

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Further to the first FOS op-ed about two Regina Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) members disciplined for refusing to deliver the anti-communist anti-China newspaper Epoch Times, FOS offers some further commentary and not so distant history.

US Senator Accuses WHO as Soft on China.

Last April 9^th 2020 a US Senator Todd Young, Chair of the US Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, sent a letter to WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to express “deep skepticism” about the WHO’s guidance on COVID-19 and “concern of China’s influence in the organization.” Young called for the WHO Director to appear before his committee for questioning.

Following Young’s letter to WHO, US President Trump stopped funding WHO and on May 29^th announced his government’s intent to withdraw from WHO and in July made it official.

The Lancet and the American Medical Association (AMA), respected voices of US medical professionals, condemned the Trump administration’s decision in the midst of a growing global health emergency.

The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) did not issue a statement. (NB: In answer to a FOS query, CMA confirmed it did not issue any statement on the US withdrawal from WHO.)

The Trump administration’s actions followed a February 9^th 2020 WHO delegation to China led by Dr. Bruce Aylward, a Canadian advisor to WHO and a respected epidemiologist and infectious disease expert, to investigate alleged lack of transparency in the Government of China’s response to COVID.

The WHO delegation filed their findings in February 14-16 2020 answering all questions at a major public press conference  and in an exhaustive report to the UN available to all member states including Canada.  Dr. Aylward is reported to have commented after the work was done that “If I had COVID-19, I’d want to be treated in China.”

CSIS and the Trudeau-Freeland Liberal Government Snap to Attention.

Not satisfied with the WHO UN report a Parliamentary Health committee was mandated by an all-party resolution to hold hearings and ordered Dr. Aylward to appear and answer questions. Dr. Aylward did not appear for questioning and all parties in the House of Commons were affronted.

WHO issued statements explaining that as a UN Organization, member states should direct questions about its work including questions regarding China to the WHO President and submit questions in writing to Dr. Aylward who was an advisor and not an elected official of WHO.

None of these protocols mattered to any Parliamentary caucus members. What the Parliamentary caucus wanted was an open-ended questioning of Dr. Aylward in the midst of a frenzy of US accusations against WHO.

President Trump was making headlines as he prepared to withdraw the US from the WHO alleging undue influence by China and Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer was cashing in.

The publicly funded CBC and the privately owned and controlled corporate media neglected to ask if Scheer or any of the affronted Parliamentary Health Committee members had read the WHO report and what was lacking in its findings.  

In such a heated atmosphere Dr. Aylward had reason to be reluctant to submit himself to questioning by the Parliamentary Health Committee.

Most threatening to anyone in Dr. Aylward’s position was that fact that the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) had issued a series of public statements warning of a Government China effort to recruit persons to do harm to Canada during the Covid emergency that harmonized with President Trumps accusations against WHO.

The implication of collaboration with China was now in the mix.

Enter Epoch Times

Epoch Times right on cue appeared in May 2020. The offending editorial claiming the corona virus pandemic was a Communist Party of China plot appeared. CUPW employees refused to deliver the paper. Many Canadians objected to receiving it.

Federal Minister in charge ordered CUPW to deliver the paper cross the entire country.

Epilogue

The Trudeau-Freeland Government and the NDP have quietly walked back from the events of April last year. The new Conservative leader Erin O’Toole keeps at it demanding a “get tough” diplomacy towards China.

On the occasion of the 50^th Anniversary of Canadian recognition of China Global Affairs Canada published the statement by then Foreign Affairs Minister Phillipe Champagne.

Champagne was replaced as Foreign Minister in the last Trudeau Cabinet shuffle by Marc Garneau.

Facts Matter – The timeline.

February 9^th 2020 Dr. Aylward Canadian WHO advisor leads WHO delegation to China.

February 24^th WHO files its report with the UN

April 9^th 2020 – US Senator attacks WHO

April-November - CSIS begins to issue dire warnings about China and Covid

April 14^th 2020 – Parliamentary Health Committee summons Dr. Aylward to answer questions.

April 29^th 2020 – WHO backs Dr. Aylward’s reluctance to answers questions.

May 2020 – Epoch Times appears and editorializes that Covid 19 is a Communist Party of China plot.

May 2020 – Liberal Government orders CUPW to deliver Epoch Times across Canada.  

May 29^th - President Trump withdraws funding and membership from WHO claiming it is too influenced by China.

July 9^th 2020 – Lancet and American Medical Association condemn Trump decision

November 2021 – US voters elect Joe Biden as President

January 2021 – President Biden issues executive order to rejoin the WHO.

January 2021 – WHO statistics reveal USA has highest Covid 19 infections in the world. 

Defend Canada Post Employees and Uphold Canadian and World Health Organisation (WHO) Health Guidelines - Part 1

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Two Regina Canada Post employees have been disciplined for refusing to deliver Epoch Times a publication they deem to be racist and flouts Health Canada and WHO efforts to eradicate the new corona virus.

It is not the first time the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) has objected to being compelled to deliver such material. Many Canadians have also objected to receiving Epoch Times in their mailboxes.

In April 2020 the Federal Government ordered CUPW workers to deliver the anti-communist anti-China publication and dismissed the union’s concerns that Epoch Times editorialized that the origin of the new corona virus was a plot by the Communist Party of China.  

Eight months later CUPW’s concerns have been vindicated by the facts as the corona virus is now the number one pre-occupation of Federal and Provincial government health agencies.

Health Minister Hajdu and Provincial Government health authorities and front-line health workers and their unions have repeatedly condemned irresponsible loose talk as damaging to their efforts to save lives.

The anti-communist, anti-China Epoch Times, lavishly produced and distributed in the USA and delivered by Canada Post all over Canada, in its latest issue continues to describe the new corona virus pandemic as a Communist Party of China virus.

Having a choice of standing with its own Minister of Health, CUPW and front-line health workers, the Trudeau-Freeland Liberal Government, Privy Council Office, Justice, Labour and Public Services Ministers stand in support of Epoch Times.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) is defending the workers under the terms of their collective agreement.

The issue is not free speech which CUPW upholds. The issue is Canada Post bias and Federal Government Sinophobia that undermines the country-wide effort to save lives.

Concerned Canadians and in the first place the CLC and all of its affiliates must act to defend the CUPW workers.   Jagmeet Singh and all NDP MP’s and MLA’s must side with CUPW and Canadian Health professionals working tirelessly to save Canadian lives.

Next: US-CSIS obtrusion in a Canadian health emergency.