UPDATED: A Timely Message

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland continues to treat the Canadian public as children, revealing nothing as to what our country's goals are in the upcoming NAFTA renegotiations. The only peek behind the curtain she is allowing is that they are striving for

provisions to strengthen protections for labour and the environment [and] language that sets out ambitions around gender equality...

While those may be laudable goals, notably absent is the promise to do anything about the horribly flawed Chapter 11 Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions that The Council of Canadians reminds us

grant private investors from one country the right to sue the government of another country if it introduces new laws, regulations or practices – be they environmental, health or human rights – that cause corporations’ investments to lose money.

Those provisions

- Protect foreign investors, but no one else. Domestic corporations, civil society, unions or governments do not have the same rights to challenge government decisions.
- Cost $4 million on average to defend a case. Chapter 11 cases are heard by three arbitrators, an elite group of investment lawyers who only look at investment issues, behind closed doors.
- Create a public “chill” that may dissuade governments from enacting policy. An in-depth study showed that policymakers will delay or shelve decisions because of the threat of potential ISDS lawsuits.

Canada has faced 38 Chapter 11 ISDS lawsuits – the most amongst the three NAFTA countries. At the moment, Canada faces ISDS lawsuits claiming $2.6 billion in damages. Canada is the most sued country in the developed world because of NAFTA. According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, two-thirds of the ISDS lawsuits against Canada are over environmental policies.

Now would seem to be a good time to be reminded of how anti-democratic those provisions are, and how all of Freelands talk about improved environmental standards is just that - talk.



UPDATE: According to CTV News, Freeland has announced that Canada wants improvements to Chapter 11:

Specifically, Freeland referred to Chapter 11 -- which involves companies suing governments. She said she wants reforms so that "governments have an unassailable right to regulate in the public interest." This is not to be confused with Chapter 19, which regulates disputes between companies over dumping, in cases like softwood lumber, and which the U.S. administration might seek to eliminate.

I am heartened to hear this, but will withhold any celebration, as it may only be a motherhood statement that will disappear early in the negotiations.

Unfit For Office

I am not writing as much these days, preferring to read, learn and reflect. Perhaps serendipitously, I am currently half-way through a book entitled The Blood of Emmet Till, a wrenching examination of the murder of a 14-year-old black lad visiting Mississippi in the summer of 1955, an event that galvanized the civil rights movement. His murderers were found not guilty due to the systemic racism of the South, a racism that clearly is alive and well today if the the horrible events in Charlotteville, Virgina are any indication.

One thing is certain, however, despite the cant of the white supremacists who are now playing the victim card: their lord and mentor, Donald Trump, is manifestly unfit for office:

Canadians (And Pretty Much The Rest Of The World) Had Better Be Careful

Watch the following and you will see why:

The Outrage Grows

I suspect that, if they had their druthers, both Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and her boss, Justin Trudeau, would much prefer that we trust their administration to always do the right thing and just go on enjoying the always-too-short days of summer. But the electorate can be fickle, even unpredictable, engaging in issues that always threaten to tatter to shreds the carefully-woven cloak of compassion and morality their 'leaders' dress in public with.

In other words, the immoral and disastrous Saudi arms deal is showing no signs of going away.

Now a new player has entered the mix, determined that the deal which so egregiously violates both national and international standards, is ended. Daniel Turp, a Montreal law school professor, says

he's ready to go all the way to the nation's top court to stop the sale of Canadian-made armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia.
... Daniel Turp says he's ready to go all the way to the nation's top court to stop the sale of Canadian-made armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia.

“I am ready to go to the Supreme Court of Canada because the issue at stake — the issue of the sale of weapons — is so fundamental, it’s worth it," Turp told National Observer. "(The government) is not done hearing about us and our fight."

The law would appear to be on Turp's side:

Saudi Arabia is widely denounced as one of the world's worst abusers of human rights and has been censured by the European Union and a number of western countries. Saudi Arabia's embassy in Ottawa didn't immediately respond to a request from National Observer for comment.

​Canadian export controls prohibit the sale of arms to countries with a "persistent record of serious violations" of their own citizens' human rights. Yet the Trudeau government issued export permits in 2015 for the sale of General Dynamics armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia, a $15-billion deal that had been approved by the previous Conservative government.

September 5 is the deadline Turp has given to Freeland:

“We gave her this deadline which seems reasonable and we understood the minister wants to investigate (the matter)...but I hope it’s not just (for the government) to stall and to (claim) again that there’s no reasonable risk that Canadian armoured vehicles are being used (in Saudi Arabia),” he said.

Canadians are fortunate indeed to have a fellow citizen willing to stand in for the rest of us in the pursuit of legal and moral conduct, especially when the government they elected seems to have veered down a very, very mercenary and unprincipled path.

Arrant Nonsense

But then, I know to expect nothing more from an administration run by a clown.

Learn To Be Empathetic

Just kidding.

UPDATED: On Cheap Talk And Photo-Ops

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.
-George Orwell

Regarding the misuse by the Saudis of armoured vehicles Canada sold them, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland says all the right words. She says

... she’s “deeply concerned” about recent videos that appear to show Canadian-made armoured vehicles being used by Saudi Arabia in a crackdown against its own citizens.

.... she has instructed her officials to “urgently” investigate the matter

She said the investigation must be done energetically but also “very carefully”.

And, for good measure, Freeland reassures us that she and her government

are absolutely committed to the defence of human rights and we condemn all violations of human rights,”.

All fine words, to be sure, but talk is cheap, and, as Orwell was fond of pointing out, can be used to defend the indefensible.

Notably absent in the Foreign Affairs Minster's rhetoric is what Canada plans to do about the situation, once it is verified, beyond this rather anodyne statement:

“[W]e will respond accordingly.”

Now, some may take me to task for intimating that except for some expressions of outrage, her Trudeau government will do nothing once the abuse has been verified. The reason I rush to judgement is that the Harper government that brokered the deal, and the Trudeau government that gave its stamp of approval to it, knew the deal with the devil they were getting into.

A piece recently written by Shannon Gormely sets such facts out in stark relief:

Representatives of not one but two Canadian governments – a previous Conservative government that in its steadfast avarice struck a $15-billion arms deal with the devil, and a current Liberal government that in its flippant cynicism signed off on it – are, with great conviction, taking turns promising and demanding the most rigorous of investigations into the alleged war criminal they have each aided and abetted.

They speak of Saudi Arabia, which apparently paused its targeting of schools, hospitals, marketplaces and weddings in Yemen to reload with some made-in-Canada ammo in its own Eastern Province. If video footage is to be believed, Canada, through yet another weapons deal (beyond that $15-billion one), has facilitated a multiple homicide by handing the murder weapons to a killer.

Gormley suggests that with full knowledge of the Saudi proclivity for using weapons against their own people, both the Conservative and Liberal governments should have followed one ironclad and very moral rule:

Don’t sell weapons to murderers.

It doesn’t matter if the murderer offers you a lot of money – lives are worth more than money. It doesn’t matter if the murderer could perhaps find another willing seller – better not, overall, to race to the bottom when the bottom is a mass grave. It doesn’t even matter if the murderer may, in theory, decide to use a weapon to defend your friends after using it to murder innocent people, or if they aren’t as bad as other murderers, or if they ask for the murder weapon really, really nicely. Don’t sell weapons to murderers.

Politicians' talk is cheap, and Trudeau's distracting propensity for peddling sunny selfies cannot conceal an ugly and indisputable fact:

The Liberals and Conservatives allowed Canadian companies to sell weapons to a murderer, and whether or not there is already blood on their hands, there is shame of the highest order.

UPDATE: From the pants-on-fire-department:

... rules call for restrictions on arms exports to countries with a “persistent record of serious violations of the human rights of their citizens.” Shipments are supposed to be blocked unless there is “no reasonable risk” the buyer could turn arms against its own population.

A Canadian arms-export researcher, Ken Epps, says the Saudi arms sales reveal the contradictions with the department of Global Affairs, which is supposed to promote business with other countries but also police military and defence shipments.

Also, Mr. Epps said what’s unfolding now in Saudi Arabia exposes how Ottawa has long failed to meet the test set out in arms-control guidelines: The government is supposed to have “demonstrated there is no reasonable risk” that military goods may be used against the local population before it signs export permits.

In the case of the $15-billion deal, the Liberal government never met this threshold, said Mr. Epps, with Project Ploughshares, a disarmament group. It merely stated it was not aware of any abuse of citizens with Canadian-made goods.

“It appears that the Canadian government isn’t even using its own standards.”

You can read the full story here.