Monthly Archives: September 2016

TPP, CETA, TiSA yet again

26th September 2016

To the Right Honourable Justin Trudeau,

Prime Minister of Canada.

Concerning: CETA, TPP and TiSA.

I have written now nine times to your Minster of Trade concerning one or all of these investment agreements and have received no response from her at all, and am therefore writing directly to you. As a Canadian I am somewhat miffed by this lack of response and as the interim Leader of the Canadian Action Party I am disgusted by the discourtesy of a highly paid member of your Cabinet.

Over the years Canada has been an exporter of a huge variety of items, from wheat to beef and pork, all manner of natural resources and innovation. We did not need special agreements – we simply did it. Mulroney’s FTA and the offshoot NAFTA changed all that with respect to Mexico and the USA and made trade more about corporate profits and their protection. During Jean Chretien’s time trade boomed because it was done on a personal and direct basis, with him going overseas with Canadian business men/women in tow talking directly to overseas counterparts. Did it work? Oh yes it did, we had a healthy surplus in trade in 2006.

Then came the era of destruction when everything from parliament to sovereignty and the rule of law was under severe attack, and the dark era of investment agreements disguised as and called trade agreements took place. Every one of them had within it an investor state dispute mechanism which had nothing to do with trade at all, but everything to do with protecting the perceived profits of corporations from those other countries.

Has this process worked? Well, we now have a huge trade deficit and have been taken before a corporate dispute tribunal more than any other country in the world. The reality or legality of the claims is immaterial as shown in the case of Abitibi Bowater. They had water and timber rights granted in the early 1900s by Newfoundland and Labrador for as long as they had an operating mill there employing Canadians. When they closed their last mill in 2008 those timber and water rights were taken back by the province as the conditions for those rights were no longer being fulfilled. The Harper Government of the time did not let the NAFTA claim go to arbitration but instead simply and quietly paid Abitibi Bowater $130 million rather than fight such a ridiculous claim and by this action deliberately opened the floodgates.

Worse yet is the fact that Canadian based companies such as Lone Pine Power of Calgary saw the advantage of incorporation in Delaware USA and when their intention to frack and drill in the St Lawrence River was rejected by Quebec because, among other things, a proper environmental study had not been done, Lone Pine Power lodged a tribunal claim against Canada for $250 million for perceived lost profits

Where exactly does trade fit into this picture?

Your Minister is so excited that CETA – which she erroneously called “a gold plated trade deal” – is not dead as it should be but has been resuscitated by the creation of a new court to deal with perceived profit loss disputes. I have asked for details of this new court such as where it will be based, who will provide the judges and lawyers and under what jurisprudence and at what cost to Canada, because we always seem to end up paying for these things , and how it will affect our court system and will that new court overrule our Supreme Court. I have, as usual, received not one word in answer, nor can I find answers on the Ministry of Trade website.

Perhaps you can tell me.

My understanding is that the Germans are not too happy about this new CETA court and rightly ask the same questions as to how it will affect their court system. The American equivalent of CETA (TTIP) is apparently dead so why is your Trade Minster and indeed the Government of Canada pursuing CETA instead of a real “trade” agreement?

Both CETA, the TPP and TiSA are extensions of Stephen Harper’s desire to subjugate Canada to the profits of international corporations. The Harper government was mercifully rejected and an ungrateful nation will now reward him for his treasonous behaviour with millions of dollars instead of a gold watch as he has quit his MP job to become a lobbyist; not of the Federal government I trust, as that would be contrary to the Lobbying Act.

The question, Prime Minister, is why are you and your Trade Minister continuing with these Harper government perfidious investment agreements, and where exactly is your mandate to turn our ability to make laws and regulations to protect both Canada and Canadians from corporate greed into an inability to do so, thereby destroying any sovereignty left after Harper? I actually think you were granted a mandate to scrap them along with Bill C51.

I have to tell you also Prime Minister that sunny ways and sunny days have turned to very dark and turbulent skies on this file and I am very fearful for my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. I did not come to Canada in 1967 to raise a Canadian branch of the family here in BC only to have them subjected to the greedy whims of some CEO somewhere in the world while their country, Canada, has its sovereignty given over to international corporate interests.

Canada is soo much better than that.

Jeremy Arney

Interim leader of the Canadian Action Party

 

cc by mail to:

Minister of Trade, Minister of Justice and Minister of Foreign Affairs.

 

Voting reform in Canada?

In Canada we have been presented with an opportunity to bring some real democracy to our political scene, and it appears to me that we are going to pass on that opportunity.

We have a three party system here with a Quebec only based party and a fringe party – the Greens – making up the MP mix.

We have 22 registered political parties in Canada so how is it that only 5 parties are sharing the MPs?

The answer is as old as the hills really and that is power and money.

We call our system of government parliamentary democracy, which in essence means that we have a parliament that represents the people, but does it? Oh there are facts, figures and percentages quoted often to support the concept that it does, but how often does your MP manage to get anything done on a national level with which you approve or even give consent. I will not deny that on an individual problem they may be able to get help for you from the government,. But that largely depends on the MP and the party to which they belong. I remember when I approached Dr. Wallace who was for years a progressive conservative MP for Oak Bay about a problem he flatly told me there was nothing he could do because he was not a member of the government. That is a perfect example of lack of willingness by an MP to act democratically on any level simply because he was not a member of the government. Point here is that all our members of Parliament claim democracy for Canada when in fact we have probably never had such a state.

What we have had since our inception is a two or three party system of governance which is entirely partisan and self serving for those parties. From this we have developed a very finely tuned system of preserving that status quo.

Before we take a serious look at the voting itself, lets look at the process leading up to that vote.

The ability to have a candidate in every riding depends on the money available to a party to develop the machinery at every constituency level, and today that is only partly through individual donations from people and corporation. After each election EC refunds to five parties a large portion of their expenses thus giving them a huge bank account to run the next election. Is there some logic behind this? Of course not from the people of Canada’s point of view because they are paying for it, but from the parties who have developed this system of huge expenses and refunds it makes perfect sense that in essence the taxpayers should pay for their election expenses.

To illustrate what I mean, in 2011 there were 17 parties which had candidates in the election. Of these only 5 parties received a refund from Elections Canada to the total tune of $33,262,653.00.  (see table below from  EC website).

This money came from EC and who pays for EC? Yes that’s right you do. The remaining 12 parties received nothing and had all exhausted their finances and had to rebuild for 2015.

Then in the actual campaigns themselves at almost every town hall across the country “all candidates meetings” actually means the Cons,. Libs, NDP and Greens (and of course the Bloq in Quebec). For a smaller party to get on the stage is an extreme rarity. Even in 2015 when the conservative party candidate did not bother or was told not to to appear at town halls in Esquimalt BC a communist candidate who attended the meetings was totally refused entry to the stage or to even make a presentation to the attendees. The “rules” of participation are set by the holder of the town hall (ie a church or Chamber of Commerce) and are not governed by EC. There is only one way to change this and that involves the people of each riding to walk out of a meeting that does no offer every candidate the same opportunity to speak as would happen in a democracy, or in fact would be suggested by the “all candidates” designation. Problem is that these small parties have some very people oriented and good ideas and therefore must be excluded in order to protect those who only speak the party line.

Advertising is very expensive and here again the Broadcast Arbiter has stacked the deck to favour those major parties and give them the lions share of the advertising that CBC must carry free during an election. Small parties get on average 5 minutes each split between radio and TV, whereas those parties which can well afford to pay for their own get 80 – 100 minutes of free time. This is of course upside down and only further hinders democracy here in Canada.

What this all means is that some 17 registered political parties in Canada are largely excluded from the election process by design.

If this exclusion continues what difference does it make how the vote is conducted?

However that process is being looked at by both a special committee which is working hard and has done so to their credit all summer. Following a decade of completely dysfunctional committees this one has an opportunity to show Canadians that MPs can actually work together for Canadians. After much nonsense about a referendum from the Conservative party members of the committee they too have finally realised that this subject is important, and have started to actually take part rather than distract from the mandate at hand. Problem is that the whole subject is being conducted on the basis of there only being 3 parties, along with the Bloq and Greens, to be considered. In other words any proposal will simply remix the mix we presently have which is no longer functional as far a democracy is concerned.

For example STV allows for up to 5 candidates to be chosen for a larger constituency, so here in Canada each constituency would have an Lib, Con, NDP, Green and one other member of parliament- if that figure of 5 stands and that is not likely as it would open the door for a small party outside Quebec.. Now that sounds like stalemate to me, and anyone who knows chess knows that is not a great outcome.

MMP allows for party list to be chosen from as a secondary feature but that list would perhaps only be presented by a party with a 5-10% of the vote at the last election…so we are back to a list from 3 parties only as even the Greens did not manage 5% of the vote in 2015.

See how this is like a mathematical loop?

All we will get from this as it is playing out so far is a shuffling of the three party deck.

Seventeen small registered parties thought that sunny days and voting reform would help them to finally have some small level of representation in our Canadian House of Commons, to represent their members views and definitely bring new ideas to a stale establishment stuck in the mold of indifference to the people and acquiescence to the corporate lobbyists.

I fear that once again this chance at a new democracy will be sidelined in favour of partisan party politics and in defence of what those parties have.

I am still wondering why the Minister in charge of all this did not appear in Victoria as advertised but instead went to Saturna Island with a total population topping off at 350. Lack of venue? Maybe but we have a magnificent legislature building here in Victoria which is only used for about 7-10 days in any BC Liberals calendar year and I am sure that could have been a very good venue.

 

Jeremy Arney

 

Elections Canada Online | Total Paid Election Expenses and Reimbursements, by Registered Political Party – 2011 General Election

Total Paid Election Expenses and Reimbursements, by Registered Political Party – 2011 General Election

Registered political party Number of candidates Total paid election expenses ($) Authorized limit of election expenses ($) Reimbursement ($)
Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada 7 39,024 467,969 0
Bloc Québécois 75 5,344,678 5,373,818 2,669,961
Canadian Action Party 12 16,954 840,226 0
Christian Heritage Party of Canada 46 41,960 3,202,184 0
Communist Party of Canada 20 8,680 1,358,384 0
Conservative Party of Canada 307 19,457,420 20,955,089 9,728,710
First Peoples National Party of Canada 1 0 62,702 0
Green Party of Canada 304 1,924,478 20,764,345 962,239
Liberal Party of Canada 308 19,483,917 21,025,793 9,741,959
Libertarian Party of Canada 23 154 1,743,667 0
Marijuana Party 5 0 339,676 0
Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada 70 3,511 5,162,705 0
New Democratic Party 308 20,319,567 21,025,793 10,159,784
Pirate Party of Canada 10 1,207 757,193 0
Progressive Canadian Party 9 1,424 765,502 0
Rhinoceros Party 14 0 982,437 0
United Party of Canada 3 0 241,407 0
Western Block Party 4 0 333,955 0
TOTAL 1,526 66,642,974 105,402,845 33,262,653

There must be something in the water in Ottawa

1st September 2016

Here we go into Alice’s looking glass again with Justin and Bill to my complete amazement, disgust and lack of approval. Seeking their god(s) approval I suppose and talking us further into the rabbit hole of debt.

The Infrastructure Bank of Asia?

We are going to invest in this?

Apart from the currency of choice how is this different from the IMF and their rapacious interest rates?

Canadian Infrastructure Bank?

We are going to create one of our own?

I saw no money set aside in the 2016 Budget for these two banks so by what sleight of hand will the money be created?

I have no problem with investing in Canada.

I have no problem with using the Bank of Canada to create money for that investment; but I do have an enormous problem with borrowing money from international banks and investors to create an unnecessary bank for our infrastructure, and borrowing money to invest in a foreign infrastructure bank, on which we will be paying compounding interest rates.

We knew that Harper’s Government, acting as if it was the Government of Canada, did not have a single economist among their ranks, and they only managed to come vaguely close to balancing the budget by selling Canada’s assets at bargain basement prices, and really had no clue how to finance anything. The fact that the Liberals promised to invest in Canada instead of selling it off originally indicated to me that they had some plan and at least one economist in their midst.

Oh boy was I wrong!

At the Canadian Action Party we believe this:

“What is physically possible, desirable and morally right, we can make it financially possible through the Bank of Canada.”

With the exception of the Libertarians every other registered but unrepresented Canadian Political party also believes this, but those parties which have representation in the House of Commons believe that we should be increasing debt instead to international banks and investors, paying them compounding interest rates to boot. The payment of the interest on our national debt is the single largest payment Canada has to make year after year and still this government of ours wants to increase that debt and the increasing interest payments. There is no way to realistically leave our children any sort of future in this country if we continue with this height of absurdity.

Our grand fathers created and left us with the Bank of Canada, something some 70 cities and counties and 8 or so States in the USA want to replicate by having proposals for creating public banking on their November Ballots this year; and yet there is no political party represented in our House of Commons which can see the value of what we have and is actually still mandated to do what it did so well from 1935 – 1974 when out national debt was $22 billion owed to ourselves through the Bank of Canada. Today our national debt stands at over $1, trillion with compounding interest owed on that to international banks and investors.

http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/canada

Tell me this makes sense.

Tell me that the MPs of Canada have not been subdued, threatened or bribed in some way to accept this on behalf of their children.

Tell me that you agree with this increasing and absolutely unnecessary debt.

Tell me that you agree with these infrastructure banks when we already have our own Bank of Canada which can do all these things here at home much more efficiently and cheaply .

Tell me that you want these problems of national indebtedness to be passed on to your children.

But better than that tell me that you want the stooges in Ottawa to start using their heads instead of their fears and act on behalf of their employers…you…and engage the Bank of Canada again to exercise it’s mandate to finance Canada’s needs.

Whatever hopes I entertained that we would see change with Justin Trudeau and his Liberals and their sunny days and ways has evaporated like the dew on a summer morning.

Jeremy Arney