Police Provoke Violence at SPP Protest in Canada (video included)

Where were the protests by Americans over the SPP meeting in New Orleans in April, 2008?  While Canadians fight back……….we sit back.  While Canadians protest, we just conform.  There is a lesson to be learned from watching this video.    Marti

Thanks to Elaine.  This is extremely important.  Click on:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DCRsj06wT64

 

 

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For those unfamiliar with the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) there is good information at http://www.canadians.org/ :

 

The protest at Montebello, Quebec was the SPP Meeting of August 2007.  Following the Montebello meeting,

On April 21, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper traveled to New Orleans to attend the fourth annual North American Leaders’ Summit to discuss progress to the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) with his American and Mexican counterparts. It has been four years since this process began, and no one beyond an elite group of corporate CEOs has been asked how they feel about the SPP—until now.

» Click here to read the report. 

http://www.canadians.org/integratethis/

Not Counting Canadians: The Security and Prosperity Partnership and public opinion

From April 7–10, 2008, the Council of Canadians commissioned Environics Research Group to conduct a survey of Canadians to find out how they feel about the major SPP policy directions and initiatives, including North American regulatory convergence, energy integration with the United States, bulk water exports, and the adoption of U.S.-style security measures in Canada. We also asked whether such a wide-reaching trilateral agreement should be brought to Parliament for a debate and vote.

Download the full report, Not Counting Canadians : The Security and Prosperity Partnership and public opinion (PDF 1.78 MB), or follow the links below:

87% of Canadians agree that Canada should maintain the ability to set its own independent environmental, health and safety standards, even if this might reduce cross-border trade opportunities with the United States. And yet the Harper government is committed to an SPP policy of regulatory harmonization in the areas of consumer product safety, food and drugs, and the environment.

89% of Canadians agree that Canada should establish an energy policy that provides reliable supplies of oil, gas and electricity at stable prices and protects the environment, even if this means placing restrictions on exports and foreign ownership of Canadian supplies. And yet the Harper government is committed to a “market-based” policy of energy integration with the U.S. through the SPP’s North American Energy Working Group.

88% of Canadians agree that Canada should adopt a comprehensive national water policy that recognizes clean drinking water as a basic human right and also bans the bulk export of fresh water. And yet bulk water exports to the U.S. are on the table in SPP discussions.

48% of Canadians do not feel that Canada should harmonize its security policies with the United States, even if this affects our trading relationship. It was the only question on which Canadians were divided. And yet the 2008 Federal budget committed millions of extra dollars to SPP security initiatives anyway.

86% of Canadians agree that the Security and Prosperity Partnership agreement should be debated and submitted to a vote in Parliament. Yet four years later, the debate is nowhere to be seen.

Canadian preferences for policies that run counter to the key SPP priorities listed above show conclusively that Prime Minister Harper does not have a democratic mandate for pursuing this agenda in secretive trilateral talks like the upcoming North American leaders summit in New Orleans. The government must cease all further SPP talks and debate the agreement fully and openly before submitting it to Parliament for a vote.

The Council of Canadians’ five demands for the SPP »

You can help stop the SPP! A citizen’s guide to fighting the Security and Prosperity Partnership »

View the full Environics poll results, Surveying Canadian attitudes towards trade issues and the SPP

For more information about the Council of Canadians, or its campaign against the SPP, please sign up to receive updates above or call us at 1-800-387-7177.

 

 

Canadians Fighting Lockheed/Martin & Loss of Confidence in Government: Part 3

 

SUBJECT: Census Data

 

October 13, 2006

 

TO:

Ivan Felligi

Chief Statistician of Canada

Ivan.P.Fellegi@statcan.ca

 

CC:

Industry Canada

Minister Responsible for Statistics Canada Maxime Bernier minister.industry@ic.gc.ca

613-995-9001

 

Cc: Jacques.Morin@a.statcan.ca; Lyne.St.John@a.statcan.ca

 

CC: Lockheed-Martin

President (Canadian operations)

Martin Munro

martin.munro@lmco.ca

613-599-3270 ext 3498 (Martin’s exec asst, Diane Grandy)

 

Dear Ivan,

 

I am in receipt of your registered letter dated October 3, 2006.

 

It does not address my reason for non-compliance with the census, communicated to you consistently and beginning back in 2003.

 

The reason you provide for the necessity of compliance with the census is not truth. I presume that if your reason is an untruth, it is because you do not have a truthful reason to offer.

 

I would be failing my responsibilities as a citizen were I to bow in cowardice to anyone, civil servant or otherwise, who attempts to intimidate me with the threat of the judicial system – jail time and fines – when there is no reasonable basis.

 

Lockheed-Martin is a large part of the American war machine. I will not, through complicity, add to their financial profits. I communicated this to you more than two years before the census, as did many other Canadians.

 

If I am to be treated equally before the Law, then you must equally refer the thousands of other Canadians who have not complied with the census to the Judicial system. I presume you are doing this.

 

The reason you have provided for the necessity of my compliance, quoting from your letter of October 3, 2006 is: “A compulsory response is required of all respondents because the census is essential for providing the information needed by governments, businesses, researchers and individual Canadians to shed light on issues that are critical to virtually every sector of society. If respondents were to arbitrarily choose whether or not they would answer the census questions, the result would not accurately reflect the characteristics of the population and would therefore not be considered useful or reliable.”

 

I am sorry to say, but that is a load of bull. Most people off the street know it’s not the way statistics work. I find it offensive that citizens are treated as though they are ignorant. In my particular case, I am a graduate of the College of Commerce, University of Saskatchewan. I majored in Quantitative Analysis (Statistics) and graduated with Honours. Every day we are provided with reliable statistical information not based on 100% sampling.

 

I repeat my point: if you must resort to blatant untruths I presume it is because you don’t have a valid argument to offer.

 

Another point I would like to make: you chose to define the Canadian census in a way that necessitated the out-sourcing.

 

On your website you record that the first census in Canada was conducted in 1666, the first national census in 1871. For centuries and decades the Government has defined the census in a way that civil servants had the capability of doing the work. To me, quite frankly, it is prudent to keep one’s work within the limits you are capable of managing.

 

If the Government is not capable of doing that which has been successfully managed by civil servants for decades and centuries, then the answer is to fire those responsible for the mismanagement. The answer is not to knowingly create some over-sized census monster which weakens one’s capabilities and then dictates an attitude of “I am so weakened I must rely on Big Daddy LM to help me out.”

 

Statistics Canada and its employees are to serve the interests of the citizens of Canada. Previous administrations have done that very well. If not, there would have been problems in the past. I am not aware of any. So I suggest that you need to re-think what you are doing.

 

Third and final point: in the last paragraph of your letter you say, “I would like to assure you that the information you provide on your census questionnaire will be kept strictly confidential, …”.

 

I reassure children so they may feel safe and secure. I think you mis-read the situation: I am secure, I am an adult. I do not need to be reassured by you. I will arrive at my own conclusions by observing your actions and by reading what you write.

 

Furthermore, not once in my communications with the Government have I mentioned concerns about the confidentiality of information. I have been clear and explicit in the reason for my non-compliance. You repeat this mantra about confidentiality. Not once have you addressed or attempted to address my explicitly-stated reason for non-compliance: the Statistics Canada contract with Lockheed-Martin enriches a corporation that plays a very large role in the American killing machine.

 

I am not being snooty. I am not “radical”. I come from rural Saskatchewan which is small “c” conservative country. I am “mature”, a Mother of 2 children. I do not believe in increasing the hatred in the world through killing other people and their children. Lockheed-Martin profits from the killing.

 

I don’t know into which pigeon hole you have slotted me. I am able to think.

I can connect the dots between my actions and wider outcomes. I was a member of and benefited from the Girl Guides of Canada for many years. I learned service to community. That community and sisterhood extends to women in all countries of the world. I had the privilege of attending an international camp. I slept in the same tent, cooked, laughed and danced with these women when they and I were young. I really don’t like seeing them killed, as in Iraq. That’s killed, as in dead. Why would I participate in, or be a collaborator with Lockheed-Martin? Perhaps you have not read the Washington Post, October 11? 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred (research overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health). The killing, once started, does not stop.

 

You were told by thousands of Canadians that Lockheed-Martin is a large part of the American war machine. You made a bad decision to “out-source”.

 

Your letter of October 3 is an attempt to coerce me through the threat of jail time and fines. Were my plate not full at the moment, did I not have more important priorities, I would be researching the avenues through which to lay charges, to “turn the matter over to the Department of Justice”, as you say. So that you might be tried for your tactics vis-a-vis me.

 

Yours truly,

Sandra Finley

Saskatoon, SK S7N 0L1

306-373-8078