Paper prepared for the
Cuba/Venezuela/Mexico/North America
Labor Conference: IV

Panels: 1) FTAA/NAFTA: the Alba Alternative -
Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua 

2) Immigration

December 8 and 9, 2007,
Tijuana, Mexico

 by Arnold August, Canada

The program for FTAA being promoted by Washington grew out of NAFTA. The trade union central Canadian Labour Congress, representing over 3 million workers across Canada puts forward nine reasons to oppose the FTAA:

1)      The FTAA strengthens the hand of corporations as they can move, with no constraints, to low cost locations, and impose their conditions on government, labour and communities;

2)      The  FTAA negotiators are unaccountable to the public, parliamentarians are also excluded;

3)      The FTAA puts investors’ rights first, giving multinationals the power to sue national governments for passing laws that negatively affect profits;

4)      The FTAA says nothing about labour, civil, political, social and cultural rights of citizens:

5)      The FTAA sees public services (public education, health care and water services) as big business opportunities rather than as basic human needs;

6)      The FTAA is weighted to benefit the larger industrialized economies leaving the poorer developing countries to struggle to pay off massive, unmanageable debts;

7)      The FTAA enforces structural adjustments, ineffective policies which damage economies and worsen poverty by diverting resources to debt repayments rather than investing in vital areas of environment, health care or education;

8)      The FTAA encourages “factory farming” as well as other resource extraction practices that worsen ecological damage;

9)      The FTAA jeopardizes sustainable agriculture and food security throughout the Americas by exposing small farmers to unfair competition from subsidized exports.

The Vancouver, Canada-based social organisation called No One Is Illegal states that “since the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement [FTA- the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and USA – the precursor of NAFTA] in 1985, wage growth in Canada has been almost flat and the majority of jobs are un-unionized and part time.  Since the implementation of NAFTA in 1994, the bottom 20% of Canadian families saw their incomes fall by 7.6%, while the top 20% saw their incomes rise by 16.8%. In 2004, the average earnings of the richest 10% of Canada’s families raising children was 82 times that earned by the poorest 10% of Canada’s families. This is despite the fact that that most households are clocking in almost 200 hours more than nine years ago. Similarly in the US, according to Forbes Magazine, the largest employer is Wal-Mart, whose average wage is $7.50 per hour. In Mexico, the number of Mexicans living in severe poverty has grown by four million since NAFTA and the real value of the minimum wage has dropped by 23%.         

The costs of environmental degradation have amounted to 10% of the annual GDP. With the rise in agribusiness, more than 50,000 Mexican farmers are expelled from their lands annually. Many of these 1.5 million displaced Mexican farmers have migrated to North America to work in low-paying sectors such as construction, agriculture and factories.”

There are many examples from Canada to illustrate what trade unions, social and political organisations are claiming. However, I would like to bring to your attention one issue which illustrates the negative impacts of NAFTA/FTAA on the working people and small farmers in the participating countries.

Since 1996 the Canadian government has operated the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (CSAWP). This program was initiated in response to severe labour shortages experienced by big farm employers.  Since the application of NAFTA in the 1990s the CSAWP has come in very handy for those profiting from the situation. NAFTA has devastated the economies of the south; national industries, particularly agriculture, have been destroyed. According to the Canadian-based coalition of labour, social activists and researchers, Justicia for Migrant Workers, most of the workers who participate in CSAWP are dispossessed or struggling small farmers from poorer rural regions that are forced to migrate for a living wage. Sending countries such as Mexico have more often than not easily complied with neoliberal restructuring despite its disastrous effects. For instance reform of Article 27 in the Mexican Constitution privatized ejido land that was protected as commonly held land among small farmers. 

Laura Carlsen of the Americas Policy Program wrote on October 31, 2007 that “in the early nineties, when NAFTA was still but a gleam in the eye of presidents Carlos Salinas de Gortari and George Bush Sr., the atmosphere in Mexican political and business circles was positively euphoric. It was a time of major structural reforms in Mexico, and NAFTA was to be the crowning glory of Mexico’s modernization, its ticket into the First World. Proponents predicted that the agreement would be a win-win deal: consumers would get cheaper food, producers would become more efficient, and immigration would decrease as the developing economy of Mexico converged with the world’s economic superpower to the North. Fourteen years later, we see nearly the opposite. As trade between the two countries has grown, so have the huge gaps in how people live. Massive agricultural imports have displaced an estimated two million farmers, as subsidized grains from the United States take over their local and regional markets...”

Neilan Barnes, Professor at California State University at long Beach gave a Conference in Toronto at York University on November 15, 2007 on Canada-USA-Mexico Integration: Do Civil Society Transnational Networks lead to health Policy and Health Service convergence? Quoting from Immigration /Labor News, August 15, 2007, it was pointed out that “for some rural Mexicans, working in Canada is a viable alternative to the low pay of Mexico’s northern borderlands or the dangerous crossing into the United States...According to a Mexican congressional report, an estimated 15,000 Mexicans labor as agricultural guest workers for up to eight months stints in Canada. Now, the attractiveness of the Canadian option might be fading too...isolated workers lack access to the Canadian health system, worker’s compensation and interpreters...” 

The number of migrant temporary farm workers coming to Canada has increased considerably. Around 20,000 workers mainly from Mexico but also from other countries in Central America and the Caribbean are brought to Canada every year. The terms of the working and living conditions are worked out through CSAWP in collaboration with the sending countries such as Mexico and representatives of the big Canadian farm owners. Migrant workers and their representatives are not invited to attend. Employers request workers through the Canadian governmental agencies. Migrant sending countries such as Mexico select and screen the workers. Workers and employers sign a contract that outlines respective rights and obligations that generally ranges between 3 to 8 months. Workers that win the approval of employers are `named’ and requested back on the farms. The Canadian-based organisation Justicia for Migrant Workers goes on to explain that “workers are sent home as soon as their contracts expire. They have to report back to their home countries with evaluation forms from their employers. A negative report can result in suspension from the program. Workers also have to report about the treatment they received from their Canadian employers. Most migrant farm workers prefer to provide a neutral report to avoid delays in being processed to return to work in Canada. Migrant workers face an array of issues that the CSAWP, the Canadian government and participating governments fail to address. First of all, migrant workers are painfully separated from their families and communities to make a living. They are often isolated in rural communities where life revolves solely around the farm. Language barriers, mobility problems and cultural differences manifesting themselves in outright racism segregate and exclude migrant workers from the rest of their host rural communities. Migrant workers perform rigorous and often dangerous rural labour that few Canadians choose to do. Many workers are reluctant to stand up for their rights since employers find it easier to send workers home (at their own expense) instead of dealing with their serious concerns. Fear and the structure of the CSAWP (i.e. lack of appeal mechanisms, high turn-over rate of migrant workers and lack of monitoring) silence the struggles of migrant workers. Some workers never return to the program due to mistreatment. Others attempt to relocate to other farms. But most of the time workers are not granted transfers because it requires approval from the employer in question and consulate liaison officers. Many workers remain silent out of fear from being expelled from the program. It is also important to note that some migrant workers claim to have positive work experiences in Canada.

However, in our numerous visits and outreach in migrant communities we repeatedly heard forceful phrases such as, `they treat us worse than animals!’ Migrant workers, mostly from the Caribbean, make references to slavery in explaining their situation in Canada...”  

In this situation, the Canadian United Food and Commerce Workers Union (UFCW) representing 240,000 workers in Canada and their Support centers in the local rural areas are doing an excellent job in most difficult conditions to unionize and defend the rights of these workers. Here are just a few of the many injustices in provinces across Canada that the union has document in its latest 2006/2007 annual report by National President Wayne Hanley entitled The Status of Migrant farm Workers in Canada:

“Work Accident, Repatriation, Clarksburg, Ontario

While loading machinery onto a truck, the worker displaced two vertebrae. The doctor prescribed an operation but the worker was pressured to return to Mexico by both the employer and the [Mexican] consulate.

Breaking Contract, Mistreatment, Sickness, Prince Edward, Ontario

A worker at this farm reported that they did not have potable water and eight workers suffered itching skin, eye irritation, stomach aches, and diarrhoea. One worker was seriously ill as a result. The employer provides no facility to wash their clothes or pots for cooking and is aggressive and insulting toward them.

Anti-Union Reprisal, Slander, Québec

As of 2006, this worker had six years with the same employer. In the airport he informed our staff that the night before returning to Mexico, the employer requested that four of the workers sign a letter to renounce their wish to be represented by UFCW Canada. They refused and subsequently the employer wrote in their letter of recommendation that they had behaviour problems and did not request them back for 2007.

Retention of Documents, Violation of Contract, British Columbia

The employer demands piecework although the contract specifies workers will be paid by the hour, as reported by workers in 2007. The employer confiscated their documents, and did not provide beds, only sleeping bags. The Canadian workers at this farm must fill three boxes per day and they receive $50 per box; the Mexican workers are required to fill seven boxes per day at $17 per box.

The United Food and Commerce Workers Union (UFCW) Migrant Workers Support Centre staff is dedicated to helping migrant farm workers whenever and wherever they are able. UFCW staffs  have made a difference to the lives of thousands of migrant workers. While the UFCW centres have had great successes in remedying many problems, the union is concerned for the many workers who have no access to the support centres. There are many issues that remain unreported because workers are either not able to contact the union centres, are unaware that that the support services exist, or fear being sent home (repatriation) if they speak out. When migrant workers raise issues of concern to their employer, they do so knowing they face the very real risk of being sent home under the CSAWP’s repatriation provisions. Under these provisions, workers can and are sent home by their employer, often with just a day or two’s notice, for any reason. This ability of employers to have workers repatriated for any reason is perhaps the most significant negative aspect of CSAWP. In essence, it provides a blanket of immunity for employers to treat workers as they choose, since any worker who tries to object can be immediately repatriated.

The 15 Recommendations to changes in the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (CSAWP) by the union are just and should be supported by unions in Canada and Mexico, the main countries involved. Here are some of these 15 recommendations by the UFCW union for changes to the CSAWP:

* Provide a transparent, impartial process of appeal, available to all workers, before any decision to repatriate is made, including the appointment of a representative from UFCW Canada to fully participate in this appeal process on behalf of the workers.

* Comply with the rulings of the Supreme Court of Canada and make it a condition of the CSAWP that provinces bringing migrant workers to Canada allow these workers the right to the freedom to associate and bargain collectively.

* Inspect all worker housing prior to and following their occupancy. Random inspections should also be mandated and occur regularly throughout the season, and employers who are found to be in non-compliance with standards for adequate housing be terminated from the CSAWP. Immediately ban the practice of housing workers above or adjacent to greenhouses in recognition of the obvious dangers associated with living in buildings housing chemicals, fertilizers, boilers, industrial fans and/or heaters.

* Immediately terminate from CSAWP any employer found to be holding the personal documents, particularly passports and health cards, of migrant workers. Amend the program to ensure that this is a direct contravention of the program whether the withholding of the documents is done by the employer or through the consulate.

* Recognize UFCW Canada as an equal partner in negotiations of the CSAWP agreement on behalf of migrant workers.

* Canada must not wait any longer to sign the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, which has been adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.” 

The Quebec Union, the Féderation des travailleurs du Québec (FTQ [The Federation of Quebec Workers] in their Memoire presented September 6, 2007 to the Quebec provincial government Commission on the Future of the Agriculture and Food Producing Industry in Quebec included the UFCW union Annual Report, quoting in full the 15 recommendations of which several are cited above. The Quebec union central severely criticized the CSAWP and both the Canadian and Quebec governments. The union indicated that even though the issue is in the realm of the Canadian government’s responsibilities, the Quebec government Commission should take a stand on the unjust conditions of the migratory farm workers in Quebec. 

The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) is a further step in the application of NAFTA. The SPP was made famous last summer during the secret meeting held in Montebello, Quebec, Canada between the leaders of the US, Canada and Mexico. One of the side positive effects of this is the constantly increasing collaborations between trade unions in Canada, the USA and Mexico.  What is SPP?

Teresa Healy from the Canadian Labour Congress addressed the Canadian Federation of Students’ annual meeting, on May 26, 2007 on the following topic - The Security and Prosperity Partnership [SPP]: Another Neo-Liberal threat to Democracy. She pointed out that “the SPP was established in 2005. Since the fight over NAFTA was such a `bruising battle’ as one U.S. official called it, there was no appetite for another fight with civil society, so the North American integration went underground.”

The  Vancouver, Canada-based social movement nooneisillegal.org wrote that “the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) was founded in  March 2005 at a summit of the Heads of State of Canada, the US, and Mexico. SPP is not an official treaty; it is not an official law; rather, it is being presented as a vague `dialogue based on shared values’. Therefore it has been able to escape any public scrutiny and will never be debated in the House of Commons [Canada’s Parliament]... The SPP is a NAFTA-plus-Homeland-Security model [U.S.]. The founding premise of the SPP is that an agenda of economic free trade and national security will result in human prosperity. Yet we know that the so-called `prosperity’ of previous free trade agreements such as NAFTA have only brought corporate prosperity, with increasing rates of poverty and displacement for the majority of people....No item – not Canadian water, not Mexican oil, not American anti-dumping laws – is off the table; rather, contentious or intractable issues will simply require more time to ripen politically.” – Leaked Minutes of a 2004 meeting of the Task Force on the Future of North America. The North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) was launched as part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) in June 2006. It is the only formal advisory board to the SPP and is made up of 30 corporate leaders from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico with ten advisors from each of the SPP signatory states.

Minutes from a January 10, 2006 tri-national “Public-Private Sector Dialogue on the Security and Prosperity Partnership” reveal exactly why the NACC was created – to `engage substantively and pragmatically on trade and security issues without undue deference to political sensitivities.’ A September 13, 2006 story in [Canada’s] Maclean’s magazine describes NACC as a ‘cherry-picked group of executives who were whisked to Cancun in March by the leaders of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, and asked to come up with a plan for taking North American integration beyond NAFTA.’

I would like to present to you today one example of how the SPP operates and the very positive reaction of unions from Canada, USA and Mexico against the plan. The example is the use of water and other sources of energy.

While the secret Montebello meeting was taking place and protected by hundreds of police against demonstrators, on August 18, 2007, 70 representatives of energy sector workers’ unions and social movements from the three countries partnered with the following result:

A Joint Solidarity Statement, August 18, 2007 of the North American Energy sector workers meeting was adopted and entitled:  For the democratic, national development of North America's energy resources

 Close to 40 energy workers’ unions and social movements from the 3 countries were represented. The following is only a partial list.

Energy Workers’ Unions

  Union nacional de trabajadores de confianza de la industria petrolera  (UNTCIP)

  Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME)

  Alianza nacional democratica de los trabajadores Petroleros (ANDTP)

  Sindicato único de trabajadores de industria nuclear (SUTIN)

  Comité nacional de la energía

  Frente autentico del trabajo (FAT)

• United Steelworkers (USW)

• All the main trade union centrals from Canada and Quebec participated as did the affiliates directly involved in the energy sector of the economy.

Networks and social movements

  Quebec Network on Continental Integration (RQIC)

  Mexican Action Network on Free Trade (RMALC)

  Common Frontiers - Canada

  Alliance for Responsible Trade (ART-USA)

Solidarity Statement. The following are excerpts from this statement:  “Energy workers from Mexico, the United States, Canada and Quebec together with our social partners in civil society and the hemispheric solidarity movements, declare to our respective members and citizens in each country our commitment to democratic, national development of our energy industries.   We are meeting at the time of the Montebello summit of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) that links our countries in a new political and economic framework for continental integration based on the security agenda of the George Bush presidency.   This agenda has the complicity of President Calderon and Prime Minister Harper, but has no democratic mandate from the peoples of Mexico, Canada or the United States... We reject the security agenda of the SPP which links NAFTA and trade to the limiting of civil liberties, mass surveillance, racial profiling and the failed and disastrous military and foreign policies of George W. Bush... However, as energy workers we are compelled first of all to respond to the SPP energy agenda.   Through the SPP and the North American Energy Working Group, the governments of Mexico, United States and Canada have formed an unprecedented collaboration with energy corporations to promote the continental integration of our energy industries and infrastructures...:  oil, natural gas, electricity, nuclear power, hydrocarbons, science and technology and regulatory agencies. The SPP-corporate agenda substitutes continental corporate rule at the expense of national and local plans of development... We share a concern that the promotion of bio-fuels and ethanol puts at risk agricultural economic stability and food sovereignty in North America.  North American farmers and consumers must not be sacrificed to facilitate unsustainable, speculative investments in new bio-fuel industries. Energy workers in each our countries have fundamental and urgent concerns over the misguided energy policies that are being pursued in the context of the SPP.”

The same Joint Solidarity Statement of the North American Energy sector workers’ meeting points out many of the very negative effects. Here are just a few examples:

United States:

    Bush/Exxon opposition to world efforts to combat global climate change

    Rising energy costs for working families and industry

Mexico:

    Unconstitutional privatization of Mexico's constitutionally protected energy industries

    Threat to privatize PEMEX

    Oil industry operating at 80% capacity and petrochemical industry at 50% capacity

    United States prohibitions on development of Mexico's nuclear sector

    Trade union freedoms for energy workers

 Canada:

    Failure to meet Kyoto targets

    Failure to meet Canadian energy security needs

The Joint Solidarity Statement goes on to declare that “the energy industries in each of our countries must be guided by the common principles of democracy and sustainability...  Sustainability and national and local development of energy resources cannot take place without democratic involvement of workers and communities.  Energy policy will not achieve these goals without the voices of energy worker unions and communities ...We commit to forge a new hemispheric worker to worker solidarity to ensure the growth of our unions and the negotiation of strong collective agreements with employers... We commit ourselves to establish co-ordination between this forum and the Energy Workers Forum of Latin America and the Caribbean to share experiences and joint actions with respect to energy integration plans. We will continue to work with our social partners in the hemispheric solidarity movements to bring workers of each country together and to jointly challenge the harmful consequences of unfair trade agreements and neo-Liberal globalization policies. Energy policies will shape our world in the 21st century. These policies will lead either to democratic, sustainable development or to global environmental disaster and new wars of aggression.   Energy workers, their unions and social partners in Mexico, Canada and the United States will act together for democratic, sustainable national development of our energy resources.”

 

 

The application of the SPP also has far reaching affects in that it can further endanger the freedom, liberty, privacy and lives of Canadian citizens. For example on August 23, 2007, the US government issued its over-fly policy to Canada. Under the guise of security, Canadian airlines companies  leaving Canada and flying over US territory to Cuba and other countries in Central America and South America, will have to carry out the following: Seventy two hours before departure, the airline company must communicate to US officials the passengers’ full name, date of birth, gender, and full itinerary. This list will be considered the original list and will have to be updated just before takeoff to take into account last minute flight purchases. According to a CBC (Canadian state-run television and radio) report on October 11, 2007, the Air Transport Association of Canada president Fred Gaspair responded in a  surprisingly hostile but appropriate way: “’Let’s say...they don’t like the person in [seat] 12C, they [US] could then scramble fighter aircraft; they could force us to land.’” In late November I called Air Canada, (Canada’s main airline company) and asked them if they are applying this order from the US.  Air Canada responded to me declaring “no”. The Canadian government has taken a public stand on November 22, 2007 through The Honourable Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities:   "The Government of Canada is concerned about the implications of the U.S. proposed Secure Flight Program; and we are working hard to find a solution," said Minister Cannon. "Canada and the United States have long worked closely together to promote aviation security, and this cooperation has greatly intensified since the tragic events of September 11, 2001. We want to continue this spirit of cooperation, which includes an assessment of threat and risk, recognizes existing security initiatives and values privacy and individual rights. For these reasons, it is imperative that we provide the U.S. with our comments and suggestions on this proposed regulation."

The official comments represent the Government of Canada's position and recommendations on the proposed U.S. Secure Flight Program. They include an assertion that, in light of existing strong security protocols and security initiatives and ongoing and growing cooperative capacity to address security challenges, all flights between Canada and third countries that overfly the U.S. should be exempt from the U.S. Secure Flight program.

In the light of the ever-increasing close ties between the current Canadian government and the U.S. and in the wake of the SSP, Canadians have to be vigilant and keep an eye on the Canadian government to assure that the US over-fly policy is completely rejected. We owe this to ourselves as well as to other people in North America and Caribbean and South America. One can imagine the effects this will have to tourism from Canada to Cuba, Canada being the first source of tourism to Cuba, if this scare policy and intimidation would take hold. Taking this into account, I believe that the Canadian government should be even more firm and explicit, and not give in to US pressures.

As part of the offensive to increase ties with Latin America to the detriment of the peoples of that part of the world, the current Canadian government is attempting to establish a Canada-Columbia Free Trade Agreement. However, trade union centrals in Canada and Quebec are pointing out forcefully that this is a wrong move on the part of the Harper government. The unions and social movements are attempting to pressure the Canadian government to reverse its mistaken stand. For example, the Canadian Labour Congress issued a statement on November 7, 2007:
“Why a Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is a Big Mistake: Ten reasons why Canada should immediately stop negotiations of a free trade agreement with Colombia; the worst human rights violator in the Americas. [The following are several of the 10 reasons]:

* Colombia is the country where more trade unionists are killed than in the rest of the world combined. Four hundred (400) union officers and rank-and-file members have been brutally and systematically murdered during the administration of President Alvaro Uribe Velez. Of these crimes there have been only 7 convictions. In 2006, 72 unionists were murdered,  23 so far in 2007. Labour activists are targeted by those who believe organizing unions is a subversive activity linked to the guerrillas. In those cases where the perpetrator is known, government-supported paramilitary organizations or the armed forces or the police are most often responsible...

* Nine hundred and fifty-five (955) cases of extrajudicial executions by the army over the last five years have been documented. The numbers are rising. Colombian soldiers are accused of executing peasants in rural areas and passing them off as leftist rebels killed in combat.

* Forty (40) lawmakers including senators, governors and mayors representing the President's political coalition are under investigation by the country's Attorney-General and Supreme Court for alleged relationships with paramilitary chiefs (labelled as terrorists by Canada) and collusion in elections fraud. Seventeen (17) are in jail together with Uribe's former head of secret services and campaign manager and high-ranking military officials.

* Journalists, electoral candidates, human rights workers, community and union leaders and those who challenge President Uribe's policies are accused by the President of being supporters of the FARC guerrillas. Such accusations are often followed by death threats, disappearance or exile...

* Canadian Prime Minister Harper says he believes that the Colombian government has been working to implement open market policies and strengthen democracy within the country. A Free Trade Agreement with Canada throws a lifeline of political support to a government in a crisis of legitimacy, whose supporters have been linked to paramilitary death squads which the Canadian government has classified as terrorist organizations...

The Canadian Labour Congress, therefore, calls on Prime Minister Harper to stop negotiations of the international business deal with Colombia... ”

On November 26, 2007, the Quebec union central [FTQ] at their Congress, representing half a million members, adopted a resolution after hearing from the President of the National union of  postal workers in Columbia Porifirio Rivas Moreno who attended the Congress in Quebec City.  The resolution states in part that the FTQ demands an urgent moratorium on the negotiations. Close to 90% of the assassinations of trade unionists world-wide take place in Columbia.

In the last week of November, 2007 in Toronto, Canada, the Ontario Federation of Labour Congress (with a delegation attending from the CTC of Cuba) took place. On November 29, as part of the trade union Congress activities, according to a report by Common Frontiers of Canada, “at mid-day hundreds of chanting trade unionists and other concerned Canadians marched in downtown Toronto to denounce the secretive free trade negotiations between Canada and Colombia. This rally was sponsored by the Ontario Federation of Labour and it called on the Canadian Prime Minister to suspend the Colombia trade talks NOW, to provide for a full debate NOW, and to put human rights first while adopting a new approach to trade that will make peoples’ lives better – NOW! Marie Clarke Walker, Executive Vice President of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), spoke to the marchers in front of the U.S. Consulate... Ms. Walker told the crowd that...just two days before this Toronto march, Conservative members of the Canadian Parliament’s Standing Committee on International Trade (CIIT) defeated an NDP [a Canadian political party] motion that called for an immediate halt to the Canada-Colombia negotiations, and for a human rights impact assessment to be carried out...”

I believe that the Canadian government is making other serious mistakes and should change its course. This wrong orientation also reflects itself in other recent positions.

For example at the Organisation of American States (OAS) debate in May, 2007 on the extradition of admitted and well known terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, Venezuela drafted a resolution to punish or extradite Posada to Venezuela. Posada is accused of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cubana jetliner that killed 73 persons aboard. During this OAS 2007 vote the Harper Conservative government of Canada sided with the USA and Panama.

More recently, on November 16, 2007 the United Nations General Assembly Committee on Socio-Humanitarian Affairs dealt with a draft resolution presented by Cuba, on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement and co-sponsored by another eleven countries. The resolution endorsed the agreement on the constitutional building of the Human Rights Council and definitively removing the mandate that the United States had imposed against Cuba at the now-defunct Commission on Human Rights. In June 2007  the Human Rights Council, gathered in Geneva, had decided to submit for the UN General Assembly’s consideration a document that defined the way in which such body would operate, which superseded the discredited Commission on Human Rights. In this document, the Human Rights Council recommended the removal of the mandate against Cuba, which the U.S. Government had adopted year after year for two decades through blackmail, threat and coercion. A vote took place with the Cuban resolution garnering 168 votes while only 7 against. This constituted a major victory for Cuba after twenty years of battle. The seven voting against were: United States, Israel, Canada, Australia, the Marshall Islands, Palau and Micronesia.

What to make of these two votes by the Canadian government with the US against Cuba (OAS in May 2007 and the UN Committee on Socio-Humanitarian Affairs in June 2007)? Historically, the Canadian and Quebec peoples and the government of Canada have always had very good ties with the Cuban people and government. In fact, alongside with Mexico, Canada has the longest uninterrupted diplomatic relations with Cuba in the Americas. This is a source of great pride for everyone in Canada. Canada, unlike the US, does not exercise in any way a blockade against Cuba. In fact, the Canadian government voted in November 2007 at the UN in favour of Cuba’s resolution to have the cruel, genocide-type blockade lifted, despite the desperate call of George Bush to what he thought were his allies, to isolate Cuba. And so Canada contributed with basically all the members of the UN to further isolate the U.S. on the issue of Cuba, a great victory for Cuba given the international context.

There is a lot of business being carried out between Canada and Cuba, Canada being one of the main investors in Cuba, especially in key developing mining and energy industries. According to Embassy, Canada’s Foreign Policy Newsweekly, June 15, 2005, Canada is Cuba’s third-largest trading partner with about $900 million in two-way exchanges in 2004, behind Venezuela and Spain. The figures are even higher now in 2007. According to the U.S. Geological Survey-Minerals Information, the Canadian corporation Sherritt Inc at the beginning of the 1990’s started collaborating with Cuba to extract and process of Cuban nickel and cobalt... The agreement between Sherritt and the Cuban side also included the cobalt refinery in Fort Saskatchewan in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.  According to a Canadian magazine news report (Maclean’s, July 1, 1995), the nickel refinery was shut down until Sherritt started bringing nickel from Moa, Cuba to this Canadian outpost in 1991 and since then the refinery has been flourishing.

The Cuban trade union central CTC has close mutual ties with the main Canadian trade union centrals, many provincial federations, the Quebec trade union central such as the CSN and unions in different sectors of the economy such as the postal workers. Trade union exchanges and visits between the two countries organised amongst other by  Canadian-based Worker to Worker have been going on for many years.

Canada is the first provider of tourism to Cuba. In Canada, most adults seem to either have been to Cuba and/or know friends or family who have likewise visited the island and come back with positive feelings. In Canada, the sentiment against US wars of aggression and U.S. domination and bullying is increasingly despised by the people in Canada and Quebec. Side by side with this, the prestige of Cuba, its people and its leader Fidel Castro are always on the increase in Canada and Quebec despite the disinformation by the Canadian and American mainstream media.

For all these reasons and more, the latest two Canadian votes in OAS and the UN are quite disappointing. I think that the two votes are wrong. Canada made a mistake and should rectify this as soon as another occasion presents itself in order to honour and respect these traditionally close ties between our peoples and the people of Cuba. The Canadian government has no mandate from the citizens in Canada to in any way modify its traditionally favourable stand of mutual cooperation and understanding with Cuba. It is important, in my view, that the trade unions and social movement in Canada be vigilant and not allow the Canadian government to in any way betray the feeling of the people in Canada towards Cuba.

It would amount to political suicide for any Canadian government not to take note of the tendency in Canada and Quebec whereby the working class, social movements and some political parties are increasingly and vociferously siding with the working peoples of the U.S., Mexico and of all the Americas against the Washington Consensus.  There is the growing consensus of the working class and social movements from Canada all the way down to the Terra del Fuego against the Washington consensus.

            Instead of attempting to developing “free trade” relations with Columbia and thus shoring up the government there,  Canada should further develop its ties with countries that are member of ALBA, for example Cuba. Canada already has long-lasting history and tradition of successful economic and diplomatic ties with Cuba. Along with Venezuela, the other founding member of ALBA, here are two countries worthy of reaping the mutual benefits of increased trade relations with Canada. Canadian workers and the rest of the population would also be so proud if Canada forged further economic links with Bolivia and Nicaragua, the other ALBA members.

            Canada should not be taken in by the White House propaganda regarding human rights, democracy and elections in countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, Ecuador as it did on November 16, 2007 at the United Nations General Assembly Committee on Socio-Humanitarian Affairs. These political themes are manipulated by U.S. administrations on the basis of a double standard to serve its own interests. Let us take the latest example of the referendum vote in Venezuela. In the November 30, 2007 U.S. Daily State Department Press Briefing spokesman Sean McCormack addressed the issue of the referendum two days before the vote. The following is part of the transcript relating to the December 2, 2007 referendum:

“QUESTION [reporter]: Sean, can we go to Venezuela?

MR. MCCORMACK: Sure.

 QUESTION: Do you have confidence that the vote count there Sunday will be legitimate?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, we'll see. One hopes that the voting, the vote count will actually reflect the will of the Venezuelan people. I can't tell you what that will be. One thing that is worth noting is that there won't be observers on the ground, so the outside world won't really have much insight into the procedures that are implemented not only on the day of the vote, but also in counting the vote. So I can't really offer a view on that, whether or not the actual outcomes will reflect the will of the Venezuelan people. Certainly, one hopes that it will...”

This represents another of a series of outright lies characterising the Bush administration, this time closing their eyes to the fact that many international observers were stationed in Venezuela including from the U.S., all of whom praised the democratic procedures of the vote. Once the vote became public on December 3rd, 2007, according to an Agence France Press report, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack  said " ‘clearly this is a message from the Venezuelan people that they do not want any further erosion in their democracy and their democratic institutions,’  . `The people spoke their mind, and they voted against the reforms that Hugo Chavez had recommended and I think that this bodes well for the country's future as well as `freedom and liberty,’ said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino...`The Venezuelan people have spoken. We have no reason to doubt that this outcome reflects the will of the Venezuelan people,’ McCormack told reporters, saying of Chavez `I can't predict what course he may try to follow.’ ”  Bush, who came to power on electoral fraud, put his two cents in and proclaimed on December 4th, according to Venezuelananalys.com that “the Venezuelan people `rejected one man rule...they voted for democracy...’ ”

Before the referendum, the U.S. was already preparing the ground for the non-recognition of the vote if ever their muscled interference into Venezuelan internal affairs through their allies in the Venezuelan oligarchy and media did not come through with the desired results. However, since the December 2nd vote coincided with the US interests, suddenly this very doubtful Venezuelan electoral system earned the blessing of the US!!

This incident is but the latest of a whole series of double standard policies that the U.S. administrations use all over the world regarding for example Cuba on the one hand and on the other hand any country which follows the dictate of Washington, irrespective of the political system that exists in that country which opts for the Washington consensus.  I strongly believe that Canada cannot and should not fall prey to this U.S. policy regarding countries members of ALBA and all other countries in South America and the Caribbean who are forward-looking, open-minded and not repressive regimes such as the one currently installed in Columbia. Much but not all of the mainstream Canadian media also seems to be bending over backwards to please the right-wing movement in the U.S. and Canada in their orientation regarding the ALBA countries.

In opposition to all of this we find in Canada and Quebec the hemispheric movement which tends towards the unity of all sectors of the Canadian and Quebec society with similar movements throughout the entire atmosphere, from Alaska to the Terra del Fuego.

I would like to conclude by giving an example of what I believe is significant and constitutes a tendency to be developed by the trade unions in Canada. That is, while opposing NAFTA and FTAA, there is the gravitation to openly ally with the most concrete expression of opposition to the Washington consensus and their self-serving trading blocks, that is to forge links with ALBA-member countries and the trade unions and social movements in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua as well as all the other countries in Caribbean and Latin America that are signing agreements with ALBA-member countries.

During the 2001 Peoples’  Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada trade union, student and social movement delegates from all over the Americas, as was the case in previous such summits, worked out a second version of Alternatives for the Americas.  

The Cochabamba Summit, Bolivia, took place in December, 2006. In a report by Canadian-based Common Frontiers delegate Rick Arnold to the Social Summit, he indicates that organisers projected that there would be some 3,000 people in attendance, but in the end 4,400 registered including a delegation from Canada. He also wrote that “during the all-Presidents meeting on the morning of December 9th 2006, Hugo Chavez made a point of reading from the Social Summit’s Final Declaration document. It should also be noted that in marked contrast to many of the heads-of-state gatherings in the recent past, the thrust and cut of the deliberations among the Presidents was televised live. Though a rumoured appearance of Evo Morales during an evening session of the Social Summit in the Coliseum did not materialize, his government’s Ministers were very much in evidence rubbing shoulders with the social movement activists. Casimira Rodriguez, Bolivia’s Minister of Justice met for two hours one morning with the Canadian Common Frontiers-United Church delegates... Two Canadian Aboriginal [Native Peoples] leaders were asked to be on the main stage prepared to say a few words... Rumours that a Bolivian Government Minister would likely show up to bring greeting from President Evo Morales proved to be true. Half way through the proceedings Casimira Rodriguez the Minister of Justice brought those greetings and addressed the crowds in native tongues...”

In September of 2007, the Quebec Social Forum took place in Montreal. This forum was part of series of local forums in the spirit of Puerto Alegre, such as the one in Atlanta, U.S.A. in 2007. More than 4,000 delegates participated, mainly from Quebec where discussion and workshops on ALBA and how the new movement in Latin America and Caribbean is developing, organised by Quebec-based Alternatives.  Delegates from ALBA-member countries Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia as well as from Mexico and Argentina participated in the Quebec Social Forum alongside most of the main Quebec trade union centrals and just about all social movements.

This Conference organised  by U.S. Labor- Exchange is another one of these manifestations.

This hemispheric solidarity movement is the way forward for the working class and all progressive forces in society throughout the Americas as an alternative to the imperialist free trade blocks.