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New matrimonial property laws a slippery slope to reserve land for sale
New matrimonial property laws a slippery slope to reserve land for sale
By Josh Grummett
Originally posted at APTN on 24 January 2014
Laws that protect Canadian couples in the event of a breakup were extended to First Nation communities last month when the Matrimonial Real Property Act (MRPA) came into effect. But critics say it's just another move toward dismantling First Nation communities.
In pushing this bill to become law, Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt said, "It is unacceptable in this day and age that people living on reserve are not afforded the same rights and protections as those living off reserve."
"It's all just optics. It makes white people feel good about themselves," said activist and Aboriginal lawyer, Joan Jack.
And she says it's a slippery slope from the MRPA to privatizing reserve land.
"It's not about giving people rights, it's about money. Because there's no money coming from the federal government for housing for infrastructure. So therefore they need to turn everything into (private) lands so people can borrow money from the bank, build a house, build a driveway and the government doesn't have to pay for anything," Jack said. "It's about assimilation."
The Harper government began the push towards the MRPA back in 2007. Taking the issue one step further (PDF) was the free-market advocacy think-tank, the Fraser Institute.
"When the Fraser institute recommends matrimonial property rights what they're saying — and they do go steps further in advocating private property in general on reserves and other Aboriginal lands — they frame it in the sense that this is about empowering Indigenous communities, helping them come into the modern democratic market-driven society," says Andrew Gavin Marshall, an activist/writer/researcher based in Montreal who manages The People's Book Project examining institutions and ideas of power.
Note: To view the full APTN Investigates Video – 'Unholy Matrimony' – click here.
It's no coincidence that the Conservative government and the Fraser Institute are interested in property issues on reserves, he says, nor is he surprised that the Fraser Institute's spokeswoman on Aboriginal issues, Ravina Bains, used to be the director of policy for Aboriginal Affairs Canada under the Harper government.
Author and Simon Fraser University professor Don Gutstein has spent decades scrutinizing the interconnectivity of government, the media, think-tanks and big business. Like Marshall, he questions the motivations of both the Harper government and Fraser Institute when it comes to their property rights advocacy.
"Their mission is to turn everything into markets, and there are obstacles to markets. One obstacle is Aboriginal governance where there's collective ownership. That has to be gotten rid of — eliminated. So that's one of the projects they are involved with is to work gradually to undermine band structure and turning reserves into private land that can then be bought and sold by anybody," Gutstein says.
That the mainstream media runs with the Fraser Institute's research and doesn't question why the think-tank is interested in on-reserve property rights, is his biggest beef.
"This is what bugs me about the media: if you've gone to journalism school, one of the first things you learn is to follow the money. And they've never done that… they report (the research) as news, as if it's factual, and gradually those ideas become entrenched in the general public or a significant enough portion of the public that it becomes the new reality."
If you follow the money, you find some deep pockets fund the Fraser Institute. For example, the Aurea Foundation (PDF) it's the private foundation of Peter Munk, head of Barrick Gold. A gold mining company, one could argue, might be interested in reserve land being privatized so it can be sold. They're a proud supporter of the Fraser institute. Adding substance to Gutstein's assertion that media and big business and right-wing think-tanks are too cozy: well-known national affairs columnist Andrew Coyne sits on the board of the Aurea Foundation and has been criticized for citing research done by think-tanks that Aurea has funded, without disclosing his personal connection to the foundation.
Then there are the Koch brothers, of the controversial U.S.-based Koch Industries which makes billions in petroleum, chemicals, energy, and gas sectors, to name a few. U.S. tax records showthey also donate generously to the Fraser Institute.
But who else foots the bill for operations and research at Canadian think-tanks is largely a mystery because they're not required by Revenue Canada to disclose who donates the cash, only how much is donated.
"To their great discredit, none of these think-tanks give of a list of their funders," Gutstein says. "That should be a requirement. Transparency would be beneficial to everyone so we could understand what the agenda was."
Fraser Institute president Niels Veldhuis told APTN Investigates the lack of disclosure is just good business.
"Our competitors who want to emulate us, if they got a hold of our supporters we've spent 38 years building, they'd contact every one of them and try to get money from them," Veldhuis says.
He scoffs at the suggestion that corporations and rich individuals give to the think tank in exchange for research that benefits their business interests.
"Donors give us money because they like the work we have done in the past. They're not involved in the questions we ask, they have no involvement in our research and in fact our donors see our research at the same time the media sees our research."
Maybe the donors don't, but Marshall points out the board of directors of these free-market advocacy think tanks are stacked with people who come from the same business backgrounds as the donors.
"You're not going to be against that which your power is based," Marshall says. "If you want to expand and protect your power you're not going to be undermining it through everything you own."
Regardless of whether or not big business is funding research as a way to get a foot in the door of reserves across Canada, or if the federal government is in on this private property push, Joan Jack says the Matrimonial Real Property Act won't help vulnerable Aboriginal women and children as claimed.
"On paper it makes (the government) look really good but when a woman is getting thrown out of her house — whether she's a band member or not — she's getting thrown out of her house and she's going to need RCMP protection, you're going to need a lawyer and in most communities those services aren't available to women, period," she said.
"It's insulting and it makes me sad that the Canadian government thinks all they have to do is make things look good on paper. Meanwhile they wonder why we're still killing ourselves."
Under the MRPA, First Nations can devise their own laws to deal with issues like who gets the house in the event of a breakup, so long as it's within the guidelines of the MRPA. Federal rules apply as a default.
TransCanada Corporation – Kings of the Keystone Pipeline: Global Power Project, Part 10
TransCanada Corporation – Kings of the Keystone Pipeline: Global Power Project, Part 10
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
Originally posted at Occupy.com
TransCanada Corporation describes itself as "a leader in the responsible development and reliable and safe operation of North American energy infrastructure." Beginning in 2005, the company announced plans for the Keystone XL pipeline. In 2010, Canada's National Energy Board (NEB) approved the full pipeline project, stating that it was in the "public interest" to transport Canadian tar sands oil to the Gulf Coast in the United States.
If approved, the Keystone XL pipeline would transport oil from Alberta through six U.S. states: Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Russ Girling, President and CEO of TransCanada, said the project would "improve U.S. energy security and reduce dependence on foreign oil from the Middle East and Venezuela."
As opposition to the pipeline project increased — and dramatically so in the wake of BP's 2010 Gulf oil spill — Girling stated, "There is no way we could have ever predicted that we would become the lightning rod for a debate around fossil fuels and the development of the Canadian oil sands…The pipeline itself is routine. It's something we do every day. It will be a safe pipeline."
Canada's National Energy Board, however, said that TransCanada had failed to meet safety standards for its pipeline within Canada. While the company "considered itself compliant," a former TransCanada employee blew the whistle on TransCanada's "culture of noncompliance" of environmental and safety regulations that posed "significant public safety risks," and referred to the company's approach as "organized crime."
In the United States, TransCanada has been suing American citizens who refuse to allow the pipeline to cross their property, threatening to confiscate their lands through the application of "eminent domain," which allows for the confiscation of private property if "it is judged to serve a larger public good."
The U.S. State Department was responsible for undertaking an "environmental assessment" of the pipeline to determine whether or not it would be approved. Declassified documents revealed an intense lobbying effort by TransCanada with the State Department, including several officials with the company holding multiple meetings with high-level State Department officials.
TransCanada has hired multiple lobbying firms and individuals, many of whom have direct ties to the Obama administration. This potentially even includes ties to Obama's personal lawyer as well as to a former campaign adviser. In the first half of 2013, TransCanada spent nearly half a million dollars lobbying the United States on the Keystone project.
In 2013, the Canadian government announced its intentions to fund a massive $16 million PR campaign for the Canadian oil and energy industry in the United States, with a "key part" of the funding going toward promoting the Keystone project. This is part of an agenda decided in March of 2010, when officials from the Canadian federal government and the Alberta government met with oil and gas industry CEOs to discuss "upping their game" in promoting the tar sands.
By 2013, there were roughly 48 different groups lobbying the U.S. government on the issue of the Keystone project, and all but two appeared to be lobbying in favor of the project. While a good deal of the promotions for the project emphasized that it would create thousands – and potentially tens of thousands – of jobs, these jobs were almost exclusively temporary, and the State Department's own assessment noted that the actual number of full-time jobs that would be created by the pipeline would be 20.
Then, in early March of 2013, the State Department released a 2,000-page draft report assessing the environmental impact of the Keystone project. The State Department had contracted the writing of the report to "experts" who had previously worked for TransCanada. In fact, TransCanada even paid the consultancy firm to write the report, which was subsequently considered an official government document of the State Department.
Not surprisingly, the Canadian government and the oil industry praised the report, while environmentalists and climate scientists criticized it as "deeply flawed." Both the EPA and the Department of Interior have subsequently slammed the report as "insufficient" and "inaccurate."
The government of Canada has, for years, been writing laws and implementing major policies at the direct suggestion of the oil industry, and has increasingly been demonizing those who protest against the policies, especially indigenous and environmental groups.
The Canadian government has been increasingly equating protest groups with "terrorists," and Canada's spy agencies have been providing information about protesters directly to energy corporations, and even infiltrating such groups in an effort to disrupt their actions. TransCanada provided training information to police agencies across the U.S. in which they refer to anti-pipeline protests as "terrorism."
Meet the Elites at TransCanada Corporation
Russell K. Girling is the president and CEO of TransCanada and is a member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), an interest group that consists of Canada's top 150 CEOs and was the main driving force behind corporate treaty projects like NAFTA. Girling is also a member of the U.S. National Petroleum Council and the U.S. Business Roundtable, as well as being a board member of Agrium Inc., an agribusiness conglomerate. Girling was also the co-chair of the City of Calgary 2012 United Way campaign.
Derek Burney, who sits on the board of TransCanada, is a senior advisor to the law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, chairman of the international advisory board of GardaWorld, a member of the advisory board of Paradigm Capital, and a member of the board of governors of Ottawa Hospital. Burney is the former chairman of the board of CanWest Global Communications Corporation (formerly Canada's largest newspaper conglomerate) from 2006 to 2010, former president and CEO of CAE Inc. (1999 to 2004), former chairman and CEO of Bell Canada (1993 to 1999), and was the former lead director of Shell Canada from 2001 to 2007.
On top of that, Burney was the Canadian ambassador to the United States from 1989 to 1993, following two years serving as chief of staff to Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, in which time he was a pivotal figure involved in the negotiations of NAFTA. Burney was also the Prime Minister's personal representative to the G-7 Summits between 1990 and 1992. He is the chancellor of Lakehead University, and was the head of the Conservative Transition Team in 2006 for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, after which time he was appointed to the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan (2007 to 2008). Burney is a distinguished alumni of the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute and is a member of the distinguished advisory council of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.
Richard E. Waugh is a member of the board and CEO of The Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank), a member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), a director of the International Monetary Conference (IMC), an international meeting of bankers, and is vice chair of the board of directors of the Institute of International Finance (IIF), the largest and most influential international banking lobbying group. Waugh is also a member of the Council of the Americas, a member of the international advisory council of The Americas Society, a board member and chair of the Canada advisory board of Catalyst. He is also a member of the advisory councils of the Schulich School of Business at York University, the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, and the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, as well as being the former campaign chair for the United Way of Toronto, and the current co-chair of the Canada-Brazil CEO Forum.
Members of the board of TransCanada sit on the boards of multiple other energy and oil companies, media conglomerates, military contractors, banks, interest groups and think tanks, as well as having served in top government positions. The elites at TransCanada have the connections to push the Keystone pipeline down the throats of North Americans, to destroy the environment, and make a handsome profit in the process.
As Utah Phillips once wrote, "The earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses."
Andrew Gavin Marshall is a 26-year old researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada. He is Project Manager of The People's Book Project, chair of the Geopolitics Division of The Hampton Institute, research director for Occupy.com's Global Power Project, and hosts a weekly podcast show with BoilingFrogsPost.
Aboriginals threatened by present, not past
Aboriginals threatened by present, not past
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
Originally published in The Province, 13 August 2013
In a recent article published in The Province, columnist Naomi Lakritz wrote that aboriginal people need to drop "the victimization mantle" and take "individual responsibility."
The essential idea, as Lakritz elaborated to me in an email exchange, was that aboriginal people should "move on" and stop "wallowing in the past."
How can people "move on" from history, if history has not moved on from them? Aboriginal people point to their history so that we may learn our own. Our histories are intertwined, and have been so since the first European colonists arrived in this land.
In 1920, Duncan Campbell, Canada's deputy Indian Affairs minister, declared: "I want to get rid of the Indian problem." The program of "assimilation" (or "cultural genocide") was largely undertaken through Indian "residential schools."
Some five decades after, our government used aboriginal children as lab rats, conducting nutritional and medical experiments on them.
Aboriginal communities across the country lack access to safe drinking water at a much higher level than the rest of Canadians. They face comparably higher levels of food insecurity, unemployment, poor housing, poverty, infant mortality, substance abuse, addiction and suicide, and make up a disproportionately high percentage of the prison population.
Early this year, the Harper government announced "a huge boom in Canadian natural resource projects" over the coming decade, potentially worth $600 billion.
Most of these projects will occur "on or near" aboriginal land (as in, the land we had not previously colonized in its entirety).
Harper's omnibus bills reduced the amount of protected lakes from 40,000 to 97 and rivers from 2.5 million to 63, paving the way for unhindered corporate extraction and environmental degradation. Whether next to a DeBeers mine in Attawapiskat, or near the tarsands in Alberta, aboriginal communities are directly exposed to the devastating environmental and health costs of our "development" projects.
It was within this context that, in late 2012, aboriginal people across Canada launched the Idle No More movement, taking responsibility not only for their own rights as indigenous people, but for the protection of the environment, linking up with indigenous groups in the United States to oppose pipelines and environmentally destructive projects, with peaceful protests, road blockades and public-awareness campaigns.
The Canadian government passes omnibus bills for the benefit of large resource-based corporations, rapidly accelerating environmental degradation, pushing not only Canada — but the human species as a whole — ever closer to the inevitable extinction faced by any self-destructive organism.
Instead of telling aboriginal people to "quit blaming the past" and take "responsibility," perhaps the rest of Canada should stop ignoring the past and take some responsibility for the present, to ensure that we may actually have a future, not simply as a nation, but as a species. Perhaps it's time for the rest of Canada to become Idle No More.
— Andrew Gavin Marshall is a researcher and writer based in Montreal.
A Brief Message for Canadians: Get Over It!
A Brief Message for Canadians: Get Over It!
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
CANADIANS: Be ashamed that this newspaper column is what passes for the "public discourse" in this country: a raving, ignorant, arrogant, idiotic and racist rant telling Indigenous people to "get over it" – referring to the state-sanctioned racism, genocide, and imperialism – all of which is still taking place.
Naomi Lakritz wrote a syndicated column for the Calgary Herald on July 31, that First Nations people "need to quit blaming the past" for the circumstances in which they live, because they "have nobody to blame but themselves." First Nations people, suggested Lakritz, need to drop "the victimization mantle" and instead, start "with the concept of individual responsibility." In other words: get over it!
No, instead of Canadians acknowledging our history as a nation – the violent destruction, exploitation, domination, murder and discrimination exerted against the indigenous peoples of the land we invaded and occupied – this "journalist" thinks that Indigenous people should "stop blaming their history."
They are not blaming their history: they are pointing to their history so that we may learn our own. We have a 'shared' history, and it has led us to the present. If we – as Canadians – actually looked at our history, and traced its evolution up to the present, we would realize that our 'colonial' history has now evolved into a modern state-capitalist imperial present. Our historical injustices imposed upon Indigenous peoples have modern incarnations: the system of domination, exploitation, segregation, discrimination and – yes(!) – genocide, continues today.
If we learned about all that, we might want to change it. We might develop something called 'empathy' which can lead to something called 'solidarity.' These are very human characteristics, so I understand that they seem challenging to relate to in a deeply dehumanizing society; but remember, we have a shared history and we share the present. Our histories are intertwined and interdependent, and so too is our future.
We might look out at the fact that Indigenous people, not only in Canada but around the world, are rising up in rebellion against the rampant and accelerating destruction of the environment, which will lead the species to extinction. Indigenous people are on the front lines of the global struggle against human extinction and the preservation of the environment and earth we live on. If we looked at all that… we might join them.
Instead, we read articles like this gutter trash, intellectual abortion, which has been published in the Calgary Herald, The Province, Victoria Times-Colonist, and the Edmonton Journal. Interesting how in the two provinces of BC and Alberta where the Indigenous struggle against environmental destruction is currently very active, are the same provinces where this 'article' is published in the main newspapers for the four largest population centres… just in case you might get the 'right' idea.
Canada's corporate-owned media wouldn't want that, would it? Not when the corporation that owns all these newspapers – the largest newspaper company in Canada, Postmedia Network – has a board of directors who are reaping profits and power off of the destruction of the environment, sitting on multiple other corporate boards for banks, energy and oil companies.
Take Jane Peverett, on the board of Postmedia. Jane also sits on the boards of CIBC, the Northwest Natural Gas Company, and Encana, a major energy company. As recently as November, an Indigenous group in BC was taking action against the construction of a major pipeline project partly owned by Encana.
I'm not blaming Jane for this article; I think the author deserves the blame. But Jane – and her compatriots who sit on the boards of Canada's highly concentrated media system – maintain and wield significant influence over a media institution which promotes articles like this as contributing to the 'public discourse,' when all it does is promote ignorance, propaganda, passivity, and protects the interests of the powerful who own it. It's an institutional function. Jane is merely a cog in a much larger wheel, while Naomi Lakritz can barely be said to be cognizant.
It's institutional propaganda. Just as the discrimination, exploitation, domination and destruction of Indigenous people is institutional to our society. For a population currently struggling against the rapacious ravaging of the environment, let alone for survival, being told to "get over it," is another way of saying: "just die, already." And because the struggle is against the extinction of our species if we continue along our current path, saying, "get over it," is also like saying, "we're all going to die, but I don't want to do anything about it… and neither should you."
So for those Canadians who think the article above presented a 'reasonable' argument (and I KNOW you exist), and for those Canadians who think Indigenous people should stop "blaming history," take a piece of your own advice: get over it. Learn your history, know your world, find your brothers and sisters and join them in the struggle to save the species and the planet we live on.
When it comes to having people like Naomi Lakritz of the Calgary Herald lower the public discourse – or rather, maintain the public discourse at painful lows – it's really time that we get beyond this. Naomi Lakritz also thinks pot is a "dangerous drug" and legalization a "bad idea" (because once again, "get over" history, don't learn, just delude!), and who (shockingly) has problems with immigrants, and it's too perfect: she wants them to "leave [their] history at home" when they come to Canada… the nation with no history, apparently.
The deranged attempts by Lakritz to support the status quo when it comes to matters of injustice cannot be left as the level of discourse in a country which boasts the title of "the most educated country in the world." It's time to start acting like it. So it's time to stop listening to Lakritz and other 'rebels against rationality', and START listening to Indigenous people, who have a great deal that they are trying to teach us about our country, and are showing us ways that we can help change it for the better.
It's only our fate as a people, species, and planet that is at stake… Get over it.
Andrew Gavin Marshall is a 26-year old researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada. He is Project Manager of The People's Book Project, chair of the Geopolitics Division of The Hampton Institute, research director for Occupy.com's Global Power Project, and hosts a weekly podcast show with BoilingFrogsPost.
An Anarchistic Understanding of the Social Order: Environmental Degradation, Indigenous Resistance, and a Place for the Sciences
An Anarchistic Understanding of the Social Order: Environmental Degradation, Indigenous Resistance, and a Place for the Sciences
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
The following was an original essay published in the Spanda Journal (Vol. 4, No. 1, 2013: Anarchy and Non-Profit: An Emerging Affair), an open-access journal which you can download for free here.
FOR ROUGHLY FIVE HUNDRED YEARS, INDIGENOUS peoples have been struggling against the dominant institutions of society, against imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, impoverishment, segregation, racism, and genocide. The struggle continues today under the present world social order and against the dominant institutions of 'neoliberalism' and globalization: the state, corporations, financial institutions and international organizations. Indigenous communities continue to struggle to preserve their cultural identities, languages, histories, and the continuing theft and exploitation of their land. Indigenous resistance against environmental degradation and resource extraction represents the most direct source of resistance against a global environmental crisis which threatens to lead the species to extinction. It is here that many in the scientific community have also taken up the cause of resistance against the destruction of the global environment. While Indigenous and scientific activism share similar objectives in relation to environmental issues, there is a serious lack of convergence between the two groups in terms of sharing knowledge, organization, and activism.
Indigenous groups are often on the front lines of the global environmental crisis – at the point of interaction (or extraction) – they resist against the immediate process of resource extraction and the environmental devastation it causes to their communities and society as a whole. The continued repression, exploitation and discrimination against Indigenous peoples have made the struggle – and the potential consequences of failure – significantly more problematic. This struggle has been ongoing for centuries, and as the species heads toward extinction – as it is along our current trajectory – Indigenous peoples will be on the front lines of that process. Many in the scientific community have been struggling for decades to address major environmental issues. Here, the focus is largely on the issue of climate change, and the approach has largely been to work through institutions in order to create enough pressure to reform. Yet, after decades of organizing through academic and environmental organizations, lobbying governments, corporations and international organizations, progress has been slow and often ineffectual, with major international conferences being hyped up but with little concrete results. Indigenous peoples continue to struggle against the dominant institutions while many in the scientific community continue to struggle within the dominant institutions, though their objectives remain similar.
A major problem and disparity becomes clear: Indigenous peoples – among the most repressed and exploited in the world – are left to struggle directly against the most powerful institutions in the world (states and transnational corporations), while many in the sciences – an area of knowledge which has and continues to hold enormous potential to advance the species – attempt to convince those powerful institutions to profit less at exactly the point in history when they have never profited more. Indigenous communities remain largely impoverished, and the scientific community remains largely dependent for funding upon the very institutions which are destroying the environment: states, corporations and international organizations. Major barriers to scientific inquiry and research can thus be established if the institutions feel threatened, if they choose to steer the sciences into areas exclusively designed to produce 'profitable' forms of knowledge and technology. As humanity enters a critical stage – perhaps the most critical we have ever faced as a species – it is important to begin to acknowledge, question, and change the institutional contradictions and constraints of our society.
It seems only logical that a convergence between Indigenous and scientific activism, organization, and the sharing of knowledge should be encouraged and facilitated. Indeed, the future of the species may depend upon it. This paper aims to encourage such a convergence by applying an anarchistic analysis of the social order as it relates to environmental degradation, specifically at the point of interaction with the environment (the source of extraction). In classifying this as an anarchistic analysis, I simply mean that it employs a highly critical perspective of hierarchically organized institutions. This paper does not intend to discuss in any detail the issue of climate change, since that issue is largely a symptom of the problem, which at its source is how the human social order interacts directly with the environment: extraction, pollution, degradation, exploitation and destruction at the point of interaction.
This analysis will seek to critically assess the actions and functions of states, corporations, international organizations, financial institutions, trade agreements and markets in how they affect the environment, primarily at the point of interaction. It is also at this point where Indigenous peoples are taking up the struggle against environmental degradation and human extinction. Through an anarchistic analysis of Indigenous repression and resistance at the point of interaction between the modern social order and the environment (focusing primarily on examples from Canada), this paper hopes to provide encouragement to those in the scientific community seeking to address environmental issues to increase their efforts in working with and for the direct benefit of Indigenous peoples. There exists a historical injustice which can and must be rectified: the most oppressed and exploited peoples over the past five hundred years of a Western-dominated world are on the front lines of struggling for the survival of the species as a whole. Modern science – which has done so much to advance Western 'civilization' – can and should make Indigenous issues a priority, not only for their sake, but for the species as a whole. Indeed, it is a matter of survival for the sciences themselves, for they will perish with the species. An anarchistic analysis of the social order hopes to encourage a convergence between Indigenous and scientific knowledge and activism as it relates to resolving the global environmental crisis we now face.
Corporations are among the most powerful institutions in the world. Of the top 150 economies in 2010, 58% were corporations, with companies like Wal-Mart, Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, and BP topping the charts[1]. According to Fortune's Global 500 list published in 2012, the top ten corporations in the world were: Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, Wal-Mart, BP, Sinopec Group, China National Petroleum, State Grid, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Toyota Motor[2]. The Global 500 corporations posted record revenues for 2011 at USD 29.5 trillion, up 13.2% from the previous year. Eight of the top ten conglomerates were in the energy sector, with the oil industry alone generating USD 5 trillion in sales, approximately 17% of the total sales of the Global 500. The second largest sector represented in the Global 500 was commercial banks, followed by the auto industry[3].
A scientific study conducted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich analyzed the 'network of control' wielded through 43,000 transnational corporations (TNCs), identifying "a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy." The researchers identified a 'core' of 1,318 companies which owned roughly 80% of the global revenues for the entire network of 43,000 TNCs. Above the core, the researchers identified a 'super-entity' of 147 tightly-knit corporations – primarily banks and financial institutions – collectively owning each other's shares and 40% of the wealth in the total network. One researcher commented, "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 percent of the entire network[4]."
Writing in the Financial Times, a former US Treasury Department official, Robert Altman, referred to financial markets as "a global supra-government," explaining:
They oust entrenched regimes where normal political processes could not do so. They force austerity, banking bail-outs and other major policy changes. Their influence dwarfs multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Indeed, leaving aside unusable nuclear weapons, they have become the most powerful force on earth[5].
The "global supra-government" of financial markets push countries around the world into imposing austerity measures and structural reforms, which have the result of benefiting the "super-entity" of global corporate power. The power and wealth of these institutions have rapidly accelerated in the past three decades of neoliberal 'reforms' promoting austerity, liberalization, deregulation, privatization and financialization. Neoliberal ideology was politically championed by Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, but was largely imposed upon the so-called 'Third World' (Latin America, Asia, and Africa) through major international organizations like the World Bank and the IMF. The results of this massive transfer of wealth and power to an increasingly connected and small fraction of the world's population have been devastating for humanity and the world as a whole. This process guided by neoliberal dogma has been most often referred to as 'globalization.'
As the 1980s debt crisis gripped the 'Third World,' the IMF and World Bank came to the 'rescue' with newly designed loan agreements called 'Structural Adjustment Programs' (SAPs). In return for a loan from these institutions, countries would have to adhere to a set of rigid conditions and reforms, including austerity measures (cutting public spending), the liberalization of trade, privatization, deregulation, and currency devaluation[6]. The United States controls the majority shares of both the World Bank and IMF, while the US Treasury Department and Federal Reserve work very closely with the IMF and its staff[7]. If countries did not adhere to IMF and World Bank 'conditions,' they would be cut off from international markets, since this process was facilitated by "unprecedented co-operation between banks from various countries under the aegis of the IMF[8]." The conditions essentially opened up the borrowing countries to economic imperialism by the IMF, World Bank, and transnational corporations and financial institutions, which were able to gain access and control over the resources and labour markets of poor countries. Thus, the 1980s has been known as the "lost decade of development," as many 'Third World' countries became poorer between 1980 and 1990[9]. Joseph Stiglitz, a former chief economist at the World Bank, wrote that, "such conditions were seen as the intrusion by the new colonial power on the country's own sovereignty[10]."
The structural adjustment programs imposed upon the Third World devastated the poor and middle classes of the borrowing countries, often resulting in mass protests against austerity[11]. In fact, between 1976 and 1992, there were 146 protests against IMF- sponsored austerity measures in 39 different countries, including demonstrations, strikes and riots. The governments, in response, would often violently repress protests[12]. The government elites were often more integrated with and allied to the powerful institutions of the global economy, and would often act as domestic enforcers for the demands of international banks and corporations. For many countries imposing structural adjustment programs around the world, authoritarian governments were common[13]. The IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programs also led to the massive growth of slums around the world, to the point where there are now over a billion people living in urban slums (approximately one out of every seven people on earth)[14].
Further, the nations of the Third World became increasingly indebted to the powerful financial institutions and states of the industrial world with the more loans they took. The wealthy elites within the Third World plunder the domestic wealth of their countries in cooperation with global elites, and send their money into Western banking institutions (as 'capital flight') as their domestic populations suffer in poverty. The IMF and World Bank programs helped facilitate capital flight through the deregulation and 'liberalization' of markets, as well as through the opening up of the economies to unhindered exploitation. Some researchers recently compared the amount of money in the form of aid and loans going into Africa compared to that coming leaving Africa in the form of capital flight, and found that "sub-Saharan Africa is a net creditor to the rest of the world by a substantial margin." The external debt owed by 33 sub-Saharan African countries to the rest of the world in 2008 stood at USD 177 billion. Between 1970 and 2008, capital flight from those same 33 African countries amounted to USD 944 billion. Thus, "the rest of the world owes more to these African countries than they owe to the rest of the world[15]."
The neoliberal ideology of 'profit before people' – enforced by the dominant states, corporations, banks and international organizations – has led to a world of extreme inequality, previously established by centuries of empire and colonialism, and rapidly accelerated in the past three decades. As of 2004, one in every three human deaths was due to poverty-related causes. In the twenty years following the end of the Cold War, there were approximately 360 million preventable deaths caused by poverty-related issues. Billions of people go hungry, lack access to safe drinking water, adequate shelter, medicine, and electricity. Nearly half of humanity – approximately 3.1 billion people as of 2010 – live below the USD 2.50/day poverty line. It would take roughly USD 500 billion – approximately 1.13% of world income (or two-thirds of the US military budget) – to lift these 3.1 billion people out of extreme poverty. The top 1% own 40% of the world's wealth, while the bottom 60% hold less than 2% of the world's wealth. As Thomas Pogge wrote, "we are now at the point where the world is easily rich enough in aggregate to abolish all poverty," but we are "choosing to prioritize other ends instead." Roughly 18 million people die from poverty-related causes every year, half of whom are children under the age of five. Pogge places significant blame for these circumstances upon the "global institutional arrangements that foreseeably and avoidably increase the socioeconomic inequalities that cause poverty to persist [...] [policies which] are designed by the more powerful governments for the benefit of their most powerful industries, corporations, and citizens[16]."
In 2013, Oxfam reported that the fortunes made by the richest 100 people in the world over the course of 2012 (USD 240 billion) would have been enough to lift the world's poorest people out of poverty four times over. An Oxfam executive, Barbara Stocking, noted that this type of extreme wealth – which saw the world's richest 1% increase their income by 60% in the previous twenty years – is "economically inefficient, politically corrosive, socially divisive and environmentally destructive [...] We can no longer pretend that the creation of wealth for few will inevitably benefit the many – too often the reverse is true[17]." A study by the Tax Justice Network in 2012 found that the world's superrich had hidden between USD 21 and 32 trillion in offshore tax havens, meaning that inequality was "much, much worse than official statistic show," and that "for three decades extraordinary wealth has been cascading into the offshore accounts of a tiny number of superrich," with the top 92,000 of the world's superrich holding at least USD 10 trillion in offshore accounts[18].
The human social order – dominated by states, corporations, banks and international organizations – has facilitated and maintained enormous inequality and poverty around the world, allowing so few to control so much, while the many are left with little. This global social and economic crisis is exacerbated by the global environmental crisis, in which the same institutions that dominate the global social order are simultaneously devastating the global environment to the point where the future of the species hangs in the balance.
Just as the dominant institutions put 'profit before people,' so too do they put profit before the environment, predicating human social interaction with the environment on the ideology of 'markets': that what is good for corporations will ultimately be good for the environment. Thus, the pursuit of 'economic growth' can continue unhindered – and in fact, should be accelerated – even though it results in massive environmental degradation through the processes of resource extraction, transportation, production and consumption[19].
Trading arrangements between the powerful rich nations and the 'periphery' poor nations allow for the dominant institutions to exploit their economic and political influence over weaker states, taking much more than they give[20]. These trading relationships effectively allow the rich countries to offshore (or export) their environmental degradation to poor countries, treating them as exploitable resource extraction sources. As the resources of poor nations are extracted and exported to the rich nations, the countries are kept in poverty (with the exception of their elites who collude with the powerful countries and corporations), and the environmental costs associated with the high consumption societies of the industrial world are ultimately off-shored to the poor countries, at the point of interaction[21]. Thus, international trade separates the societies of consumption from the effects of extraction and production, while the poor nations are dependent upon exports and exploiting their cheap labour forces[22]. This process has been termed ecological unequal exchange[23].
Between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s, the majority of the world's non-renewable resources were transferred from poor to rich nations, accelerating in volume over time (due to technological advancements), while decreasing in costs (to the powerful nations). Thus, between 1980 and 2002, the costs of resource extraction declined by 25% while the volume of resource extraction increased by more than 30%. Environmentally destructive processes of resource extraction in mining and energy sectors have rapidly accelerated over the past few decades, resulting in increased contamination of soils, watersheds and the atmosphere. Negative health effects for local populations accelerate, primarily affecting Indigenous, poor and/or migrant populations, who are subjected to excessive pollutants and industrial waste at nearly every part of the process of extraction, production and transportation of resources and goods[24].
In an examination of 65 countries between 1960 and 2003, researchers found that the rich countries "externalized" the environmentally destructive consequences of resource over-use to poor, periphery nations and populations, thus "assimilating" the environments of the less-developed nations into the economies of the powerful states, disempowering local populations from having a say in how their resources and environments are treated[25]. Rich societies consume more than can be sustained from their own internal resource wealth, and thus, they must "appropriate" resource wealth from abroad by 'withdrawing' the resources in environmentally destructive (and thus, more economically 'efficient') ways. Apart from ecologically destructive 'withdrawals,' the rich nations also facilitate ecologically destructive 'additions,' in the form of pollution and waste which cause environmental and health hazards for the poor societies. This is facilitated through various trading arrangements (such as the development of Export Processing Zones), consisting of minimal to no environmental regulations, cheap labour and minimal restrictions on corporate activities[26].
While Japan and Western Europe were able to reduce the amount of pollutants and 'environmental additions' they made within their own societies between 1976 and 1994, they accelerated their 'additions' in waste and pollutants to the poor countries with which they traded, "suggesting a progressive off-shoring over the period onto those peripheral countries" not only of labour exploitation, but of environmental degradation[27]. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) by transnational corporations has been linked to extensive environmental hazards within the countries in which they are 'investing,' including growth in water pollution, infant mortality, pesticide use, and the use of chemicals which are often banned in the rich nations due to high toxicity levels and dangers to health and the environment, and greater levels of carbon dioxide emissions. Indeed, between 1980 and 2000, the total anthropogenic CO2 emissions from the rich countries increased by 21%, while over the same period of time in the poor countries it more than doubled. While forested areas in the rich nations increased by less than 1% between 1990 and 2005, they declined by 6% over the same period of time in poor countries, contributing to soil erosion, desertification, climate change and the destruction of local and regional ecosystems[28].
According to an analysis of 268 case studies of tropical forest change between 1970 and 2000, researchers found that deforestation had shifted from being directed by states to being directed and implemented by corporations and 'economic' interests across much of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. This was largely facilitated by the IMF and World Bank agreements which forced countries to reduce their public spending, and allowed for private economic interests to obtain unprecedented access to resources and markets. The rate of deforestation continued, it simply shifted from being state-led to "enterprise driven[29]."
Using a sample of some sixty nations, researchers found that IMF and World Bank Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) were associated with higher levels of deforestation than in countries which did not sign the SAP agreements, as they allowed rich nations and corporations to "externalize their forest loss" to poor nations. Further, "economic growth" as defined by the World Bank and IMF was related to increased levels of deforestation, leading the researchers to acknowledge that, "economic growth adversely impacts the natural environment[30]." World Bank development loans to countries (as separate from structural adjustment loans) have also been linked to increased rates of deforestation in poor nations, notably higher rates than those which exist in countries not receiving World Bank loans[31].
Military institutions and armed warfare also have significant environmental impacts, not simply by engaging in wars, but simply by the energy and resources required for the maintenance of large military structures. As one US military official stated in the early 1990s, "We are in the business of protecting the nation, not the environment[32]." While the United States is the largest consumer of energy among nations in the world, the Pentagon is "the world's largest [institutional] consumer of energy[33]." The combination of US tanks, planes and ships consume roughly 340,000 barrels of oil per day (as of 2007)[34]. Most of the oil is consumed by the Air Force, as jet fuel accounted for roughly 71% of the entire military's oil consumption[35].
Nations with large militaries also use their violent capabilities "to gain disproportionate access to natural resources[36]." Thus, while the US military may be the largest single purchaser and consumer of energy in the world, one of its primary functions is to secure access to and control over energy resources. In an interview with two McKinsey & Company consultants, the Pentagon's first-ever assistant secretary of defense for operational energy and programs, Sharon E. Burke, stated bluntly that, "My role is to promote the energy security of our military operations," including by increasing the "security of supply[37]."
In a study of natural resource extraction and armed violence, researchers found that, "armed violence is associated with the extraction of many critical and noncritical natural resources, suggesting quite strongly that the natural resource base upon which industrial societies stand is constructed in large part through the use and threatened use of armed violence." Further, when such armed violence is used in relation to gaining access to and control over natural resources, "it is often employed in response to popular protest or rebellion against these activities." Most of this violence is carried out by the governments of poor nations, or by mercenaries or rebels, which allows for distancing between the rich nations and corporations which profit from the plundering of resources from the violent means of gaining access to them. After all, the researcher noted, "other key drivers of natural resource exploitation, such as the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and global marketplace, cannot, on their own, guarantee core nation access to and control over vital natural resources[38]." Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the United States – and other powerful nations – and the major arms companies within them are the largest arms dealers in the world[39].
It is clear that for scientists – and anyone else – interested in addressing major environmental issues, the source of the problem lies in the very structure and function of our dominant modern institutions, at the point of interaction. In short: through states, armed violence, banks and corporations, international organizations, trade agreements and global 'markets,' the environment has become a primary target of exploitation and destruction. Resources fuel the wealth and power of the very institutions that dominate the world, and to maintain that power, they engage in incredibly destructive activities with negative consequences for the environment and the human species as a whole. The global environmental crisis is intimately related to the global social and economic crises of wealth inequality and poverty, labour exploitation, and 'economic growth.' To address the environmental crisis in a meaningful way, this reality must first be acknowledged. This is how an anarchistic understanding of the environmental crisis facing the world and humanity can contribute to advancing how we deal with these profound issues. For the sciences, the implications are grave: their sources of funding and direction for research are dependent upon the very institutions which are destroying the environment and leading humanity to inevitable extinction (if we do not change course). Advancing an anarchistic approach to understanding issues related to Indigenous repression and resistance to environmental degradation can help provide a framework through which those in the scientific community – and elsewhere – can find new avenues for achieving similar goals: the preservation of the environment and the species.
Indigenous peoples in the Americas have been struggling against colonialism, exploitation, segregation, repression and even genocide for over 500 years. While the age of formal colonial empires has passed, the struggle has not. Today, Indigenous peoples struggle against far more powerful states than ever before existed, transnational corporations and financial institutions, international organizations, so-called "free trade" agreements and the global 'marketplace.' In an increasingly interconnected and globalized world, the struggle for Indigenous peoples to maintain their identity and indeed, even their existence itself, has been increasingly globalizing, but has also been driven by localized actions and movements.
Focusing upon Indigenous peoples in Canada, I hope to briefly analyze how Indigenous groups are repressed, segregated and exploited by the dominant institutions of an incredibly wealthy, developed, resource-rich and 'democratic' nation with a comparably 'good' international reputation. Further, by examining Indigenous resistance within Canada to the destruction of the natural environment, I hope to encourage scientists and other activists and segments of society who are interested in environmental protection to reach out to Indigenous communities, to share knowledge, organizing, activism, and objectives.
Historically, the Canadian government pursued a policy of 'assimilation' of Indigenous peoples for over a century through 'Indian residential schools,' in what ultimately amounted to an effective policy of "cultural genocide." In 1920, Canada's Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs Duncan Campbell Scott bluntly explained: "I want to get rid of the Indian problem [...] Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politics and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department[40]."
The segregation, repression and exploitation of Indigenous communities within Canada is not a mere historical reality, it continues to present day. Part of the institutional repression of Indigenous peoples is the prevalence of what could be described as 'Third World' conditions within a 'First World' nation. Indigenous communities within Canada lack access to safe drinking water at a much higher rate than the general population[41]. Indigenous people and communities in Canada also face much higher levels of food insecurity, poverty, unemployment, poor housing and infant mortality than the rest of the population[42]. Accounting for roughly 4% of the population of Canada (approximately 1.2 million people as of 2006), Indigenous peoples also face higher rates of substance abuse, addiction, and suicide[43].
Indigenous people – and especially women – make up a disproportionate percentage of the prison population[44]. Further, as Amnesty International noted, "Indigenous women [in Canada] are five to seven times more likely than other women to die as a result of violence[45]." The Native Women's Association of Canada has documented roughly 600 cases of missing or murdered indigenous women in Canada, more than half of which have occurred since 2000, while Human Rights Watch reported that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in northern British Columbia had "failed to properly investigate the disappearance and apparent murders of [indigenous] women and girls in their jurisdiction[46]."
Industries seeking to develop land and extract resources are increasingly turning to Indigenous territories to develop and seek profits on the land and environment upon which such communities are so often dependent for survival. At the point of interaction with the environment, Indigenous peoples are left to struggle with the damaging environmental and health consequences caused by state and corporate interests extracting resources and wealth from the land and environment.
The Alberta tar sands (or oil sands) is a primary example of this process. Many environmental, indigenous and human rights organizations consider the tar sands development as perhaps "the most destructive industrial project on earth." The United Nations Environmental Programme identified the project as "one of the world's top 100 hotspots of environmental degradation." The dense oil in the tar sands (diluted bitumen) has to be extracted through strip mining, and requires enormous amounts of resources and energy simply to extract the reserves. It has been documented that for every one barrel of oil processed, three barrels of water are used, resulting in the creation of small lakes (called 'tailing ponds'), where "over 480 million gallons of contaminated toxic waste water are dumped daily." These lakes collectively "cover more than 50 square kilometres (12,000 acres) and are so extensive that they can be seen from space." The processing of the oil sands creates 37% more greenhouse gas emissions than the extraction and processing of conventional oil[47].
While the United States consumes more oil than anywhere else on earth, Canada is the main supplier of foreign oil to the United States, exporting roughly 1.5 million barrels per day to the US (in 2005), approximately 7% of the daily consumption of oil in the US. The crude bitumen contained in the tar sands has been estimated at 1.7 trillion barrels, lying underneath an area within Alberta which is larger than the entire state of Florida and contains over 140,000 square km of boreal forest. In 2003, the United States Department of Energy officially acknowledged the reserves of crude bitumen in the Alberta tar sands, and elevated Canada's standing in world oil markets from the 21st most oil-rich nation on earth to the 2nd, with only Saudi Arabia surpassing[48].
Alberta's tar sands have attracted the largest oil companies on earth, including Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, and Total S.A. Local indigenous communities thus not only have to struggle against the devastating environmental, health and social consequences caused by the tar sands development, but they also have to struggle against the federal and provincial governments, and the largest corporations on earth. The Athabasca River (located near the tar sands development) has been depleted and polluted to significant degrees, transforming the region "from a pristine environment rich in cultural and biological diversity to a landscape resembling a war zone marked with 200-foot-deep pits and thousands of acres of destroyed boreal forests." Indigenous peoples have been raising concerns over this project for years[49].
Disproportionate levels of cancers and other deadly diseases have been discovered among a local Indigenous band, the Fort Chipewyan in Athabasca. These high levels of cancers and diseases are largely the result of the enormous amounts of land, air, and water pollution caused by the tar sands mining[50]. One Indigenous leader in Fort Chipewyan has referred to the tar sands development as a "slow industrial genocide[51]." As pipelines are planned to be expanded across Canada and the United States to carry tar sands oil, this will have devastating impacts for "indigenous communities not only in Canada, but across the continent[52]."
Between 2002 and 2010, the pipeline network through Alberta experienced a rate of oil spills roughly sixteen times higher than in the United States, likely the result of transporting diluted bitumen (DilBit), which has not been commonly transported through the pipelines until recent years. In spite of the greater risks associated with transporting DilBit, the US agency responsible for overseeing the country's pipelines decided – in October of 2009 – to relax safety regulations regarding the strength of pipelines. In July of 2010, a ruptured Enbridge pipeline in Michigan spilled 800,000 gallons of DilBit, devastating the local communities in what the government referred to as the "worst oil spill in Midwestern history." In July of 2011, an Exxon pipeline spilled 42,000 gallons of DilBit into the Yellowstone River in Montana[53].
In 2009, the Canadian Ministry of Indian Affairs and Northern Development announced the Federal Framework for Aboriginal Economic Development which sought to "improve the participation" of Indigenous people "in the Canadian economy," primarily by seeking "to unlock the full economic potential of Aboriginal Canadians, their communities, and their businesses[54]." An updated report on the Framework in 2012 reaffirmed the intent "to modernize the lands and resource management regimes on reserve land in order to increase and unlock the value of Aboriginal assets[55]." As John Ibbitson wrote in the Globe and Mail, "businesses that want to unlock the potential of reserves, from real estate development to forestry and mining, need the legal certainty that a property regime makes possible[56]."
In late 2012, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative Party introduced an omnibus Budget Bill (C-45) which amended several aspects of the Indian Act (without proper consultations with Indigenous groups). Bill C-45 also moved forward to "unlock" barriers to resource extraction, environmental degradation, and corporate profits with an amendment to the Navigable Waters Act, which dramatically reduced the number of protected lakes and rivers in Canada from 40,000 to 97 lakes, and from 2.5 million to 63 rivers[57].
Following the introduction of Bill C-45 to the Canadian Parliament, a group of four Indigenous women in the province of Saskatchewan held a "teach-in" to help increase awareness about the Bill, quickly followed by a series of rallies, protests and flash mobs where Indigenous activists and supporters engaged in 'round dances' in shopping malls, organized through social media networks like Twitter and Facebook. This sparked what became known as the 'Idle No More' movement, and on December 10, 2012, a National Day of Action took place, holding multiple rallies across the country. The immediate objectives of the Idle No More movement were to have the government "repeal all legislation that violates treaties [with Indigenous peoples], including those that affect environmental regulations," such as Bill C-45 and the previous omnibus Bill C-38. The longer-term objectives of the movement were to "educate and revitalize aboriginal peoples, empower them and regain sovereignty and independence[58]."
Pamela Palmater, a spokesperson for Idle No More and a Ryerson University professor noted that Indigenous people in Canada were opposing Bill C-45 "not just because it impacts their rights, but also because we know that it impacts the future generations of both treaty partners," referring to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians. "The question," she added, "really should be whether Canadians will rise to protect their children's futures alongside First Nations[59]."
Theresa Spence, an Indigenous chief from a northern Ontario community (Attawapiskat) went on a hunger strike for 44 days to support Idle No More and raise awareness about a serious housing crisis in her community. Spence only ended her hunger strike upon being hospitalized and placed on an IV drip[60]. Her community of Attawapiskat had been experiencing a major housing crisis for a number of years, and in 2011, a state of emergency was declared in response to the fact that for over two years, many of the community's 1,800 residents were "living in makeshift tents and shacks without heat, electricity or indoor plumbing." James Anaya, a United Nations human rights expert expressed his "deep concern about the dire social and economic condition" of the Attawapiskat community to the Canadian government, which reflected a situation "akin to third world conditions[61]." The Conservative government of Stephen Harper (which came to power in 2006) blamed the crisis on the internal handling of funds within Attawapiskat, claiming that the government provided CAD 90 million in funding for the community since 2006. However, analysis of the funds revealed that only CAD 5.8 million in funding had gone toward housing over the course of five years. Meanwhile, estimates put the necessary funds to resolve the housing crisis alone at CAD 84 million[62]. The former Minister for Aboriginal Affairs acknowledged that the government had known about the housing crisis for years, saying that it "has been a slow-moving train wreck for a long time[63]."
In 2005, the community of Attawapiskat had signed a contract with the international mining conglomerate De Beers to develop a diamond mine 90 km near their community. The mine officially opened in 2008, projecting a 12-year contribution to the Ontario economy of CAD 6.7 billion[64]. In 2005, De Beers dumped its sewage sludge into the Attawapiskat community's lift station, causing a sewage backup which flooded many homes and exacerbated an already-developing housing crisis, followed by another sewage backup potentially caused by De Beers in 2008[65]. Afterward, the company donated trailers to the community to serve as "short-term emergency shelters," yet they remained in place even four years later[66].
As the Idle No More movement took off in late 2012 and early 2013, members of the Attawapiskat community undertook road blockades leading to the De Beers mine. The company sought a legal injunction against the protesters, and the blockade was ended just as a large number of police were headed to the community to "remove the barricades." After successfully blocking the mine from properly functioning for nearly twenty days, the company announced that it was considering taking legal action against the protesters[67].
The Idle No More mission statement called "on all people to join in a revolution which honors and fulfills Indigenous sovereignty which protects the land and water [...] Colonization continues through attacks to Indigenous rights and damage to the land and water. We must repair these violations, live the spirit and intent of the treaty relationship, work towards justice in action, and protect Mother Earth." The movement's manifesto further declared that, "the state of Canada has become one of the wealthiest countries in the world by using the land and resources. Canadian mining, logging, oil and fishing companies are the most powerful in the world due to land and resources. Some of the poorest First Nations communities (such as Attawapiskat) have mines or other developments on their land but do not get a share of the profit[68]." As Pamela Palmater noted, Idle No More was unique, "because it is purposefully distances from political and corporate influence. There is no elected leader, no paid Executive Director, and no bureaucracy or hierarchy which determines what any person or First Nation can and can't do [...] This movement is inclusive of all our peoples[69]."
The Athabasca Chipewyan Indigenous band which had been struggling for years against the tar sands development were further mobilized with the eruption of Idle No More onto the national scene, including by establishing a blockade on Highway 63 leading to the tar sands development[70]. As Chipewyan chief Allan Adam noted, "The way I look at it, the First Nations people are going to cripple this country if things don't turn out [...] Industry is going to be the target." He also added: "We know for a fact that industry was the one that lobbied government to make this regulatory reform[71]." Indeed, this was no hyperbole.
Greenpeace obtained – through access to information laws – a letter sent to the Canadian government's Environment minister and Natural Resources minister dated December of 2011, written by a group called the Energy Framework Initiative (EFI), representing the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, the Canadian Fuels Association, and the Canadian Gas Association. The letter sought "to address regulatory reform for major energy industries in Canada" in order to advance "both economic growth and environmental performance." It specifically referenced six laws that it wanted amended, including the National Energy Board Act, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act, Migratory Birds Convention Act, and the Navigable Waters Protection Act. Referring to many of these laws as "outdated," the letter criticized environmental legislation as "almost entirely focused on preventing bad things from happening rather than enabling responsible outcomes[72]."
Less than a month after receiving the letter, the Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver lashed out at activists opposing the construction of Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline shipping oil from Alberta's tar sands to the B.C. coast for shipment to Asia, stating, "Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade… Their goal is to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth. No forestry. No mining. No oil. No gas. No more hydro-electric dams." Oliver went on, saying that such "radical groups" were threatening "to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda," and accused them of using funding from "foreign special interest groups[73]."
Documents from the energy industry revealed that big corporations advised the Harper government not to amend the many environmentally related acts separately, but to employ "a more strategic omnibus legislative approach," which resulted in the two omnibus bills over 2012, Bills C-38 and C-45, which included "hundreds of pages of changes to environmental protection laws [...] weakening rules that protect water and species at risk, introducing new tools to authorize water pollution, as well as restricting public participation in environmental hearings and eliminating thousands of reviews to examine and mitigate environmental impacts of industrial projects[74]." The energy industry got virtually everything it asked for in the two omnibus bills, including – as their letter to the Harper government suggested – reforming "issues associated with Aboriginal consultation[75]."
Documents from Environment Canada showed how the minister informed a group of energy industry representatives that the development of pipelines were "top-of-mind" as the government pursued "the modernization of our regulatory system." When the new legislation passed, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency announced that it has cancelled roughly 3,000 environmental assessments, including 250 reviews related to pipeline projects[76]. Other documents showed that at the same time the minister was informing energy corporations that he was serving their interests, he was to inform Indigenous leaders that any "changes to the government's environmental assessment or project approvals regime" were "speculative at this point" and that they would "respect our duties toward Aboriginal peoples[77]."
As the Harper government became the primary lobbyist for the Alberta tar sands, documents showed how the government compiled a list of "allies" and "adversaries" in its public relations campaign, referring to energy companies, Environment Canada and the National Energy Board as "allies," and the media, environmental and Indigenous groups as "adversaries[78]." The Canadian government even ran an "outreach program" where diplomats would attempt to secure support among American journalists for the Keystone XL pipeline project – taking oil from the Alberta tar sands to the Gulf Coast in the United States[79].
As the Canadian government revised its anti-terrorism strategy in early 2012, it listed "eco-extremists" alongside white supremacists as a threat to national security[80]. A review of Canadian security documents from the national police force (RCMP) and the Canadian intelligence agency (CSIS) revealed that the government saw environmental activism such as blockades of roads or buildings as "forms of attack" and "national security threats." Greenpeace was identified as "potentially violent," as it had become "the new normal now for Canada's security agencies to watch the activities of environmental organizations," noted one analyst[81].
The government of Canada acknowledged in early 2013 that it expected – over the following decade – that there would be "a huge boom in Canadian natural resource projects," potentially worth CAD 600 billion, which is foreseen to be taking place "on or near" Indigenous lands. One Indigenous chief in Manitoba warned that the Idle No More movement "can stop Prime Minister Harper's resource development plan and his billion-dollar plan to develop resources on our ancestral territory. We have the warriors that are standing up now, that are willing to go that far[82]."
In an official meeting between the Harper government and the Assembly of First Nations in January of 2013, Indigenous 'leaders' presented a list of demands which included ensuring there was a school in every indigenous community, a public inquiry into the missing and murdered Indigenous women, as well as several other very 'moderate' reforms. For the government, the objectives were much more specific, as internal documents revealed, written in preparation for Harper's meeting with Indigenous leaders. As one briefing memo stated, the government was working towards "removing obstacles to major economic development opportunities[83]."
For the Idle No More movement, which does not consider itself to be 'represented' by the Assembly of First Nations leaders, the objective is largely "to put more obstacles up," as Martin Lukacs wrote in the Guardian. Indigenous peoples, he noted, "are the best and last defense against this fossil fuel scramble," specifically in mobilizing opposition to "the three-fold expansion of one of the world's most carbon-intensive projects, the Alberta tar sands[84]."
In March of 2013, an alliance of Indigenous leaders from across Canada and the United States announced that they were "preparing to fight proposed new pipelines in the courts and through unspecified direct action," specifically referring to the Northern Gateway, Keystone XL and Kinder Morgan pipeline projects. One Indigenous leader at the formation of the alliance warned, "We're going to stop these pipelines one way or another." Another Indigenous leader commented: "We, as a nation, have to wake up [...] We have to wake up to the crazy decision that this government's making to change the world in a negative way[85]."
The territories of the ten allied Indigenous groups "are either in the crude-rich tar sands or on the proposed pipeline routes." One Indigenous leader from northern British Columbia referred to the Canadian government, stating, "They've been stealing from us for the last 200 years [...] now they're going to destroy our land? We're not going to let that happen [...] If we have to go to court, if we have to stand in front of any of their machines that are going to take the oil through, we are going to do that. We're up against a wall here. We have nowhere else to go[86]."
Roughly one week after the Indigenous alliance was formed, an ExxonMobil pipeline carrying Alberta tar sands oil through the United States ruptured in the town of Mayflower, Arkansas, spilling thousands of barrels of oil into residential neighbourhoods and the surrounding environment. Exxon quickly moved in with roughly 600 workers to manage the cleanup and sign checks "to try to win over the townsfolk and seek to limit the fallout[87]." The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) put in place a "no fly zone" over Mayflower, Arkansas, within days following the oil spill. The 'no fly zone' was being overseen by ExxonMobil itself, thus, as Steven Horn commented, "any media or independent observers who want to witness the tar sands spill disaster have to ask Exxon's permission[88]."
Between March 11 and April 9 of 2013 (in a span of roughly thirty days), there were 13 reported oil spills on three separate continents, with more than a million gallons of oil and other toxic chemicals spilled in North and South America alone. The oil spills included an Enbridge pipeline leak in the Northwest Territories in Canada (March 19), a tar sands 'tailing pond' belonging to Suncor leaking into the Athabasca River in Alberta (March 25), a Canadian Pacific Railway train derailment spilling tar sands oil in Minnesota (March 27), the Exxon spill in Mayflower (March 29), oil-based hydraulic fluid spilling into the Grand River from a power plant in Michigan (March 31), a CN Rail train derailment in Ontario (April 3), a drilling leak in Newfoundland (April 3), the Shell pipeline leak in Texas (April 3), a condensate spill at an Exxon refinery in Louisiana (April 4), and a pump station 'error' in Alaska (April 9)[89]. Another spill took place in June on Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline in British Columbia, one of the pipeline extensions being opposed by Indigenous groups[90].
Meanwhile, Stephen Harper was in New York in May, speaking to the highly influential US think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, where he explained that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline "absolutely needs to go ahead," adding that it was "an enormous benefit to the US in terms of long-term energy security[91]." TransCanada, the company aiming to build the Keystone XL pipeline, along with the government of Alberta, hired a team of lobbyists with connections to the Obama administration and Secretary of State John Kerry in particular to pressure the US government to approve the pipeline[92]. In late April, the president of the American Petroleum Institute confidently declared, "When it's all said and done, the president will approve the pipeline[93]." In late May, the CEO of TransCanada said, "I remain extremely confident that we'll get the green light to build this pipeline[94]."
Leaders from 11 different Indigenous bands in the United States "stormed out" of a meeting in May being held with federal government officials in South Dakota in protest against the Keystone XL pipeline. The leaders criticized both the project and the Obama administration, with one leader commenting, "We find ourselves victims of another form of genocide, and it's environmental genocide, and it's caused by extractive industries." Another Indigenous leader who walked out of the meeting warned, "What the State Department, what President Obama needs to hear from us, is that we are going to be taking direct action[95]." TransCanada has even been supplying US police agencies with information about environmental activists and recommendations to pursue charges of "terrorism" against them, noting that the company feared such "potential security concerns" as protests, blockades, court challenges, and even "public meetings[96]."
While Indigenous communities in Canada and elsewhere are among the most repressed and exploited within our society, they are also on the front lines of resistance against environmentally destructive practices undertaken by the most powerful institutions in the world. As such, Indigenous groups are not only standing up for environmental issues, but for the future of the species as a whole. With the rapidly accelerating 'development' of the tar sands, and the increasing environmental danger of huge new pipelines projects, resistance to how our modern society treats the environment is reaching new heights. Indigenous organizing – much of which is done along anarchistic ideas (such as with the Idle No More movement) – is presenting an unprecedented challenge to institutional power structures. Thus, there is an increased need for environmentalists, scientists, and others who are interested in joining forces with Indigenous groups in the struggle against environmental degradation and the potential extinction of the species. In Canada, there is an even greater impetus for scientists to join forces with Indigenous communities, for there is a state-sponsored assault upon environmental sciences that threaten to devastate the scientific community in the very near term.
Since Stephen Harper's Conservative government came to power in 2006, there has been a steady attack upon the sciences, particularly those related to environmental issues, as the government cut funding for major programs and implemented layoffs. One major facet of this attack has been the 'muzzling' of Canadian scientists at international conferences, discussions with the media, and the publication of research. At one conference hosted in Canada, scientists working for Environment Canada were forced to direct all media inquiries through the public relations department in an effort "to intimidate government scientists[97]." Under new government guidelines, scientists working for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) cannot publish material until it is reviewed by the department "for any concerns/impacts to DFO policy." The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) expressed in a letter to Stephen Harper their "deep dismay and anger at your government's attack on the independence, integrity and academic freedom of scientific researchers[98]." Hundreds of Canadian scientists marched on Parliament Hill in July of 2012 in what they called a "funeral procession" against the government's "systematic attack on science[99]."
One of the world's leading science journals, Nature, published an editorial in March of 2012 calling on the Canadian government to stop muzzling and "set its scientists free[100]." Journalists requesting interviews with Canadian government scientists on issues related to the Arctic or climate change have had to go through public relations officials, provide questions in advance, adhere to "boundaries for what subjects the interview could touch upon," and have a PR staffer "listen in on the interviews[101]."
Dozens of government agencies and programs related to environmental sciences have had their budgets slashed, scientists fired, or were discontinued altogether[102]. The Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria lodged a formal complaint with Canada's Federal Information Commissioner about the muzzling of scientists, outlining multiple examples "of taxpayer-funded science being suppressed or limited to prepackaged media lines across six different government departments and agencies." Natural Resources Canada now requires "pre-approval" from the government before any scientists give interviews on topics such as "climate change" or the "oilsands[103]."
The attack upon the sciences is part of the Harper government's 2007 strategy, Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada's Advantage, which directed "a major shift away from scientific goals to economic and labour-market priorities," aiming to focus on science and research which would be directly useful to industry and for commercial purposes. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) has been steered by the government "toward industry-related research and away from environmental science." The government's minister of state for science and technology noted that the focus for research was to be on "getting those ideas out to our factory floors, if you will, making the product or process or somehow putting that into the marketplace and creating jobs[104]." Further, the National Research Council (NRC) was "to focus more on practical, commercial science and less on fundamental science" which wouldn't be as beneficial to corporate interests. The minister of state for science and technology, Gary Goodyear, announced it as "an exciting, new journey – a re-direction that will strengthen Canada's research and innovation ecosystem for many years to come." The president of the NRC noted that, "We have shifted the primary focus of our work at NRC from the traditional emphasis of basic research and discovery science in favour of a more targeted approach to research and development[105]."
As Stephen Harper said, "Science powers commerce," but apparently to Harper, that is all it should do, even though many scientists and academics disagree[106]. The implications should be obvious: just as society's interaction with the environment is unsustainable, so too is the dependency of the sciences upon those institutions which are destroying the environment.
Regardless of one's position in society – as a member of an Indigenous group, an activist group, or within the scientific community – all of human society is facing the threat of extinction, accelerated by our destruction of the environment sourced at the point of interaction (the location of extraction) between the dominant institutions of our world and the natural world itself. Roughly half the world's population lives in extreme poverty, with billions living in hunger, with poor access to safe drinking water, medicine and shelter, monumental disparities in wealth and inequality, the production and maintenance of unprecedented weapons of death and destruction, we are witnessing an exponentially accelerating plundering of resources and destruction of the environment upon which all life on Earth depends. If there has ever been a time in human history to begin asking big questions about the nature of our society and the legitimacy of the institutions and ideologies which dominate it, this is it.
An anarchistic understanding of the institutions and ideologies which control the world order reveals a society blinded by apathy as it nears extinction. The institutions which dictate the political, economic and social direction of our world are the very same ones destroying the environment to such an extent that the fate of the species is put at extreme risk. To not only continue – but to accelerate – down this path is no longer an acceptable course of action for humanity. It is time that socially segregated populations begin reaching out and working together, to share knowledge, organizational capacity, and engage in mutual action for shared objectives. With that in mind, it would appear to be beneficial not only for those involved – but for humanity as a whole – if Indigenous peoples and segments of the scientific community pursued the objective of protecting the environment together. Acknowledging this is easy enough, the hard part is figuring out the means and methods of turning that acknowledgement into action.
This is again where anarchist principles can become useful, emphasizing the creative capacity of many to contribute new ideas and undertake new initiatives working together as free individuals in collective organizations to achieve shared objectives. This is not an easy task, but it is a necessary one. The very future of humanity may depend upon it.
For notes and sources, download the paper here.
Andrew Gavin Marshall is a 26-year old researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada. He is Project Manager of The People's Book Project, chair of the Geopolitics Division of The Hampton Institute, research director for Occupy.com's Global Power Pro-ject, and hosts a weekly podcast show with BoilingFrogsPost.
Cash Hoarding, Tax Evasion, and the Corporate Coup
Cash Hoarding, Tax Evasion, and the Corporate Coup
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
The following is Part 3 of my three-part exclusive series for Occupy.com
Part 1: Welcome to the Network of Global Corporate Control
Part 2: The "Real" Recovery: Welcome to the Network of Global Corporate Control
Corporate profits are good, right? Low taxes on corporations are also good, right? With high profits and low taxes, corporations have large amounts of money to "invest" in new businesses and jobs, meaning everyone else benefits. This is what we are told by politicians, it is what the majority of economists are taught to think, and it's what corporate executives and their spokespeople say constantly so therefore it must be true…right?
Let's get a reality check.
With record-breaking profits and record-low taxes, the truth is that corporations around the world have been hoarding record-high amounts of cash while finding legal loopholes to pay less, or none, of their taxes.
Holding trillions of dollars in cash would, in theory, allow corporations to invest in new businesses and create jobs: the old promise of trickle down economics. Instead, corporations have decided to firmly hold on to their cash, perhaps in preparation for the next financial crisis (which their refusal to invest in new opportunities and jobs is helping to create).
Or perhaps the executives are only waiting for our standards of living to decline far enough that austerity and "adjustment" policies produce desirable "investment environments" like those in existence across the "Third World," where unhindered corporate plundering and exploitation is the norm.
In 2010, Apple recorded roughly $13 billion in foreign profits but paid a negligible $130 million in taxes, par for the course for giant corporations. The result of Apple and other multinationals getting away with tax loopholes means disastrous consequences for governments. Google, for example, is able to move its billions in profits out of Europe, paying almost no taxes there as it deposits the revenues into the company's administrative headquarters in Bermuda, where there is no corporate income tax.
Tax havens and loopholes allow corporations to move around globally, creating a problem for national governments that seek to tax corporations at higher rates by establishing a "race to the bottom" in competition for reduced corporate taxes. Belgium, for example, with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, at roughly 34%, collects far less from companies due to its own tax loopholes.
The average tax rate for the 50 most profitable companies in Belgium – which totaled some 27 billion euros in profits in 2010 – was a mere 1.04%. Thus, as the government considers establishing a "minimum tax rate" of 12.5% to ensure revenue for the debt-ridden country, others fear that establishing such a rule would simply lead to corporations leaving the country and migrating to other tax havens across Europe.
As reported in Der Spiegel, "[a]n international treaty could prevent corporations from outsmarting countries," however, "so far not even the European Union has been able to harmonize the rules of its member states." Obviously, such an endeavor is not high on the priority list for European and international decision makers, which is hardly surprising since their main interest is in serving global corporations and banks.
At the same time that reports emerged last fall about major European and international corporations avoiding taxes, the Wall Street Journal wrote in November of 2012 that the continent's biggest banks were "continuing to stash more money at central banks" rather than investing it, hoarding a combined total of $1.43 trillion in cash on reserve at several central banks.
Since 2010, the major banks have increased their cash hoarding by 84%. French bank Société Générale reportedly held 81 billion euros ($103 billion) at central banks in the third quarter of 2012.
This hoarding frenzy is happening even as banks across Europe continue to receive national and international bailouts, while demanding that countries further impoverish their populations through austerity measures so as to pay back their bad debts. This is a year after the European Central Bank provided 1 trillion euros to the continent's banks in short-term cheap loans, supposedly "to jump-start lending to the businesses, individuals and other financial institutions."
As the Wall Street Journal stated bluntly: "Across Europe, corporations are sitting on a mountain of cash." Despite their massive reserves of cash, major corporations aren't spending, and thus "one possible way out of Europe's economic crisis – a big boost in business investment – is closed off." According to the Institute of International Finance, the principle international banking lobby, this is common practice across most "mature and emerging economies." Collectively, corporations in the United States, the Eurozone, the U.K. and Japan held roughly $7.75 trillion in cash, "an unprecedented sum."
The Centre for European Reform, a think tank in London, reported that the ratio of investment to gross domestic product is at a 60-year low as corporations hoard more cash than ever before — money which, in theory, could facilitate investment. In the Eurozone, corporate cash hoarding reached roughly 2 trillion euros (or $2.64 trillion). Meanwhile, austerity policies in European countries has led to a predictable retraction of growth, which in turn has led to more corporate hoarding.
Moving over to the U.S., it was reported in 2011 that corporations there had been hoarding cash to a larger degree than at any time in nearly half a century, with non-financial companies holding more than $2 trillion by the end of June 2011. This figure only acknowledged domestic cash hoarding by U.S. corporations, and didn't include their foreign earnings. According to released IRS documents in 2009, major corporations, which held $1.7 trillion in cash from domestic operations, held a total of $5.13 trillion when including foreign cash assets.
As recently as 2008, the Government Accountability Office reported that despite trillions in earnings for corporations, the majority of U.S. and foreign-based corporations doing business in the United States managed to avoid paying any income taxes, with 72% of foreign and 57% of U.S. conglomerates successfully avoiding paying income tax for at least one year between 1998 and 2005.
Between 2008 and 2010, 30 large and profitable U.S. corporations paid no income taxes, even though the U.S. corporate tax rate was officially 35%. Among the companies that avoided paying any taxes were General Electric, PG&E and Boeing. Congress and state governments have encouraged the establishment of "pass-throughs," allowing corporations to avoid paying any taxes by "passing" the profits along to investors.
This has been an exception given to businesses for decades, though the percentage of nontaxable corporations has rapidly grown, from 24% in 1986 to 69% in 2008, allowing private-equity giants like Blackstone Group and construction firms like Bechtel Group to avoid paying any taxes on their revenue.
In 2011, despite the 35% tax rate for corporations, the ten largest corporations in the United States paid an average federal tax rate of 9%, including companies like Exxon Mobil, Apple, Microsoft, JP Morgan Chase, and General Electric. Not surprisingly, the eight corporations that spent the most money on lobbying had lower tax rates, including Exxon Mobil, Verizon, GE, AT&T, Altria, Amgen, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing.
In 2010, when General Electric recorded worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, with $5.1 billion coming from operations within the United States, the company – one of the largest in the world – managed to pay no taxes at all, and, in fact, claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. Between 2008 and 2011, 280 of the largest publicly traded American corporations paid an average tax rate of 18.5% on their profits, just slightly over half of what the actual tax rate is and less than most of their competitors in foreign industrialized countries.
Canadian companies have also been hoarding mountains of cash, not to be left on the sidelines by their American and Europe-based counterparts. In fact, it was reported that Canada's corporations had hoarded more than half a trillion dollars in cash reserves, about $525 billion, by the end of 2011. This amounted to almost a third of the size of the entire economy, with at least 45% of Canada's biggest corporations hoarding cash instead of investing or creating jobs.
Cash hoarding also allows companies to avoid paying taxes, giving companies further reason to not invest. In the U.K., corporate cash hoarding amounted to roughly $1.2 trillion, about half the size of the British economy — though small compared to the $5.1 trillion hoarded in the United States, an amount larger than the GDP of Germany. An analyst at Ernst & Young stated, "Until these companies stop stashing the cash and start increasing levels of investment and dividends, the economy will remain on the critical list."
Over the previous 22 years, the biggest American banks created more than 10,000 subsidiaries around the world, "using legal structures to pay lower taxes and escape tighter regulation," according to figures released from the Federal Reserve. JP Morgan Chase, the largest American lender, had 3,391 subsidiaries, followed closely by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America, each with over 2,000 subsidiaries. Citigroup maintained over 1,500 global subsidiaries.
Since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 (which had been put in place in 1933 to avoid another Great Depression), the big banks got even bigger, with even the Federal Reserve admitting that the law's repeal was the "main catalyst" for the growth in the size of banks, whose assets tripled since that time to $15 trillion.
The combined assets of the five largest banks in the United States in 2011 was roughly $8.5 trillion, equal to 56% of the U.S. economy, compared to five years earlier, before the financial crash, when the total assets of these banks equaled roughly 43% of the American economy. The five banks – JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs – are twice as large now as they were ten years ago.
The facts are in. The reality is this:
Big banks, corporations, and powerful states created the global economic crisis for which the people of the world are forced to pay, and suffer, with declining wages, decreased opportunities, increased debt and expanding poverty. Meanwhile, those who created the crisis make record profits, pay little or no taxes, hoard trillions in cash, and fail to "invest" their revenues.
The question is now, what are we going to do about it?
Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, with a focus on studying the ideas, institutions, and individuals of power and resistance across a wide spectrum of social, political, economic, and historical spheres. He has been published in AlterNet, CounterPunch, Occupy.com, Truth-Out, RoarMag, and a number of other alternative media groups, and regularly does radio, Internet, and television interviews with both alternative and mainstream news outlets. He is Project Manager of The People's Book Project and has a weekly podcast show with BoilingFrogsPost.
Interview: Indigenous Occupy
The following is my latest interview from Russia Today
An indigenous movement known as 'Idle No More' is gaining momentum in Canada. The First Nations people have promised to bring the country's economy 'down to its knees' if aboriginals' voices remain unheard.
Having begun with four members in November, Idle No More has now become reminiscent of other grassroots movements like Occupy Wall Street.
Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper has agreed to meet with native chiefs on Friday to discuss disagreements over treaty rights and other grievances. Despite him promising to pay more attention to their demands, the meeting did not resolve any real issues.
Before the meeting, hundreds of indigenous activists protested in front of the Canada's parliament, demonstrating their frustration, but also highlighting a deep divide within the country's First Nations on how to push Ottawa to heed their demands.
Mass demonstrations have been sparked by Bill C-45, which was passed by the Canadian government in December. The legislation amends rules about the community's land and protesters say it undermines century-old treaties by altering the approval process for leasing aboriginal lands to outsiders and changing environmental oversight in favor of natural resource extraction.
"Bill C-45 is not just about a budget, it is a direct attack on First Nations lands and on the bodies of water we all share from across this country," Idle No More said in a statement on its website.
"Canada is becoming essentially the world's No.1 corporate colony," claimed independent researcher and writer Andrew Gavin Marshall. "Our prime minister has negotiated or is negotiating eight free trade agreements – this is opening up Canada to unhindered corporate plundering of the environment and resources. Indigenous peoples are at the front lines of that because their communities are hit first and they are hit hardest. So they may be facing the final stages of the 500-years genocide."
In an interview with RT, Marshall said the Idle No More movement puts a spotlight on a broad range of problems within Canada. The movement is a resurgence of indigenous resistance against colonialism and oppression, he explained. Apart from that, it addresses human issues, the environment, the economy and society in general.
"In Canada we have essentially what amounts to apartheid system in how we treat the indigenous population. In their communities they have less access to water, food insecurity."
Another serious issue is the situation that indigenous women are facing. "We have huge numbers of murdered or missing aboriginal women. The police don't care. It's unaccounted for."
As the movement is gaining moment it is spreading outside Canada with hundreds of protests held across the world, Marshall says."It's been spreading globally because indigenous issues are human issues and are relevant everywhere around the world. It can spread in the same way the Occupy spread – largely through social media."
Canadian society is waking up to the fact that the world has changed, Marshall argues.
"You have a youth movement here in Quebec and now an indigenous movement across the country and spreading."
"What's happening is part of the global phenomenon of change. This has no national boundaries, this is about people waking up to the power systems that exist and demanding and fighting for change," he told RT.
"What aboriginal people in Canada are teaching us is that to protect the environment we have to address empire and that's the reality that people everywhere are facing. As well as economic injustice – these are all related issues – we can't deal with them separately. We have to deal with them collectively and we have to act on them collectively."
Corporate Culture and Global Empire: Food Crisis, Land Grabs, Poverty, Slums, Environmental Devastation and Resistance
Corporate Culture and Global Empire: Food Crisis, Land Grabs, Poverty, Slums, Environmental Devastation and Resistance
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
Corporate power is immense. The world's largest corporation is Royal Dutch Shell, surpassed in wealth only by the 24 largest countries on earth. Of the 150 largest economic entities in the world, 58% are corporations. Corporations are institutionally totalitarian, the result of power's resistance to the democratic revolution, which was begrudgingly accepted in the political sphere, but denied the economic sphere, and thus was denied a truly democratic society. They are driven by a religion called "short-term profits." Corporate society – a state-capitalist society – flourished in the United States, and managed the transition of American society in the early 20th century, just as Fascists and Communists were managing transitions across Europe. With each World War, American society – its political and economic power – grew in global influence, and with the end of World War II, that corporate society was exported globally.
This is empire. The American military, intelligence agencies, and national security apparatus operate with the intention of serving U.S. – and now increasingly global – state and corporate interests. Wars, coups, destabilization campaigns, support for dictators, tyrants, genocides and oppression are the products of Western interaction with the rest of the world.
In the same sense that "God made man in his own image," corporations remade society in their own interest; and with equal arrogance. Corporations and banks created or took over think tanks, foundations, educational institutions, media, public relations, advertising, and other sectors of society. Through their control of other institutions, they extend their ideologies of power – and the variances between them – to the population, to other elites, the 'educated' class, middle class, the poor and working class. So long as the ideas expressed support power, it's 'acceptable.' It can extend critiques, but institutional analysis is not permitted. Ideas which oppose institutional power are 'ideological', 'idealist', 'utopian', and ultimately, unacceptable.
Corporate culture dominates our society in the West. Being inherently totalitarian institutions, the culture – and its institutions – become increasingly totalitarian. This is the response by private economic power to undo the achievements in human history which came through increased democracy in the political sphere. Corporations and banks seek to control and consume all things, to dominate without end.
The only reason corporations were and are able to be the defining cultural institution of the 20th and now 21st century, is because of their economic power. This is derived from exploitation: of resources, the environment, labour, and consumers. It is enforced with repression: the job of the state in the state-capitalist society, along with massive subsidies and protectionist measures for corporate and financial interests. As corporate power extended around the world, the rapid destruction of the environment and resources accelerated, and Western powers 'outsourced' the environmental devastation our consumer societies 'require' to the so-called Third World. We consume, and they suffer; a marriage of inconvenience that we call "civilization." Corporations and our state keep the rest of the world in a state of poverty and repression, eternally attempting to block the inevitable global revolution to create a human society that acts… humanely. We were busy buying things. Couldn't be bothered.
Now what our societies have done to the people on whose land we now live, or everyone else in the world, is being done internally, to us. Everything is up for sale! Corporations make record profits, hoard billions and trillions in cash reserves, NOT being invested, but likely waiting until your standard of living is significantly reduced so that your labour and resources are cheaper, and thus, ultimately more profitable. This is called 'austerity' and 'structural reform,' political euphemisms for impoverishment and exploitation.
Corporations, banks and states have in recent years caused a massive global food crisis, driving food costs to record highs almost every subsequent year from 2007 onward. With billions of people in the world living on less than $2 per day, the majority of humanity spends most of their income on food. Price increases in food, caused primarily by financial speculation (big players include Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Barclays), push tens of millions more people into poverty and hunger. Roughly one billion – 1/7th of the world's population – live in slums. And they are growing rapidly. Massive urban slums were developed out of the imperialism Western states and corporations imposed upon the rest of the world, pushing people off the land and into the cities, whether induced by poverty or coerced by bombs and guns. All billed to the imperial Western state sponsors of terrorism. We supported (and support) ruthless and tiny elites in the countries we dominate[d] around the world, and now we are just beginning to realize the ruthless and tiny elite which rules over our own domestic lives. Their social function is that of a parasite: to suck the life blood out of all global society.
Food price increases have helped spur a massive global land grab, with Western (as well as Gulf and Asian powers) grabbing vast tracts of land – and water – around the world, for pennies on the dollar. This grab is most extensive in Africa, where in the past several years, mostly Western investors have grabbed land which amounts to an area roughly the size of Western Europe. The land not only contains extensive resource wealth, most importantly water (the Nile is up for sale!), but it is home to hundreds of millions of people, and globally, there are 2.5 billion poor people engaged in small-scale farming. This is primarily done through communal land ownership, something which Western society – with its 'divine right' of private property – does not understand. Thus, in international, state, and corporate law – which we designed – we deem communally owned and used land to be legally owned by the state. Our 'investors' – banks, hedge funds, pension funds, corporations and states – strike deals with corrupt states across the world to give us 40-100 year contracts for vast tracts of land, paying little or sometimes no rent. Then the "empty land" – as we call it – is cleared (of it's "emptiness", no doubt), evicting peoples who have been there for generations and beyond, who depend upon the land and the food it produces for their very lives. These people are being driven to cities, and ultimately, slums.
This is what we call "productive" use of land. So naturally, we then destroy it, eviscerate its environment, poison and pollute, extract, exploit, plunder and profit. Or we simply hold onto the land, not using it at all, just waiting until it goes up in profit. Even major American universities like Harvard are getting involved in the massive land grabs across Africa and elsewhere. This is the largest land grab in history since the late 19th century 'Scramble for Africa' where Europeans colonized almost the entire continent. When we do use the land for 'productive use', we say it will "help the climate" and "reduce hunger." How? Because we will produce food and biofuels. And in doing so, we will use massive amounts of chemicals, pesticides, genetically modified organisms, deforestation, biodiversity destruction, highly mechanized and heavy fuel-use farming techniques. The food we produce – which is not much, we have more interest in things like biofuels, lumber, minerals, oil, cash-crops, etc. – is then exported to our countries, and away from the poor ones where hunger and poverty are so prevalent. They lose their land, gain more poverty, with the added bonus of extensive food insecurity, hunger, starvation, slum growth, increased mortality rates, disease, and violence. Poverty is violence.
This is how Western states, banks, corporations and international organizations address the issue of "hunger": by creating more of it. And in a deeply disturbing irony, we call this moving towards "sustainability." Little did we know that power interests have a different definition of "sustainability" than most people: they simply combined the words sustained and profitability, and called it "sustainability." And coincidentally, that word already has a meaning to most people, so we simply misinterpreted the meaning. But there are people who take that concept seriously, those who experience the major costs of an unsustainable society.
We are witnessing a massive global resistance to these processes, largely driven by indigenous peoples – in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and now in North America. In Canada, the 'Idle No More' movement began with four indigenous women in Saskatchewan deciding to meet up and discuss their concerns about Steven Harper's "budget bill," which, among other things, had reduced the amount of Canada's protected rivers, lakes, and streams from roughly 2.5 million (as of Dec. 4, 2012) to somewhere around 62 (as of Dec. 5, 2012). Now a large, expanding, and increasingly international social movement led by indigenous peoples is taking place. Less than two months ago, it began with four women having a discussion.
Canada's Indigenous peoples are showing Canadians – and others around the world – how to stand up against power. And they've had practice. For over 500 years, our societies have been oppressing and often eradicating indigenous populations at 'home' and abroad. Indigenous peoples, like other oppressed peoples, are at the front lines of the most oppressive nature of our society: they experience and have experienced exploitation, environmental devastation, domination and decimation. With the world's Indigenous peoples speaking – not only in Canada, but across Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere – it is time that we in the West begin to listen. It is always important to listen to those who are most oppressed; the histories of our 'victims' are rarely written or known, at least not to us. Victims remember. And it matters that we begin to listen.
How can we expect to change – or know what and how to change – our societies if we do not listen and learn from those who have experienced the worst of our society? Indigenous people are now giving us a lesson in democratic struggle. If we continue on our current path, Indigenous communities will be completely wiped out; the powers that rule our society will have completed a 500-year genocide.
So we have to ask ourselves the question: should we now listen to, learn from, and join with these people in common struggle for justice and the idea of a humane society, or… are we still too busy buying things?
Perhaps it is time we all should be 'Idle No More'.
The above was a short summary of roughly three separate chapters currently being researched and written as part of The People's Book Project. To help the Project continue, please consider spreading the word, sharing articles, or donating.
The Great Corporate Colony: Welcome to Canada Inc., A Subsidiary of the American Empire & Co.
The Great Corporate Colony: Welcome to Canada Inc., A Subsidiary of the American Empire & Co.
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
The following is a sample from the first volume of The People's Book Project, a crowd-funded initiative to produce a series of books studying the ideas, institutions, and individuals of power and resistance. Please consider donating to help the Project come to fruition.
As one of the most resource-rich countries on earth, and the largest single trading partner with the United States, Canada is strategically positioned to influence the changing nature of global power structures. Do we support – and siphon our resources for the benefit of – the American Empire, co-operating in the wholesale plundering of the world, the oppression and impoverishment of peoples, destruction of global ecology, all for the benefit of an increasingly small class of global corporations and banks… Or, do we become independent and free? Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper once said, "You won't recognize Canada when I get through with it." With multiple "free trade" agreements under way, expanded corporate rights, expropriation of vast amounts of natural resources, Canada is becoming one of the world's foremost corporate colonies, unrecognizable from what Canadians once imagined our nation to be.
The Plundering Potential of Resource Wealth
Canada is the second largest country by landmass in the world, after Russia, and with roughly 10% of the population of the United States, it is also one of the most resource rich countries on the entire planet. Looking at a list of the ten most resource-rich nations on earth (determined not by the multitude, but rather the 'market value' of the resources they contain) is rather revealing. At number ten, and in descending order is: Venezuela, Iraq, Australia, Brazil, China, Iran, Canada, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Russia. Canada has one of the largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia and Iran (though these are largely located in the difficult-to-extract Alberta tar sands), as well as having some of the largest mineral resource deposits in the world, with the second-largest proven reserves of uranium and the third largest amount of timber.[1] According to Statistics Canada, the nation's natural wealth tripled in value between 1990 and 2009, then valued at $3 trillion, largely due to the increased price of oil.[2]
In June of 2012, the United Nations released a major report in which it established a new index to account for and define 'wealth' beyond mere reports of GDP. Termed the "Inclusive Wealth Index" (IWI), it determines national wealth based upon three types of assets: "manufactured" (machinery, buildings, infrastructure, etc.), "human capital" (the population's education and skills), and "natural capital" (land, forests, fossil fuels, minerals, etc.). The study, Inclusive Wealth Report 2012, analyzed 20 different countries, and was intended to take into account depleting resources and sustainability for future generations when determining a nation's real wealth. While GDP growth has taken place in China, the U.S., South Africa and Brazil, these nations have significantly reduced their natural capital. Between 1990 and 2008, the "natural capital" of the United States declined by 20%, 17% for China, 25% for Brazil, and 33% for South Africa. In fact, 19 out of the 20 countries studied showed a decline in natural capital, offset only by an increase in human capital (education and skills).[3]
Human capital is based upon the average years of schooling, wages that the country's workers can demand, and how many years they are expected to work before they retire or die. With this measurement, human capital amounts to the largest percentage of a nation's wealth (except for Nigeria, Russia, and Saudi Arabia), accounting for 88% of Britain's wealth and 75% of America's.[4] Canada is of course included among the 19 countries with rapidly declining natural capital.
Canada's Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver spoke to a gathering of Canaccord Genuity Corporation (a financial services conglomerate) in Toronto in September of 2012, where he explained that Canada's "tremendous natural wealth" included "huge capacities and reserves of energy, including the third-largest proven oil reserves in the world," as well as "tremendous hydroelectric capacity, massive tracts of forests and an abundance of minerals and metals." He added, however: "it's not enough to have the resources… You have to do something with them." Oliver listed some of the many resources which Canada has and produces in abundance: oil, natural gas, hydroelectricity, uranium (second largest producer in the world), more than 200 mines turning out more than 60 minerals, "including more potash than anyone else," as well as aluminum, cobalt, diamonds, nickel, platinum group metals, titanium concentrate, tungsten, chromite, the second-largest exporter of primary forest products, and is the "biggest exporter of wood pulp, newsprint and softwood lumber." The resource sector, explained Oliver, "is the cornerstone of our economy, our long-term prosperity and our quality of life."[5]
Oliver explained that the energy, forestry, metals and minerals industries accounted for roughly 15% of Canada's nominal GDP, the "direct contribution" to the Canadian economy, while the indirect GDP (taking into account "goods and services purchased from other sectors – construction, machinery and equipment, business and professional services") takes the number up to roughly 20%. The key areas and industries are oil in Alberta, forestry in British Columbia, potash and uranium in Saskatchewan, mining in Ontario and hydro-power in Quebec. Oliver told the assembled crowd in the heart of Toronto's finance industry that there was "about $650 billion invested in over 600 major resource projects currently underway in Canada or planned in the next 10 years." He added: "Countries in the Asia-Pacific region are especially hungry for the energy and minerals and metals and forest products they need to fuel their growth and build a better quality of life for their citizens." There were, he acknowledged, still inherent problems with the global economy which could effect this outlook, but suggested that what the Canadian government can – "and is doing – is establish a competitive business climate so the private sector can capitalize on our enormous potential." In other words, the Canadian government will establish a highly protective and subsidized market for multinational corporations to more effectively plunder the natural resources.[6] All for altruistic intentions, of course!
Canada's highly influential big business dominated think tanks have not been far behind in promoting resource plundering by multinational corporations. The Conference Board of Canada published a report in June of 2012 arguing that "Canada's trade strengths are concentrated in industries that extract natural resources and process raw materials," including agricultural and food products, minerals and metals, forest products, and electricity exports. In the report, Adding Value to Trade: Moving Beyond Being Hewers of Wood, Michael Burt wrote: "These industries rely heavily on natural resource wealth such as land, water, forests, and mineral products. The abundance of these resources gives Canada a robust comparative advantage in the industries that extract and process them." Thus, it would be desirable to promote the "development and use of our natural resources, and industries that support the primary sector are competitive with world standards."[7] The board of directors of the Conference Board of Canada includes executives and/or board members of the Business Development Bank of Canada, EPCOR Utilities, CGI Group, GE Canada, Canada Post Corporation, TransAlta Corporation, ICICI Bank Canada, Cisco Systems Canada, Desjardins Group, IBM Canada, Shell Canada, Xerox Canada, SaskTel, SaskPower, and John Manley, the President and CEO of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), the main business interest group in Canada, made up of the top 150 corporate CEOs in the country.
In October of 2012, the Canadian International Council (CIC) – the Canadian counterpart to the Council on Foreign Relations in the U.S. – published a report entitled, Becoming a Resource Superpower, in which the author, Madelaine Drohan (the Canada correspondent for The Economist) argued that, "without strong leadership and collaboration we risk losing an opportunity to become a real resource superpower." A series of recommendations were laid out, including the possibility of establishing a sovereign wealth fund (SWF) to pool and invest money made from resources, encouraging the provincial and federal governments in Canada to "stop treating" revenue from resources "as income to be spent and start treating them as capital to be saved or invested." In other words, the money made from resources should not go back to benefit Canadians, but rather be used to exclusively benefit the investor class.[8]
Other recommendations focused on expanding the relationship between government, business, and academia (as if we don't have enough of this already): "To do this, federal and provincial governments must concentrate their funding for research and development on collaborative projects between groups of companies and academic institutions." Another recommendation focused on expanding "trade" networks and energy customers, specifically in the Asia-Pacific, noting: "Canada should focus on negotiations involving the largest possible number of countries, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and look beyond China so we do not repeat the error of putting all our eggs in one basket." The report then recommended the government to establish highly protectionist trade agreements for corporations, writing: "Government can help companies plug into global value chains by removing impediments and securing the right trade and investment deals." By definition, that is the opposite of "free trade," which is why it is important that we call it "free trade," when in actuality, it is highly protectionist, involving state intervention designed to undermine the 'market' and give corporations a subsidized advantage, thus, undermining competition. The last major recommendation was for federal, provincial, and territorial governments to "collaborate on a national blueprint for resource development that identifies the gaps to be filled – including in infrastructure, environmental protection, trade diversification, education, immigration, technology, and supporting sectors – and sets out how to address them, with achievable goals and deadlines." In other words, massive state-capitalist planning and plundering is required.[9]
The board of directors of the Canadian International Council (CIC) includes the president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Chair of the Atlantic Council of Canada, Raymond Chrétien (nephew of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien), while the chief sponsors of the CIC include: Bennett Jones, Power Corporation of Canada (owned by the Desmarais family, Canada's Rockefellers), the Royal Bank of Canada, AGF, Barrick Gold, BMO Financial Group, Sun Life Financial, Scotiabank, and TD Bank. So naturally, it has everyone's interests at heart, and by 'everyone', I mean, everyone that matters to the investor class (i.e., the investor class).
So, as Canada increases production of oil from Alberta's tar sands, the government is seeking to expand the major pipelines to the coast in the hopes of acquiring China as a major trading partner, instead of just the United States.[10] Canada sits atop "unknown quantities" of natural gas reserves, what The Economist calls an "unconventional bonanza," adding: "Just as the 20th century was the age of oil, the 21st could prove to be the century of gas."[11] However, in August of 2012, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared that Canada's future economic hopes depend upon the natural resources of the Arctic, which has been the focus of a new global grab for resources since the Arctic ice has begun to break up more rapidly. On a visit to the region, Harper stated, "Obviously, there is a tremendous economic opportunity here. The fact that we are attracting investment not just domestically, but from around the globe speaks very highly to the future." As revealed by documents released to the press, in late 2011, the Mining Association of Canada was lobbying the Environment Minister Peter Kent "to change regulations and allow non-metal mines, such as diamonds, oilsands and coal, to discharge potentially polluted water under federal guidelines."[12]
In other words, now that the ice is breaking and resources are being readied for plunder, the major mining conglomerates want the government's permission to treat the Canadian environment the way they treat the environment in the rest of the world, notably, in poor, conflict-ridden countries like Colombia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. After all, what is plundering without the added bonus of environmental devastation? It's not just a matter of extracting and exploiting all available resources, from which to gain massive profits, but it's also important for corporations to destroy the surrounding environment so that little, if anything, can flourish and replenish. That is plundering at its most profitable. In October of 2012, it was reported that Canada was going to claim ownership of a massive size of undersea territory in the Arctic, larger than the size of the province of Québec, and roughly equal to 20% of the country's surface area.[13]
In 2013, Canada will begin chairing a two-year term of the Arctic Council, a grouping of eight nations working together to manage the development of the Arctic as an economically and strategically important global region.[14] With the opening of new and large opportunities for economic exploitation and resource plundering, the states with territory in the Arctic have become increasingly aggressive in their military posturing in the region, "increasingly designed for combat rather than policing," according to a study by the Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions. The report noted: "Although the pursuit of co-operation is the stated priority, most of the Arctic states have begun to rebuild and modernize their military capabilities in the region."[15]
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper had been publicly making aggressive statements about competition in the Arctic, particularly in relation to Russia. In private, however, Harper had been making different claims. As revealed by Wikileaks, Harper expressed the message to the Secretary-General of NATO that there was no real military threat in the Arctic, instead expressing the perspective that, "Canada has a good working relationship with Russia with respect to the Arctic, and a NATO presence could backfire by exacerbating tensions." Harper added, according to the released cables, "that there is no likelihood of Arctic states going to war, but that some non-Arctic members favoured a NATO role in the Arctic because it would afford them influence in an area where 'they don't belong'." All the public statements and aggressive military stances in the region have, however, helped to sway public opinion into believing that there is a "security or sovereignty threat to the northern border," and thus justify increased expansion into the region for exploitation. The issue is not one of security, but of securing resources (for corporations, no doubt). One released cable from 2009 relayed this point accurately, noting that Canada's defense plan to build six Arctic Patrol ships for the navy was "an example of a requirement driven by political rather than military imperatives, since the navy did not request these patrol ships. The Conservatives have nonetheless long found domestic political capital in asserting Canada's 'Arctic Sovereignty'."[16] By the summer of 2012, the aggressive rhetoric had essentially vanished, and Harper's missions to the Arctic were entirely diplomatic and aimed at exploiting the region's vast natural resources.[17] The Obama administration has also identified the Arctic as "an area of key strategic interest."[18]
Canada For Sale: "Free Trade" Fanaticism
Canada has been pursuing a vast array of so-called "free trade" agreements with specific countries around the world, as part of the overall program of plundering resources and giving multinational corporations unprecedented control over society. Since the 1988 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Canada has pursued agreements with several countries, including Israel, Jordan, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, Honduras, Panama, Peru and is in talks with the European Union and Japan, as well as China and India.[19]
On August 15, 2011, the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement – a highly protectionist corporate-driven agreement (like all "free trade" agreements) – came into effect. The agreement was reached in 2008, receiving "royal assent" in 2010, and is sure to benefit major corporations and help finance a state which is responsible for the greatest human rights violations in the Western Hemisphere. Canada's top five exports to Colombia include wheat, newsprint and paper, machinery and equipment, dump trucks as well as beans, peas, and lentils. Colombia's top five exports to Canada include coal, coffee, bananas, fuel oil and cut flowers (note: this list excludes illicit trade products like cocaine, of which Colombia is a major global exporter).[20]
As critics of the deal pointed to Colombia's record on human rights abuses, Stephen Harper commented, "No good purpose is served in this country or in the United States by anybody who is standing in the way of the development of the prosperity of Colombia," by which he means to say that human rights are irrelevant so long as multinational corporations are making large profits. And indeed, policies fit that paradigm very well. Harper added: "Colombia is a wonderful country with great possibility and great ambition. And we need to be encouraging that every step of the way. That's why we have made this a priority to get this deal done. We can't block the progress of a country like this for protectionist reasons."[21] In this sense, the word "protectionist" refers to any impediments, regulations, or barriers to the unhindered exploitation and plundering of a country by multinational corporations. When agreements are protectionist in favour of corporations, securing and enforcing their unhindered monopolization of markets and exploitation of resources, this is called "free trade."
With more than 70 Canadian corporations in Colombia, from oil and mining to finance, the agreement will open up more access for major companies. For those who mention human rights abuses, Harper had this to say: "I think there are protectionist forces in our country and in the United States that don't care about development and prosperity in this part of the world. And that's unfortunate." Chris Spaulding of Talisman Energy, a Canadian corporation doing business in Colombia, commented that, "It's very business friendly. They want foreign investment. The labor force is very good. The resources are there."[22]
According to the Globe and Mail, Colombia has "near bullet-proof potential for rapid growth," due to low wages, abundant resources, and with the return of "order" (a euphemism for state oppression and control), though the country still has a high murder rate, five times the rate of the United States. Colombia not only signed a free trade agreement with Canada, but also with the U.S., and has received top rates from the World Bank for fostering a good "business climate."[23] Scotiabank, one of Canada's big five banks, made a $1 billion purchase of a 51% stake in Colombia's fifth largest bank, Banco Colpatria.[24] Rick Waugh, the CEO of Scotiabank, declared that, "Colombia is very important to us."[25]
Toronto-based mining company Gran Colombia Gold Corp has been seeking to remove an entire town, a 500-year old community, to make way for an open-pit mine. When the Colombian government was preparing to displace the town, villagers in the community formed a committee to defend themselves. One of the organizers, a local priest, Father José Reinel Restrepo, publicly denounced the plan to move the town for the benefit of a foreign corporation, even giving television interviews in which he denounced "Canadian imperialism." He explained: "If they are going to drive me out of here, I would tell them they would have to expel me by way of bullets or machetes – but they can't oblige me to leave." Four days later, Father Restrepo was shot dead while traveling to visit his family.[26]
Colombia has a long history with powerful business interests allying themselves with paramilitary outfits to "silence opponents and displace rural populations living atop natural resources." Under the guise of the "war on drugs," Colombia's military, with billions in "aid" from the United States, has co-operated with big business interests and criminal paramilitary groups, purportedly to fight rebel groups (notably FARC), but mostly to clear rural communities to allow for corporate plundering of the resources upon which they sit. In recent decades, some four million people have been displaced by such actions, leaving the country with Latin America's "most inequitable distribution of wealth." On top of that, Colombia is a major narco-state, with state, paramilitary and rebel groups all participating in the massive cocaine trade. Many historians have described Colombia as "the world's most enduringly violent country," with over five decades of constant internal warfare. With over 20 major Canadian companies holding major investments in Colombia, it's no wonder that the World Bank rated the country as the best investment climate in Latin America.[27]
The brand of "order" that the government of Colombia has enforced in recent years represents a continuation of the policies of several administrations before it. The human rights and humanitarian crisis in Colombia is "staggering in scale," with millions displaced, killed, tortured, raped, kidnapped or "disappeared," more than 280,000 people had to flee their homes in 2010 alone. State, paramilitary and rebel groups have all routinely been accused of vast human rights abuses and war crimes. While the new government of President Santos promised to prioritize human rights when he came to power in 2010, the reality, according to Amnesty International, was that "threats against and killings of leaders of displaced communities and of those seeking the return of lands misappropriated during the conflict, mainly by paramilitary groups, have increased during the Santos government." In criminal investigations of human rights abuses, witnesses, victims, lawyers, and judges have continuously been threatened or even killed. Threats and murders have also increased for human rights activists, trade unionists, and community leaders.[28]
Canadian law demands that the government table a human rights report for Parliament on the impact of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Instead of submitting the report, the Canadian government decided, in May of 2012, that it would not even adhere to Canadian law, and refused to submit any such report, instead stating that it would produce a report for May of 2013. With more than 259,000 people displaced from their homes in Colombia in 2011 (on top of the 280,000 displaced in 2010), human rights abuses and war crimes will continue, with the tacit (and perhaps active) cooperation of Canadian corporations, notably mining companies. The Canadian government has effectively given the green light for such abuses to continue. While Colombia's Constitutional Court identified 34 Indigenous nations in the country that were in "grave danger of extinction," Canadian indifference continued. Alex Neve, the Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada declared that, "Canada must not turn its back on the human rights crisis in Colombia for yet another year… The crucial question that should not be postponed is what role is Canadian investment playing with regard to this emergency?" Neve added: "Failure to carry out a full impact assessment violates Canada's responsibility of due diligence under international law and denies Canadian corporations working in Colombia the information they need to avoid implicating themselves in grave human rights violations."[29]
The website for the Canadian ministry for Foreign Affairs and International Trade declared that the Canada-Colombia FTA provided "a key boost for Canadian companies in five important sectors: agriculture, information and communication technologies, mining, oil and gas, and services." Noting that Canada's interest in the narco-state was "growing strongly," the ministry website added that Colombia had "undergone important economic and legal reforms, spurring democracy and global direct investment." The business climate, it declared, was "now stable and predictable, making Colombia a secure business partner and a solid investment destination."[30] With that in mind, Canada's Defence Minister Peter MacKay signed an agreement with the Colombian military in November of 2012 to strengthen its "military relationship with Colombia," which MacKay stated, "represents a natural evolution in our relationship… And we look forward to continuing to build our ties with the Colombian Armed Forces." No doubt, as they continue to displace hundreds of thousands of innocent people in order to clear the land for foreign corporations, and of course, to help advance the profits of the international illicit drug trade.[31]
Scotiabank decided to expand its operations further in Colombia, with the purchase of a majority stake in one of Colombia's largest pension fund companies. Scotiabank has taken on a major role in "financing Colombia's energy and mining sectors," with the bank's head of global wealth management stating, "We look to continue the growth and expansion of this business." Another executive at Scotiabank stated, "We continue to invest in Colombia because we see this as a market with great potential for growth."[32] Interestingly, the Canadian Embassy in Colombia is located in the new Scotiabank Tower in Bogota.[33]
Canada continues to pursue further "free trade agreements" with other countries as well, notably, Japan and China. In March of 2012, Canada and Japan agreed to begin free trade talks, already steadfast trading partners. On top of "free trade," the Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda announced that Canada and Japan would also be advancing defence and security "co-operation."[34] At the announcement, Harper declared that, "This is a truly historic step that will help create jobs and growth for both countries." Jayson Myers, the president of the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters association stated, "Japan is a strategic commercial partner… However, it is also a country with whom we've had a persistent trade deficit when it comes to manufacturing. These negotiations provide the appropriate forum to resolve ongoing concerns."[35]
As revealed by secret documents obtained by the media, the Canadian government had been lobbying the United States to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement for the main reason of gaining more access to Japan, with one document noting that the TPP without Japan "does not excite us."[36] In November of 2012, it was reported that Japan was likely to follow Canada's entrance into the TPP, the largest and most secretive trade agreement in history, involving 11 Pacific rim countries, and negotiated in cooperation with over 600 corporations. The TPP is highly controversial within Japan, since it could potentially – and likely would – lead to reduced protections and subsidies for the Japanese agriculture sector, an area long considered untouchable. A spokesperson for the Canadian department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade stated, "We welcome Japan's interest in joining the TPP. Japan's participation in the TPP would further strengthen Canada and Japan's strong trade and investment relationship. We are already working closely with Japan towards a bilateral free trade agreement that will bring new jobs and increased prosperity to Canadians and we would welcome the opportunity to also work together in the TPP."[37]
(For more information on the TPP, please see my three-part series here: The Trans-Pacific Partnership)
Canada has also begun talks with India and hoped to sign a free trade deal with the country by the end of 2013, with Stephen Harper stating, upon a visit to India, "I think I am very clear that we need to go farther and faster." Stephen Harper lamented against the fact that India has democratic institutions, and thus, undemocratic policies are harder to implement. He stated: "What we do have to realize when we deal with India, as opposed to some other countries that we're dealing with in the developing world – this country is a democracy… And that means that governments cannot simply dictate a whole set of policy changes to happen the next day. That means governments must develop consensus behind policy changes. And that, in this country is not easy. We understand that."[38] Luckily for Harper, he doesn't have to face any such problems at home, with a majority government, tearing the country to pieces day-by-day. Stephen Harper once boasted many years ago, that if he was given the chance to become Prime Minister, "You won't recognize Canada when I get through with it."[39] Indeed, that turns out to be quite true. Indeed, back in 1997, Harper wrote an article in which he referred to Canada as "a benign dictatorship," though there seems to be little 'benign' about his majority-government rule.[40]
In September of 2012, Stephen Harper signed an investment treaty with China (as a precursor to a potential free trade agreement), called the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA). The details of the agreement were kept secret until the deal was tabled in the Canadian Parliament in late September, but the agreement is not to be debated in Parliament because treaty making "is a royal prerogative," and can thus become law through the initiative of the Prime Minister's cabinet alone, so long as the treaty is 'tabled' in Parliament. Canada already had roughly 24 FIPAs in operation, with roughly a dozen more in the works. FIPAs are not "free trade agreements," but are designed to simply "protect and promote" foreign investment in legally-binding agreements.[41] In essence, they are quicker and smaller versions of "free trade" agreements, and designed with a similar purpose: to advance corporate rights and the expense of democratic rights.
China's ambassador to Canada stated that the two countries should move quickly toward a free-trade agreement within a decade, adding, "It's time to open each other's markets." The comments came as a major Chinese state-owned corporation was seeking to take over a Canadian energy company, which would be the first direct foreign takeover of a major actor in Canada's energy sector, a major concern for Canadians who fear Canada's resource wealth will not benefit Canadians. On this issue, the Chinese ambassador noted, "Business is business. It should not be politicized… If we politicize all this, then we can't do business." The ambassador told a Canadian journalist, "We are not coming to control your resources."[42] No, of course not, they're just coming to take the resources. Within a couple months, Prime Minister Harper approved of the Chinese takeover of the Canadian energy company Nexen, as well as another takeover by a Malaysian company in the Canadian energy sector. However, Harper then stated that there would be restrictions on foreign governments buying some of Canada's largest energy conglomerates (just not these ones in particular). At a press conference, Harper stated, "When we say that Canada is open for business, we do not mean that Canada is for sale to foreign governments." Except, of course, for all the exceptions to that rule.[43]
Critics of the Canada-China FIPA warned that it would reduce Canada to little more than a "resource colony," which would bind Canada to new investment rights with China for 30 years.[44] Not only does it allow China to gain an increased foothold in Canada's economy, and specifically, in purchasing Canadian resources, but it also acts "to protect Canadian capitalists when they go into China."[45] What more could someone ask for? The Council of Canadians, a public interest organization, referred to the Canada-China FIPA as a "corporate rights pact" that would have serious repercussions on Canadian environmental, energy, and financial policies. This is because the deal would allow for lawsuits against the Canadian federal and provincial governments for having "barriers" to investments, which could then be overturned.[46]
Canada is also in the final stages of negotiating a trade agreement with the European Union, called the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA), designed to reduce tariffs and open up "new markets," having major impacts upon agriculture, intellectual property rights (copyright and patent laws), with drug prices likely to increase "significantly," as well as allowing for more "labour mobility," a euphemism for increased labour exploitation.[47] The agreement, which has been in negotiations for years, would "deal another blow to Canada's already battered manufacturing sector," with roughly 28,000 jobs under threat, deemed to be the "best-case scenario" by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The "worst-case" scenario could see up to 152,000 jobs being "vaporized."[48]
As is typical, the negotiations are "behind closed doors" and barely deal with actual "trade." CETA is, much like the TPP, termed a "next generation" free trade agreement, negotiated since May of 2009, and would further deregulate and privatize the Canadian economy, and of course, therefore, increase corporate power, and thus at the expense of democratic accountability. The agreement could restrict how local and provincial governments could spend money, even banning "buy local" policies, increase the cost of drugs by $3 billion, increase Canada's trade deficit with the EU, allow for European corporations to attack environmental and health protections within Canada as "barriers to investment," potentially even apply pressure to privatize water, transit, and energy, and even prevent farmers from saving their seeds, as a major gift to GMO manufacturers.[49] Where corporate rights are advanced, democratic rights are dismantled.
A leaked document from the European Commission dated November 6, 2012, revealed that the practice of Canadian municipalities "buying locally" would disappear with the Canada-EU CETA, and that "provincial development programs could go with them." Canadian municipalities were offering better terms for European access to municipal contracts that those which Canadian provinces give each other. The document, prepared for the European Commission's Trade Policy Committee noted that the agreement is "the most ambitious and comprehensive offer Canada and its provinces have made to any partner, including the U.S." EU negotiations will, however, continue to press for more access to energy sectors. Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians noted: "The amount of room our provinces, municipalities and local communities have to support local farmers and otherwise create the jobs of tomorrow is threatened again by a Canada-European Union free trade deal that will forever prohibit these kinds of economic strategies." The province of Ontario could alone lose between 13,000 and 70,000 jobs as a result of the agreement, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.[50]
Openly acknowledged by European politicians was that Canada would be getting the short end of the stick in the CETA deal, as a Danish member of the European Parliament stated, "At the moment Europe will be able to export more than what Canada will be exporting." Another European official closely linked to the negotiations stated, "We will gain a bit more." Canadian Trade Minister Ed Fast said, "[t]he potential benefits to Canadians under a free trade agreement with the European Union are immense," though he forgot to acknowledge that the 'Canadians' he was referring to are largely corporations, and the elite class that owns them. Michael Hart, a trade expert at Carleton University noted, "[t]rade agreements do not create jobs. Never have. Never will. But ministers have never accepted that economic insight."[51] And understandably so, after all, it's rather challenging to sell a trade deal to the public if one openly declares it is for the singular purpose of advancing corporate rights, domination, and plundering. So instead, politicians must always mutter the magical word of "jobs," which in political language, translates accurately into "profits," as Noam Chomsky has suggested in the past. Thus, when politicians say that trade agreements will "create jobs," which they never do, what they are actually saying is that such agreements will "create profits," and exclusively for major multinational corporations, which they always do.
Canada's trade agenda is of course driven by big business, whose interests will be served by such "free trade" agreements. In regards to CETA, the Canada Europe Roundtable for Business (CERT) was established in 1999 to contribute "recommendations on trade and investment to government officials and hosting thematic, high-level meeting focused on developing strategic relationships between company executives and with government officials," according to the website for CERT. A declaration of support in 2008 for a Canada-EU trade agreement was signed by over 100 executives in Europe and Canada, urging Canadian and EU leaders to "design a new type of forward-looking, wide-ranging and binding bilateral trade and investment agreement." Such an agreement, the document stated, "will provide European companies with a gateway into the vast North American free trade area, while increasing Canadian opportunities in the European Common Market," serving as "a strategic and important step towards the eventual creation of a comprehensive transatlantic trade and investment area." Among the signatories to the statement were top executives at the following companies: Anglo American plc, AstraZeneca, Barrick Gold Corporation, BASF, Bayer, Bertelsmann, BNP-Paribas, Bombardier, British Airways, Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, CN, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, E.ON AG, Gaz de France, GlaxoSmithKline, Lafarge, Manulife Financial, Merck, Monsanto Canada, Munich Re, Pfizer Canada, Power Financial Corporation, Rio Tinto plc, Royal Dutch Shell, Siemens, SNC-Lavalin, Société Générale, SUEZ, Suncor, ThyssenKrupp, TOTAL SA., TSX Group, Ubisoft Entertainment, and Volkswagen, among many others.[52]
In late October 2012, a number of European and Canadian big business lobbying groups, including BusinessEurope, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and the Canada Europe Roundtable for Business (CERT), sent a letter to the Canadian and European trade negotiators, Ed Fast and Karel de Gucht, respectively, urging them to push through on the CETA. The signatories called for Canada and the EU to reach "an ambitious and successful conclusion to the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) negotiations by the end of 2012." The letter said it was "imperative" to "maintain a high level of ambition" in key areas which would benefit Canadian and European corporate interests. Among the many areas for which the letter suggested "a high level of ambition" were in recommending the "full and rapid dismantling of tariffs for all industrial goods," and "[a]ccess to raw materials and energy products," the removal of barriers and "discriminations" in service sectors, "full access" to the agricultural sector, including "a satisfactory path forward on the bio-tech issues that have caused trade impediments," by which is meant to advance the interests of GMO manufacturers. Further recommendations included "access to government procurement" which removes all barriers and allows for increased privatization, and of course, "[r]obust protection and enforcement of intellectual property (IP) rights in both markets," which would include "the targeting, seizing and destroying of counterfeit imports and exports," so as to undermine competition and protect monopoly and oligopoly corporations. Finally, the letter stated that the Canada-EU agreement "must also ensure improved labour mobility," which would allow for increased labour exploitation, enhancing competition between the labour forces of Europe and Canada, which always results in lost jobs, lower wages, and reduced protections and benefits.[53] These are, of course, all very good things for multinational corporations. Since they are terrible things for the populations, they have to be coded in political and economic language, so instead of saying, "we want easily exploitable and cheap labour," they suggest, "improved labour mobility," which is also at times referred to as "labour flexibility" (i.e., making labour "flexible" to the interests of multinational corporations).
The Great Canadian Corporate Colony
Such letters from corporate leaders are necessary in order to remind political leaders whose interests they are in office to serve. The Canadian government ensured that it would serve big business interests through trade policy by appointing, in May of 2012, a new 'advisory panel' which would "help guide Canada's ambitious, pro-trade plan in large, dynamic and fast-growing priority markets." Speaking at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, International Trade Minister Ed Fast stated: "Our government's top priority is the economy – creating jobs, growth and long-term prosperity for Canadian workers, businesses and families… We understand the importance of trade to our economy… That is why we are deepening Canada's trading relationships in priority markets around the world."[54]
Ed Fast announced the formation of the new advisory panel at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. The members of the panel include: Murad Al-Katib, president and CEO of Alliance Grain Traders Inc.; Paul Reynolds, president and CEO of Canaccord Financial; Kathleen Sullivan, executive director of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance (CAFTA), representing 80% of Canada's agri-food sector; Perrin Beatty, president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, former president and CEO of the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, former president and CEO of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporations (CBC), and former government minister; John Manley, former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, former Foreign Affairs and Finance Minister, and currently president and CEO of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), a corporate interest group made up of Canada's top 150 CEOs; Catherine Swift, president and CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses; Jayson Myers, president and CEO of Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters; Brian Ferguson, president and CEO of Cenovus Energy Inc, a major Canadian oil company; Serge Godin, founder and executive chairman of the board of CGI Group Inc, one of the largest information technology businesses in the world; and Indira Samarasekera, president of the University of Alberta. Upon the announcement of this panel, Ed Fast stated: "I look forward to receiving advice from these knowledgeable Canadian leaders."[55]
So we return to the statement once made by Prime Minister Stephen Harper: "You won't recognize Canada when I get through with it." Sadly, this is quite true as Harper Inc. advance Canada to the status of one of the world's premier corporate colonies, where plundering for profits, environmental degradation, mass privatization, deregulation, and democratic devastation are the rules of the day. A Canada once thought of as democratic, free, and peaceful, is ever-advancing toward a fully privatized outpost of global corporate tyranny: Canada Inc., a subsidiary of the American Empire & Co.
Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, with a focus on studying the ideas, institutions, and individuals of power and resistance across a wide spectrum of social, political, economic, and historical spheres. He has been published in AlterNet, CounterPunch, Occupy.com, Truth-Out, RoarMag, and a number of other alternative media groups, and regularly does radio, Internet, and television interviews with both alternative and mainstream news outlets. He is Project Manager of The People's Book Project and has a weekly podcast show with BoilingFrogsPost.
[1] "The World's Most Resource-Rich Countries," 24/7 Wall St., 18 April 2012:
[2] Kim Covert, "Canada's natural wealth tripled between 1990 and 2009," Financial Post, 28 June 2011:
[3] UNEP, "A New Balance Sheet for Nations: Launch of Sustainability Index that Looks Beyond GDP," UNEP News Centre, 17 June 2012:
[4] Free Exchange, "The real wealth of nations," The Economist, 30 June 2012:
[5] Joe Oliver, "Natural Resources: Canada's Advantage, Canada's Opportunity," Natural Resources Canada, 4 September 2012:
[6] Ibid.
[7] CNW, "Canada's trade strengths come from natural resources and related industries," Canada Newswire, 19 June 2012:
[8] Jameson Berkow, "Canada could become a global resource superpower in just nine easy steps," The Financial Post, 9 October 2012:
[9] Jameson Berkow, "Canada could become a global resource superpower in just nine easy steps," The Financial Post, 9 October 2012:
[10] Energy in Canada, "The great pipeline battle," The Economist, 26 May 2012:
[11] "An unconventional bonanza," The Economist, 14 July 2012:
[12] Jordan Press, "Future lies in Arctic resource development, Harper says," Postmedia News, 21 August 2012:
[13] Randy Boswell, "Canada poised for massive undersea land grab off Arctic, Atlantic coasts," The Ottawa Citizen, 4 October 2012:
[14] Randy Boswell, "Canada to take helm of Arctic Council as region heats up," Postmedia News, 25 September 2012:
[15] Terry Macalister, "Arctic military rivalry could herald a 21st-century cold war," The Guardian, 5 June 2012:
[16] Campbell Clark, "Harper's tough talk on the Arctic less stern in private," The Globe and Mail, 12 May 2011:
[17] Campbell Clark, "Harper's Arctic trips are now diplomatic ventures," The Globe and Mail, 22 August 2012:
[18] Jacquelyn Ryan, "As Arctic melts, U.S. ill-positioned to tap resources," The Washington Post, 9 January 2011:
[19] "Free trade with Canada has become a global aspiration," The Vancouver Sun, 2 November 2012: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Free+trade+with+Canada+become+global+aspiration/7488138/story.html#ixzz2BfUjOQxc
[20] "Canada-Colombia trade deal takes effect," CBC, 15 August 2011:
[21] Mark Kennedy, "Harper defends trade agreement with Colombia," 10 August 2011:
[22] Ibid.
[23] Martin Hutchinson, "Colombia's turnaround: from bullets into drill bits," The Globe and Mail, 19 January 2012:
[24] Caroline Van Hasselt and Dan Molinski, "Scotiabank Buys Stake in Colombian Bank," The Wall Street Journal, 21 October 2011:
[25] Paul Christopher Webster, "Colombia is Canada's new best friend," The Globe and Mail, 26 April 2012:
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Alex Neve, "Canada's tainted trade partner," The Toronto Star, 21 September 2011:
[29] News Release, "Canada-Colombia trade deal: Empty human rights impact report yet another failure by government," Amnesty International, 16 May 2012:
[30] FAITC, "Colombia FTA gives Canadian firms a big boost," Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, 7 December 2012:
[31] Jessica Hume, "Canada, Colombia strengthen defence relationship," The Toronto Sun, 17 November 2012:
[32] Grant Robertson, "Scotiabank bulks up in Colombia," The Globe and Mail, 14 August 2012:
[33] Paul Christopher Webster, "Colombia is Canada's new best friend," The Globe and Mail, 26 April 2012:
[34] "Canada, Japan agree to free-trade talks," CBC, 25 March 2012:
[35] Shawn McCarthy, "Canada, Japan launch free-trade talks," The Globe and Mail, 25 March 2012:
[36] Jason Fekete, "Secret documents show how hard Conservative government lobbied to get into TPP talks," Reuters, 12 June 2012:
[37] Andy Hoffman, "Japanese PM looks to join Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal," The Globe and Mail, 11 November 2012:
[38] Mark Kennedy, "Stephen Harper says Canada-India trade links must come faster," The Montreal Gazette, 8 November 2012:
[39] Frances Russell, "True colours of Mulroney, Harper revealed," Winnipeg Free Press, 20 May 2009:
[40] Terry Milewski, "Ending Canada's 'benign dictatorship'," CBC, 30 March 2011:
[41] "5 things to know about the Canada-China investment treaty," CBC, 27 October 2012:
[42] Campbell Clark, "China calls for free-trade deal with Canada within a decade," The Globe and Mail, 22 September 2012:
[43] Shawn McCarthy and Steven Chase, "Ottawa approves Nexen, Progress foreign takeovers," The Globe and Mail, 7 December 2012:
[44] Heather Scoffield, "China deals would leave Canada a resource colony: opponents," The Financial Post, 31 October 2012:
[45] Don Butler, "Understanding FIPA in under 1,000 words," Ottawa Citizen, 31 October 2012:
[46] Daniel Tencer, "Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion And Protection Agreement 'A Corporate Rights Pact,' Council Of Canadians Says," The Huffington Post, 1 October 2012:
[47] Janyce McGregor, "5 key issues in the Canada-EU trade deal," CBC, 22 November 2012:
[48] Greg Keenan, "Free-trade deal with EU could cost thousands of Canadian factory jobs," The Globe and Mail, 27 October 2010:
[49] Campaigns, "Canada-European Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA)," The Council of Canadians:
[50] Daniel Tencer, "Canada-EU Free Trade: Leaked EU Document Sheds Light On Negotiations," The Huffington Post, 26 November 2012:
[51] Althia Raj, "Canada Trade Deal With European Union: CETA May Benefit EU Over Canada, Officials Say," The Huffington Post, 17 October 2012:
[52] CERT, "Declaration in support of a Canada-EU trade and investment agreement," The Canada Europe Roundtable for Business.
[53] "The Canadian and EU business communities' call for a successful conclusion to the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA)," BUSINESSEUROPE, 29 October 2012.
[54] Press Release, "Harper Government Launches Next Phase of Canada's Pro-Trade Plan for Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity," Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, 29 May 2012:
[55] Ibid.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership: What "Free Trade" Actually Means
The Trans-Pacific Partnership: What "Free Trade" Actually Means
By: Andrew Gavin Marshall
The following is part 3 of a three-part exclusive series on the Trans-Pacific Partnership for Occupy.com
Part 1: The Trans-Pacific Partnership: This is What Corporate Governance Looks Like
Part 2: Why So Secretive? The Trans-Pacific Partnership as Global Corporate Coup
To discuss "free trade agreements" or the "free market," we must first identify the theoretical versus the functional definitions of these terms – because theoretical definitions look at what those terms should mean, whereas functional definitions look at what the terms mean actually.
The theoretical definition of a "free market" is one in which every individual actor in the realm of exchange exists in a state of equality of opportunity; where all compete with one another to produce the best products at the cheapest prices for consumers, thus the most innovative and efficient producers succeed while others fail, unregulated – and unhelped – by the state. Within "free markets," what we call "free trade agreements" are meant to reduce barriers such as tariffs, subsidies and regulations so that market "competitors" can freely move products and goods across borders and compete in an ever-expanding global "free market."
The functional, or technical, definition of a "free market" is one in which the state regulates the market – the realm of economic exchange and activity – for the benefit of large transnational corporations and banks.
Barriers to profits, such as environmental, labor, safety and financial regulations, are dismantled. Meanwhile, subsidies and legal rights and protections are granted to major corporations, undermining competition and supporting monopolization. So while the rhetoric of "free markets" tends to be all about reducing state interference in the economy, in actuality state interference increases – but only for the benefit of large corporations and banks.
At the same time, state "interference" decreases in sectors that benefit the actual population, such as welfare, social services, pensions, healthcare, education, labor protections and so on. In the actual "free market," these protections are dismantled, subjecting populations to "market discipline" quite unlike the large corporations and banks that receive direct protection against "market discipline." The most obvious example of this is the post-2008 bank bailouts.
In a theoretical "free market," all the banks that gambled badly would have failed and collapsed. But with the functional "free market" we have today, the banks went to the state and got bailed out with trillions of dollars of taxpayer money.
The same dichotomy exists for the term "free trade agreement," which in theory is the opposite of "protectionism," where states intervene in the market by establishing tariffs, regulations, subsidies and protections for various imports and exports, thus undermining the "free market."
The technical definition, however, is one in which protectionism is rampant, with enormous subsidies and protective barriers, and very often includes thousands of pages of regulations and provisions. But because all of this is done to protect corporate and financial interests, it is called "free trade." It is "protectionism" if the barriers, regulations and protections benefit the nation or population and prevent transnational corporations and banks from having unhindered access to the "market"?
Likewise, is it "free trade" if the barriers, regulations, and protections benefit corporations and banks at the expense of the nation and population? In actuality, so-called "free trade" is a drain on the economy, creates enormous national debts, undermines labor, creates poverty and exploitation, wastes natural resources and devastates the environment. However, it is very profitable for banks and corporations, so is endlessly repeated as something "good" and "necessary."
In theory, "free trade" would enhance competition because it would allow all parties to compete on an even playing field internationally, thus companies would have to find ways to lower their costs of production while increasing their product standards, ultimately decreasing the final price to consumers. In this theoretical form of "free trade," the best and cheapest product, the company that made it, and the consumer and society as a whole would all benefit.
The reality is the exact opposite: the production cycle is broken up (this is commonly called "offshoring"), which increases the use of transportation, resources and the overall cost of production, making the final product more expensive to consumers. Case in point is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), where competition between corporations is undermined while access to resources and markets is enhanced, subsidized and protected.
Corporate cooperation with each other and the state is enhanced while the poor, working and middle classes of Canada, the United States and Mexico are put in direct competition with each other. Corporations in Canada and the U.S. close their factories and move them to Mexico where labor is cheaper, increasing unemployment and poverty, destroying unions and labor protections, and forcing down wages while costs and corporate profits increase.
The role of the state is to regulate these markets and agreements for the benefit of the corporations and banks, and to force the populations to compete with each other in a race to the bottom: market monopolization for the elite, and market discipline for the population.
The break-up of the production cycle, especially from the late 1980s onward, has redefined what "trade" actually is. Typically, we think of trade as a system where countries export and import products or goods. With the era of "free trade," the production cycle was no longer confined within national borders, and was broken up between several countries.
The result was that a large percentage of what we call "trade" is actually one corporation moving parts or goods to a subsidiary or another corporation in a different country, to continue the production cycle until it returns to the home country as a finished product for consumption.
This is referred to as "intra-industry trade" (transporting parts or goods between corporations) or "intra-firm trade" (transporting parts or goods between a corporation and its subsidiaries). When the parts move across borders, often several times before the final product is created, customs agents at borders register the cumulative value of those products as a "traded" good, and these numbers are then used to determine the "actual contribution" of that good to the economy.
For example, a product which has parts manufactured in Canada, assembled in Mexico, and sold in the United States, would have to cross borders several times before it becomes a final product. Each time the parts cross a border, the total value of those parts at that time of transport gets registered as an import/export, instead of differentiating between the value added at each part of the production cycle. Thus, the statistics of exports and imports become heavily skewed and inflated since they do not account for "value-added." While the production cycle is broken up over several countries, the determination of "value" is not broken up to fit the actual trading system as it exists.
For a hypothetical comparison to reveal how absurd this process is, imagine a country that attempts to measure the total education of its population by including in its statistics the degrees and credentials of all the tourists who entered the country for short periods of time. The recorded education level of the country's population would be enormously inflated, since the educated tourists entering the nation would not be staying and contributing their education to the benefit of the society. Something similar happens when parts move across borders several times before they become a finished product, yet have their total value registered each time they cross a border.
According to a report from a Canadian think tank, the Conference Board of Canada, if countries were to apply a "value-added" measurement of trade instead of using inflated numbers applied to the cumulative value of a good, the actual contribution of trade to a country would rapidly diminish. In conventional measurements, trade accounts for 35% of Canada's economy, but with the value-added measurement, it drops to 24%. These manipulations are important because they serve as a basis for claiming that countries like Canada are "trade dependent" nations, which justify implementing more "free trade" agreements.
When a country imports more than it exports, it builds up a large amount of debt called a trade deficit. When a country exports more than it imports, it establishes a trade surplus. However, because the process of determining the value of imports and exports is enormously inflated and misleading, countries are saddled with inflated and inaccurate debts. They are then pressured into reducing those debts through austerity measures, which punish those countries' populations into poverty.
Apple is a great example of this process, often hailed as one of the great corporate success stories, being enormously profitable and therefore "good for the economy." As the Asian Development Bank Institute in Tokyo reported in 2010, while Apple is a U.S.-based company, the iPhone is itself considered to be a Chinese export to the U.S. The iPhone is produced in many different pieces and parts through several Asian and European countries, which are then transported to China where they are assembled and shipped to the United States and elsewhere.
The estimated value of the Chinese laborers in assembling the iPhone was 3.6% (or $6.50) of the total value of the finished product, estimated at $178.96 in 2009. Yet, the wholesale cost of the shipped iPhone is credited to China as an export. China was merely the last stop in the production cycle, but China records the total value of the finished product as an export, while the United States records it as an import. Thus, the researchers at the Asian Development Bank Institute concluded that "even high-tech products invented by U.S. companies will not increase U.S. exports."
Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), commented, "What we call 'Made in China' is indeed assembled in China, but what makes up the commercial value of the product comes from the numerous countries… The concept of country of origin for manufactured goods has gradually become obsolete."
If trade statistics were adjusted to reflect the actual value contributed to a given product by a country, the U.S. trade deficit with China (which in 2010 stood at $226.88 billion) would likely be cut in half. In 2009, the iPhone left the United States with a $1.9 billion trade deficit with China, but if the value-added approach to determining trade statistics were applied, the United States would have a $48 million trade surplus with China (in relation to the iPhone alone).
With the production cycle broken up and scattered around the globe, this adds enormous costs to transportation of equipment, machinery, goods and products between these nations, which in turn requires enormous quantities of oil and fuel to facilitate this transport system, and thus produces unnecessary amounts of pollution. Because of the high costs of transportation, fuel, and assembly, the value of the end product goes up, making it far more costly than if it were simply produced in one or two countries.
With countries determining their exports and imports based on inflated and inaccurate statistics, populations are saddled with enormous debts and thus the financial cost of breaking up the production cycle lands on the shoulders of the population, who were already subjected to increased competition between labor forces, reduced environmental and social protections, dismantled subsidies and regulations, increased personal debt and poverty.
So if "free trade agreements" are bad for people, bad for labor – at home and abroad – and bad for the environment and the nation as a whole, why are they pursued?
The answer is simple: they create enormous profits for banks and corporations, whose losses are subsidized by the state. In an actual "free market," breaking up the production cycle would be far too costly to be a rational choice for a corporation, but because the state takes on the cost of doing so (largely through its trade deficit), the process continues.
When it comes to agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it is not difficult to see what the results will be: increased subsidies, protections and regulations for the benefit of large corporations and banks (notably the 600 corporations involved in secretly drafting the agreement over recent years) and decreased protections, subsidies and regulations that benefit the population, environment and society as a whole.
The TPP advances corporate monopolistic protections through intellectual property rights; undermines labor protections, putting the working class of 11 different nations in direct competition with one another; dismantles environmental protections and financial regulations; and expands corporate rights and privileges to allow undemocratic corporate institutions to challenge national laws through an unaccountable international tribunal of corporate lawyers who are given powers to overturn national laws or demand immense compensation from any nations that hinder those corporations' "potential profits," thus further increasing the heavy cost of "free trade."
The Occupy movement and other activists have a strong mandate to oppose the TPP and all related "free trade agreements." Popular opinion is swinging against "free trade" as people seem instinctively to recognize – even without all the details – that such agreements undermine labor, increase debt and benefit only the rich.
But while public opinion may oppose the TPP in principle, the bigger problem is that "the public" does not know the TPP even exists. This is a challenge that the Occupy movement can step up to: promoting an educational campaign that crosses borders, organizing international protests and actions against the TPP, and establishing a "free market" of resistance based upon the "free trade" of information.
As corporate rights expand and democratic rights decrease, so must people demand an end to the TPP. Organized resistance, information and action have stopped "free trade agreements" in the past, and they can – and must – do so in the future. The coming corporate tyranny of the Trans-Pacific Partnership can only be defeated through a democratic movement of Transnational People Power.
Our already frail and dying democratic institutions lack the capacity to take up the challenge, so the challenge now rests with the people alone.
Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada, with a focus on studying the ideas, institutions, and individuals of power and resistance across a wide spectrum of social, political, economic, and historical spheres. He has been published in AlterNet, CounterPunch, Occupy.com, Truth-Out, RoarMag, and a number of other alternative media groups, and regularly does radio, Internet, and television interviews with both alternative and mainstream news outlets. He is Project Manager of The People's Book Project and has a weekly podcast show with BoilingFrogsPost.