[Peace-discuss] Oh, Canada...
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at illinois.edu
Wed Sep 16 16:02:19 CDT 2009
Canadian PM Stephen Harper has 42 minutes of face time with Barack Obama in
Washington today. While Canadian institutions (notably healthcare) are being
compared favorably with those of the US, quite rightly, here are some other
things to remember:
1. On dozens of occasions since 1915 Canadian gunboats have been deployed to
the Caribbean and Central America.
2. Canada has been the 5th or 6th-largest contributor to the U.S. war in Iraq.
3. Ottawa asked London for its Caribbean colonies after World War I.
4. Days after elected President Salvador Allende was overthrown, Canada's
ambassador to Chile called victims of dictator Augusto Pinochet's repression the
“riffraff of the Latin American Left.”
5. In a number of countries Canadian “aid” has been used to rewrite mining
codes to the benefit of Canadian mining companies.
6. Canada had between 250 and 450 nuclear-armed fighter jets based in Europe
in the 1960s.
7. Washington did not press Ottawa to break relations with post-revolution
Cuba because it wanted Canada to spy on the island.
8. Throughout Pierre Trudeau's time in office and before, Canadian companies
were heavily invested in apartheid South Africa.
9. Canada helped depose Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, one of
Africa's first independence leaders, who was then killed.
10. Many commentators ... consider Lester Pearson [PM 1963-8] a war criminal.
That's from Yves Engler, "The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy" (Fernwood
Books Ltd., Halifax).
Still, there's something to be said for a country that was the real land of
freedom for slaves in the 19th century and refuge for war resisters in the 20th
(and in the 18th).
In 2004 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ran a television series to
determine who is considered to be the greatest Canadian of all time. (The
project was inspired by the BBC series Great Britons.) It included a series of
documentaries, with 10 Canadian celebrities acting as advocates and presenting
their cases for The Greatest Canadian.
The winner by vote was not a military leader or PM, but the man responsible for
bringing Canada universal healthcare (i.e., the equivalent of Medicare for all,
not Obamacare), Tommy Douglas. (A Scottish-born Baptist minister, Douglas was
Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961, and as such head of the first
socialist government in North America; from 1961 to 1971, he was the leader of
the social democratic New Democratic Party.)
That's unimaginable in the thoroughly propagandized US. --CGE
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