Here is something that might interest you. I share it with you on the premise of privately communicating a matter from one person to another, without the intention to publish the information. I say this, because I am not informed of possible copyright ramifications, regarding the manual transcription of a newspaper article, contained in a newsletter and the partial content of the newsletter itself. In any case, the newsletter is The Canadian Intelligence Service, published monthly, by Canadian Intelligence Publications, at 55 - 8th Avenue SE, High River, Alberta, Canada, T1V 1E8. Their e-mail address is [email protected] For permission to copy and distribute, for further details, or for subscriptions, they may be contacted at either address. I quote from the August 1997 issue as follows:
A Plan To Replace Responsible Government: Globe and Mail Features Writer Robert Everett-Green, in the paper's May 29th issue, dealing with the current Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) which Ottawa is involved in, reported: "While the major parties debate whether Reform's television ads are racist or just rude, voters are hearing almost nothing about an issue which could have profound implications for employment, national unity and culture. Right now in Paris, federal bureaucrats are dealing away more of Canada's control over foreign investment in an agreement that some are calling a bill of rights for multinational corporations.
"The deal is called the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), and it would prohibit limits on foreign ownership, minimum requirements for local employment and domestic content and any form of preferential treatment for Canadian-owned businesses.
The parties to the deal are the 29 nations of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group that includes the United States, much of Europe and Japan.
"The Liberal govrnment, which joined the MAI talks two years ago, says that it will demand an exception for culture, like the one Canada claimed in the Free Trade Agreement that dominated the federal election in 1988. Unlike the FTA and NAFTA, however, MAI would have roll-back provisions designed to gradually enforce conformity over all areas touched by investment...
"The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, which is handling the deal for Canada, has been close-lipped about the negotiations, to the extend that even some Liberal MPs don't know much about them.
Professor John McMurtry of the University of Guelph, Ontario, is the author of an article captioned "The plan to replace responsible government," published in the June 17th issue of the Globe and Mail. Here are excerpts:
"A DOCUMENT called the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) is being secretly negotiated by economist bureaucrats and corporate advisers from the 29 nations of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Resembling the North American free-trade agreement and the World Trade Organization pact in its one-sided logic, it is the latest fast-track initiative to institute a transnational regulatory framework of private corporate ownership and trade as a sovereign order that over-rides national, regional and municipal jurisdictions and laws.
"The MAI's focus is protection of foreign investment capital. Its master principle is the blanket right to 'national treatment' of transnational corporations in host societies. Under the agreement - I quote from a draft copy prepared last January - foreign corporations must never by (be?) "discriminated against" by any government on any level on any account, such as their contribution to the well-being of the home society. Serving the interests of the home society is deemed to be "protectionist". To accomplish the full colour of this right, a massive re-engineering of the access of foreign corporations to the wealth of all societies is required. Accordingly, the MAI has written onto its draft articles the rights of transnational corporations, among them:
* "To export their commodities or services across all borders to other societies' markets with no conditions attached;
* "To own any saleable natural resource of other countries and to have national right to any concession, license or authorization to extract its oil, forest, mineral or other resources with no obligation to sustain these resources, or to use them in the interest of the host society;
* "To bid for and own any privatized public infrastructure, social good or cultural transmission without any limit of foreign control permitted by law;
* "To have access to any domestic government grant, loan, tax incentive or subsidy with the same rights as any domestic firm with no means test, locale requirement or public interest distinction permitted;
* "To repel as illegal any national standards of human rights, labour rights or environmental protection on goods produced in and imported from other regions or nations.
"Under the proposed agreement, any provision by governments of goods to their citizens by public ownership or control is construed as a 'monopoly'. In contrast, monopolies of knowledge by corporate copyright are given a special exemption and classed as non-monopolies.
"This double standard is significant, because monopoly designation entails special legal restrictions on the pricing and distribution of goods, which would be 'an interference with business freedom to transact' on private corporations. Any public non-profit 'monopoly' in health care, education or some other universally accessible life-good is, therefore, to be bound by the obligation to act 'solely in accordance with commercial considerations in the purchase or sale of its good or service'.
"What unifies the diverse prescriptions of this extraparliamentary formation of a transnational framework of law is the single, final goal of releasing corporate investment from any interference or social condition set by national or local public authority. This dispossession of citizens and communities of their collective rights to protect their lives and resources as their own is, in the end, grounded on metaphysical principle: that unfettered market rule has a natural right to regulate all of the world's societies in their best interests.
COMMENT: Needless to say, this MAI plan should have been a hot issue discussed and debated during our recent federal election. That's perhaps why it's being negotiated almost entirely in secrecy. It's quite understandable that neither the international corporations nor our politicians would care to face the electors on this issue at election time! But following are a few points that Canadians must understand and speak out upon before any negotiations are concluded:
* Why the secrecy in negotiating this plan to divest Canadians of their fundamental rights and sovereignty? Where are our national news-media (except for the G & M) and our political and judicial custodians of our heritage and sovereignty, when these plans to hijack Canadian resources and sovereignty are being discussed and negotiated? Too busy discussing where Mr. Manning intends to live, or why the Blue Jays are losing so many at home!
* For countless centuries our forefathers worked, sacrificed and fought for freedom and sovereignty - the right of every citizen to own and enjoy property, to 'have a say' in how his country is governed and to exercize his rights and sovereignty secure in a framework of common law. Now, according to the demands of an international conglomerate of Big Business and Finance, we're being ordered to give up our heritage and surrender our sovereignty to an international power - or a 'world government' - unelected and over and above all national governments and peoples. Little wonder that Maude Barlow, head of the Council of Canadians, is quoted in the June 7th issue of the Globe and Mail as warning Canadians in these words: "Next election your vote may be irrelevant...The new Multilateral Agreement on Investment gives the corporations so much power, Parliament won't matter."
What is almost incredible is that Ottawa should even be considering discussing or negotiating such a surrender of national sovereignty, because such a surrender would be unconstitutional. Control of our natural resources, working conditions, regulating business practices within the province, delivery of medical services, direct taxation, etc., are all areas of exclusive PROVINCIAL jurisdiction under our constitution. Moreover, the Constitution does not permit either the Federal or the Provincial order of government to surrender or even exchange with each other the powers and jurisdictions given to each by the BNA (British North America) act. And what is more, the Constitution does not belong to government - federal or provincial - it belongs to the citizens of Canada, says former Chief Justice Rinfret of the Supreme Court of Canada.
Those who would plunder our resources - whether foreign armies in wartime, or financial or corporate pirates in peacetime - are enemies of Canada. And those who deal with our enemies are hardly our friends. So what business has anyone in this country got, regardless of rank or estate, to either tinker with or in anyway even consider or discuss the surrendering, or even the diminishing, of the rights and sovereignty of the Canadian people?
Why not ask your MP (Member of Parliament) for more information on this matter! In order to respond, he'll have to make an effort to better inform himself.
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GLOBAL TYRANNY ... STEP BY STEP
The United Nations and the Emerging New World Order
by William F. Jasper SC, $ 22.- (Can), $ 15.- (US)
This thing is so outrageously insolent that it makes me wonder whether we have gone bankrupt and nobody bothered to tell us about it. Gene, I think this issue is more important than the Talmud, Ritual Murder, The Protocolls and Holocaust,
all wrapped into one. It could be a blow, potentially more lethal than another world war. Read it a couple of times and savour each word; letting it take physical shape in your mind. Since it involves The States as well, I wonder how much of it is known and with what attitude it is being treated on your side
of the border.