The Government of Canada's Unacceptable Response to the Tragedy in Lebanon
People of Quebec stand with Lebanese people at vigil at the Lebanese
consulate in Montreal, August 6, 2020.
Canada has made aid to Lebanon in the midst of
this great tragedy they have suffered conditional on the Lebanese
government enacting all kinds of reforms demanded by the imperialist
financial institutions. It blames the Lebanese government for the
plight of the country for which the U.S. imperialists, Israeli
Zionists, Lebanon's former colonial power France and others are fully
to blame. The conditions which exist in Lebanon today and the many
tragedies the Lebanese people have suffered in the past and which they
suffer today are of their making. Instead of taking up their
responsibilities and putting the well-being of the Lebanese people in
command of their decisions on getting aid to Lebanon, these governments
blame the Lebanese people and the factional fighting in the government
-- a government based on the model given to them by the French
imperialists in the first place. They are demanding regime change,
while they channel aid through their own agencies to further undermine
the unity in action of the people to deal with the tragedy which has
befallen the people. Experience shows this will merely enrich these
so-called humanitarian agencies while the plight of the people will
remain.
Two days after the devastating explosion tore
through Beirut on August 4, French President Emmanuel Macron made a
trip to Beirut outside of the purview of the Lebanese government, media
report. He toured the site of the blast and some of the capital's
hardest-hit neighbourhoods. Macron made it a point to say he was not
there to support Lebanese leaders and would make sure that any
assistance from France would go to the people. He reiterated that no
financial assistance would be given to the government to help ease a
deepening financial crisis, without substantial reforms. Touring a
devastated neighbourhood, Macron said that he was there to ask
political leaders "to change the system, to stop division... and to
fight corruption." After meeting with political leaders at the
presidential palace, Macron said, "There is a need to create a new
political order in Lebanon," calling for a complete overhaul of the
system and urgent reforms in all sectors.
For its part, the Government of Canada took a
despicable position. At her press conference on August 6, Minister of
International Development Karina Gould began by shedding crocodile
tears for the victims of the blast and their families. "Just know that
the government of Canada is [sorry] as well and that we are working
around the clock to provide assistance and support our friends in
Lebanon," she said. She then started lecturing about neo-liberal
economics and blaming the near bankruptcy of Lebanon on the Lebanese
government and people, not the international financial institutions and
their onerous debts and demands for neo-liberal reforms which cripple
the victimized countries.
It is Hitlerite logic which must be condemned. She
used this Hitlerite logic to justify why Canada is giving humanitarian
aid to what she calls "trusted humanitarian agencies."
This comes in the middle of the WE scandal which
shows just what kind of "trusted humanitarian organizations" the
Government of Canada finances and supports.
At the press conference, Gould continued her rant
saying:
"We are very concerned about the economic
situation in Lebanon and of course defaulting on debt payments [$1.2
billion Eurobond debts] was of great concern to us and we have also
seen the significant repercussions that this has had amongst the
Lebanese people. Canada is always willing to have conversations whether
it's with the G7 or the G20 or the multilateral development bank to see
what we can do to assist Lebanon.
"However, we feel very strongly that there needs
to be significant political and economic reforms within the country to
make sure that that assistance would be most effective. We are having
those conversations and certainly [August 4]'s events highlighted the
urgency of making sure that Lebanon can get into a much better fiscal
position and those conversations are ongoing, but I would say that we
are deeply concerned by the current economic status and the impacts
that is having on the Lebanese people.
"[...] And that is something that we have been
very firm in. And so that's one of the reasons why we continue to
provide assistance to trusted humanitarian partners who are operating
on the ground but recognizing that this disaster in particular has
exacerbated what was already a very precarious financial position for
Lebanon."
This is gross interference for self-serving
reasons in the internal affairs of the Lebanese people. It is also a
diversion to deflect attention from the actual dangers posed to the
security of all by hazardous substances right here in Canada, for which
the Canadian government bears direct responsibility. The peoples of the
world saw the horror of the Lac-Mégantic tragedy in Quebec
when a freight train with 72 tanker cars carrying crude oil derailed in
downtown Mégantic, spilling their contents and causing a
series of fires and explosions of catastrophic proportions, in which 47
people were killed, many others were injured and downtown
Mégantic was destroyed.
It has been amply proven that decades of rail
industry deregulation by successive Canadian governments prepared the
conditions for this tragedy and other major derailments, fires and
explosions which have taken place across the country. Many of these
disasters did not cause the loss of human life simply because they
occurred away from populated areas.
To this day, trains carrying sulphuric acid and
propane gas, which are even more hazardous than crude oil, continue to
be parked at the same place, on the same slope, unattended and with
insufficient brakes, from where the runaway train descended bringing
hell to Lac-Mégantic on that night of July 6, 2013. The same
situation exists across the country.
What lesson can the Canadian government give the
Lebanese people and government? Canadian society has lots of its own
problems to deal with. The Canadian government must stop interfering in
other peoples' internal affairs and being party to enslaving
supranational institutions which deprive the Lebanese people of their
sovereign decision-making power over their own affairs. Canadians must
denounce, with utmost contempt, the Canadian government's unacceptable
position.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 29 - August 8, 2020
Article Link:
The Government of Canada's Unacceptable Response to the Tragedy in Lebanon
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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