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Supplement
No. 5February
22,
2020
Canada's Relations with
Caricom
Self-Serving
Definition of What It
Means
to Be a "Vital Partner"
- Tony Seed -
Thirty-First Inter-Sessional Meeting of the
Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean
Community, Bridgetown, Barbados, 18-19 February
2020. (CARICOM)
The Lima Group meeting
hosted by Canada this week came right on the heels
of Foreign Minister François-Philippe
Champagne's meeting on February 18 with leaders of
Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in
Bridgetown, Barbados. He was sent as a substitute
for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The 15-member organization[1] has served as an
effective block to attempts by the U.S. and
its allies to use the discredited Organization of
American States (OAS) as a political weapon
against Venezuela. It has denied them the number
of votes needed to take action against
Venezuela in the name of the OAS. This led the
U.S. and Canada to set up the illegitimate
Lima Group outside the OAS for the purpose of
advancing their illegal regime change
project.
In March 2019, the online periodical Misión Verdad
exposed a clumsy manoeuvre by the
Canadian government in which it sent a low-level
representative to a meeting of the
Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS),
held on the island of Guadeloupe in
January 2019. The aim was to facilitate a direct
link between Venezuelan imposter Juan
Guaidó's team and the prime ministers whose
governments make up CARICOM. The leaders
rejected the manoeuvre.
First, the envoy did not possess the appropriate
diplomatic level necessary for such a meeting
to take place.
Second, the sending of a low-level functionary to a
ministerial meeting showed contempt for
the Caribbean.
Third, CARICOM has stood for dialogue and peace,
not aggression.[2]
This was the reason for the decision to send the
Canadian prime minister to Barbados as the
last stop of his recent African tour. Trudeau has
had no trouble vacationing at luxurious
resorts in the Caribbean but has never officially
visited the region since his election in 2015.
His visit was cancelled due to the crisis in
Canada from the resistance of the Wet'suwet'en
Land Defenders who are winning national and
international support for their refusal to allow
Canada to reject their law on their own lands and
permit an oil pipeline to pass through their
land despite a failure to get their consent.
A confidential Global Affairs Canada
document tabled at the 2019 Guadeloupe meeting also
contained the proposal of the Trudeau government,
which at all times acted as representative
of the Venezuelan opposition, to establish an
organization parallel to Petrocaribe, a
Venezuela-CARICOM energy partnership, called
"Cooperation and Energy Stability
Agreement."[3]
The Caribbean leaders at that meeting reminded the Canadian envoy
of their full support for dialogue
between the parties in Venezuela. They reminded
Canada of the fact that Petrocaribe is being
sabotaged by both U.S. sanctions and regional
pressure against Venezuela, supported both by
the Trudeau government and by the U.S.-financed
and organized Venezuelan opposition
headed by Guaidó.
During the conclusions of the recent Barbados
meeting, Caribbean leaders rejected the U.S.
blockade of the socialist island republic of Cuba.
They reiterated their concern over the
sanctions announced by the U.S. administration
under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act,
which intensifies the economic, commercial and
financial blockade towards Cuba. They
described the sanctions as extraterritorial
measures that are contrary to international law.
For its part, Canada tried to hide its manoeuvring
against Venezuela, all the while overtly
stressing its alleged humanitarian motives. A
Global Affairs Canada press release states:
"Together, Minister Champagne and CARICOM leaders
agreed to launch an annual
Canada-CARICOM dialogue to discuss political,
trade, development and security priorities
specific to the almost 20 million people who call
the Caribbean islands home.
"Champagne highlighted new Canadian funding to
support CARICOM efforts to counter the
devastating impacts of climate change. These
efforts range from emergency response and
preparedness, to climate smart agriculture and the
blue economy. He also offered to expand
the scope of Canadian technical expert assistance
in areas prioritized by CARICOM
countries.
"In bilateral and group discussions at the CARICOM
Inter-sessional Meeting, the Minister
also underscored Canada as a vital partner in
advancing shared regional and global interests,
as it continues to pursue its candidacy for the
United Nations Security Council in
2021-2022."
And that, says the vital partner, is that. The
cheque book is out -- yet neither the amount of
funding is mentioned, nor are the shameful results
of Canada's alleged protection of the
devastating impacts of climate in Haiti,
especially since the earthquake ten years ago.
"Security Priorities," and "Emergency Response"
How Canada defines "security priorities" and
"emergency response" is a serious
matter of concern. First, instead of providing
internationalist assistance on the basis of
equality,
mutual respect and benefit to the recipient
nation, the Trudeau government thinks that small
countries who are suffering from the global crisis
of the imperialist system and seeking a way
forward can be simply bribed. This is not only
contemptuous of their suffering, imposed on
them by the very countries doing the bribing, but
is in total denial of the corruption such
bribery encourages. Canada's view of the West
Indies is unacceptable. It uses the language
and techniques that shore up U.S. interests,
descending to the humiliating point where, instead
of taking an independent stand like CARICOM does,
Canada imagines that the region is
part of its "global backyard." Chrystia Freeland,
when she was Trudeau's minister for foreign
affairs, infamously stated to the press:
"The crisis in Venezuela is unfolding in Canada's
global backyard. This is our neighbourhood.
We have a direct interest in what happens in our
hemisphere."
Secondly, it links this bribery with creating an
institutional bilateral mechanism to "discuss"
"security priorities" which are first and foremost
posed by the U.S. and the financial oligarchy
striving for world hegemony, including markets,
resources, etc. In this context, "security
priorities" and "emergency response" are simply
code words for military integration, training
and intervention.
The objective reality of the people of Haiti
illustrates the pathetic fraud of "emergency
response"
and "humanitarian aid." Yves Engler noted recently
that "Canada disbursed $657 million
from the quake to September 2012 'for Haiti,' but
only about two per cent went to the
Haitian government." In parallel, 33 per cent of
U.S. aid went to the U.S. military occupying
Haiti. All the countries that militarily occupied
Haiti through MINUSTAH are today
organized as the infamous Lima Group.
As a reminder, Canada sent arms to Trinidad in
1970 to crush a popular upsurge; and troops and
RCMP forces to overthrow the Dominican Republic
government in 1965, the Grenada
government in 1983 and the Haitian government in
2004. It annually deploys warships to
participate in sabre-rattling U.S. Southcom
military exercises (e.g., Panamax, Tradewinds, Op
Caribbe), along with NATO bloc members France,
Netherlands and Britain, which are aimed at
Venezuela and its allies. The Canadian Forces are
fully integrated into the U.S. Northern
Command and Southern Command and the U.S.
imperialist machinery of war.
It merits attention that since June 2012, Canada
has operated a military hub in Kingston,
Jamaica -- essentially access to facilities at a
port, airport and military base justified at the
time as providing quicker emergency response to
hurricanes. Yet none of the activities of the
Canadian Forces during 2017 Hurricane Irma used
this base to provide assistance to the Bahamas and
Martinique, possessions of NATO countries Britain
and France, respectively.
Further, "climate smart agriculture and the blue
economy" is code for neo-liberal economic
penetration cloaked as an environmental "counter"
to "devastating impacts of climate
change."
"Banker to the Caribbean"
The financial oligarchy, through the summit of the
big banks, has enriched itself
enormously from the plunder of the Caribbean since
the 1800s as part of the British colonial
system and such banks as Barings, a stronghold of
British finance capital and financial agents
for Canada in London, and the Colonial Bank of the
West Indies. The wealth of the Bank of
Nova Scotia and the Royal Bank -- both of which
were founded in Halifax, Nova Scotia --
was originally generated from the significant
mercantile trade from the Atlantic fisheries to
provide protein to the slave plantations and later
in the sugar trade and military adventures.
They never invested a single cent in development
of the immense human productive forces of
the island nations, other than what was needed to
satisfy the start-up of operations. All the
profits were repatriated by Anglo-Canadian
capital. Much of the profits of Barings, which
enriched itself from slavery and the 1833
Abolition of Slavery Act, were re-exported to
finance the railway expansion of the Canadian
colonial state.[4]
Today Canadian banks control more than 60 per cent
of the Caribbean's banking sector to the
detriment of the Caribbean's economic development.
This means that they conduct more
than 60 per cent of the region's transactions.
Nevertheless, over the past year, the Bank of
Nova Scotia and the Royal Bank have been seeking
new neo-colonial arrangements to
minimize their risk. Whatever this oligarchy
cannot control it seeks to destroy, which includes
the human productive forces and anyone who stands
in its way. Scotiabank, for example,
holds over U.S.$1 trillion in assets and reported a
profit of CAN$1.98 billion a year ago. It
used to call itself the "Banker to the Caribbean"
and operates 370 branches in 23 countries in
the region. To maximum its rate of profit, it now
seeks to transfer $20 billion in assets it owns in
the region to a new financial partnership
headquartered in Trinidad.
Caribbean leaders are denouncing the maneouvre which is being carried
out behind their backs without even elementary consultations with the
Caribbean countries and indigenous banks. This has aroused great
concern. Sir Ronald Sanders, Ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda to the
United States and the Organization of American States asks, "Is this
another demonstration of the persistent contemptuous behaviour that
small countries confront in the international arena -- the doctrine of
‘might is right'?"[5]
Old Program in New Colours
The Trudeau "security" program is an old program
of the former government of
Trudeau senior, dressed in new environmental
colours.
In the early 1980s, as part of the Caribbean Basin
Initiative of the Reagan administration, the
Canadian government gave special importance to the
training of "cadres" -- mostly young
people, recruited from Trinidad and Tobago,
Jamaica and Bermuda, amongst others from the
British West Indies -- within the framework of its
"military assistance and co-operation"
program to this region. In 1980, the federal
cabinet approved a paramilitary program to
"assist" Caribbean countries with training for
coast guard and police marine units. These
recruits were equipped to operate the marine
police forces, which were being set up and
expanded along the coastal zones of these
countries, as well as for customs control and
coast
guard patrols. The head of the Canadian Coast
Guard was Rear Admiral Andrew Collier,
former head of Maritime Command.[6]
Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, speaking on
the island of St. Lucia in February 1983 to
the leaders of 16 Caribbean Commonwealth
countries, stressed among other things that this
program would be increased and extended. Youth
recruited from Trinidad and Tobago, after
being processed in a Toronto high school, were
then trained at the Royal Military College in
Kingston, Ontario. There, besides acquiring
military skills, young people were taught the
methods of coping with demonstrators, along with
specialized, inhuman, "commando" skills.
Following their training in Canada, these youth
returned as agents in the form of front-rank
officers in the armed forces of the island
nations.[7]
At that time, People's Canada Daily News published
by the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), pointed out: "Far from
having 'no strings attached,' the Canadian
military-economic 'aid' and initiatives are of the
same nature and made with the same aims as those
of U.S. imperialism itself. It is in order to
achieve these nefarious aims that the Canadian
government and its armed forces are increasing
their activities in Central America and the
Caribbean." This is what they are doing yet again,
this time through the Lima Group and other fronts
as a self-styled "vital partner."
Notes
1. The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is a grouping
of 20 countries: 15 member states and
five associate members, representing a region that
is home to approximately 16 million
citizens. It was created on July 4, 1973, with
the signing of the Treaty of Chaguaramas,
which transformed the Caribbean Free Trade
Association to create a Common Market. It
includes countries considered to be "developing,"
and all members and associate members are
island states, with the exception of Belize in
Central America, and Guyana and Surinam in
South America.
The organization says it emerged as a product of
15 years of efforts to promote regional
integration and was constituted with the
fundamental objectives of raising the standard of
living and working conditions in the region's
nations; reducing unemployment; accelerating,
coordinating, and supporting economic development;
and promoting trade and economic
relations with third countries and blocs of
nations.
CARICOM's principal governing bodies are its
Conference and Council. The Conference is the
highest authority of the regional organization and
includes the heads of state and government
of member countries. It is responsible for
establishing policy and authorizing the signing of
treaties within the Caribbean Community and with
other integration organizations. The
Council, for its part, is composed of Foreign
Ministers and is responsible for the
implementation of strategic plans, coordinating
the integration of different sectors, and
promoting cooperation among members.
CARICOM points out that it is the world's oldest
regional integration movement, and although
often unrecognized, its accomplishments have been
many, especially in concrete cooperation
in the areas of education, health, culture, and
security.
2. "Exclusive: CARICOM Rejects Canada's Proposal
to Undermine Petrocaribe," TML Weekly,
March 23, 2019 - No. 10.
3. Petrocaribe is an oil alliance involving
Caribbean member states. The alliance was founded
on June 29, 2005 in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela,
Venezuela offered the other member states
discounted oil supplies based on a concessionary
financial agreement. Petrocaribe, which the
U.S. imperialists and Canada seek to destroy, has
been part of the trend in Latin America and
the Caribbean, seeking to achieve post-neoliberal
development in the region.
4. Baring was founded in 1810 with origins dating back to
1720, from investments it received from
human trafficking in the Atlantic slave trade
reaping enormous profits. Baring owned
numerous sugar plantations in St. Kitts and in
British Guiana, and received some £10 million of the total £20-million in "compensation"
from the British state in 1839 for the
emancipation of their "property" -- all in all,
655,780 human beings of African descent that
they had enslaved, brutalized and exploited. This
represents £76 (US$117) billion at today's
value. None of the money went to the enslaved
Africans, who still had to do unpaid work for
their owners under an "apprenticeship program" of
indentured servitude that ran for another
four years.
Barings was also behind the forced union of the
Canadas in 1841. R.T. Naylor remarked that
Baring Brothers were the true Fathers of
Confederation. The Bank acted as exclusive
financial agents for Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick, and Upper Canada along with George Carr Glyn, a big investor in the colonies.[8] By the last quarter of the 19th century, Baring
Brothers was financing one quarter of all U.S.
railroad construction, along with the
Intercolonial, Grand Trunk and Canadian Pacific
railways
in Canada. A railroad town in British Columbia was
renamed Revelstoke in honour of the
bank's leading partner.
The benefits of the monies from the slave system
still exist in Canada today. For example,
along with being a foundation of Canadian banks,
they are also a basis of wealth for many
leading Canadian families, among them the "father
of Confederation" Sir John A. Macdonald
who had a direct personal family link to slavery.
His father-in-law, Thomas James Bernard,
owned a sugar plantation in Jamaica and 96
enslaved Africans. He received £1,723
"compensation" from the government, a vast sum
considering the annual salary for a skilled
worker in Britain at the time was around £60.
Macdonald married Bernard's daughter, Agnes,
in 1867. Macdonald had to resign in 1873 when the
Pacific Scandal exposed his receipt of
campaign donations from the owner of the Canadian
Pacific Railway. From Halifax, others
include the Stairs family (providing six
generations of directors of the Royal Bank and
Harper's first chief of staff) and the Ritchie
family (corporate lawyers and Mulroney's
ambassador to Washington). The main street in
Halifax, Spring Garden Road, bears the name
of a sugar plantation in British Guiana owned by
Francis Baring, partner in the firm between
1823 and 1864, who unsuccessfully claimed £3,421
"compensation."
Earlier, in the 1820s and 1830s, London-based
slave owners played a significant role in the
settlement, exploitation and expansion of Canada.
The Hudson Bay Company, Canadian Land
Company and British American Land Company all
included British slave owners on their
boards of directors.
5. For a discussion, see Sir Ronald Sanders, "Withdrawal
of Canadian banks: opportunity to
remedy not repeat mistakes, December 12, 2019,"
and August,
29, 2019.
Of the manoeuvring by the Bank of Nova Scotia,
Sanders writes:
"Scotiabank's decision not to discuss the sale of
its holdings in nine Caribbean jurisdictions
with the governments concerned, in advance of
concluding an agreement, was extraordinary,
particularly as, in Canada, no bank or bank branch
can carry on business without obtaining
the approval of the finance minister and the
Office of the Superintendent of Financial
Institutions. The Bank appears to believe that it
could contravene in the Caribbean what it
would be obliged to obey in Canada.
"Apart from ignoring the law in Antigua and
Barbuda, and elsewhere, to first obtain the
agreement of the governments for a sale in order
to secure a 'vesting order,' Scotiabank's
decision demonstrated a lack of good corporate
judgment. It could not have been difficult to
engage governments about plans to sell before
concluding a sale agreement with RFH. Unless
it assumed its clout would hammer acceptance of
the sale.
"Equally disdainful behaviour by Scotiabank was
the way in which it informed the nine
Caribbean jurisdictions that it had settled the
sale arrangement. That information came through
a public announcement, issued to the media, on November 27, 2018. Governments of the nine
jurisdictions and their Central Banks, the
regulatory bodies for banking, learned of the sale
arrangement simultaneously with the general
public.
"Why would a Canadian financial institution that
has been present and money-spinning in the
Caribbean since 1889 and which reported a profit
of CAN$1.98 billion a year ago, treat the
Caribbean region so disparagingly? Is this another
demonstration of the persistent
contemptuous behaviour that small countries
confront in the international arena -- the
doctrine
of 'might is right'?"
6. In February 1998, Shunpiking Magazine discovered
the presence on the staff of the Coast
Guard College in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia of a
former Nazi collaborator from Latvia, based
on information from outraged Jamaican cadets who
reported racist abuse to the RCMP
detachment in Sydney. The young RCMP officer who
filed the report was summarily
transferred out of the Sydney detachment.
7. "Vigorously oppose the role of the
Canadian bourgeoisie in Central America
and the Caribbean," by Tony Seed, People's Canada Daily News,
Volume 13, Number 178, August 26,
1983.
8.
Stewart, Andrew, British Businessmen and
Canadian Confederation: Constitution Making in an Era of Anglo
Globalization, 2008, McGill University Press.
(To access articles
individually click on
the black headline.)
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