In the News
Invocation of Emergency Powers
Dirty Deeds in the Name of National Security
and National Interest
Whether we speak of the organized blockades at border crossings or the occupation in Ottawa, or Coastal GasLink facilities on the Wet’suwet’en yintah or any other, what constitutes “critical infrastructure” to be protected in the name of “national security” and the “national interest” is defined not by the Canadian, Quebec and Indigenous peoples but by those who wield the decision-making power in a manner which favours narrow private interests.
In Canada, the decision-making powers have always been used to favour the private interests of those who constituted Canada as a British Dominion and then brought it under U.S. tutelage. When Canada was first established as a British Dominion it was endowed with a Constitution which permitted the genocide of the Indigenous peoples, suppressed the republican forces in Lower and Upper Canada, and put down the Riel Rebellion with brute force, hangings, massacres and starvation, amongst other things. Along with this, the British aristocrats and their vice-regal representatives in Canada, lieutenants, generals and other assorted retinues, imposed the Party system of “responsible government” to defend these private interests.
The impression is created that a popular democracy was established to hide the fact that what is called the civil power is actually rule of police powers wielded by prime ministers, premiers and cabinets, the courts and instruments of coercion. The legislatures — portrayed as some kind of “people’s assemblies” — merely serve to cover this up. Those called elected representatives in fact swear allegiance to a fictitious person of state embodied by a queen and her corrupt and degenerate family. The Crown, it is said, are mere figureheads and benign, no matter how much money they squander or how many immoral acts or crimes they commit.
Today the private interests which wield the decision-making powers are supranational. Besides usurping all the state structures to favour their interests, they are also known to have private security agencies and to command special forces of their own to carry out black ops on their behalf. The content of what is called Canada’s national security is whatever serves these narrow private supranational interests. No matter how dirty their deeds, they are not known for moral qualms.
To call this Canada’s national security or national interest is itself a dirty deed. Writing in 1990, the leader of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) wrote: “Freedom, in whose name so many dirty deeds have been committed, will take its revenge in the victory of those who are seeking the real solution to the real problems.”
It is also a matter of experience that no matter which faction seizes the reins of governments through elections — which are anything but democratic — it is private interests which wield the decision-making power. They have integrated Canada’s natural, human and material resources lock, stock and barrel into the U.S. war machine. To call this Canada’s national security or national interest is itself a dirty deed.
(Renewal Update, posted February 21, 2022)
