by abbie bakan
US corporate interests are pushing hard for increasing free trade throughout North and South America through the both the WTO and the FTAA. But why is the Canadian government so determined to participate in the expansion of free trade in the South?
In a word, imperialism.
Canada has avoided the reputation of an imperialist power because it has not militarily intervened in the region. Instead, it has quietly approved US incursions, and then followed after the messy part is over to reap the economic benefits.
The principle benefits to Canadian corporations follow from their preferential trade and investment arrangements with the small nations in the Caribbean region.
Desperate to attract foreign currency and capital investment, the governments of the English Caribbean region have been all too eager to ensure cheap labour and tax holidays.
The tiny island of St. Lucia, for example, advertises its business advantage to Canadian investors by promising wages of between eight cents and $1.50 per hour.
Of the four major banks servicing the English-speaking Caribbean, three of them -- the Royal Bank, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, and the Bank of Nova Scotia -- are Canadian-owned. With Barclays of the UK, these financial interests hold tremendous influence in virtual every aspect of economic planning and in development policy.
Since World War Two, Canadian corporate investment has steadily increased, including mining, tourism, transportation, utilities as well as the financial sector.
In the early 1980s, Canada under the Tory Mulroney government was a principle supporter of one of the United States' first free trade zones in the region. Former US President Ronald Reagan's Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), first implemented in 1984 and rendered permanent in 1990, was the trade model that inspired NAFTA and now the FTAA.
The hope of expanding this type of trade and investment arrangement into the larger economies of Latin America has left Jean Chrétien and his Cabinet almost drooling at the thought.
The CBI also inspired Canada's own corporate holiday deal, CARIBCAN, which has been in effect since 1986. Under the CBI and CARIBCAN, tax holidays for US and Canadian investors and duty free imports and exports are guaranteed for a wide range of products.
But for the Caribbean states, the deals came with a price.
To gain access to the CBI, the region's nations had to meet a series of "conditions" deemed to be necessary to ensure economic stability. These conditions included that no countries designated as "communist" would be welcomed into the deal, ensuring that the economic sanctions against Cuba continued.
No country was allowed to expropriate or utilize property controlled by US citizens without arrangement and compensation, or to provide preferential trade to other developed countries.
CARIBCAN was closely modeled on the CBI. It was developed to insure that no elements of the CBI would be violated by Canada's involvement. Once the Free Trade Agreement and later NAFTA were implemented, Canada's corporate investment in the US economy increased relative to the Caribbean, but the basic imperialistic patterns have only intensified.
Canada has increased its commitment to military support for the US in the South since the 1980s, including participation in joint maneuvers designed to topple oppositional governments like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua or the New Jewel Movement in Grenada.
Canada's imperialist interests in the region were clearly exposed in Haiti in 1991. In September of that year, democratic nationalist President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was toppled by a brutal military coup.
Days after the coup, 19 Haitian students occupied the Canadian embassy in Port-au-Prince in search of asylum. Barbara McDougall, then Minister for External Affairs, coldly denied their requests and instead forced them to starve into submission. The Canadian government ensured that the students were handed over to the same Cedras military regime that then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney had condemned.
This despite the occupants' fear for their lives because of their opposition to the bloody dictatorship that had taken command in Haiti. And this despite Brian Mulroney's bold words, insisting that Canada would not rule out any options to restore the government of Aristide and full democratic rights to the people of Haiti.
At least 4,500 other Haitian citizens desperately tried to escape the coup by fleeing in leaky boats headed for Miami. They were met by a cordon of coast guard ships which refused them passage to US borders.
About a year later, under a UN-brokered plan to "restore democracy" in Haiti, Canada agreed to "cooperate" with US authorities in returning fleeing boat people. One Canadian navy ship rescued 67 Haitian refugees from a rickety sailboat. But they were immediately turned over to the United States Coast Guard, and sent back to the barbaric regime in Haiti.
Imperialism
Imperialism, according to the Russian revolutionary VI Lenin, is about capitalism's expansion beyond national borders. It is not a policy of one government or another. It is not as if some capitalist states are imperialistic and war-mongering while others are peace-loving. Imperialism is a system that follows inevitably from the market.
Canada is not as large as the US, and its record of direct military intervention hardly compares to the US. But Canada is an imperialist power nonetheless.
Multinational corporations based in Canada are the single most influential element in determining Canadian foreign policy. And Canadian corporations and US corporations work hand in hand. The protection of Canada's corporate interests in the Caribbean comes before any other concerns for the needs of citizens in the region or at home.
Vampires may hide their fangs from time to time, but that makes them no less thirsty for the blood of their victims.
As negotiations continue for the FTAA and the millennium round of the WTO, we should have no doubt that this basic fact is well understood by the Canadian government delegates.