I’ve just returned from a most amazing conference put on by the BC Federation of Labour and the BCTF. What was amazing was the collection of people, who are all so dedicated and informed, and some of the presenters. If only some of what they all know collectively could rub off on all of us.
Stephen Lewis spoke on Friday evening. It was the second time I’ve heard him speak but he was definitely equally as powerful. What was noticeably different was his tone because of the audience he was speaking too. He was clearly within his comfort zone. He knew he was speaking to an audience that respects him and agrees with him. In some ways for me this made his speech all the more passionate.
Two things really stood out for me this time from what he was saying. The first was a shift for me in how I see my own country. While I think I have grown up in Canada believing that I could be proud to be Canadian, it seems that we are losing that right. In the past decade we have lost ground in being a country at the forefront of working towards peace, social justice and sustainability. In fact our own Canadian Human Rights Commissioner, Louise Arbour, is stepping down perhaps because of our hypocrisy as a nation. We have scarred our record. Most recently we helped to prevent the passage of the UN convention on rights of indigenous peoples. We have undermined the Kyoto accord and are continuing to do so. This past week Canada refused to allow water to be inscribed as a human right. If I want to continue to be proud to be Canadian I need to be involved in politics. There is just no getting away from it. Marian Dodds quoted Rosemary Brown, “when I hear someone say they are not interested in politics, I know I am talking to a fool.” I certainly understand the truth in that now.
The second thing that stood out for me from Stephen Lewis’ talk was a re-emphasis of what I heard loud and clear the last time I heard him speak. As he says, “the never agains are endless,” yet we keep letting them happen. The G8 countries (Canada included) have failed to live up to the millenium goals for 2015 in three areas. We are no closer to achieving a goal of spending just 0.7% of our GNP to alleviate poverty. In fact poverty is getting worse. More than 1 billion people in our world live on less than $1/day. More than 3 billion on less than $750/year. And to that now we add the food crisis. Eygpt, Thailand, Yehman and Mexico are no longer getting enough food. As SL pointed out, these are not poor countries but middle income countries! Secondly, we have not reduced infant mortality. Over 10,000,000 children under age five die from preventable diseases each year. Thirdly, we have not made the significant gains that were set out with regards to women’s rights. He talked as one example of the worsening situation for women in the Congo. The UN has in its charter the responsibility to protect. This means that in the case where a country will not protect its citizens from violence the UN will intervene. While we have the responsibility to protect, this clause is not used. It is not used, for example again, in the Congo or in much of Africa because the violence is often only against women! His point, quite simply put, awareness is not enough.
Other powerful speakers presented throughout the two day conference. Gillian Creese, a UBC anthropology professor spoke on the topic of economic security as a human right. She used current statistics in BC and the lower mainland to make the point that our BC is violating human rights. Grand chief Ed John who spoke again of Canada’s lack of support for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He provided details about the current situation in BC. (more on him and his impact on me in a separate blog post still to come). Dr. Emmanuel Rozental, a medical surgeon from Columbia, presented a most passionate talk on Canada’s role in the corporation take over. Dr. Rozental is heavily involved with the Columbia Workers’ Rights groups. He touched on free trade, multi national corporations, and indigenous rights. He moved the entire audience to tears. I won’t do him justice at all to paraphrase his words here, but I want to at least make note of a few and then follow up in a separate blog post that I am still working on about my growing respect, understanding and curiousity about our relationship to first nations rights in Canada. So a few of the more powerful quotes from Dr. Rozental:
“When we look at the past and it was bad, and we look at today and it is worse, and we look to the future and we know it will be even worse, then we cannot reconcile the past and say we are sorry.”
“Canada has been hijacked by a few transnational companies.” and “On cannot change what one does not understand. We need to understand the global nature of capital.” “Harper says that we cannot sacrifice the economy for the ecology.” “They (the capitalists) have a memory to act from. We don’t. …. We cannot continue to base our action only on resistance….In the process of resisting we must plan our own position.” He claims that the capitalist governments rely on three strategies: propaganda, legal policy (free trade agreements and structural reform) and terror. In Columbia over 4 million people have been murdered and displaced. He would like to see us stop free trade between Canada and Columbia. Stop the SPP agreeement and act on mining to protect the health and health care of his people. To end, “words without action are meaningless. Action without words are blind. Action and words outside of the spirit of community are death.”
Next I went to hear a young and very intelligent woman, Dawn Paley, present on mining. By now, as those of you who know me well, will understand, my mind was working overtime. Dawn is an independent researcher who should definitely be supported. She filled us in a little on the acitivities of a company called Gold Corp, which is the 2nd biggest gold mining company in the world. Our teacher and CPP pension money, by the way, supports Gold Corp and by the end of Dawn’s presentation I was more than a little uncomfortable with that knowledge. The environmental damage, the lack of respect for the health and well being of whole communities, and the general lack of ethic care involved in mining in Latin America and even here in Canada is truly appalling. But not to worry though. The only condition for money held in CPP is profitability and believe me, Gold Corp, even with its lack of accountability to its share holders, thanks to some creative off shore money management strategies such as chains of companies held in the Cayman Islands, appears to be an excellent investment for our money. We will have a solid pension if our lack of environmental protection laws internationally are allowed to continue unchecked! (Oh and by the way, Canada’ lack of support at the UN for indigenous peoples rights and the basic human right to water started to be more clear to me in this session.)
To round off the day I went to hear Murray Dobbin speak on Privatization and Human Rights. We was talking specifically about the notion of public private partnerships (P3). More on this to follow.
You say : “Other powerful speakers presented throughout the two day conference. Gillian Creese, a UBC anthropology professor spoke on the topic of economic security as a human right. She used current statistics in BC and the lower mainland to make the point that our BC is violating human rights. ”
———-
That is rhetorical nonsense!
Despite what Gillian Creese repeats, property rights and the right of free trade are man’s only “economic rights” (they are, in fact, political rights)—and there can be no such thing as “an economic bill of rights.” But observe that the advocates of the latter have all but destroyed the former. And while people are clamoring about “economic rights,” the concept of political rights is vanishing.
[To insure one’s so called “economic rights” you have to take money from the pocket of another….violating his or her human rights. You can’t call it a right because it violates the rights of others…]
Furthermore, there is no such thing as “a right to a job”-there is only the right of free trade, that is: a man’s right to take a job if another man chooses to hire him. There is no “right to a home,” only the right of free trade: the right to build a home or to buy it. There are no “rights to a ‘fair’ wage or a ‘fair’ price” if no one chooses to pay it, to hire a man or to buy his product. There are no “rights of consumers” to milk, shoes, movies or champagne if no producers choose to manufacture such items (there is only the right to manufacture them oneself). There are no “rights” of special groups, there are no “rights of farmers, of workers, of businessmen, of employees, of employers, of the old, of the young, of the unborn.” There are only the Rights of Persons—rights possessed by every individual person and by all persons as individuals.