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Editorials of / Editoriaux de Gilles Gervais

Harper’s choice: Will Canada implement a sovereign policy towards Asia or will it adopt Obama’s Asia ’Pivot’ policy?

21 May 2013

On May 22-23 Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be attending the Pacific Alliance Leaders’ Summit in Cali, Colombia, “where he will discuss issues of economic importance to the hemisphere, including trade and investment,” says a press release from the PMO dated May 17.

“The Pacific Alliance,” explains the press release, “is a grouping of four of Latin America’s fastest-growing economies: Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. It was launched in April 2011 to facilitate the free movement of goods, services, capital and people among member countries, and to strengthen their trade and investment ties with Asia. Canada has bilateral free trade agreements with all the founding members of the Pacific Alliance. Canada became an observer to the Pacific Alliance in October 2012.”

The same day the Wall Street Journal reports that the Pacific Alliance Summit “will afford the first opportunity for a ‘sounding-out’ of what it has to offer and see it in action, according to Andrew MacDougall, Mr. Harper’s spokesman.”

“He said it was too early to discuss whether Canada would want to become a full-fledged member, though he didn’t dismiss the notion.

’The first step is to see first hand what’s on offer and what’s available and what the goals are, and to make that determination,’ Mr. MacDougall said.”

So “what’s on offer”?

Postmedia journalist Lee Berthiaume, in a November 15, 2012 article, presented University of Ottawa Professor Carlo Dade’s argument in favour of the Pacific Alliance as the more practical roadmap for Canada’s trade with Asia:

“…But it is Canada’s economic ties with Asia that could really benefit, especially if Canada is eventually accepted as a full member," wrote Berthiaume in 2012.

“Canada has recently joined the Trans-Pacific Partnership,”… “but progress on the TPP has been slow as the agreement must pass through the U.S. Congress, which isn’t expected for some time.

“Even then, there have been concerns that Canada, which is late in joining the partnership, could be forced to make major concessions, including in its dairy sector.

“Carlo Dade, an expert on Canadian-Latin American issues at the University of Ottawa, said this is where the Pacific Alliance comes in.

The bloc was initially set up as a way to leverage the four countries’ strengths to negotiate trade deals with Asian nations, [i.e. ASEAN nations-GG] he said, and if Canada can get onside it will give this country a way to sidestep the TPP.

’These guys are going to start negotiating across the Pacific well in advance of the TPP,” he said.

’So if you actually want negotiations that will span the Pacific, this is the way to do it. And they don’t have to go through the U.S. Senate to have it passed.”

While professor Dade’s cited reason for going with the Pacific Alliance might seem rational, it also presents Canada with immigration and other problems. More importantly, it completely ignores the crucial consideration for rejecting the Trans-Pacific Partnership – that the TPP is a major component in the so-called Asia ‘Pivot’ policy of Obama: i.e. a policy of ‘containment’ of China and one that is bound to lead to regional wars and an increased danger of thermonuclear war.

The crucial consideration: avoiding a thermonuclear confrontation with China under Obama’s watch

Prime Minister Harper has to decide to weight-in on the side of security and peace and not make a decision on Pacific relations based primarily on trade considerations. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not a policy that Canada should embrace now or ever if it represents a clear path towards war. Early in the preceding century, the British Empire had initiated a series of alliances, including the Triple Entente which was conceived as a stepping stone towards achieving the Empire’s World War I geopolitical aims.

Today, the new British Empire’s financial elite has dictated Obama’s Asia ‘Pivot’ policy (including the TPP) as a complimentary component towards achieving the House of Windsor’s avowedly radical green-Malthusian agenda to depopulate the planet, up to and including a thermonuclear brinksmanship policy against China and Russia.

At this juncture of the world financial and monetary breakdown crisis, there is no amount of free-trade treaties, be it with Asia or Europe or anywhere else, that can be embarked upon that will magically revive the world economy. Nations must first put their houses in order; win back their sovereignty from the financial oligarchy by passing legislation in favour of a global Glass-Steagall system, followed by the establishment of a system of national banks that can issue large amounts of public credit to be made available for continental-wide infrastructure projects.

The need to establish a global Glass-Steagall now and how nations in Asia could join Western nations in a community of principle between fully sovereign nation-states was the subject of discussion between Asia scholar Mike Billington and radio host Marcia Merry Baker on the weekly LaRouche radio show of this past Saturday May 18th.

We invite the PMO’s office staff and the office staff of International Trade Minister Ed Fast to tune in and listen to this week’s interview. The approach discussed in the program, if adopted, would not only allow for harmonious Canada-Asia Pacific trade but would prevent Canada’s involvement in President Obama’s Asia ‘Pivot’ policy of containment and eventual war with China!

Gilles Gervais