[The Honorable Paul Hellyer, distinguished parliamentarian, was first elected to the House of Commons in 1949. He has served in the governments of Louis St. Laurent, Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau. The following speech was delivered at the Save Canada Conference held in Ottawa, August, 1999. Montreal Serai does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed herein or endorse the Canadian Action Party.] Ed.

WHAT I'm going to say is not so pleasant. What I'm going to give you is a frightening overview of the bad things that are happening to us as individuals to Canada and to the world.

We are being led down the garden path. Sylvia Ostrey, who is one of Canada's better-known economists and who was one of our chief negotiators at the Uruguay Round of negotiations at the World Trade Organization, is on record as saying that when they started negotiations, she had no idea how much national sovereignty would be given up and had no vision of what it would all look like when they were finished.

Just a few weeks ago, Dr. Ronald Lehman, a chief U.S. strategist for three administrations, Republican and Democrat, addressed a group in Toronto for breakfast. I'm not exactly sure why he was there, but I think it was to shore up Canadian support for various American initiatives. What he said, in effect was that they do not have a vision of what the world will look like after globalization.

Can you imagine starting out on a trip like that without a road map? Well, that's what we've done.

What Globalization Means

I can give you a fairly accurate picture of what globalization is accomplishing. Universal access to health care is being cut back in Canada and around the world. I don't think there is a single exception. Universal access to education is being cut back in Canada and all around the world. Concern for the environment is being cut back in Canada and all around the world. Unemployment has been high in Canada -- 8 per cent, one million people, looking for jobs. It's absolutely, totally immoral and it's the same all around the world -- 350 million people are unemployed and a total of about one billion people are either unemployed or underemployed. It's a genuine tragedy.

The only exception, of course, is in the United States which is using the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to blast its way into Third World markets. And it has the added advantage of its currency being the international currency of exchange. In fact, the only beneficiaries of globalization are the officers, directors and principal shareholders of multinational corporations who don't seem to give a damn about anybody else.

Faulting Free Trade

A few weeks ago in Montreal at McGill University, there was a meeting that could only be described as a love-in between George Bush and Brian Mulrooney. It was to mark the tenth anniversary of the signing of The Free Trade Agreement, and our former prime minister boasted of his accomplishments. He said his trilogy, "free trade, the goods and services tax and high interest rates" had paved the way to prosperity.

Talk about lies and half-truths! Pages and pages of propaganda In our papers for days after, and there was scant mention that the 10 years since the FTA was signed has been the worst decade for Canada since the Great Depression of the 1930s and the second worst decade of the entire 20th century. Family income stagnated; unemployment soared. If that's Mulrooney's definition of success, I wonder what his definition of failure would be?

In the 1988 election, the prime minister assured us that what he wanted was guaranteed access to the U.S. markets. That's what it was all about.

What a crock that was! Just ask the softwood lumber producers who have had tariffs and quotas imposed on their exports. Ask the steelmakers. Ask the cement makers. Ask the Manitoba farmers who had their trucks stopped at the border. There is no such thing as guaranteed free access to the U. S. markets. As soon as imports begin to impinge heavily on local industry, American politicians find some way of impending the flow.

But that wasn't Mulroney's biggest deceit, however. His number one whopper was to pretend that the Free Trade Agreement was a free trade agreement. The trade part of the deal was not the important part at all. Sure, it affected some tariffs. But they were going to come down anyway under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. It was an investment agreement. The Americans wanted access to our industries and our resources and especially to our water. It was an oversight of unforgivable magnitude and, had we been told the truth, we might have rebelled at the time. Instead of saying, as he did that "Canada is open for business." He should have said: "Canada is now up for sale."

In allowing the Americans to insert the "national treatment" clause, which was an absolutely new concept in international law, and gave U.S. investors the same rights in Canada as Canadian citizens, Mr. Mulroney accomplished two things. First he virtually guaranteed the demise of Canada as a nation state. Second, he allowed Ronald Reagan, with one stroke of the pen, to do what American generals and American armies have been unable to do several times, and that was to conquer Canada. The conquest is still tentative for perhaps two more years.

Time's a-wasting

Yesterday, Archbishop Lazarre was kind enough to say that I had some gift of prophecy. I seldom pat myself on the back, but I do have a pretty good instinct for what is going to happen. I don't know how anybody could listen to Richard Wolfson and David Cadman and other speakers and know what's going on in the world and think that we've got many more years to get our act together: that is the reason for this conference. We are getting very, very close to the point of no return, after which nothing can be done. So we have to find out now if anyone cares. Do you want to be Americans by default? I hope not.

The national treatment clause is not only the provision that will kill Canada, but it is the means by which transnational corporations and international banks are colonizing the world. It's been stated so often here today that we can't consider Canada in isolation from what's going on in the world.

True, we're all in this leaky boat together. They are using this clause to make vassals of us all. Their powers under the national treatment clause are the foundation of an evil empire every bit as bad and probably worse with its ultimate consequences than the evil empire which was the Soviet Union.

Democracy or a new form of monarchy?

Several hundred years of experiment in popular democracy are going down the drain. Democracy is being replaced by a new form of monarchy. A look at the American experience tells us the story.

Incidentally, I'm not anti-American. My friends are not anti-American. There are people there who think exactly as we do and it cuts right across the political spectrum, from left to right. David Korten, who wrote that wonderful book, When Corporations Rule the World, would have come today, if he hadn't been on holiday, in order to express solidarity with our concerns with what's going on in Canada and in the world.

Our quarrel is not with the American people. Our quarrel is with the American government and the transnational corporations that run the American government.

Well, the American War of Independence was about who was going to govern and, allegedly, the problem with England about tea taxes. Benjamin Franklin tells us in his memoirs that it was about money. London insisted the colonies could not print their own money. They had, instead, to borrow from British banks and pay back principal and interest in gold, which they did not have. There was a system of financial slavery and you've been talking about it here today. It's something that not a lot of people understand and it's absolutely fundamental to what's going on, both in our country and around the world.

While victory and battle transferred sovereignty from England and from the monarch there to the people, not all Americans were treated equally, of course. The landed white gentry had a great advantage, whereas the slaves, the natives, the women and the poor were not considered as people. It took them a long time to achieve that equality, to be known as persons, even in theory.

The birth of corporations

Their victory -- if it was a victory -- was short-lived because there was a parallel development that made the advantage of the new rights an advantage that didn't last very long.

It was the development of the corporation as a vehicle for the production and distribution of goods and services. At first, the corporations owed their existence to the sovereign people. Consequently, their objects were limited. They could only do certain things. Often their charters were limited and only allowed to run for so many years, after which they had to account for their actions in order to have their charters renewed. The directors were liable for misdemeanors. They had stakeholders rather than shareholders.

In time, this accountability became irksome and so they [the corporations] used their power and influence to remove the restraints, one by one. Their objectives were broadened so that they could invest in anything and do just about anything. Their liability was limited to a very narrow range and charters were granted in perpetuity so that corporations would outlive the people they were designed to serve.

Most important of all, the United States Supreme Court granted corporations the status of persons and this was a profound advantage. That was the beginning of the Takings Law. This is a concept of law which was foreign to our experience and which the U.S. rammed down our throats in NAFTA. It is the law under which we are being taken to the cleaners under Chapter 11 of NAFTA; and I don't have to repeat the consequences of that. Chapter 11 forces governments to compensate corporations for potential profit loss due to legislation. Ethyl Corporation launched a suit against the federal government when Ottawa tried to limit use of the gasoline additive, MMT. The Chretien government backed down.] Not only did we pay for their [Ethyl's] legal expenses, but I think, far worse, we had two ministers of the Crown stand and read statements saying that MMT, the gasoline additive which was the contentions product, was injurious to neither the environment nor health; at the very time the latest scientific evidence was showing us that just the opposite was true and that indeed, it was injurious to health, especially to children.

It boggles my mind that we could give corporations enough power Allowing them to tell our Parliament to revoke a law, pay them damages and get up and read something that isn't true. Absolutely incredible! That's what globalization is all about.

In pursuit of absolute power

Well the power of transnationals is now so great that the whole purpose of the American War of Independence has been aborted. Transnationals are now the kings and queens of the world. Some laughingly call it market economics, but really it's the pursuit of unbridled, near-absolute power. That's what it's all about and globalization is just a code word for corporatisation and colonization. The transnationals want to re-engineer the world in such a way that they don't have to pay taxes to support social security and fix pot holes in the roads or maintain parks, or pay their employees decent wages.

They're re-creating the conditions that existed in the time of Charles Dickens. They're moving production to places, such as Honduras, where they pay women starvation wages, for working 13 hours a day, up to seven days a week: no environmental standards, no health care. If they get pregnant, they get fired. If they get sick, they get fired. This erases 100 years of the legislation which acknowledged workers' rights, such as holidays with pay and pensions and protection against injury and so on -- and the benefits of unionization.

Dual Governments

The process has reached the point where Lewis Lapham, editor Harpers Magazine, says the U.S. has two governments: the permanent and the provisional. The permanent government consists of the Fortune 500 magazine's largest companies, also the largest law firms and public relations firms in Washington that work for those companies, and the top bureaucrats, both civil and military and they're the permanent government. Then there is what they call an election every once in a while where they elect the provisional government and elect actors that come on stage and read the script written by the permanent government.

You know, it used to make me so mad when people would say it doesn't matter who you elect, the Liberals or the Conservatives. The reason it made me mad was because I knew there was a lot of truth in it.

You were probably following the papers a few days ago where they had the straw vote in Idaho. Who won? George W. Bush. Why did he win? He spent the most money because he had corporate backing.

As a result, the United States government has become little more than a big bully enforcer for the big American corporations. If Time Warner says it wants a bigger chunk of the Canadian advertising revenue, it tells the American government to go get it and they do. Then they threaten to have a trade war with us. Finally, when they don't know whether we're serious or not, we capitulate -- and our government declares it a victory!

Well it's a victory all right, but not for us. Split run magazines are the worst form of dumping that I can think of. If the shoe was on the other foot, Americans would not put up with it for one minute. They would do what we should do and just impose a dumping duty -- the difference between what they pay for a page of advertising in the United States and what they pay for a page of advertising in Canada. That would end split run magazines. That's what should happen to them.

If Dole and Chiquita should decide that they want a bigger share of the European banana market, the American government goes to bat for them. It threatens a trade war with Europe. What it does not take into account is the fact that the bananas that are being sold there come from small producers in the Caribbean -- 96 most of them women -- and they will not be able to compete. If they lose their plantations, they will lose their livelihood and their security. Their land will be taken over by the big agro-businesses and they will be nothing but part time, temporary workers, the rest of the year unemployed. That is what globalization does. People don't matter in a globalized society. Only corporations do. If the United States wants to open up global markets for Monsanto, it just uses those pressure tactics.

"The constitution of Canada does not belong either to Parliament, or to the Legislatures; it belongs to the country and it is there that the citizens of the country will find the protection of the rights to which they are entitled." Supreme Court of Canada A.G. of Nova Scotia and A.G. of Canada.

THE END

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