Maria Worton is a Montreal writer, poet and social activist who concentrates on hospital related fiction... apart from being one of the Editors of Serai.
Preamble to a Poem: Canada's War Machine (not an oxymoron after all)
The thing is see I was going to write a love poem and was just taking a stroll for inspiration. Perversely I wound up at the website of the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC) and fell into the Corporate Plan Summary for 2002-2003 - 2006-2007. Well…it was like finding a big hole in the garden in the dark, or submitting to a peculiar eye test, the letters of which amount to a strange indiscretion, which for the first time ever has you reading the very small print.
What the website did was gloss over some of the CCC's activities, that to the tune of billions, have brokered deals, between, among others, the US government and Canadian military hardware and software manufacturers. Though the CCC is wholly owned by the Canadian government, since an Act of Parliament in 1946, it has apparently been mandated to service our most important neighbour like family. Where the US is concerned the CCC greases the wheels with the lubrication of minimum questioning so that in business with the US no Canadian government permits are required thanks to the spirit of mutual cooperation captured a while ago now in the Defense Production Sharing Arrangement (DPSA) of 1956, the Defense Development Sharing Agreement (DDSA) of 1963 and the NASA Letter of Agreement of 1960. The US can trust Canada to the point that it uses the CCC's auditing services.
The poem I did write in the end observes Canada's crucial contribution to America's most recent military venture: apart from intelligence and war planners there were the light armoured vehicles (tanks for city streets) (by General Dynamics Land Systems), tank bridges (Bombardier), satellite imaging surveillance (Com Dev), war plane engines, testing grounds etc. etc. And I say crucial because what's war without the bells and whistles, eh? (Forgive any euphemisms here but after the CCC's corporate look ( so clean some people will let their children eat off it) and weeks of televised freedom coverage, it would seem a little bloody minded to refrain from any war-ease what so ever, wouldn't it?)
Well, having digested the contents of the CCC website it's surprising to see some Canadians kicking themselves round the block for Canada not doing more in the war effort, as though Canada were doing nothing at all! Because the terms of the DPSA seem to oblige the CCC in no uncertain way, "In times of crisis or war the CCC serves as a national contracting instrument associated with industrial mobilization of Canadian sources of supply in keeping with Canada's obligations to the US under the DPSA….." Perhaps it's all about exposure. I mean what if these same people had decided to write a love poem…go for a stroll?
Though in all fairness to these people there was a rumour put about by our elected government that Canada declined involvement in the war in so far as it said it would not be sending troops or warplanes. To which I'm inclined to say, "Come on Canada! Enough of the bashful tact! Why we're a shy state with our fuses showing! And is that not an infra-red light I spy beneath our bushel? Because though we may not have pulled many triggers or dropped many bombs I think it only fair to say that our instruction manuals and machines must have inflicted a significant share of "collateral damage" (excuse me but you know what that means).
At this time, there's no doubt that Canada, in practice at least, cannot only count itself among the "the coalition of the willing" but also as an institutionalized member of the "very willing if a little coy about it". Witness the CCC's financial forecast, which with current US foreign policy being what it is, anticipates "huge opportunities for Canadian companies" that until now have remained "largely untapped", markets that the CCC wants to help Canadian firms "penetrate" citing the US Army as a favorite hunting ground for contracts past, present and future. This in addition to the leverage it will continue to provide Lockheed Martin and the US Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps in the development and sale of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter which Lockheed promises will set "new standards for lethality, survivability and supportability".
As I prepare to shut down and shuffle to bed I'm wondering why we don't hear more about the CCC in the press and parliament? Even someone like myself, a poet without a pension plan, finds the figures quite interesting and would quite like to see more, even though they are, by all accounts, very large (They do say the devil's in the details, don't they?)
"We need to break down the glass wall of obscurity," the CCC says of its relations with parliamentary government. It complains that "we have suffered from a low level of awareness amongst parliamentarians including those in Foreign Affairs, International Trade, Finance, Industry National Defense, Transport and Government Operations…" But I am surprised to read this on the one hand and then on the other, "In the wake of 'the war against terrorism' the worldwide demand for security equipment and services has been booming." And by booming I gather they also mean making quite a lot of noise. Well don't walls everywhere have ears?
I read the other day that the Canadian military industry gives generously to the Liberal Party fund. (Funny, because I never imagined arms manufacturers and their ilk to be Liberal.) And yet where the CCC is concerned the Liberals appear to be a little cold. Could it be that the government and parliament regard the CCC to be an unpleasant though essential bit of business in the basement? This attention to appearances would seem a wee outdated, Victorian, deceptive even on the government's part. When you think…there the CCC is, chugging away, another boiler in the basement of American empire, bowing to a US neo-liberal agenda that accepts "Privately owned contractors and utilities will become increasingly important sources of procurement" in line with "WTO rules-based trading" and globalization.
Which is all very titillating in its way, though I wonder if it wouldn't be more stately of Canada to be completely honest and open with itself? Perhaps even go for a little help? Because when the spoils of war are tallied Canada will surely have scalps to boast, and publicly, one would hope, so that those among us that appreciate that sort of thing can also go public. In that event I imagine many of us would want to trade in our bottle bottoms for bifocals, in the interests of transparency, just so everyone can know who is who and what is where and how.
Of course many of us would have to mourn too. Because for all the hush around the CCC it is evidently part of the state apparatus, part of Canada's dark underbelly, a deep place in our unconscious we might go to when rummaging around for national identity.
the state i'm in
oh canada the state i'm in home and frozen land of corporate weather reports and questionable facts and points of order recently raised i'll single some out shall I
to the music of the zither
you recall the soundtrack to 'the third man' no well the breaking story goes you're the third hand a worldlier you selling lethal medecines for little people and goats in slay grounds and mongering war and cutting down from domestic imposts and pension plan funds of we the unconsulted
from modelling efficiency to a tv general in a pointy stick i guess i was blinded by the whiteness in waging that vote a bigshot gamble on a trojan machine
but i see now i've been floating in i know you'll agree your consensual fluids freely floating in your command only wanting so much wanting to inherit the earth
but look here you I can I will deny you my taxation donation self-automaton dumb salute for your endings of Innocence
state of pain
I am afraid you won't do and I am afraid of what you will do next truth is
I am afraid of you
© maria worton montreal 2003