Cellucci wants huge aqueducts to carry water from Canada to the US

Embassy Mag :

"Pointing out the imminent droughts in the southwestern United States caused by climate change, [former US Ambassador to Canada] Paul Cellucci raised the idea of constructing huge aqueducts to carry Canadian water south of the border.
He added that "to some extent, fresh water is a renewable resource," and that this opinion is shared by a recent report by the Montreal Economic Institute."

Yes, we already covered that Montreal Economic Institute report back here, Paul :

The chairman of the board of the Montreal Economic Institute, the 'independent non-profit' so keen on privatizing and exporting Canadian water, is Helene Desmarais. Helene Desmarais is married to Paul Desmarais Jr., co-CEO of Power Corporation of Canada and board member of GDF Suez, a multinational corporation that is a world leader in water privatization.

So. Not entirely arm's length then.
GDF Suez recently spun off its water equities into Suez Environnement Company, now Europe's 2nd largest private water management corp, in which it maintains a 35% controlling interest.

Meanwhile, we learn Paris is the latest city to reverse this trend and take action to put water back into public hands.
Is the Water Privatization Trend Ending? is an interesting article about Suez, "corruption, fraudulent accounting practices, and high prices", and the EU's attempt "to impose the worldwide privatisation of water and other public services through the WTO".

"In the 1990s many countries privatised their water and sanitation services, particularly in Africa, Asia and Latin America, under strong pressure from neo-liberal governments, particularly in the European Union (EU), and from international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to 'open up' national services.

The biggest beneficiaries were Suez and Veolia."

Oh yeah, by all means bring on that Canada-EU Free Trade Agreement with its "deep economic integration negotiations", so enthusistically touted by French President Sarkozy, currently also in rotation as President of the EU, as he awarded France's highest honour to Paul Desmarais Sr. ten days ago as thanks for helping him to become president.


In 2006, Mr. Cellucci suggested "that water should be included in the same category as other natural resources exported as Canadian commodities on the open market," an opinion also shared by the Montreal Economic Institute.

Stick it, Paul.
Cross-posted at Creekside

SPP and Election '08 : From Star Wars to listeriosis

Margaret Atwood gets it. (h/t West End Bob)

So does Kevin Brooker, columnist at the Calgary Herald :
Beware Government deals made secretly

"With all of the structural problems in the U.S. economy, is now the time to give deep integrationalists encouragement to do what we never asked them to do in the first place?"

Mr. Brooker is refering to the Con's summer release of their Competition Review Panel report "Compete to Win" , which recommends loosening up foreign investment restrictions and ending the prohibition on bank mergers.

Well just lol. The U.S. economy is tanking and we already have one of the world's most foreign dominated economies, but as usual, not U.S.-dominated/decimated enough for the North American Competitiveness Council, aka the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.

Let's do a little review of "Compete to Win", in their own words, courtesy of Integrate This! :

"The chief mechanism to deal with Canada–US border issues, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), has yielded too little progress in improving crossborder flows. In this context, the Panel believes that it is imperative to intensify our bilateral effort with the US, focusing on facilitating the flow of goods, services and people across the Canada–US border"

URANIUM MINING
"The Minister of Natural Resources should issue a policy directive to liberalize the non-resident ownership policy on uranium mining..."

COMPETITION
"The Minister of Industry should introduce amendments to the Competition Act (to) align the merger notification process under the Competition Act more closely with the merger review process in the United States..."

TAXATION
"The federal, provincial and territorial governments should continue to reduce corporate tax rates to create a competitive advantage for Canada, particularly relative to the United States."

CANADA-U.S. ECONOMIC TIES
"Addressing the thickening of the Canada–US border should be the number one trade priority for Canada, and requires heightened direct bilateral engagement at the highest political levels."

REGULATION
"Canada should harmonize its product and professional standards with those of the US, except in cases where, and then only to the extent that, it can be demonstrated that the impairment of the regulatory objective outweighs the competitiveness benefit that would arise from harmonizing."

As Mr. Brooker notes :

"When these people sit down to discuss, say, environmental regulation, do you think it is to make those laws tougher?
Do you suppose they're spending much time thinking about how to preserve workers' rights?

And how about Canada's vast freshwater resources, which were specifically excluded from NAFTA. What are the chances that emergent "security" needs will put water back on the table and thus guarantee the U.S. permanent access, just like they got with our oil?"

The always incisive Laura Carlsen, director of Americas Policy program at the Center for International Policy, answers Mr. Brooker's questions with a quote from someone who should know :

"In April 2007, on the eve of the North American Trilateral Summit, Thomas Shannon, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, described the SPP's purpose with remarkable candor: The SPP, he declared, "understands North America as a shared economic space," one that "we need to protect," not only on the border but "more broadly throughout North America" through improved "security cooperation." He added: "To a certain extent, we're armoring NAFTA."

Carlsen notes: "This was the first time that a U.S. official had stated outright that regional security was no longer focused on keeping the citizens of the United States, Canada, and Mexico safe from harm, but was now about protecting a regional economic model."

Of course the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, Canadian wing of the NACC, not only have always known this, they are very keen to take credit for the idea. From their website :

"As our Council made clear in launching our North American Security and Prosperity Initiative in 2003, it is in Canada’s fundamental interest to pursue bilateral and trilateral agreements that will keep our border with the United States as open as possible, and this requires hard work on issues related to security....In this context, we would restate our view that it is in Canada’s interest to participate in the ballistic missile defence program."

Oh goodie! Pudding!


While I was over at the CCCE website perusing their "Blueprint", I ran in to this :

"In 2003, our Council proposed that the federal government adopt a “five percent solution”, which would require that each year, each minister and each deputy minister identify the least effective five percent of spending under their direction. This identification of relatively ineffective spending would provide a pool of resources that could be reallocated to new purposes if and when needed."

A 5% cut in each department's operating budget?
That sounds oddly familiar. And voilà!

"A Canadian Food Inspection Agency employee was fired on Friday for sharing with his union information he found in a Treasury Board document that CFIA planned to make a 5% cut in its operating budget by outsourcing responsibility for food inspections and the labelling of products to industry.

It's like watching a prophecy unfold, isn't it?
The CCCE proposes something; the Cons turn it into listeriosis.

On Oct 14, be sure you are not voting for these puddin' heads.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Carrying water for elephants

The elephant in the room of this election has been the US market meltdown, courtesy of the Republican elephant's love of ponzi schemes.
Yesterday Steve took time out from pretending to ignore it altogether to express his concern that we might not let him carry water for Uncle Miltie's neo-liberal fantasy economics any more :

"In a time of economic uncertainty, I do think the country needs a strong government that's able to govern," Mr. Harper told journalists in Toronto. "My concern is that obviously, going forward, that we have a government that's going to be sabotaged by a bunch of parties who don't want our economy to be successful."

Yeah, that's it, Steve, you utter prat. Why do the other parties hate Canada?

Speaking of sabotage, Steve, as an economist and PM, you have implemented de-regulation of food and airline safety and the abandonment of independent Canadian regulation and testing of pesticides and drugs. In fact your singular economic achievement since taking office has been to turn the $13B surplus you inherited from PM Martin into $60B in corporate tax cuts.

Decent short article on economic cycles : Teetering between Keynes and Friedman :

"When the pyramid starts crumbling, taxpayers must step in to refinance the banking system, revive mortgage markets and prevent economic collapse."

I'm guessing a surplus would be more useful here than your pledge to continue carrying water for that Republican elephant in the corner of the room.
Cue the hilarious How the markets really work one more time.

Image from Banksy
Cross-posted at Creekside

Yeah, Eileen, but it's still shit

First it was called "sewage sludge", then "biofuel", and now Eileen Smith of the Ministry of the Environment informs us that henceforth it will be called "non-agricultural source materials."

Sure, Eileen, but it's still shit.
The Star has been running a series on sewage sludge and the controversy regarding the safety of spreading it on farmland and growing our food in it. A program born purely of the need to get rid of the stuff is surely not the most auspicious beginning for disposing of solid waste left over from the treatment of human, commercial, hospital and industrial waste :

"Diverting some of it to fields began in the 1970s. Then in 1996, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement stiffened sewage treatment guidelines. This created more sludge and Ontario started recommending it for use as fertilizer for farm crops. Faced with fast-filling landfills and a U.S. border slowly closing to Ontario's waste, many municipalities accepted."

Why am I suddenly reminded of the spinach and tomato recalls last year due to salmonella and e coli?
Possibly because "local officials who investigate health complaints are not required to report their findings to the province."

Well, there's that and the fact that according to Eileen "sludge will be the joint responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the environment ministry".
What happened to oversight from the Ministry of Health?
Nope, they're out of the picture now. Also :

"In a move that Eileen Smith says will raise safety, odour and application standards, the government is introducing changes that will drop the requirement for a certificate of approval for sludge spreading and allow it to be handled by farmers as part of the Nutrient Management Act."

In other words, certificates will no longer be publicly available to tell us what's being spread and who is spreading it.
This is the second case of the Cons deregulating food safety this week : see SPP and Mad Cow. and SPP : Outsourcing food safety to industry

Here's one of those anecdote-is-not-data stories.
Many years ago, having heard about the Chinese use of "night soil", I called around and left messages trying to get advice on how I could safely compost my own for the rose beds. I came home from work that night to an answering machine full of alarmed responses from various health officials asking questions like "How many of you are doing this?"
A guy from UBC Soil Sciences was the most informative.
Even in the unlikely case you get the temperature high enough to kill most of the pathogens, he explained, you'd still be introducing a new concentration of heavy metals into the soil.
Heavy metals?
Human waste has a very high concentration of them, he said.
Well what about China?
Yeah, it's a big problem there and in South America, he replied, proceeding to tell me about dioxins and various unattractive soil-born diseases.

And that was just my shit, never mind the pesticides and drugs and bacteria and hormones that are in the industrial and hospital stuff.

The American Society of Agronomy would seem to agree.

Now obviously a safe system of "nutrient recycling" is a great idea. But if what farmers are spreading on their crops in Ontario is as safe as Eileen says it is, why has Health Canada been dropped as a regulating body and why will certificates no longer be available to tell us who is using the stuff?

As usual, the handy Security and Prosperity Partnership is always there to answer all your questions :
SPP : Prosperity Pillar Working Groups :
"The Food and Agricultural Group will work towards creating a safer and more reliable food supply while facilitating agricultural trade by pursuing common approaches to enhanced food safety, and increasing cooperation in the development of regulatory policy."

Cross-posted at Creekside

SPP : Outsourcing food safety to industry

A Canadian Food Inspection Agency employee was fired on Friday for sharing with his union information he found in a Treasury Board document that CFIA planned to make a 5% cut in its operating budget by outsourcing responsibility for food inspections and the labelling of products to industry.

A 5% saving, you say. Well that definitely seems sufficient cause to dump the CFIA mandate and adopt the U.S. industry-based approach to food safety instead.

Luc Pomerleau, a 20 year public service employee and shop steward, found the info on a shared CFIA computer last May. The union contends that Pomerleau was fired not for "breaching security" but because of what he found.
Michèle Demers, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada : "It is not industry's role to protect the health of safety of Canadians, it's the agency's role."

While the document - a November 2007 Treasury Board meeting at which ministers approved the proposed cuts - is once again secret, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's (CFIA) Report on Plans and Priorities for 2007-2008 webpage displays an emphasis on profit you would not normally expect from a government department whose primary purpose is ensuring food safety for Canadians :

"Canada is working with the United States and Mexico on the regulatory aspects of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) of North America to eliminate redundant testing and certification requirements when it is beneficial to Canada. The CFIA co-leads with Health Canada, Canada's participation in the SPP initiatives for food and agriculture regulation and protection. Through the SPP, the CFIA is pursuing common approaches to better protect North America from offshore and domestic risks to food safety and animal and plant health."

Only in North America, you say? Pity.

"Working to achieve a better life for Canadians is the highest priority of the government. Long-term prosperity requires increased productivity and competitiveness which means making sure Canadians can compete in a global economy by creating a stronger economic union, reducing red tape and making sure borders stay open for business."

Yes, because when I think about food safety, my thoughts immediately turn to the main preoccupation and slogan of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives : "making sure borders stay open for business".

A side note : the "leaked" document also mentions spending cuts on equipment for the Avian Influenza Preparedness Program - you know, bird flu, supposedly one of the three big concerns on the Montebello agenda. I thought the bird flu scare was the major rationale for that NorthCom "Defending Our Homelands" pact which allows troops from Canada and the U.S. to operate in each other's countries now.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Going postal

Canada Post is still ours, right? It does still belong to us.

So why would the federal government appoint a panel of three people, the chair of which has already written two books advocating the end of postal monopolies, to determine whether Canada Post should be allowed to continue to provide us with universal service and some of the lowest postal rates in the world, or whether it would somehow be better to deregulate it so that private corps can have a piece of it?

The government has said it has no plans to privatize Canada Post, but what are the chances CP can survive a bidding war for contracts against private companies with non-unionized jobs?
And then there's the privacy angle -
Public Service Alliance of Canada:

"If any of participating corporations were based in the United States, they would be subject to the terms of the USA Patriot Act, which gives the U.S. government access to private information contained in the mail."

Well no need to worry yet - I'm sure all this will come out at the public hearings.
Oops. No public hearings.
Unlike previous reviews which held public meetings throughout Canada, this three person panel is only accepting written submissions from June till Sept. 2.
Gosh and I'll bet a lot of people are away at the summer cottage at the moment too.

The problem with deregulation is that it allows private corps to snap up the most lucrative aspects of a public corporation, leaving it - and us - with the debts associated with delivering the less profitable parts - like mail to that remote cottage - and paying more for less service.
Then there is usually another follow-up review panel which concludes that - surprise, surprise - the gutted public corporation just isn't financially sustainable any more so we may as well sell it off for whatever we can get for it. Like this :

From the bio of Moya Greene, Canada Post President & CEO :

"As Assistant Deputy Minister, Policy, in the Department of Transportation, Ms. Greene was responsible for broad reform of the over-burdened transportation system; the privatization of CN; the deregulation of the Canadian airline industry; and the commercialization of the Canadian port system."

So how is the deregulation and privatization of mail doing in other countries?
Hmmmm ... not so good.

In May 2007, United Parcel Service of America (UPS) lost its NAFTA Chapter 11 case against the Government of Canada regarding Canada Post's delivery of public sector services. UPS had claimed that Canada Post represented unfair competition for private companies providing similar services.
Is the Canada Post Corporation Strategic Review panel going to carry UPS's water for them?

Your submission here :
Canada Post Corporation Strategic Review

h/t to the indefatigable Waterbaby
Cross-posted at Creekside