Global Community perspective on the proposed Canada-European Union trade deal

Dont do it Canada!
Dont sign a trade deal with the EU.

It is a myth to think Canada would be better off within a free trade deal with the European Union (EU). It was a myth to believe the same with the USA and the Free Trade Agreement (FTA), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). It was not a good deal with the USA for reasons given here in this paper.

The proposed CanadaEU trade deal would be much worse than the deal made by the former Conservative PM of Canada, Brian Mulroney, with the USA. Actually the proposed CanadaEU trade deal would mean the end of Canada, its institutions, its values and history. Let me explain why!

First let us have a look at the situation now, today, in the EU. The half of billion people of the EU are not doing as well as they would like us, Canadians, to believe, and their future does not look good at all. Very desperate and muddy future, and uncertain! Just like what the White House has been doing a few years back when bailing out its banking institutions and car manufacturing industry, the EU itself has already bailed out several of its important member states with trillions of dollars. They are bankrupted just like the USA. They will never get over paying their astronomically high national debts. Now that all the fun has gone by, all the money wasted away, they look at Canada as the land of the future, and their biblical promise land. They believe all they have to do to acquire this new Garden of Eden, the biblical "garden of God", is to sign a trade deal with the Conservative PM of Canada, Stephen Harper. The PM did not ask Canadians whether they wanted this deal or not, he just went to Brussels, Europe, to conclude an agreement of understanding leading to the Canada EU free trade deal with the President of the European Commission, Jos Manuel Barroso. All on his own doing! Forget about what Canadians want, he thinks he knows better!

The truth in all of this is that the PM of Canada, a hard Conservative fellow from Alberta, wants to sell his Alberta oil & gas products to the EU member states. The EU member states would like to get away from the deal they have made with Russia. The EU currently imports 82% of its oil, 57% of its natural gas and 97.48% of its uranium demands. There are concerns that Europe's dependence on Russian energy is endangering the Union and its member countries. The EU is attempting to diversify its energy supply. Canada's PM could not resist putting his foot before his head and went to Brussels to sign a pre-deal with the EU. The PM does not care what else a trade deal would do to Canada and to all Canadians. He just wanted to make things easy for Albertans and his beloved oil & gas industry friends. Well! What is wrong with that?!? Let me explain!

Again let us take a good look at the situation, today, in the EU. It is nothing like it seems! Several important EU member states are bankrupted. Even Great Britain is having a lot of trouble getting ahead economically. Their future does not look good at all! Look! They have hired a Canadian, Mark Carney, to look after their failing economy. Who is Mr. Mark Carney? Mr. Mark Carney was appointed Governor of the Bank of Canada by the Conservative government, PM Harper, February 2008, for a term of seven years. After five and half years of service as Governor, Mr. Carney departed the Bank of Canada on 1 June 2013 to become the Governor of the Bank of England. He was effectively appointed to this position on July 1st, 2013. He is the person supposedly able to get Great Britain out of trouble.

If Great Britain wants any future al all, Great Britain needs the new Eden, Canada lands and resources, for its own survival as a country. Great Britain never quite got integrated by the EU. Actually never wanted to be integrated for reasons the EU was going to take away its economical and political power to make decisions for itself. Great Britain does not quite believe the EU deal is all that good and certainly would strain jacked badly the British people. But after all the debates were done and thought about, England, today, is still an important member state of the EU. So why would England hired a Canadian, Mr. Mark Carney, to get them all out of trouble.

Actually, beside Mr. Carney's outstanding expertise in his field, there is another reason for doing so. Mr. Mark Carney is of the same class as Canadian Hockey Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky. Mr. Gretzky, a person raised in Alberta, has been said to be one of the best hockey player in the world. Several times over the years, Mr. Gretzky brought the hockey cup to Canada. He was so good that the USA bought him to play in the USA. That is right they "bought" him. This is what they do in hockey. The more money you have the most likely you will be successful. Canada never got the cup again!

Mr. Carney was hired or "bought" by England to get England out of trouble. Simple as that! Both Mr. Carney and Mr. Gretzky have a dollar sign on their face, heart and mind. They have or are using their experience, knowledge and strength to compete against the people who have educated them, fed them, kept them healthy throughout their younger life. And all they can think about is make more money in a foreign country to compete against Canada. This is not treason! In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. In the case of Mr. Carney, his knowledge of Canadian institutions, political and social situation, is at least if not better than the person who hired him in Canada back in 2008, the Conservative PM of Canada himself. There is no price to what Mr. Carney knows about Canada.

Now Mr. Carney will certainly use his knowledge and experience to help England, a prominent and influential member state of the EU, to make things easy for the EU and its member states access Canada ways of life, resources, institutions, or anything that can make things easy to compete against Canada, and Canadian businesses.

Of course, British Petroleum, a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England, United Kingdom, and who already has a base in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, would have all the benefits of a CanadaEU free trade deal. As if they need more breaks from Canada, not paying taxes, getting away from environmental barriers, and taking Canadian resources away from Canadians. After a trade deal is signed, imagine what British Petroleum will be able to do or any other foreign company for that matter. They will be able to sue any municipal, provincial or even the federal government of Canada about any problem coming up in the future. They will even be able to sue the Canadian Natives if they try to stop them from developing Canadian resources. And they certainly will not have to clean up after a disaster up North. Canadian taxpayers will have to foot the costs of clean up which will amount to be in the billions of dollars.

The CanadaEU trade deal will not be good for small and medium size businesses. The trade deal was designed for big corporations, the 1% of the global business arena, the super rich, the 'upper class', the same kind of people who would divide Canada to pieces like the British have done in India .

Before Canada gets engaged with the British people via the CanadaEU trade deal, let us take a good look at the kind of people Canadians will be facing with. Let us look a bit at British history.

Back at the time when the British were in the process of moving out of India, they created Pakistan out of India territorial boundaries. In many ways they have help a community, mostly made of Muslim people, to govern itself as a nation. The partition of India is a signal event in world history, not merely in the history of the Indian subcontinent. British rule became established in eastern India around the mid-eighteenth century, and by the early part of the nineteenth century, the British had tightened their grip over considerable portions of the country. The suppression of the Indian revolt of 1857-58 ushered in a period, which would last ninety years, when India was directly under Crown rule. Communal tensions heightened in this period, especially with the rise of nationalism in the early 20th century. Though the Indian National Congress, the premier body of nationalist opinion, was ecumenical and widely representative in some respects, Indian Muslims were encouraged, initially by the British, to forge a distinct political and cultural identity. The Muslim League arose as an organization intended to enhance the various -- political, cultural, social, economic, and religious -- interests of the Muslims.

Outside South Asia, the partition of India evokes little recognition. As the British left India, the largest single migration in history took place: well over ten million, and perhaps as many as fifteen million, people crossed borders, and a million or more became the victims of murderous assaults. Both the Governments of India and Pakistan established commissions for the "recovery" of abducted women who numbered in several tens of thousands. Numbing as these figures are, they barely register in world histories: perhaps that indifference to the calamity that afflicted India and Pakistan betokens the view that life in South Asia has never had much value, and that the violence of the partition can be seamlessly assimilated into a narrative that pitches the Hindus and Muslims as foes locked into battle ever since Islam became a dominant political force in India in the early part of the 13th century. Partition came, moreover, in the aftermath of the most immense bloodbath in European history, and the emaciated women and men liberated from concentration camps were so palpable a testimony to the holocaust unleashed within Europe that many other holocausts would be all but invisible to European eyes and ears. There is, howsoever loathe we may be to acknowledge it, an hierarchy of suffering, and the industrial killing of Jews was construed as the paradigmatic experience of genocide in modern history.

On 15 August 1947, India acquired its independence from Britain. The newly-appointed Constituent Assembly was given the task of drafting a constitution for India, and the greater part of this onerous responsibility fell upon the shoulders of B. R. Ambedkar, who was elected chairman of the drafting committee. There was much irony in this: as the leader of the "Untouchables", as they were then called, Ambedkar had been the most unremitting foe of Gandhi, the "Father of the Nation". Ambedkar, who was Law Minister in the Government of India, and his colleagues made a careful study of the constitutions of various countries, besides considering the common law traditions of Britain and the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Constitution of India guarantees equal rights to all citizens, and prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, caste, and religion; it also allows universal franchise, thereby making the Indian electorate the largest in the world. The Fourth Part of the Constitution contains what are called "directive principles of state policy", which require the government to set goals for the welfare of the people, such as a minimum wage, jobs for people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and subsidized medical care. The Indian Constitution is one of the largest in the world, and comprehensive and sweeping in its scope. The Indian state, however, has been asked about its commitment to enforce the "directive principles", and constitutional rights have been abrogated much too often. During the internal emergency of 1975-77, proclaimed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the Constitution was sadly rendered ineffective. In recent years, the Supreme Court of India, as well as the higher courts, have shown much daring in so interpreting the Constitution as to advantage the oppressed, the poor, and the victims of state and police brutality. Indeed, the Supreme Court has become renowned for its judicial activism and what is termed Public Interest Litigation or Social Action Litigation. The Constitution remains a vital and living document, and the political awareness of recent years suggests that it will continue to be a source of inspiration for those who strive valiantly to make Indian society more egalitarian and just.

The bulk of the scholarly literature on the partition has focussed on the political processes that led to the vivisection of India, the creation of Pakistan, and the "accompanying" violence. Numerous people have attempted to establish who the "guilty" parties might have been, and how far communal thinking had made inroads into secular organizations and sensibilities. Scholarly attention has been riveted on the complex negotiations, and their minutiae, leading to partition as well as on the personalities of Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Azad, Patel, and others, and a substantial body of literature also exists on the manner in which the boundaries were drawn between India and Pakistan, on the western and eastern fronts alike. (In general, however, the partition in the Punjab has received far more scholarly attention than the Bengal partition.) There has been much speculation about the role of the British in hastening the partition, and Gandhi s inability to prevent it; indeed, some Hindu ideologues have even suggested that, whatever his stated opposition to the bifurcation of India on religious grounds, Gandhi is more properly viewed as the Father of Pakistan rather than the Father of the Indian nation. Whatever the "causes" of the partition, the brute facts cannot be belied: down to the present day, the partition remains the single largest episode of the uprooting of people in modern history, as between 12 to 14 million left their home to take up residence across the border. The estimates of how many people died vary immensely, generally hovering in the 500,000 to 1.5 million range, and many scholars have settled upon the nice round figure of 1 million. There is nothing nice or comforting about this somewhat agreed-upon figure, and it is interesting as well that few scholars, if any, have bothered to furnish an account of how they came to accept any estimate that they have deemed reasonable. We know only that hundreds of thousands died: in South Asia, that is apparently the destiny of the dead, to be unknown and unaccounted for, part of an undistinguished collectivity in death as in life.

In recent years, the scholarly literature has taken a different turn, becoming at once more nuanced as well as attentive to considerations previously ignored or minimized. There is greater awareness, for instance, of the manner in which women were affected by the partition and its violence, and the scholarship of several women scholars and writers in particular has focussed on the abduction of women, the agreements forged between the Governments of India and Pakistan for the recovery of these women, and the underlying assumptions -- that women could scarcely speak for themselves, that they constituted a form of exchange between men and states, that the honor and dignity of the nation was invested in its women, among others -- behind these arrangements. Earlier generations of scholars hardly bothered with oral histories, but lately there have been a number of endeavors to collect oral accounts, not only from victims but on occasion even from perpetrators. These accounts raise important questions: should the partition violence be assimilated to the broader category of genocide so widely prevalent in the twentieth century? or was the violence of the partition something very different, a kind of uncalculated frenzy? was it really a time of insanity? can the partition justly be differentiated from the bureaucratized machinery of death installed by the holocaust perpetrated against the Jews? why do we insist on speaking of the violence as merely "accompanying" the partition, as though it were almost incidental to the partition?

There was a time, not long ago, when scarcely any attention was paid to the partition. Perhaps some forms of violence and trauma are better forgotten: the partition had no institutional sanction, unlike many of the genocides of the twentieth century, and the states of Pakistan and India cannot be held accountable in the same way in which one holds Germany accountable for the elimination of Europe s Jews or Soviet Russia accountable for the death of millions of peasants in the name of modernization and development. It is also possible to argue that the partition theme gets displaced onto other forms of expression. But it can scarcely be denied that now, more than ever, it has become necessary to adopt several different approaches to the partition, taking up not only the questions covered in the more conventional historical literature -- the events leading up to the partition, the ideology (indeed pathology) of communalism, and the immediate political consequences of the partition -- but also the insights offered by film, literature, memoirs, and contemporary political and cultural commentary. Of course, the consequences of partition are there to be seen: India and Pakistan continue to be embroiled in conflict, and Kashmir remains a point of contention between them. The psychic wounds of partition are less easily observed, and we have barely begun to fathom the myriad ways in which partition has altered the civilizational histories of South Asia. If the partition appeared to some to vindicate the idea of the nation-state, to others the partition might well represent the low point of the nation-state ideology. Will the people of South Asia ever leave behind their partitioned selves?

Dear reader you may wonder what the India-Pakistan-Kashmir historical events have to do the CanadaEU trade deal and here is what. British rule all over the world has been the cause of millions of innocent people deaths. In many ways the British people consider trade as a game, and they are good at it. They manipulated people of other nations and their governments, even invaded them, just to get power and resources. Over the years, the British people have brought disgrace to humanity by their selfish, immoral, unethical, incoherent, inconsistent, dishonest, erratic, and mostly aimed at making money behavior in other nations. Before engaging in any free trade deal with Great Britain via the EU, Canadians are better learned about historical facts concerning the British people and be very cautious.

The view from space shows us a global landscape in which competition over resources is the governing principle behind the use of economic and military power. Truly, resources have become the new political boundaries. Geopolitical boundaries between nations are gradually disappearing to make place to georesources boundaries. Canada is certainly a country of immense quantities of natural resources yet to be developed and, with climate change and the melting of the North ice, Canada will be a country much like the promise land by God where its people, Canadians, will have accessed to even more resources the world has never seen before. There is no question about that! Canadians are in a country of plenty more to come! Democracy is an excuse to gain control over those resources by mega corporations. 'Blood oil and gas' is certainly a proof of this statement. Conservation, restoration, and management of the Earth resources is about asking ourselves the question of "Who owns the Earth?" The large gap between rich and poor is connected to ownership and control of the planet's land and of all other Earth natural resources. We, the Global Community, must now direct the wealth of the world towards the building of local-to-global economic democracies in order to meet the needs for food, shelter, universal healthcare, education, and employment for all.

The Global Community has proposed a democracy for the people based on the fact that land, the air, water, oil, the electromagnetic spectrum, minerals, and all other natural resources rightly belong to the Global Community along with the local communities where those resources are found. The Earth is the birthright of all life. The Global Economic Model proposed by the Global Community is truly the best response to the world. To gain control of the Northwest Passage, Canada would have to show strong Earth management initiatives and not making empty promises like Brian Mulroney with his Polar 8 icebreaker. We remember the purchase of the Polar 8 icebreaker to patrol Canada northern border was cancelled in 1989 by then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, head of the Conservatives. If the Conservatives want to make a difference with Canada's sovereignty it better be a real one, not a fake one. History is telling now. The Conservative PM is more preoccupied with an illegal invasion of Afghanistan than Canada's sovereignty in the North and the protection of its environment. During his time as Prime Minister Jean Chretien and head of the Liberals, Canada has spent $51 million to map and identify the boundary of its continental shelf in the Arctic, pursuant to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Canada ratified the UNCLOS in 2003 and has 10 years from that date to determine the extent of its continental shelf. This mapping will help to determine Canada s exact sovereign rights in terms of economic control (beyond the UNCLOS - defined 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone) and resource exploration. That money and its positive impact on Canada's sovereignty were more than what Brian Mulroney and today's PM Stephen Harper, together have ever done toward protecting Canada's sovereignty. Mulroney "Free Trade' with the US has diminished Canada's sovereignty. Most of Canada's large corporations have been bought out by the US and other foreigners. We have seen a gradual lost of Canada's sovereignty because of 'Free Trade' and the signing of the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement.

When you think about Mr. Carney experience and knowledge being used to compete against Canada, that somehow rings the bell about the action of the well known NSA whistleblower Edward Joseph Snowden.

Mr. Snowden, an American computer specialist and former CIA employee and NSA contractor, disclosed classified details of several top secret United States, Israeli, and British government mass surveillance programs to the press. He is living in Russia under temporary asylum and is considered a fugitive by American authorities, who have charged him with espionage and theft of government property. Mr. Snowden used his knowledge and experience to make known to the world mass surveillance programs conducted by the above mentioned nations. Could Mr. Snowden have just been hired by Russia for this job?!?!

What is the difference between Mr. Snowden and Mr. Carney? They both use their knowledge and experience to do a job. Actually Mr. Carney is quite well pay for doing his job and Mr. Snowden is not. So why would the United States, Israeli, and British governments spy on Canada? Why would Great Britain, London, spy on Canada? Obviously that has something to do with the CanadaEU trade deal. The deal is to access the new Canadian Eden for England, and that is a priority and a must get done deal. It is for their own survival as a nation! But all London had to do instead of spying on Canadians is to hire the best man for the job, Mr. Carney. Well! They did! Mr. Snowden has likely violated many laws, but, absent additional facts, treason is not one of them. Or is what he did treason? Is what Mr. Carney doing considered as treason against the Canadian government?

Many questions are being asked and not answered. The timing of the PM going to Brussels on October 2013 to conclude a proposal CanadaEU free trade deal is very suspicious. It is two years before an election here in Canada and the PM will need a 'good' issue to survive his majority. He thinks the trade deal will do just that, to give him another majority government. Now another timing is critical here. Mr. Mark Carney was appointed Governor of the Bank of Canada by the Conservative government, PM Harper, February 2008, for a term of seven years. But he did not complete his term. He became the Governor of the Bank of England effectively on July 2013. So the question is how likely is the fact of hiring Mr. Carney, the trip of the PM to Brussels related, and the desperate needs for England to reach a trade deal with Canada via the EU related? Are we witnessing here a maneuver from the PM, Mr. Carney, London and the EU to get a free trade deal signed as soon as possible? That is likely and, if it can be shown to be the truth, then what Mr. Carney and the PM have done can be defined as treason against Canada.

We know the PM is from Alberta, his beloved province, and how many billions of taxpayers money he has been pouring into the province and its oil & gas industry. The Senate scandal happening now in Canada is just another smoke screen to take Canadians attention away from a truly bad deal with the EU and also from the mismanagement of Canadian taxpayers money by pouring billions of taxpayers money into the province of Alberta and its oil and gas industry. PM Harper would do anything to make things even easier for his oil & gas industry, and this free trade deal would do just that. It would open the sky to the EU market for his preferred product, the oil & gas. That is also the reason why he has put down all environment barriers here in Canada. Also we know he has appointed Mr. Carney, his Conservative friend, to the job of Governor of the Bank of Canada. A phone call to London by either or both the PM and Mr. Carney, and all is done! I wonder if Mr. Snowden would have phone calls and emails from the PM concerning the trade deal in his data base?!

Now let us take a good look at the experience Canadian have had with the free trade deal between Canada and the USA. Certainly we ought that to ourselves before engaging at all with the EU. The EU member states are desperate to get Canada swimming in their muddy future. And we sure dont want that!

We Canadian-skeptics love the real Canada, but we see NAFTA and the FTAA as a bad idea. It is a bad idea like slavery, communism, high-rise flats. The proposed CanadaEU trade deal is of the same kind of deal except worse. Let us take a look at the deals with the USA after the years of experience we have had with the free trade deals so far, and how is it that our major partner South of us got bankrupted, not because of us Canadians, but because of their handling of business, and especially the handling of their banking systems. The US government inserted trillions of dollars into their economic system to solve their problems without success. This alone, by the way, was against all the rules of the free trade deal Canada has with the USA. And so was the bailing out of the USA car manufacturing industry during that same period of time.

The EU itself has been doing similar expensive bailing out with the failure of some of their important member states. And again that alone is already against the rules of any free trade deal. The Canadian government never bailed out an industry except its oil & gas industry off course, and we all know why.

The rules were also broken when the USA government handed over trillions of dollars to their banking systems and in turn banks were able to allow big corporations to make huge loans and to buy Canadian corporations and get their hands on our resources with nothing more than bankrupted dollars from the White House. Canadians exchanged tangible Canadian resources for bankrupted money from the USA. That also was against the rules of the free trade deal in a major way. Of course the USA technocrats running the NAFTA and FTAA never done anything about that. They were part of the maneuver to out-deal Canadians. The same thing will happen with the CanadaEU deal. A bunch of technocrats living on the other side of planet Earth governing Canada as they please.

The fundamental idea behind NAFTA was born after the FTA, an economic agreement between the U.S. and Canada, but only came to fruition after the United States and Mexico made all sorts of special economic arrangements. This fundamental idea was that nation-states were better off with no other needs than the best economics, and that at the expenses of the values and institutions people from each member state respected most. Those nation-states must therefore be emasculated and diluted into a new form of super-national organization called NAFTA - run, not by elected national politicians reflecting the desires of the peoples, but by a commission of wise technocrats, USA technocrats in most parts running the show.

This leads me to the key piece of the NAFTA propaganda: the claim that the USA, Canada and Mexico have kept healthy the economics of the North American continent since its creation, and that it is essential to maintain it in future. This is the big deception, which plays at the almost unconscious level. It is a warm, mystic conviction that NAFTA, with all its faults, must be inevitably good because it brings good economics. But, today, even that is questionable. The USA is bankrupt today. Actually the USA were bankrupted years ago but refused to accept their failure as a nation and government. Now they are forced to do so. And they are taking down Canada with them.

Those who promoted the myth that the agreements were good economics do not tolerate any rational examination of history or the facts. Indeed, they accuse those of us who query the divinity of NAFTA of being rabid nationalists, xenophobes, little Canadians, and worse. You start to be guilty of all this as soon as you dare to point out that the economy alone is not all that matters, and that, what is more important is the protection of the global life-support systems and the primordial human rights which include security. Also important are the cultural and social aspects, as well as our Canadian value systems.

Indeed, if you stand back and scratch your head a bit and take a calm look at NAFTA, you will see it is a well-tried model for destruction, not good economics. It contains three of the most important ingredients for conflict. First, it is a top-down amalgamation of different peoples put together without their informed consent, and such arrangements usually end in conflict. Whistle-blowers have been silenced since its creation, and there is no internal auditors. Third, NAFTA is institutionally undemocratic. Let me say here that America alone and unilaterally has invaded Iraq without the consent of Canada and Mexico and, therefore, such an action has endangered the entire North American continent, its economy, the security of its people is at risks, and peace is threatened and replaced by fear. Americans are economically bankrupted and yet they spend astronomical amounts of money with defence because of a threat they created abroad. Now that tells Canadians and the people of Mexico that economics are affected by the U.S. foreign policies, and we should have a say in those policies. Everything is connected: economics, foreign policies, social aspects, the environment, everything.

Let me explain a little more of how NAFTA (the FTAA is very much similar) functions and show why it is so innately undemocratic. In other words, what sort of animal are you dealing with? How bad is it now?

Even in Canada, very few people realize what huge areas of our national life have already been handed over to control by NAFTA. Put simply, these include: everything to do with a single market -in other words, all of our industry and commerce - all of our social and labor policy, our environment, agriculture, fish, and foreign aid. Even security and the Canadian forces are being handed over to the U.S.A. technocrats.

What do I mean by control from the U.S.A. technocrats? Well, in all those areas of our national life which used to be entirely controlled by the Canadian Parliament, our government or House of Commons can be outvoted in the NAFTA meetings of member states. That is a system known as "you have no democratic rights, just money to lose". If our government agrees, or is outvoted in any new ruling in those areas, then Parliament, being the House of Commons, must put it into Canadian law. If they dont, the country faces unlimited economic fines.

So our Canadian Parliament has already become rubber stamps in all those areas of our national life. Our foreign trade relations are in an even worse category: the commission of the NAFTA bureaucracy self-negotiates those on our behalf. And so in this area, NAFTA already has its own legal personality.

So to go back to where we are now, in addition, laws affecting our justice and home affairs and our foreign and defence policies must also be rubber-stamped by the Canadian Parliament if they have not been agreed by our government and all the other member states governments in NAFTA (and similarly in the FTAA). In other words, our government cannot veto new rulings in NAFTA in these areas, and it has to enact them. This all means that NAFTA technocrats actually govern Canada, not the Canadian House of Commons. If Parliament were to reject a new NAFTA ruling in these areas, we would be subject to unlimited fines as we would be in breach of our treaty obligations, which is, of course, a rather more horrifying prospect for our foreign office and political classes in their diplomatic cocktail parties and so on. A fine, after all, is paid by the taxpayer.

No rulings in NAFTA has ever been overturned by the Canadian Parliament. NAFTA technocrats act as a higher Court, the highest court in North America - superior to all our national courts including the Supreme Court of Canada - in the area which ceded NAFTA, and it must find in favor of the ever-closer economic union of the peoples of North America, ordained the treaties, and it is guilty of much judicial activism in order to do so.

There are four other features of this NAFTA system which are worth emphasizing, all of them innately undemocratic. First, the unelected bureaucracy - the commission has the monopoly to propose all new rulings and change our Canadian laws. This reflects the basic idea behind NAFTA which I have mentioned. The nation-states, the democracies of North America, must be emasculated and diluted into this new super national economic body we called NAFTA and run by the commission of wise technocrats. Second, the commission's legal proposals are then negotiated in secret by the shadowy committee of permanent representatives, or bureaucrats, from the national capital states. The U.S. have already established themselves as being by far the ruling majority technocrats of this body. Decisions are taken in NAFTA, again by secret vote. National parliaments are precluded from knowing how their bureaucrats and ministers negotiate and vote. The commission then executes all NAFTA rulings, supported when necessary by the so-called court. The technocrats pretend that democracy is maintained. But the point remains that the Canadian Parliament itself is excluded from the process. We can and do debate some rulings, but we have to pass them exactly as agreed in NAFTA.

A third features of this frightening new system enshrined in the treaties is that once an area of national life has been ceded to control from NAFTA it can never be returned to national parliaments.

The fourth feature I would mention is that no changes can be made to the treaties unless they are agreed unanimously by NAFTA technocrats. So the return of powers to national parliament by renegotiation is no realistic. The only way out is the doorway.

Canada's membership with NAFTA is also very expensive financially. The government of Canada steadfastly refuses to carry out a cost-benefit analysis because it does not want the result to be made public. So the GGNA has made private studies, which produce a cautious estimate at the cost to the taxpayer and the economy of around six billion per annum, or 2 percent of GDP. Two new studies are on the way which will take this estimate considerably higher.

It is also worth saying that the whole of the North American continent will continue in steady and irreversible demographic and therefore economic decline over the next fifty years. Add to this the unemployment and decay caused by globalisation and you have to ask why the Canadian political establishment wants to stay on the Titanic.

NAFTA spells out the final extinction of Canadian sovereignty and the sovereignty of the democracy of Mexico. Its worst feature is that it grants its own legal personality superior to that of Canada and Mexico. There is no longer even the pretense that NAFTA is an arrangement between sovereign nations, and that the U.S. technocrats are the majority. Soon we will see a NAFTA flag and an anthem.

NAFTA will eventually take over most of the rest of the powers which we have retained in Canada so far, including defence and security.

When will Canadians ever held a referendum to reject NAFTA? Canadians have been kept in such ignorance and history shows that we have accepted it all somewhat like frogs in warm water being heated from underneath. We could not react fast enough to reject NAFTA even though it is destroying all of what makes us Canadians. And the same will happen with the CanadaEU trade deal or worse. Most likely the CanadaEU trade deal will spell out the lost of what is left of our Canadians values, our institutions, our good economics and banking systems, and even divide our nation to pieces just like what the British people have done with India. Millions of Canadians might not survive a British invasion through the back door, the CanadaEU trade deal.

The Canadian Supreme Court should start to take note of NAFTA rulings, and I submit that is not agreeable to our democracy.

I feel I must also at least touch on the moral dimension of NAFTA and also of the FTAA. I need hardly say that it is fundamentally secular, irreligious, even atheistic. The convention which was drawing up the agreement refused the supplication of the pope himself, that the agreement should contain at least some reference to our Judeo-Christian heritage.

We Canadian-skeptics love the real Canada, but we see NAFTA, FTAA and the proposed CanadiaEU free trade deal as a bad idea. It is a bad idea like slavery, communism, high-rise flats. I need to tell the damage which ideas can do when they become generally accepted and turn out to be wrong. I remember the story of the young, white Russian officer who wrote home to his fiancee in 1918 from the front against the Bolsheviks. Oh, my darling, he said. Please do not worry. In a few weeks I shall be home with you in Moscow, and we shall be married. These people are not very well armed, and their ideas are even worse. Well, three days later he was killed, so he was not entirely right about their arms, but he did turn out to be right about the ideas which inspired Soviet Communism. It is just that it took seventy years and fifty million lives to prove him so.

Let us hope NAFTA and the FTAA dont end up as quite such a dangerous idea as that. With any luck, it will start to decay from within. If we have the energy to understand it, to expose it, and to fight it. We can do that together. We can make things better.

But just to be safe Canada, let us not have another free trade deal this time with the EU and its member states. There are desperate for a deal but really we dont need them and our future will be brighter without them suing us. And, by the way, we can still sell them our products and services without being tangled up with a free trade deal that sure dont make any sense. More like an insane trade deal!

What do you think more than a half billion people from the EU member states will do to 40 million Canadians? People from the EU are hungry for resources, scared because no one else wants to make a free trade deal with them, not even Russia. Russian people know the people from the EU member states. Russians know the EU member states are broke and would not be good partners economically, especially within a free trade deal. Russians know better! And that is the reason why the EU member states dont like Russians. Gush! EU member states are so poor they cheat on the oil and gas flowing by pipelines from Russia to EU member states. And Russia has to cut the flow to be paid. No wonder EU member states dont like Russia. No wonder EU member states would like to break the agreement they have made with Russia concerning the oil and gas resources. EU member states cannot do business on a fair exchange basis and cannot be trusted.

Now the EU member states are looking for the Canadian oil and gas resources. The same people who cheated with Russia and wanting to break away from the agreement they have made with Russia are now trying 'to do it to Canadians'. A CanadaEU trade deal will allow technocrats rulers from the other of the planet to sue Canadians and government (municipal, provincial and federal) for any problem on their ways. The EU 28 member states dont just want to do business with Canada, they want all of it, they want to control Canadians and Canada, and the trade deal will allow them to cheat on Canadians legally. Gee! That is not right economics! That is pure and simple robbing and being invaded economically. There is an economic warfare out there globally and the uniting of the 28 member states into the EU is just another way to compete unfairly and Canada would be literally engulfed by the more than 500 billion people of the EU.

Canada has no need of a trade deal with the EU. Canadians can always sell products to the EU member states without an insane trade deal binding Canada into bankruptcy and being divided. We are Canadians! And like the Russian people, we just dont want to sell a product to the EU member states and being invaded economically. We dont want to be straitjacketed by a bunch technocrats ruling our lives and living on the other side of the planet in the EU. We dont want our future to be broken into pieces, becoming a divided nation, because that is what will happen within a free trade deal with the EU. They will do to Canada what they have done to themselves. Not a future!

Over the past, EU member states have been divided into small countries trying to out-do one another. They have done so for centuries, a thousand years...! Why are they all divided into 28 member states? How has that happened? Why? Today they are trying hard to re-unite themselves as the EU. But they cannot even agree on a Constitution that would bind themselves as one Union, one community. Just economics they say! But they are broke! What have they got to offer the world that the world already has? They cannot pay for what we have to offer them. Russians know well about that! And EU member states will only buy cheap product and services. We all know that because many of the manufacturing products found in the EU market are manufactured in China, Bangladesh and India where the costs of manufacturing are very low. So how likely a product manufactured in Canada compete successfully in the EU? Not likely!

The truth is that people from the EU member states had it good for centuries, and now they are broke. They cannot compete globally because they live with values of the old style, the old ways. And China, Bangladesh and India will always out compete them. And they think Canadians are so a gullible people, credulous and naive. They think Canadians dont know about the EU history and how the EU member states got to what they are today: broke, hungry and scared because they is no future globally for them.

The people from the EU member states are trying to re-invent themselves as the new way to go: a better people with human rights and being environmentally responsible and, truly, they are doing what they saying they want to do. But today, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is already being classified as outdated, no longer of sustaining us all globally, and even detrimental to the survival of all life on our planet. The Scale of Global Rights, as promoted by Global Community, is the way to go now, the only way to go, and the EU member states must get on with the rest of the world on this issue.

The people from EU 28 member states are broke, they have spent all of their assets and resources, they are no longer credible economically, and they are hungry for a new virgin land to rip apart, and to divide as they have done to themselves over centuries of wars. Canadians know better than being "occupied" or "invaded economically". We are not Europeans! We are Canadians! We are a responsible people! We are successful! And Canada is the land to protect, to live in!

The more than a half billion people from the EU 28 member states are much like piranhas. Piranhas have a reputation as ferocious predators that hunt their prey in schools as a means of cooperative hunting. That is why the 28 member states are re-uniting themselves as the EU, a new Union of predators badly needing of a new prey, a fresh body to eat, and Canadians and Canada will do just fine they say. After the feeding frenzy of the piranhas is done, only bones are left afterward. Once all of Canada has been 'done' with to the bones and falling apart, guess what happens next! Canadians and Canada will be divided. Not even a Soul left! The Canada we know today will become much like the 28 member states: divided, hungry, scared of not having a future for themselves, and the Canadian brand gone forever.

With climate change and the melting of the North ice, Canada will enjoy a new land to appreciate for the generations to come. Our future as Canadians is good. Let us not lose it to the EU. We Canadians are a responsible people. Canada is our country and a wonderful place to be born in and with a great future ahead of us for many generations to come. Let us not lose it all to the EU member states desperate and hungry to invade us economically. Dont do it Canada!

The European Union (EU) is an economic and political union of 28 member states that are located primarily in Europe. The EU operates through a system of supranational independent institutions and intergovernmental negotiated decisions by the member states. The European Union has seven institutions: the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the European Council, the European Central Bank, the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Auditors.

The European Parliament is elected every five years by EU citizens. The EU's de facto capital is Brussels.

To join the EU, a country must meet the Copenhagen criteria, defined at the 1993 Copenhagen European Council. These require a stable democracy that respects human rights and the rule of law; a functioning market economy capable of competition within the EU; and the acceptance of the obligations of membership, including EU law. Evaluation of a country's fulfilment of the criteria is the responsibility of the European Council.

The EU has developed a single market through a standardised system of laws that apply in all member states. Within the Schengen Area (which includes 22 EU and 4 non-EU states) passport controls have been abolished. EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital, enact legislation in justice and home affairs, and maintain common policies on trade, agriculture, fisheries, and regional development.

The eurozone, a monetary union, was established in 1999 and came into full force in 2002. It is currently composed of 17 member states. Through the Common Foreign and Security Policy the EU has developed a role in external relations and defence. Permanent diplomatic missions have been established around the world. The EU is represented at the United Nations, the WTO, the G8, and the G-20.

With a combined population of over 500 million inhabitants, or 7.3% of the world population, the EU in 2012 generated a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of 16.584 trillion US dollars, constituting approximately 23% of global nominal GDP and 20% when measured in terms of purchasing power parity, which is the largest nominal GDP and GDP PPP in the world.

The EU was the recipient of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize for having "contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy, and human rights in Europe."

The classification of the European Union in terms of international or constitutional law has been much debated. The organisation itself has traditionally used the terms "community", and later "union". The difficulties of classification involve the difference between national law (where the subjects of the law include natural persons and corporations) and international law (where the subjects include sovereign states and international organisations); they can also be seen in the light of differing European and American constitutional traditions. Especially in terms of the European constitutional tradition, the term federation is equated with a sovereign federal state in international law; so the EU cannot be called a federal state or federation, at least, not without qualification. Though not, strictly, a federation, it is more than a free-trade association. It is, however, described as being based on a federal model or federal in nature. Walter Hallstein, in the original German edition of Europe in the Making called it "an unfinished federal state". The German Constitutional Court refers to the European Union as an association of sovereign states and affirms that making the EU a federation would require replacement of the German constitution. Others claim that it will not develop into a federal state but has reached maturity as an international organisation.

Competencies in scrutinising and amending legislation are divided between the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union while executive tasks are carried out by the European Commission and in a limited capacity by the European Council (not to be confused with the aforementioned Council of the European Union). The monetary policy of the eurozone is governed by the European Central Bank. The interpretation and the application of EU law and the treaties are ensured by the Court of Justice of the European Union. The EU budget is scrutinised by the European Court of Auditors. There are also a number of ancillary bodies which advise the EU or operate in a specific area.

Leaders of the EU
- President of the Commission: Jos Manuel Barroso
- President of the European Council: Herman Van Rompuy

Legislature of the European Union
- Upper house: Council of the European Union
- Lower house: European Parliament

The European Council gives direction to the EU, and convenes at least four times a year. It comprises the President of the European Council, the President of the European Commission and one representative per member state; either its head of state or head of government. The European Council has been described by some as the Union's "supreme political authority". It is actively involved in the negotiation of the treaty changes and defines the EU's policy agenda and strategies.

The European Council uses its leadership role to sort out disputes between member states and the institutions, and to resolve political crises and disagreements over controversial issues and policies. It acts externally as a "collective head of state" and ratifies important documents (for example, international agreements and treaties).

On 19 November 2009, Herman Van Rompuy was chosen as the first permanent President of the European Council. On 1 December 2009, the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force and he assumed office. Ensuring the external representation of the EU, driving consensus and settling divergences among members are tasks for the President both during the convocations of the European Council and in the time periods between them. The European Council should not be mistaken for the Council of Europe, an international organisation independent from the EU.

The European Commission President is Jos Manuel Barroso. The European Commission acts as the EU's executive arm and is responsible for initiating legislation and the day-to-day running of the EU. The Commission is also seen as the motor of European integration. It operates as a cabinet government, with 28 Commissioners for different areas of policy, one from each member state, though Commissioners are bound to represent the interests of the EU as a whole rather than their home state.

One of the 28 is the Commission President (currently Jos Manuel Barroso) appointed by the European Council. After the President, the most prominent Commissioner is the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy who is ex-officio Vice-President of the Commission and is chosen by the European Council too. The other 25 Commissioners are subsequently appointed by the Council of the European Union in agreement with the nominated President. The 28 Commissioners as a single body are subject to a vote of approval by the European Parliament.

The European Parliament building is in Strasbourg, France. The European Parliament (EP) forms one half of the EU's legislature (the other half is the Council of the European Union). The 736 (soon to be 751) Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are directly elected by EU citizens every five years on the basis of proportional representation. Although MEPs are elected on a national basis, they sit according to political groups rather than their nationality. Each country has a set number of seats and is divided into sub-national constituencies where this does not affect the proportional nature of the voting system.

The Parliament and the Council of the European Union pass legislation jointly in nearly all areas under the ordinary legislative procedure. This also applies to the EU budget. Finally, the Commission is accountable to Parliament, requiring its approval to take office, having to report back to it and subject to motions of censure from it. The President of the European Parliament carries out the role of speaker in parliament and represents it externally. The EP President and Vice-Presidents are elected by MEPs every two and a half years.

The Council of the European Union (also called the "Council" and sometimes referred to as the "Council of Ministers") forms the other half of the EU's legislature. It consists of a government minister from each member state and meets in different compositions depending on the policy area being addressed. Notwithstanding its different configurations, it is considered to be one single body. In addition to its legislative functions, the Council also exercises executive functions in relations to the Common Foreign and Security Policy.

The EU had an agreed budget of 120.7 billion for the year 2007 and 864.3 billion for the period 2007 - 2013, representing 1.10% and 1.05% of the EU-27's GNI forecast for the respective periods. By comparison, the United Kingdom's expenditure for 2004 was estimated to be 759 billion, and France was estimated to have spent 801 billion.

In the 2010 budget of 141.5 billion, the largest single expenditure item is "cohesion & competitiveness" with around 45% of the total budget. Next comes "agriculture" with approximately 31% of the total. "Rural development, environment and fisheries" takes up around 11%. "Administration" accounts for around 6%. The "EU as a global partner" and "citizenship, freedom, security and justice" bring up the rear with approximately 6% and 1% respectively.

The Court of Auditors aims to ensure that the budget of the European Union has been properly accounted for. The court provides an audit report for each financial year to the Council and the European Parliament. The Parliament uses this to decide whether to approve the Commission's handling of the budget. The Court also gives opinions and proposals on financial legislation and anti-fraud actions.

The Court of Auditors is legally obliged to provide the Parliament and the Council with "a statement of assurance as to the reliability of the accounts and the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions". The Court has refused to do so every year since 1993, qualifying their report of the Union's accounts every year since then. In their report on 2009 the auditors found that five areas of Union expenditure, agriculture and the cohesion fund, were materially affected by error.

EU member states retain all powers not explicitly handed to the European Union. In some areas the EU enjoys exclusive competence. These are areas in which member states have renounced any capacity to enact legislation. In other areas the EU and its member states share the competence to legislate. While both can legislate, member states can only legislate to the extent to which the EU has not. In other policy areas the EU can only co-ordinate, support and supplement member state action but cannot enact legislation with the aim of harmonising national laws.

That a particular policy area falls into a certain category of competence is not necessarily indicative of what legislative procedure is used for enacting legislation within that policy area. Different legislative procedures are used within the same category of competence, and even with the same policy area.

The distribution of competences in various policy areas between Member States and the Union is divided in the following three categories.

Exclusive competence:
"The Union has exclusive competence to make directives and conclude international agreements when provided for in a Union legislative act."

the customs union
the establishing of the competition rules necessary for the functioning of the internal market
monetary policy for the Member States whose currency is the euro
the conservation of marine biological resources under the common fisheries policy
common commercial policy
conclusion of certain international agreements

Shared competence:
"Member States cannot exercise competence in areas where the Union has done so."

the internal market
social policy, for the aspects defined in this Treaty
economic, social and territorial cohesion
agriculture and fisheries, excluding the conservation of marine biological resources
environment
consumer protection
transport
trans-European networks
energy
the area of freedom, security and justice
common safety concerns in public health matters, for the aspects defined in this Treaty

"Union exercise of competence shall not result in Member States being prevented from exercising theirs in:"

research, technological development and space
development cooperation, humanitarian aid

"The Union coordinates Member States policies or implements supplemental to theirs common policies, not covered elsewhere"

coordination of economic, employment and social policies
common foreign, security and defence policies

Supporting competence:
"The Union can carry out actions to support, coordinate or supplement Member States' actions in:"

the protection and improvement of human health
industry
culture
tourism
education, youth, sport and vocational training
civil protection (disaster prevention)
administrative cooperation

The EU has established a single market across the territory of all its members. 17 member states have also joined a monetary union known as the eurozone, which uses the Euro as a single currency. In 2012 the EU had a combined GDP of 16.073 trillions international dollars, a 20% share of the global gross domestic product (in terms of purchasing power parity). According to Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report 2012 (September), the EU owns the largest net wealth in the world; it is estimated to equal 30% of the $223 trillion global wealth.

Of the top 500 largest corporations measured by revenue (Fortune Global 500 in 2010), 161 have their headquarters in the EU. In 2007, unemployment in the EU stood at 7% while investment was at 21.4% of GDP, inflation at 2.2%, and current account balance at ?0.9% of GDP (i.e., slightly more import than export). In 2012, unemployment in the EU stood, per August 2012, at 11.4%

Structural Funds and Cohesion Funds are supporting the development of underdeveloped regions of the EU. Such regions are primarily located in the states of central and southern Europe. Several funds provide emergency aid, support for candidate members to transform their country to conform to the EU's standard (Phare, ISPA, and SAPARD), and support to the former USSR Commonwealth of Independent States (TACIS). TACIS has now become part of the worldwide EuropeAid programme. EU research and technological framework programmes sponsor research conducted by consortia from all EU members to work towards a single European Research Area.

Two of the original core objectives of the European Economic Community were the development of a common market, subsequently renamed the single market, and a customs union between its member states. The single market involves the free circulation of goods, capital, people, and services within the EU, and the customs union involves the application of a common external tariff on all goods entering the market. Once goods have been admitted into the market they cannot be subjected to customs duties, discriminatory taxes or import quotas, as they travel internally. The non-EU member states of Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland participate in the single market but not in the customs union. Half the trade in the EU is covered by legislation harmonised by the EU.

Free movement of capital is intended to permit movement of investments such as property purchases and buying of shares between countries. Until the drive towards economic and monetary union the development of the capital provisions had been slow. Post-Maastricht there has been a rapidly developing corpus of ECJ judgements regarding this initially neglected freedom. The free movement of capital is unique insofar as it is granted equally to non-member states.

The free movement of persons means that EU citizens can move freely between member states to live, work, study or retire in another country. This required the lowering of administrative formalities and recognition of professional qualifications of other states.

The free movement of services and of establishment allows self-employed persons to move between member states to provide services on a temporary or permanent basis. While services account for 60 - 70% of GDP, legislation in the area is not as developed as in other areas. This lacuna has been addressed by the recently passed Directive on services in the internal market which aims to liberalise the cross border provision of services. According to the Treaty the provision of services is a residual freedom that only applies if no other freedom is being exercised.

The EU operates a competition policy intended to ensure undistorted competition within the single market. The Commission as the competition regulator for the single market is responsible for antitrust issues, approving mergers, breaking up cartels, working for economic liberalisation and preventing state aid.

The Competition Commissioner, currently Joaquin Almunia, is one of the most powerful positions in the Commission, notable for the ability to affect the commercial interests of trans-national corporations. For example, in 2001 the Commission for the first time prevented a merger between two companies based in the United States (GE and Honeywell) which had already been approved by their national authority. Another high-profile case against Microsoft, resulted in the Commission fining Microsoft over 777 million following nine years of legal action.

The European Central Bank in Frankfurt governs the monetary policy. The creation of a European single currency became an official objective of the European Economic Community in 1969. However, it was only with the advent of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 that member states were legally bound to start the monetary union no later than 1 January 1999. On this date the euro was duly launched by eleven of the then 15 member states of the EU. It remained an accounting currency until 1 January 2002, when euro notes and coins were issued and national currencies began to phase out in the eurozone, which by then consisted of 12 member states. The eurozone (constituted by the EU member states which have adopted the euro) has since grown to 17 countries, the most recent being Estonia which joined on 1 January 2011.

All other EU member states, except Denmark and the United Kingdom, are legally bound to join the euro when the convergence criteria are met, however only a few countries have set target dates for accession. Sweden has circumvented the requirement to join the euro by not meeting the membership criteria.

The euro is designed to help build a single market by, for example: easing travel of citizens and goods, eliminating exchange rate problems, providing price transparency, creating a single financial market, price stability and low interest rates, and providing a currency used internationally and protected against shocks by the large amount of internal trade within the eurozone. It is also intended as a political symbol of integration and stimulus for more. Since its launch the euro has become the second reserve currency in the world with a quarter of foreign exchanges reserves being in euro. The euro, and the monetary policies of those who have adopted it in agreement with the EU, are under the control of the European Central Bank (ECB).

The ECB is the central bank for the eurozone, and thus controls monetary policy in that area with an agenda to maintain price stability. It is at the centre of the European System of Central Banks, which comprehends all EU national central banks and is controlled by its General Council, consisting of the President of the ECB, who is appointed by the European Council, the Vice-President of the ECB, and the governors of the national central banks of all 28 EU member states.

The monetary union has been shaken by the European sovereign-debt crisis since 2009.

Not good while competing in the EU

The distribution of competences in various policy areas between Member States and the European Union is divided in the following three categories. The complete listing of competences can be found in the section b)The EU today. Listed here are the competences especially important for Canada.

Exclusive competence:
"The European Union has exclusive competence to make directives and conclude international agreements when provided for in a Union legislative act."

the customs union
the establishing of the competition rules necessary for the functioning of the internal market
common commercial policy
conclusion of certain international agreements

Customs authorities implement EU policies in almost every field connected with international trade.

Customs are able to:
•   facilitate trade,
•   protect the interests of the European Union and its citizens,
•   protect society and the EU's financial interests by developing effective measures against illicit, restricted and prohibited goods and developing effective risk assessment as part of the fight against terrorist and criminal activity; and
•   support the competitiveness of European companies by modernising customs working methods and developing new EU standards.

Canadian small and medium size businesses will not be able to compete as they will be at a net disadvantage from the start because the EU Customs will favor the success of EU member businesses.

Shared competence:
"Member States cannot exercise competence in areas where the European Union has done so."

the internal market
social policy, for the aspects defined in this Treaty
economic, social and territorial cohesion
agriculture and fisheries, excluding the conservation of marine biological resources
environment
consumer protection
transport
trans-European networks
energy
the area of freedom, security and justice
common safety concerns in public health matters, for the aspects defined in this Treaty

Canadian small and medium size businesses will not be able to compete as they will be at a net disadvantage from the start because the EU shared competences. Because competences are shared between member states and the EU, Canadian businesses will be faced to follow standards and policies of both competences.

"European Union exercise of competence shall not result in Member States being prevented from exercising theirs in:"

research, technological development and space
development cooperation, humanitarian aid

This competence reenforces further the above competences and the difficulty of Canadian small and medium size businesses to compete in the EU.

"The European Union coordinates Member States policies or implements supplemental to theirs common policies, not covered elsewhere"

coordination of economic, employment and social policies
common foreign, security and defence policies

Supporting competence:
"The European Union can carry out actions to support, coordinate or supplement Member States' actions in:"

the protection and improvement of human health
industry
culture
tourism
education, youth, sport and vocational training
civil protection (disaster prevention)
administrative cooperation

There are 28 EU member states and 24 offical languages. Canadians have a hard time dealing with 2 offical languages in Canada so how hard will it be dealing with 24?

A Canadian business would be facing a new language and culture in each of the member state before even thinking about investing in the EU market. Learning about a new language and culture would make cost skyrocketing and out of reach for any Canadian small and medium size business.

Transportation costs must also be evaluated before thinking about manufacturing a product for sale in the EU. Going through the EU Customs would also be a major challenge to consider. Then the environmental costs of transporting a product for sale in the EU must also be evaluated. Transportation creates greengase emissions and pollution.

Many of the manufacturing products found in the EU market are manufacted in China, Bangladesh and India where the costs of manufacturing are very low. So how likely a product manufactured in Canada compete successfully in the EU?

Not good while competing in Canada

The Conservative Canadian government has critically downgraded standards and policies in many aspects of governing the nation to a point where a business (small, medium or large size) from the EU will not have to face worlwide accepted ways of doing things. A typical example of such state of affairs is the downgrading and almost non-existent of environmental standards and their enforcement. And a typical scenario of what might happened in the future is the case of an oil rig the size of the Hibernia platform being built in the Canadian North failing and falling such as what happened in the Gulf of Mexico, or that of an oil or gas tanker sinking along the Canadian west coast or up North. In both cases a business from the EU would not be liable and required to have proper safety for operating the rig or tanker, and subsequently of cleaning the disaster areas.

It is well known how an EU member business could actually sue a municipal, provincial or even the federal government if any attempt is made to force a EU member business to follow worldwide standards for operating in a nation other than in an EU member nation. The EU Parliament is so powerful that Canada would have no choice but let Canadian taxpayers pay for the costs of clean-up which may well be in the billions of dollars. Even our Canadian Natives will be affected by the trade deal signed by the Conservatives. They can be sued too!

The EU Justice System overrides the Canadian Justice System. Here some of the things that can happen in a free trade deal:

- scrapping of trial by jury
- scrapping of innocent until proven guilty
- scrapping of habeas corpus
- scrapping of double jeopardy
- scrapping of non-disclosure

The EU would have total immunity for everything including Canadian Criminal Laws.

The Conservative government has practically dismantled the Canadian manufacturing industry which makes it very difficult to compete against a first class manufacturing business from the EU.

In Canada there exist a mentallity of not helping one another between provinces across the country. Businesses from every province are practically making it hard to do business in another province. People from a province often would rather buy something South of the border or overseas than buying the same product or better right here in Canada. A typical example is the Calgary LRT train in Alberta that was bought in Germany and maintained by a company from Germany. At the time, Ralph Phillip Klein was the Mayor of Calgary. His paternal grandparents were immigrants from Germany. So when the time came to build the LRT line he travelled to Germany to buy the train. But there was also a Canadian company who specialized in the building of train, better train and less costly, and was never considered as a potential candidate to build the train for Calgary.

Perhaps a more convincing experience are the Free Trade Agreement (FTA), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which are very different things. We Canadian-skeptics love the real Canada, but we see NAFTA and the FTAA as a bad idea. It is a bad idea like slavery, communism, high-rise flats. The proposed Canada EU trade deal is of the same kind of deal except worse. Let us take a look at the deals after the years of experience we have had with the free trade deals so far, and how is it that are major partner South of us got bankrupted not because of us Canadians but because of their handling of business, and especially their banking systems. The US government inserted trillion of dollars into their economic system to solve their problems without success. This alone, by the way, was against all the rules of the free trade deal. The EU itself has been doing similar thing with the failure of some of their important member states. And again that alone is already against the rules of a free trade deal. The Canadian government never bailed out an industry except its oil & gas industry off course, and we all know why. The rules were also broken when the USA government handed over trillions of dollars to their banking systems and in turn banks were able to allow big corporations to make huge loans and buy Canadian corporations and get their hands on our resources with nothing but bankrupted dollars from the White House. Canadians exchange tangible Canadians resources for bankrupted money from the USA. That also was against the rules of the free trade deal in a major way. Of course the USA technocrates running the NAFTA and FTAA never done anything about that. They were part of the maneuver to out-deal Canadians. The same thing will happen with the Canada EU deal.

The fundamental idea behind NAFTA was born after the FTA, an economic agreement between the U.S. and Canada, but only came to fruition after the United States and Mexico made all sorts of special economic arrangements. This fundamental idea was that nation-states were better off with no other needs than the best economics, and that at the expenses of the values and institutions people from each member state respected most. Those nation-states must therefore be emasculated and diluted into a new form of super-national organization called NAFTA - run, not by elected national politicians reflecting the desires of the peoples, but by a commission of wise technocrats, USA technocrats in most parts running the show.

This leads me to the key piece of the NAFTA propaganda: the claim that the USA, Canada and Mexico have kept healthy the economics of the North American continent since its creation, and that it is essential to maintain it in future. This is the big deception, which plays at the almost unconscious level. It is a warm, mystic conviction that NAFTA, with all its faults, must be inevitably good because it brings good economics. But, today, even that is questionable. The USA is bankrupt today. Actually the USA were bankrupted years ago but refused to accept their failure as a nation and government. Now they are forced to do so.

Those who promoted the myth that the agreements were good economics do not tolerate any rational examination of history or the facts. Indeed, they accuse those of us who query the divinity of NAFTA of being rabid nationalists, xenophobes, little Canadians, and worse. You start to be guilty of all this as soon as you dare to point out that the economy alone is not all that matters, and that, what is more important is the protection of the global life-support systems and the primordial human rights which include security. Also important are the cultural and social aspects, as well as our Canadian value systems.

Indeed, if you stand back and scratch your head a bit and take a calm look at NAFTA, you will see it is a well-tried model for destruction, not good economics. It contains three of the most important ingredients for conflict. First, it is a top-down amalgamation of different peoples put together without their informed consent, and such arrangements usually end in conflict. Whistle-blowers have been silenced since its creation, and there is no internal auditors. Third, NAFTA is institutionally undemocratic. Let me say here that America alone and unilaterally has invaded Iraq without the consent of Canada and Mexico and, therefore, such an action has endangered the entire North American continent, its economy, the security of its people is at risks, and peace is threatened and replaced by fear. Americans are economically bankrupted and yet they spend astronomical amounts of money with defence because of a threat they created abroad. Now that tells Canadians and the people of Mexico that economics are affected by the U.S. foreign policies, and we should have a say in those policies. Everything is connected: economics, foreign policies, social aspects, the environment, everything.

Let me explain a little of how NAFTA (the FTAA is very much similar) functions and show why it is so innately undemocratic. In other words, what sort of animal are you dealing with? How bad is it now?

Even in Canada, very few people realize what huge areas of our national life have already been handed over to control by NAFTA. Put simply, these include: everything to do with a single market -in other words, all of our industry and commerce - all of our social and labor policy, our environment, agriculture, fish, and foreign aid. Even security and the Canadian forces are being handed over to the U.S. technocrates.

What do I mean by control from the U.S. technocrates? Well, in all those areas of our national life which used to be entirely controlled by the Canadian Parliament, our government or House of Commons can be outvoted in the NAFTA meetings of member states. That is a system known as "you have no democratic rights, just money to lose". If our government agrees, or is outvoted in any new ruling in those areas, then Parliament, being the House of Commons, must put it into Canadian law. If they dont, the country faces unlimited economic fines.

So our Canadian Parliament has already become rubber stamps in all those areas of our national life. Our foreign trade relations are in an even worse category: the commission of the NAFTA bureaucracy self-negotiates those on our behalf. And so in this area, NAFTA already has its own legal personality.

So to go back to where we are now, in addition, laws affecting our justice and home affairs and our foreign and defence policies must also be rubber-stamped by the Canadian Parliament if they have not been agreed by our government and all the other member states governments in NAFTA (and similarly in the FTAA). In other words, our government cannot veto new rulings in NAFTA in these areas, and it has to enact them. This all means that NAFTA technocrates actually govern Canada, not the Canadian House of Commons. If Parliament were to reject a new NAFTA ruling in these areas, we would be subject to unlimited fines as we would be in breach of our treaty obligations, which is, of course, a rather more horrifying prospect for our foreign office and political classes in their diplomatic cocktail parties and so on. A fine, after all, is paid by the taxpayer.

No rulings in NAFTA has ever been overturned by the Canadian Parliament. NAFTA technocrates act as a higher Court, the highest court in North America - superior to all our national courts including the Supreme Court of Canada - in the area which ceded NAFTA, and it must find in favor of the ever-closer economic union of the peoples of North America, ordained the treaties, and it is guilty of much judicial activism in order to do so.

There are four other features of this NAFTA system which are worth emphasizing, all of them innately undemocratic. First, the unelected bureaucracy - the commission has the monopoly to propose all new rulings and change our Canadian laws. This reflects the basic idea behind NAFTA which I have mentioned. The nation-states, the democracies of North America, must be emasculated and diluted into this new super national economic body we called NAFTA and run by the commission of wise technocrats. Second, the commission's legal proposals are then negotiated in secret by the shadowy committee of permanent representatives, or bureaucrats, from the national capital states. The U.S. have already established themselves as being by far the ruling majority technocrates of this body. Decisions are taken in NAFTA, again by secret vote. National parliaments are precluded from knowing how their bureaucrats and ministers negotiate and vote. The commission then executes all NAFTA rulings, supported when necessary by the so-called court. The technocrates pretend that democracy is maintained. But the point remains that the Canadian Parliament itself is excluded from the process. We can and do debate some rulings, but we have to pass them exactly as agreed in NAFTA.

A third features of this frightening new system enshrined in the treaties is that once an area of national life has been ceded to control from NAFTA it can never be returned to national parliaments.

The fourth feature I would mention is that no changes can be made to the treaties unless they are agreed unanimously by NAFTA technocrates. So the return of powers to national parliament by renegotiation is no realistic. The only way out is the doorway.

Canada's membership with NAFTA is also very expensive financially. The government of Canada steadfastly refuses to carry out a cost-benefit analysis because it does not want the result to be made public. So the GGNA has made private studies, which produce a cautious estimate at the cost to the taxpayer and the economy of around six billion per annum, or 2 percent of GDP. Two new studies are on the way which will take this estimate considerably higher.

It is also worth saying that the whole of the North American continent will continue in steady and irreversible demographic and therefore economic decline over the next fifty years. Add to this the unemployment and decay caused by globalisation and you have to ask why the Canadian political establishment wants to stay on the Titanic.

NAFTA spells out the final extinction of Canadian sovereignty and the sovereignty of the democracy of Mexico. Its worst feature is that it grants its own legal personality superior to that of Canada and Mexico. There is no longer even the pretense that NAFTA is an arrangement between sovereign nations, and that the U.S. technocrates are the majority. Soon we will see a NAFTA flag and an anthem.

NAFTA will eventually take over most of the rest of the powers which we have retained in Canada so far, including defence and security.

When will Canadians ever held a referendum to reject NAFTA? Canadians have been kept in such ignorance and history shows that we have accepted it all somewhat like frogs in warm water being heated from underneath. We could not react fast enough to reject NAFTA even though it is destroying all of what makes us Canadians.

The Canadian Supreme Court should start to take note of NAFTA rulings, and I submit that is not agreeable to our democracy.

I feel I must also at least touch on the moral dimension of NAFTA and also of the FTAA. I need hardly say that it is fundamentally secular, irreligious, even atheistic. The convention which was drawing up the agreement refused the supplication of the pope himself, that the agreement should contain at least some reference to our Judeo-Christian heritage.

We Canadian-skeptics love the real Canada, but we see NAFTA and the FTAA as a bad idea. It is a bad idea like slavery, communism, high-rise flats. I need to tell the damage which ideas can do when they become generally accepted and turn out to be wrong. I remember the story of the young, white Russian officer who wrote home to his fiancée in 1918 from the front against the Bolsheviks. Oh, my darling, he said. Please do not worry. In a few weeks I shall be home with you in Moscow, and we shall be married. These people are not very well armed, and their ideas are even worse. Well, three days later he was killed, so he was not entirely right about their arms, but he did turn out to be right about the ideas which inspired Soviet Communism. It is just that it took seventy years and fifty million lives to prove him so.

Let us hope NAFTA and the FTAA dont end up as quite such a dangerous idea as that. With any luck, it will start to decay from within. If we have the energy to understand it, to expose it, and to fight it. We can do that together. We can make things better.

But just to be safe Canada, let us not have another free trade deal this time with the EU and its member states. There are desperate for a deal but really we dont need them and our future will be brighter without them sueing us. And, by the way, we can still sell them our products and services without being tangled up with a free trade deal that sure dont make any sense. More like an insane trade deal!