The PGA Bloc Ottawa Presents:
NO SECURITY WITHOUT JUSTICE! NO PROSPERITY WITHOUT DIGNITY!
A Week of Education and Action to Oppose the Security and Prosperity Partnership
August 4th - August 12th
On August 20-21, 2007, President Bush and his "partners", including
Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Prime Minister Harper of Canada,
and the heads of 31 of the wealthiest corporations on the planet will
meet behind closed doors in Montebello, Quebec to discuss their
Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). To prepare for the mass
mobilizations and direct confrontations planned for August 19th-21st,
the PGA Bloc Ottawa is hosting a series of events in mid-August to
confront SPP and it's corporate backers.
CONTENTS
(((A))) Direct Action Training: Saturday, August 4th
(((B))) Picket and Action to Oppose the SPP: Saturday, August 11th
(((C))) SPP Teach-in and Discussion: Sunday, August 12th
(((D))) Info on the SPP
(((E))) PGA Contact Info and Upcoming Meetings
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(((A))) DIRECT ACTION TRAINING
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The PGA Bloc Ottawa will host a Direct Action Training to help groups
and individuals plan and prepare for the August 20-21 SPP summit.
We'll focus on scenarios and skills that may be useful for the type of
situation we'll face in Montebello on August 19th-21st. Everyone is
welcome.
1:00pm-5:00pm
Saturday, August 4th
J.K. Wylie Boardroom, PSAC
233 Gilmour Street (btw Metcalfe and Elgin)
Ottawa, ON
FREE
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(((B))) PICKET AND ACTION TO OPPOSE THE SPP
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12:30pm
Saturday, August 11th
Rally at Confederation Square War Memorial (top of Elgin @ Wellington)
On Saturday, August 11th, the PGA Bloc Ottawa invites all groups and
individuals opposed to the Security and Prosperity Partnership to join
us in directly confronting one of the corporate backers who will
directly benefit from the Montebello Summit.
The North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) was launched as part
of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) in June 2006. It is
the only formal advisory board to the SPP and is made up of 30
corporate leaders from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico with ten advisors
from each of the SPP signatory states. A September 13, 2006 story in
Maclean's magazine describes NACC as a "cherrypicked group of
executives who were whisked to Cancun in March by the leaders of
Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, and asked to come up with a plan for
taking North American integration beyond NAFTA."
Harper appointed the Canadian membership of the NACC in June 2006:
Dominic D'Alessandro (Manulife Financial); Paul Desmarais, Jr. (Power
Corporation of Canada); David Ganong (Ganong Bros. Limited); Richard
George (Suncor Energy Inc.); Hunter Harrison (CN); Linda Hasenfratz
(Linamar Corporation); Michael Sabia (Bell Canada Enterprises); Jim
Shepherd (Canfor Corporation); Annette Verschuren (The Home Depot);
and Rick Waugh (Scotiabank).
For more information on the NACC and the corporate profiteers
involved, visit http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=438
For more information about the picket and action, contact
pgabloc@gmail.com or visit pga.roadnetwork.org
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(((C))) WHAT IS THE SPP? TEACH-IN AND DISCUSSION
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1:30pm
Sunday, Aug 12, 2007
Jack Purcell Community Centre
320 Jack Purcell Lane
off Elgin near Gilmour
Ottawa, ON Canada
Pay What You Can
Wheelchair Accessible
Child -friendly
Contact: a_ottawa@mutualaid.org
http://adg.roadnetwork.org/
What is the SPP?
A talk by members of the PGA Bloc - Ottawa
On August 20-21, 2007, President Bush and his "partners", including
Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Prime Minister Harper of Canada,
will once again be meeting behind closed doors, this time at Chateau
Montebello, to discuss their Security and Prosperity Partnership
(SPP).
The "three amigos" will be meeting with senior executives from big
business of the North American Competitiveness Council that control
the war (Lockheed Martin), energy (Chevron, Suncor),
telecommunications (BCE), railways (KCS, CN), media (Power Corp),
postal services (FedEx, UPS), forestry (Canfor), banking (Bank of Nova
Scotia) and insurance (Manulife) industries, to name a few.
You're notinvited.
This latest model, the SPP, can be summed up as
"NAFTA-plus-Homeland-Security". It will secure additional prosperity"
for those already benefiting both directly and indirectly from Bush
and Harper's war agenda (be it war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti,
Columbia or here at home against First Nations), at the expense of the
insecurity and impoverishment of the rest of us. This model is
reflected in the spread of Bush's Homeland Security agenda into Canada
(e.g. no-fly lists on airplanes, "safe third country" deportation
policies for migrants, etc.), and in forcing concessions on workers in
Canada, US and Mexico in the name of "competitiveness".
All are welcome. Accessible! Child-friendly!
Contact a_ottawa@mutualaid.org for more information.
http://adg.roadnetwork.org/
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(((D))) INFO ON THE SECURITY AND PROSPERITY PARTNERSHIP
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(with files from No One Is Illegal Vancouver (http://noii-van.resist.ca)
On August 20-21, 2007, President Bush and his "partners", including
Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Prime Minister Harper of Canada,
and the heads of 31 of the wealthiest corporations on the planet will
meet behind closed doors in Montebello, Quebec to discuss their
Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).
The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) was
founded in March 2005, in Cancun, at a summit of the Heads of State of
Canada, the US, and Mexico. Broken down, the SPP is
NAFTA-plus-Homeland-Security model. The founding premise of the SPP is
that an agenda of economic free trade and national security will
result in human prosperity.
Yet we know that the so-called "prosperity" of previous free trade
agreements such as NAFTA have only brought corporate prosperity, with
increasing rates of poverty and displacement for the vast majority of
people. For example, despite government rhetoric, the Economist
Intelligence Unit (affiliated with The Economist) has reported that
the implementation of NAFTA in Mexico has "failed to create even one
formal job in net terms." We also know that the "War on Terror" and
the beefed-up national security apparatus has exacerbated insecurity
and brought terror on the lives of millions of people locally and
globally through immigrant raids, border militarization, foreign troop
occupations, and repression of civil liberties and resistance
movements. A September 2006 report in The Independent found that the
"War on Terror" has "directly killed a minimum of 62,006 people,
created 4.5 million refugees, and cost the US more than the sum needed
to pay off the debts of every poor nation on earth."
SPP is not an official treaty; it is not an official law; rather, it
is being presented as a vague 'diaologue based on shared values'.
Therefore it has been able to escape any public scrutiny and will
never be debated in the House of Commons. There have been several
meetings for the SPP, including a summit in March 2006 in Texas and a
preparatory meeting in Ottawa in February 2007, all of which were held
behind close doors. On August 21st 2007, the three Heads of State will
meet for a third tri-national Summit to forward the SPP agreements in
Montebello, Quebec. People in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Quebec
City have already begun organizing to confront this Summit in
Montebello, to confront the agenda of SPP and the agenda of George W
Bush, Stephan Harper, and Felipe Calderon.
SPP is a direct continuation of the colonialist and capitalist
politics that perpetuate and accelerate the carnage, pillage, and
destruction of the planet. Laura Carlsen of the International
Relations Centre Americas Program explains, "SPP has three fundamental
objectives. The Bush administration wants to create more advantageous
conditions for transnational corporations and remove remaining
barriers to the flow of capital and crossborder production within the
framework of NAFTA. It wants to secure access to natural resources,
especially oil. And it wants to create a regional security plan based
on "pushing its borders out" into a security perimeter that includes
Mexico and Canada."
Under this framework of security and prosperity, the following
initiatives are currently being recommended and/or being undertaken:
Integration of military and police training exercises, cooperation on
law enforcement, and the expansion of The North American Aerospace
Defense Command (NORAD) into a into a multiservice joint naval and
land Defense Command.
Expand temporary worker programs as a means of ensuring low wages and
labour exploitation.
Adoption of coordinated border surveillance technologies with major
contracts provided to military suppliers; coordination of no-fly
lists; development of a North American Border Pass; and the use of
Biometrics. The Canadian Biometrics Group is predicting that the North
American biometric "market" would rise to US $2.6-billion by 2006.
Integration of refugee policies. The Safe Third Country Agreement,
implemented in December 2004 between the US and Canada, has resulted
in at least a 40% decrease in refugee applications in Canada. Under
the United States-Mexico "Voluntary Repatriation Program" more than
35,000 persons have already been deported.There is also a pilot
project to share information on refugee and asylum claimants based on
a comparison of fingerprint records.
Harmonization of health and environmental regulations to lower
standards and development of a North American alternative to the Kyoto
Protocol.
Beginning of the privatization of Mexico's nationalized oil sector;
fivefold increase in tar sands production in Alberta; and full
"development" of Canadian energy resources, already being actively
opposed by the Lubicon, Dene, and other indigenous communities.
NAFTA Superhighway, a corridor several hundred metres wide including
rail lines, freeways and pipelines from Mexico to the Canadian border.
In Canada, the major lobby for SPP comes from the Canadian Council of
Chief Executives (CCCE), a CEO organization and Canada's 'premier
business organization'. In January 2003, CCCE launched its North
American Security and Prosperity Initiative with initiatives to
increase investment and capital flows, integrate security agreements
and military defence, and expedited means of resource (oil, natural
gas, water, forest products) extraction. With the launch of SPP in
2005, the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) was created.
Harper appointed the Canadian membership of the NACC in June 2006:
Dominic D'Alessandro (Manulife Financial); Paul Desmarais, Jr. (Power
Corporation of Canada); David Ganong (Ganong Bros. Limited); Richard
George (Suncor Energy Inc.); Hunter Harrison (CN); Linda Hasenfratz
(Linamar Corporation); Michael Sabia (Bell Canada Enterprises); Jim
Shepherd (Canfor Corporation); Annette Verschuren (The Home Depot);
and Rick Waugh (Scotiabank).
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(((D))) CONTACT INFO
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To get in touch with the PGA Bloc Ottawa, contact:
pgabloc@gmail.com
pga.roadnetwork.org
The next PGA Bloc Ottawa Planning Meeting will be at:
6:30pm
Thursday, August 2nd
Room 125, Simard Hall
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, ON
map link: http://www.uottawa.ca/map/