(The following article is from the November 1-15, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)
Excerpts from the welcoming remarks to the Trilateral Peace Conference, held Oct. 2-4 in Toronto, by Canadian Peace Congress President Dave McKee

The theme of this conference, as outlined in the call jointly prepared by the Canadian Peace Congress, MOMPADE and the US Peace Council, is "For Unity in Action of the Peoples of Mexico, Canada and the USA - for Peace, Sovereignty, Anti-Imperialist Solidarity and the Rights of the Working People." I will use this theme as a lens through which to examine the current realities, concerns and challenges for the peace movement in Canada.

     Our organization, the Canadian Peace Congress, was formed 60 years ago as an anti-imperialist peace organization and it has, for that same period of time, been affiliated to the World Peace Council. Our work has been rooted in the awareness that the struggles for peace, sovereignty and self-determination, workers' rights and liberation, and international solidarity and cooperation are all intimately interconnected in the overall, comprehensive struggle against imperialism. That awareness continues to guide our work today.

     ...Through the years many peace-oriented organizations developed and grew across the country - in specific economic or professional sectors, within the faith communities, in the labour movement.

     Much of this growth occurred in direct response to the dangers of nuclear war that loomed during the Cold War. While many of these groups ascribed equal culpability for the arms race to the United States and to the Soviet Union - which could make for a difficult working relationship with the Congress - these movements represented a rapidly growing voice within Canada against the nuclear arms race and related policies. So, under the slogan that "Peace is Everybody's Business" the Canadian Peace Congress worked with others to unite the many elements of the Canadian peace movement under the umbrella of the Canadian Peace Alliance. The Alliance was formed in 1985 and today it remains the largest umbrella peace organization in Canada....

     Through the 1990's, following the "end of the Cold War," the nuclear arms race which had given so much focus and energy to the Canadian peace movement fell quickly from public discourse and the movement as a whole declined in activity and profile, and the strength of the networking among different groups was severely reduced. During that same period, the Canadian Peace Congress fell into a period of very low activity and nearly disappeared altogether, which meant that we were much less able to promote either a clear political and tactical position for the broader peace movement, or broad unity in action of the movement as a whole.

     That weakness became apparent in 1999, during NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia. As a result of ideological softness - deliberately engineered by painting the conflict as a humanitarian mission against an aggressor state (Yugoslavia) that was pursuing a genocidal campaign against a national minority (Kosovo) - the imperialist camp, including Canada, was able to play sections of the people's movements against one another and obscure the real basis of the conflict, which was also the real basis for mass unity against NATO's aggression. Lost among the public debate, at least here in Canada, was the fact that the conflict was about smashing the infrastructure of the last socialist-oriented state in Europe, about forcibly reorienting the Yugoslavian economy toward Western neoliberalism, and about the inter-imperialist rivalry over who would gain the spoils of victory.

     When placed this way, it is easy to recognize the aggressive and expansionist nature of NATO's campaign, and also the extreme danger that that inter-imperialist rivalry represented. Unfortunately, and without diminishing the very real and sustained efforts made by specific organizations and communities, an awareness of this reality is not what guided the response of the Canadian peace movement as a whole. Generally, the outcry was brief and tepid, the mobilizations small and fractured.

     However, within four years, the situation had changed greatly. The US-led invasion of Iraq quickly galvanized the peace movement in Canada, reuniting it with the labour movement and uniting it with much of the new "anti-globalization" movement. The lead-up to the 2003 invasion was so blatant in its aggressive focus on control over oil resources that this cut through much of the ideological weaknesses and ongoing organizational fractures within the peace movement. The result was some of the largest peace mobilizations ever achieved in this country - in February 2003 some 80 communities responded to a united call for demonstrations against the war, with huge turnouts (over 100,000 in Montreal; 80,000 in Toronto; 40,000 in Vancouver; 18,000 in Edmonton; 5,000 in Halifax), and this despite -30 Celsius temperatures in many of these areas.

     This level mobilization was echoed all over the world. Here in Canada, it provided a sustained period of time during which the profile of the peace movement was quite high, active networking and cooperation among various groups resumed, affiliation of progressive movements to the peace movement was increased, and the formation of new groups against the war occurred in virtually every community across the country.

     And yet, to be honest, we have to admit that in relative terms, organizing a mobilization in Canada against an aggressive war led by George W. Bush, in which Canada played no direct role, was a simple task. The challenge was (and continues to be) to organize against the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, which had begun almost two years prior and in which Canada has assumed a prominent role from the start.

     The war in Afghanistan represents many developments in Canada's role in the imperialist camp. Beginning in 1999, if not earlier, serious discussions occurred within the state structure - involving government, military, and industrial representatives - that were focused on Canada's international role and its relation to Canadian trade and economic interests. One specific area of concern was the Caspian Sea Basin, which was identified as a region of strategic interest to Canada economically (first) and, consequently, politically. The emerging consensus was that for Canada to secure its interests in this region of the world, it had to exert itself diplomatically and militarily, and more intimately tie its international policy to that of the United States. Further, the pursuit of Canadian interests should be done both unilaterally and through active support for US policy.

     So when the debate arrived in 2001 about invading Afghanistan, under the ruse of retaliation for the terrorist actions in the US in September of that year, the Canadian government responded with enthusiasm. The media was flooded with stories about the Taliban regime, about the direct link between the government in Afghanistan and terrorism, about the human rights abuses and the severe repression of women specifically, about the importance of assuming our humanitarian duty to force regime change in Afghanistan, about Canada's commitments under NATO's mutual clause to respond militarily to an attack on a member state (the US).

     Very little was said about oil and gas reserves, about pipeline routes, about the strategic importance of establishing a Western military presence in the region, about encirclement of China, about inter-state rivalry over control of oil resources and supply routes, or about the evolving role of NATO in the world. In fact, when progressive analysts raised these questions, they were confronted with an immediate and multi-sided attack which quickly and effectively marginalized these realities. As a result, mobilization against the war in Afghanistan was weak for an extended period.

     This is not to say that the Canadian public supports the war. Despite aggressive communications campaigns from all sectors of the state apparatus, opinion polls consistently show that a majority of Canadians are opposed to the war, and that the opposition is growing.

     There have been demonstrations and education campaigns from 2001 to the present. But the initial response was sporadic and fractured and has taken a long time to build: it was very difficult to locate a basis of unity among the various peace forces, let alone to build a coordinated response. Some sectors of the peace movement even held up the situation in Afghanistan as a positive counterposition to the war against Iraq, pointing to the UN Security Council resolutions on Afghanistan and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) as examples of the humanitarian and multilateral justification for the invasion. This view represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the war in Afghanistan and of the comprehensive nature of this regional campaign that also includes the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the role of Israel in the Middle East.

     Nonetheless, while the level of mobilization of the Canadian population remains comparatively low, the war in Afghanistan has now come to assume a central place in the work of most sections of the Canadian peace movement. Ending Canadian involvement in this war is without question the number one objective priority for the peace and progressive forces in this country, and we will push that point until we have achieved that goal.

     Canada made heavy commitments to ISAF, and Afghanistan became Canada's largest military deployment, by far. The war has cost Canada over $17 billion (to March 2009) and extending the war to 2011, Canada's current date for withdrawal, will cost an additional $11 billion.

     In terms of NATO's role, Canada played a particularly shameful part. The military alliance had been scrambling to find a new role in the world, to justify its existence, and it had clearly overstepped its own mandate by engaging in a conflict that was outside of the North Atlantic theatre. To its discredit, it was the Canadian government that suggested and facilitated the takeover of ISAF command by NATO, which was accomplished in 2003.

     As to its strategic economic interests, in 2002 - shortly after the large commitment of Canadian troops to the ISAF - a Canadian energy corporation was invited to join the consortium building a Caspian Basin pipeline through Kazakhstan. The Canadian Prime Minister who had made the troop commitment became the foreign relations adviser to this same corporation a year later.

     Canada's role in Afghanistan has propelled more fundamental changes to Canadian military and international policy. These shifts are perhaps best described through an examination of the Conservative government's foreign policy doctrine, called Canada First Defence Strategy (CFDS), which was unveiled in 2008. As the Canadian Peace Congress stated in 2008: "CFDS is the manifesto of the most aggressive, chauvinistic and reactionary circles of Canadian finance capital seeking with a bigger military budget to strengthen its influence at the imperialist round tables in Washington and Brussels...

     "CFDS is profoundly undemocratic and was implemented without seeking Parliamentary approval and commits $492 billion over 20 years on top of the $5.3 billion already allocated in 2006 approaching 2.2% of GDP all to guarantee the profits of defence contractors and investors. The Canadian government policy of the rapid militarization of the economy is the only job creation project the Government has to offer the youth, the unemployed and the underemployed. CFDS cannot be implemented without sacrificing the needs of public health care, pensions, child care, senior's needs, low cost housing and the peaceful development of the country."

     Virtually all of the recent developments I have mentioned are an outgrowth of the intimate link between the economies and policies of Canada and the United States. We need to consider, that as the current economic crisis continues, and as the economic and political strength of the US (specifically) and, perhaps, North America in general, declines relative to other centres, there is a very real danger of increasing war due to inter-imperialist and inter-state rivalry. We need to be aware of the potential responses from the US to this reality, and we need to ask what will the response from Canada be? Will the Canadian peace movement achieve the level of unity and organization necessary to confront the challenges ahead? The answer, of course, is that we must - through the deliberations this weekend, we expect to make progress on how that goal can be reached.