THE RECORD

June 16, 1999

Our dear friend Brian Mulroney was feted, feasted and honoured a couple of weeks ago for his part in putting Canada on the road to globalized prosperity with the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement. In 1994 Jean Chrétien signed NAFTA in virtual secrecy to avoid the embarrassment of the public uproar of 1988, when 43 percent of Canadian voters forced free trade on the majority of this country.

I caught Mulroney's performance earlier on CBC TV, praising himself for the FTA and stating that it was successful beyond imagination. Canadian exports to the USA went up by 148% and so on. I also have read his speech to the assembled guests and dignitaries at the FTA banquet, where he claimed that free trade has created millions of jobs, wealth and the whole shooting match. Where are those jobs, Brian? On the Moon?

As usual with globalizers, Mulroney and cronies can not prove anything to support their claims with facts and figures any more than they could support the rosy promises for the FTA 11 years ago. It was hot air then, hot air now, without substance.

A week or so before the free trade shindig, John McCallum, Chief Economist for the Royal Bank, red hot neoclassical economist, former professor and member of the C.C. Howe Institute, came out with a report that supports the claims for growth in exports without mentioning what those exports were? Of course not, because according to the World Bank, our resource exports have gone from 13 percent to 68 percent in 10 or 15 years. We're selling the house from over our heads. When it comes to job creation McCallum and other economists claim that they don't know how free trade influenced jobs? In other words, they don't want to tell the facts, in fear of being lynched if the public knew them.

Where does Mulroney and cohorts come up with the "millions of jobs", when the greatest supporters and financiers of free trade, the greatest donors to the pro-FTA propaganda in 1988, like the Royal Bank, can not show any real benefits to the public even in the area of job creation? The same goes for every study and set of statistics I have seen on the subject. The protagonists dare not openly admit that their phony free trade and globalization are the biggest job killers since the Great Depression, so they just try to sweep the issue under the carpet.

In Canada whole industries, trades and skills, like furniture, leather, clothing, shoes, etc. have been wiped out affecting the lives of millions. In the USA the Steelworkers Union is now suing their federal government, claiming that they had no right to sign the NAFTA without 2/3 majority vote in Congress and that on account of this 600,000 jobs were lost.

There was an anti NAFTA rally in Mexico City a few months ago involving over a million people. Their claim is that the Agreement eliminated 2 million jobs, impoverished whole sectors and virtually eliminated the middle class. No media reports on this in Canada.

Basically the same is happening all over the world. Since the beginning of the Thatcher, Reagan and Mulroney years the number of the world's billionaires and millionaires increased by about 10 percent every year, while poverty and destitution increased by 15 percent. There are about 6 million millionaires around the world. Their average earnings went up by 12 percent last year, while the middle and working classes are going downhill, with unemployment, poverty and environmental destruction increasing everywhere.

Even the most blinded believers in the globalization hysteria have to admit that the poverty gap is increasing every year and that the vast majority of people are worse off today than they were 30 years ago.

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

So, what is their solution? Propaganda and more propaganda against governments to divert attention from the real culprits. Solid media control and censorship by a few billionaires, like Conrad Black, Thompson and Murdoch to prevent the facts and figures from reaching the public. Covering up the growing disillusionment and dissatisfaction with more promises and slogans, like these pathetic anti- government rallies and recall attempts.

Where will it end? In the same place every empire and aristocracy ultimately ended up: In the garbage can of history with the thousands of dead empires of the past. All of them ultimate exercises in futility, but not before they killed and destituted millions. Will humanity ever learn?

Copyright (c) 1999, West's International