(The following article is from the August 1-31, 2007 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St. Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)
During the recent visit to Cuba by a delegation of the Communist Party of Canada, CPC leader Miguel Figueroa was interviewed by the Cuban newspaper Granma.
In the interview, published on July 5, Figueroa said the CPC had historically considered the relationship between Canada and the USA as a sort of "antagonistic partnership"; a unity and contradiction at the same time.
"This situation began to change in the 1980s, when Canadian monopoly and the Canadian government began handing over more and more of the country's sovereignty to the United States in exchange for greater access to its market. This is quite evident in the North American Free Trade Agreement signed between the two countries and Mexico in 1993. The new Security and Prosperity Partnership agreement, signed in 2005 between the three governments, would carry the integration process still further, especially with regard to security, defense, and energy, water and other resources."
Q: Military and also energy security?
A: Yes, this integration involves trade and investment, customs and immigration, foreign policy, etc. But it also directly relates to control over the resources of Canada and Mexico, like oil, petrochemicals and others. Water is a very important issue, because Canada is the world's largest reservoir of fresh water and the United States is facing a growing water crisis, one which will only get worse in the future with the impact of global warming.
Q: What does your country represent in as far as the energy security of the United States?
A: We export oil, coal, natural gas and hydroelectric power to our neighbour and the North-South energy grid (including new pipelines, etc.) is being rapidly expanded. It should be noted that presently Canada is the most important foreign energy source of the United States.
Q: And what about the environment?
A: Canada signed the Kyoto protocol, but now the minority Conservative government argues that it is impossible to meet the accord's objectives, another reflection of the shift towards more overt support of Washington's stance.
Q: Other consequences?
A: For many decades [Canadian] workers fought to improve job security, win free and universal health care, and other social benefits. The Canadian public healthcare system, for instance, is very different from what exists in the United States, as is shown in the new film by Michael Moore, where he talks very favourably about the Canadian health system.
However there are forces, including specialists who control the Canadian Medical Association, the private insurance companies, the pharmaceutical monopolies and big business in general, that are pressuring to privatize the health system.
Of course they can't do so openly because recent polls show that almost 90 percent of the population opposes the privatization of those services.
Nonetheless, they are moving to gradually erode and undermine the system through a thousand small cuts. User fees are being introduced and medical services delisted. In the province of Ontario, for example, it was decided recently that eye exams would no longer be considered an essential health service, so people now have to pay up to $100 or more for such necessary tests. Vision is no longer a right, it seems, but instead a privilege for those who have money.
There is an effort to create a climate of crisis in the healthcare system to undermine the people's confidence in public healthcare, and then try to sell them on the idea of "two-tier" creeping privatization of the system....
Regarding jobs and employment, official statistics talk about 6 percent unemployment, that still means that 1.5 million persons are without work. Most important is the question of what jobs are being created, and what types of jobs are disappearing. Since 2002, over 250,000 factory jobs have been lost, and highly skilled and unionized workers forced onto the streets; while job creation is mostly in the service sector, jobs that are often part-time, temporary and usually low-wage.
Q: What impression of Cuba do you take with you?
A: Since 1959, Canada's relations with Cuba have been guided by a foreign policy different from that of the United States. Currently, some 600,000 Canadians visit the island each year and there are business, diplomatic, cultural and other types of relations that function well. But there is growing pressure from Washington and right-wing circles in Canada to undermine these positive relations, and our Party and others in the Cuba solidarity movement are actively combating those anti-Cuban pressures.
During this visit we have seen the tenacity of the Cuban people to defend their social achievements, despite the continuing blockade. We were especially impressed with the visit to the Latin American School of Medicine, a unique and outstanding testimony to Cuba's internationalism.
The governments of Canada and the other rich, imperialist countries should feel ashamed, because while they export bombs and troops, Cuba, a small country, sends doctors and nurses to save lives in other nations.