By S. da Silva
As Canadians approach a Federal election, here’s a central issue that won’t be featured in the debates amongst the contenders for control over the Canadian state: Yet another imperialist aggression against a sovereign country.
On March 21, 2011, as the four parliamentary parties braced themselves for an electoral campaign, all the parties found unity around the bombing of Libya.
In fact, the Liberals, the NDP, and the Bloc Quebecois found the Conservatives in contempt of Parliament in part for not revealing details about their spending on fighter jets, amongst other programs.
So while they offer up their nominal criticisms about spending tens of billions of dollars on new fighter jets, all the parties enthusiastically supported Canada’s deployment of 7 CF-100s to participate in the assault. In the last ten years, Canada has breached the sovereignty of and attacked the former Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Haiti (2004), and now Libya.
Behind the “humanitarian” rhetoric of NATO mission is a campaign to remove the Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi and replace him with an even more reliable regime, which would enable the imperialist forces to once again have total access to Libya’s vast oil fields.
Canadian corporations have huge investments in Libya.Canada’s largest oil company, Suncor, has drilling contracts in Libya; and the Quebec-based construction and engineering firm SNC-Lavalin had contracts for the construction of the Benghazi airport, a prison in Tripoli, and the massive Great Man-Made River Project (see image above).
The NATO-led group of imperialist countries are looking to seize the initiative in the wave of destabilization of regimes in the Middle East and northern Africa, and reimpose their own will upon the peoples of the region. What the imperialists have planned for Libya will look nothing like the aspirations for liberation that the peoples of the region have been fighting for in the opening months of 2011.
We must reject the unity of all the electoral parties to embroil Canada in yet another bloody imperialist war. This is war for big Canadian capitalists, pure and simple.
If you disagree with Canada waging yet another war, then reject all the parties in the upcoming May 2 Federal Elections. Let’s give the whole electoral system a vote of non confidence and refuse to support a regime right here in Canada that knows nothing but war and conquest. Finally, let’s make our own power in the streets and build an anti-imperialist people’s movement.
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