G20 Breakdown

At the G8 meeting in Halifax, Canada stated clearly that is will not be including abortion in its maternal and child health plans at the G8 meetings in Huntsville, including any funding of abortions. This could set off a potential impasse with other countries, including the U.S., which lifted the Bush administration ban on funding abortion in its development projects. The U.S., which is likely to tread lightly given its own highly organized anti-abortion groups, has said it will not cause a U.S./Canada split.

There is an excellent op-ed in the Globe and Mail today, taking the Harper government to task ‘bad policy’ on its maternal health initiative: “by refusing to fund abortions… the Conservative government is effectively saying only women who become mothers are worthy of complete health care…

It further argues that: “the maternal health initiative embeds these ideas in public policy. If you are a good woman, a woman who mothers, you will be rewarded with health care. If not, if you dare to be a non-mother, necessary health care will be withheld. In fact, the refusal to provide comprehensive health care to such a woman can be interpreted as punishment for being a bad woman.” Harper’s top-down do-good plans at the G8 seem more and more like a platform for his ideology.

I suspect there won’t be a lot done on maternal health when all is said and done in Huntsville, and there certainly won’t be any fundamental economic changes which are at the heart of poor health.

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, health care solutions (though they are important) that don’t acknowledge the sources of poverty and poor health are not nearly enough. Medicalized, band-aid solutions have been proposed for years, and poor health is as rampant as ever. But anything that might question globalization’s own role in this economic precariousness is surely off the G8 discussion table (and far away in another room).

A large scale dry-run hostage-taking happened in the underground paths of Toronto on Sunday in preparation for the G20 meetings, and they are using private security to make it happen.

“There’s only so many police officers but there’s lots of private security…If private citizens see things they can report it to the private sector and the private sector has a communication network now with us and they can pass it on.”

Chris Fernandes, of the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy rapid response Team, said police have been increasing their partnerships with private security forces in an effort to better contend with modern threats. “It gives us thousands more eyes on the street to help us look for people we may want to find and help us do our policing,”

This marks a clear move towards privatization of security operations at an unprecedented scale in Canadian history. And the track record of private security at a globale scale is nothing to write home about. See: Blackwater, Halliburton

You can really feel things starting to ramp up on many fronts, as a pair of Globe and Mail articles exemplify:

1. Canadian bankers are publicly calling for the G20 to not stifle their growth through new regulations. “When you’re going to change the financial model of the world, be very careful how quickly you act,” Bank of Nova Scotia CEO Rick Waugh said in an interview.

They are pushing back, along with the Canadian government, on plans for a bank tax, as well as other possible regulations. I think there is a sense among bankers that it is time to go on the offensive now that the crisis has stabilized, despite their central global role in the economic crisis.

Most telling is how the Globe and Mail suggests that the bankers must mean business because they are being public about it all, because they usually just use their connections to lobby for (ie: get) what they want, when they want.

“The six men leading Canada’s major banks tend to shy away from public comments about what policy makers should do. They have access to key regulators and top officials in Ottawa, and prefer to use those channels to relay messages in private.”

2. While the bankers are using their public and private influence to get what they want, there are more details of the massive security being set up for the protesters who, it seems, are not to be heard. It will be a “small army”, according to the Globe and Mail:

“For the G8 Summit [in Deerhurst, Ont.] the RCMP/OPP will require approximately 4,000 personnel with duty-related belongings to be transported at different dates, times and locations,” reads a contract tendered for shuttle buses. “For the G20 Summit, the RCMP will require approximately 5,600 personnel with duty-related belongings to be transported at different dates, times and locations.”

And there is lots of money to be made from contracts:

Dozens of buses: “For the G20 Summit the RCMP will require approximately 5,600 personnel with duty-related belongings to be transported at different dates, times and locations.”

1,000 Private Security Guards: “The contractor will be required to provide approximately 1,030 security screening personnel to perform pedestrian screening in designated areas.”

Secure two-way radios: “The radio system must be a leased, two-way multi-channel digital trunk radio communication system or service … fully operational by June 7, 2010.”

Communications/Interpretation: “Conference discussion systems (CDS), conference simultaneous interpretation systems (CSIS), sound reinforcement systems (SRS), conference microphone systems (CMS), audio visual systems (AVS) and simultaneous interpretation (SIS) in various locations.”

On-site printing and shredding: “The Printing contractor will deliver, install and provide the personnel to operate the main sites printing centres as well as the remote sites… the contractor will provide personnel, photocopiers, facsimiles, scanners and shredders.”

A number of key things came out of this week’s G8 foreign ministers meetings.

1. One item of importance to Canadians is that the Conservative government plans to continue with its Afghanistan withdrawal plans and be out of the country by 2011. I am happy to hear this and that Canada is holding firm against U.S. pressure to stay, though I don’t think we should have been there to begin with.

However, due to the withdrawal, the Canadian government is reasoning that there is no need for, and will not be, any more debate around Afghanistan. What? Imagine if the government decides to change its withdrawal plans due to ‘new’ circumstances? At that point, won’t we be thinking that there should have been debate during that year and a half? And

In any case, Parliament needs to be debating the things that happen over the next 21 months, a lot of time for many developments to transpire. Maybe they figure it isn’t much time since the war has been going on since 2002, but that leaves plenty of time for lives lost and people maimed over the next year and nine months.

Further, does this end of debate also include the detainee debate? Finally, what will happen after 2011? What is Canada’s role then?

Ignatieff (the Canadian opposition leader) is right, the Conservatives want to do foreign policy through the media, with no Parliamentary oversight and debate.

2. There is a plan for an Afghanistan-Pakistan border trade initiative “to help improve trade between the two countries and strengthen border infrastructure.” I don’t fully understand the details, though it does seem like a plan build an economic solution to help people economically to dissuade them from joining the Taliban. Not sure how all that will work, and it doesn’t seem like they know either. Window dressing?

3. And Iran. The G8 has been kind enough to open dialogue with Iran over their nuclear program, though they call for strong measures against them as well. Setting aside the unspeakable fact that four G8 countries are nuclear weapons states themselves, there is little evidence that Iran has nuclear capabilities, or will in the future. The White House even announced this back in February:

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the US “do not believe they have the capability” to enrich the uranium to the 20 percent level, as President Ahmadinejad claimed earlier today.

Iran has been enriching uranium at 3.5 percent, the level needed for its power generation program. On Tuesday they announced that they were beginning to enrich uranium at 20 percent, the level needed for their medical reactor. The IAEA indicated yesterday that Iran has converted a small percentage of its enrichment program to the 20 percent level.

Since the announcement, US officials have insisted that they needed to make haste with new sanctions against Iran, claiming that the 20 percent enrichment (though itself legal and innocuous) could have been a step toward the capability to enrich uranium above 90 percent, or weapons grade.

Those whose job it is to create a safe world for bankers are sure hoping to not be bothered by outsiders, as seen in the G-20 security plans that have been announced

According to Const. Ed Boltuc, a Toronto police officer and community liaison with the Integrated Security Unit:

“The Olympics that you saw recently in Vancouver was actually the largest security event ever to take place here in Canada. The G20/G8 surpasses that completely. There’s going to be a massive — absolutely massive — presence of police and security on the ground like you’ve never seen before.”

Why am I getting the sneaking suspicion that Harper, in all his ideological zealotry and his distain for democratic processes, is looking to show the world that he can kick ass with the best of them and that nothing is going to stop him from doing what he wants, where he wants? Why else would he be having the G-20 right downtown in Canada’s largest city?

The Star further outlines the plans:

This inner security zone will be strictly controlled during the summit weekend and blocked off with an “unscalable” fence rising at least 3 metres, Boltuc said. Anyone requiring access will have to pass a “five-tier system of security,”

The outer layer will be protected by Toronto police, Boltuc said. While speculation had placed the boundaries at Queen St. to the north, Yonge St. to the east, Lake Shore Blvd. W. to the south and Spadina Ave. to the west, Boltuc said the area won’t be quite that large.