Bering Strait Tunnel, Alaska-Canada Rail Infrastructure Corridors Will Transform Economy

by Richard Freeman and Dr. Hal Cooper

EIR / PDF (EIR)-The adoption and construction of the Bering Strait rail and tunnel project is the focus of a Schiller Institute conference in Kiedrich, Germany on Sept. 15-16, bringing together international experts and political activists to mobilize for this program, which will bring about a technological upshift in the economy globally. The infrastructure corridors built around the rail lines will help generate, through their bills of materials, a renaissance in manufacturing and infrastructure in the United States, as well as Canada. The Bering Strait project would link, by hoops of steel, the entirety of the Americas to the entirety of Eurasia, with the potential to connect to Africa. It would replace the world’s slow, outmoded, and vastly overburdened sea-rail routes with a geodesic high-speed-rail route. The system would use high- speed electric rail, and shift as quickly as possible to magnetic levitation rail. This would free the world forever from hundreds of billions of dollars spent on petroleum-driven transport, while doubling or tripling the speed of transport of people and freight. For example, goods produced in the American Midwest could be transported to China, or Russia, in 7-10 days, rather than the three weeks it presently takes by a combination of sea and rail. As a leading vector for enabling a World Land-Bridge, the Bering Strait project would facilitate the proliferation of rail-spined development corridors of high economic growth, ending the Third World’s enforced backwardness and death. A critical feature of the overall Bering Strait project, would be the development of a 3,030-mile Alaska-Canada rail connector, which will contribute to moving the U.S. and Canadian physical economies from a deepening collapse process of several decades, onto an alternative path of growth. Building 3,030 miles of track—and double that amount if the system is double-tracked—demands a tremendous quantity of goods, expressed as a bill of materials. This is an ordered array of goods—steel for tracks and for railroad bridges; wood for ties and railroad structures; cement for culverts and other structures; aggregates for cement manufacture, but also for roadbed, etc. The bill of materials for the Alaska-Canada rail connector will require the production of tens of millions of tons of goods. This will create 35,000 to 50,000 jobs in the building of the railroad, plus workers in the factories producing the steel, cement, copper and aluminum wire, power plants, locomotives, and other necessary components. But that is just the first phase. In the second phase, potentially, hundreds of thousands of jobs will be generated. On June 2, Fred Stakelbeck, of the Center for Security Studies, published a blistering attack on the project: “What do Russian President Vladmir Putin, spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, political activist Lyndon LaRouche, and former . . . Governor of Alaska Walter Hickel have in common? They are all supporters of the Bering Strait Tunnel Project.” The Wall Street Journal said the project would “soak the American taxpayer.” But economist LaRouche has shown just the opposite: Hamiltonian long-term, low-interest financing will bring the project into realization. The confluence of the project’s generation of technology and productivity worldwide, the development corridors, and the bill of materials will produce a several-fold increase of physical-economic activity, and an increase in tax revenue. It will pay for itself several times over. The adoption of LaRouche’s New Bretton Woods monetary system is the context in which the project would come into existence.

A Critical Rail Network

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figure 1. The Alaska Railroad

To appreciate what must be done, we can first look at the state of rail, and transportation in general, in the Great North region comprised of Alaska; the Yukon Territory of Canada; and the northern tier of British Columbia, Canada. To say that this area is underdeveloped, is like saying that the Sahara Desert is dry. Figure 1 shows the Alaska Railroad, which was built in 1914-23, by the U.S. government, and has been, since 1985, owned by the Alaska state government. The Alaska Railroad, which extends from Fairbanks to Anchorage, covers 544 miles (876 kilometers), counting spur lines. It is a small, isolated system in the vastness of Alaska’s 663,267 square miles (1,717,855 square kilometers). The map shows that, by rail, there is currently neither a passage to reach Fairbanks from the Lower 48 U.S. states, nor a way to get from that city to the Bering Strait. The Alaska-Canada (Alcan) Highway, which was built under President Franklin Roosevelt’s direction in 1942, extends from the Lower 48 states to Fairbanks, but goes no further west. To reach the Bering Strait by overland passage, short of using a snowmobile fortified with extra cans of gasoline, one must resort to huskies pulling a dog sled! The Yukon Territory has only a tiny rail line. The North American rail grid that joins Mexico, the United States, and Canada, comes to a dead-end stop at the northern tier of British Columbia. The Arctic North region is underpopulated, and its development frozen in time.

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figure 2.

The Alaska-Canada rail connector, with the construction of a development corridor extending 50 miles (80 km) on each side of the railroad, can transform the region in its entirety. Power lines, fiber-optic lines, and where necessary, freshwater pipes would be encased within the corridor. Cities, population, manufacturing, and scientific agriculture would be fertilized and harvested in this corridor as well. The Arctic North’s nearby abundant, but largely untapped, mineral and raw material resources would be made accessible, by rail link, out of the frigid ground for rational use in the Arctic North and the world.

Overcoming a Transportation Dark Age

Figure 2 shows the plan for an Alaska-Canada rail connector system, as developed by co-author Dr. Hal Cooper, a consulting engineer.# This proposed system starts off with two route-branches, each of which heads in a north-south direction. The first branch, called the westerly one, starts at Prince George, British Columbia, and proceeds to Chipmunk, B.C., to Dease Lake, B.C., to Jake’s Corner, Yukon Territory, and then to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. The second branch, called the easterly one, starts at Prince George, also. It then heads to Dawson Creek, B.C., to Fort St. John, B.C., to Fort Nelson, B.C., to Watson Lake, Yukon Territory, to Jake’s Corner, and then to Whitehorse. Both branches should be built. The two branches join at Jake’s Corner, which is in proximity to the larger Whitehorse. The rail connector line would then extend, as a single route, northward to Beaver Creek in the Yukon Territory, at the Alaska-Canada border, and then to Fairbanks. From there it would proceed to Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, which lies across the Bering Strait from Uelen, Russia. The Bering Strait tunnel would link Cape Prince of Wales to Uelen. Spanning off from this main line, two spur lines would be constructed—the first heading toward Nome, the second toward Red Dog, and then to Point Lay. This second spur would be a critical route, linking existing and projected mines in Alaska to the main line. Red Dog is the site of a massive Alaskan mine, currently the world’s largest producer of zinc; it also produces sizeable amounts of lead and gold. This rail system has two features to be noted. First, Prince George is a location where the North American rail grid nearly comes to an end. Starting in Prince George, the rail routes have been built out to Chipmunk and to Fort Nelson on the westerly and easterly branches, respectively. Both rail sections are owned by the Canadian National Railroad. But some of the rail line to Chipmunk has already been torn up, and both lines would require substantial repair and upgrade as part of the

Alaska-Canada rail connector plan.

Second, by building the Alaska-Canada rail connector, we create the ability to move goods from Russia and China, as well as from Central Asia, Southwest Asia, and Europe, directly to the North American rail grid, and thus to the United States. The westerly branch would extend the system’s reach due south to Vancouver, British Columbia; Seattle, Washington; and then to major cities in California. The easterly branch would enable goods to travel either from Fort Nelson to Chicago, or from Dawson Creek to North Dakota, and then to a projected rail corridor to Texas.

An Immense Bill of Materials

Keeping the physical topology, and size of the railroad in mind, we can work up an approximate bill of materials. There are two prerequisite steps in all rail construction, prior to laying a single mile of track. First, a comprehensive engineering survey must be conducted on the path and terrain on which the rail would be built, a process that Cooper and a few others have carried out. Second, the area must be graded, across mountains and low-lying areas. This would require bulldozers and earth-moving equipment, etc. Then building can begin. In assessing a bill of materials, what the industry calls “unit factors,” that is, how many tons of specific goods are needed, per mile of track to be constructed, must be considered. These factors are approximate: In any particular several-mile-stretch of track, one may need more special materials to build on permafrost; one may need more of certain materials for extra strengthening of the track or to build more culverts; or one may need more wood or concrete to build protective walls and sheds, to protect the line from Winter weather.

Table 1 gives the unit factors for building a single mile of railroad track that is double-tracked, and where electric locomotives will be used. “Double-tracking” means that trains can run in each direction at the same time. An electric locomotive uses no diesel fuel, and is powered 100% by electricity supplied by over-head wires. This requires construction of power plants, transmission lines, overhead wires, poles, etc. All of this must be accounted for in the bill of materials. The total length of the Alaska-Canada rail corridor, including spur lines, as displayed in Figure 2, is approximately 3,030 miles. Using four different unit factors, it was possible to determine an approximate bill of materials for four different types of rail line that would be constructed: a single-track diesel-electric-hybrid locomotive; a single-track electric locomotive; a double-track diesel-electric-hybrid locomotive; and a double-track electric locomotive. (On average, the “factor” for a double-track electric locomotive system is roughly double that for a single-track electric locomotive system, although there is some economy of scale.

The same holds for the comparable types of diesel-electric- locomotive systems). Table 2 presents, for construction of each of the four types of system, the approximate tonnage required, by type of commodity. Notice that construction of a double-track electric locomotive system would require a huge bill of materials: more than 10 million tons of iron and steel; nearly 10 million tons of cement, aggregates, etc.; more than 1 million tons of copper, aluminum, and steel wire. Cooper estimates that, at the beginning, because the total tonnage of freight to be carried by each train would be relatively smaller, the the Alaska-Canada rail corridor system may start out as a single-track diesel-electric hybrid locomotive system; but, as the Bering Strait tunnel is built, sending through a greater volume of freight traffic, a double-tracked electric locomotive system would be built. Engineers estimate that it would require 10 to 12 years to build the Bering Strait tunnel. However, with foresight and strong support by the United States government, the Alaska-Canada rail connector could start out as a double-tracked electric locomotive system. It would move as quickly as possible to a maglev system.

An Expansion of Employment

The process of constructing and operating a double-tracked electric locomotive system would generate a significant number of new jobs. It would require 7,500 to 12,800 full-time equivalent jobs to construct the railroad itself, and 1,800 to 2,300 workers to operate and provide maintenance to the railroad, once it is constructed. There is also indirect employment: An additional 15,000 to 25,600 jobs would be created, to produce the steel, cement, copper and aluminum wire, specified in the bill of materials in Table 2. The project would also require engineering and other services. Adding together the direct and indirect jobs, the corridor project would create between 24,300 and 40,700 new jobs, a goodly percentage of them productive. There is more to this process. The Alaska-Canada Railway connector corridor will ultimately employ electrified rail: first high-speed (electric locomotive) rail and then magnetic levitation. This will require huge amounts of electricity, and mandate construction of a series of regional power plants to supply electricity to the railroad operation itself, plus for regional economic and industrial development. The requirement would be, conservatively, 3,000-6,000 megawatts of new installed electricity-generating capacity by 2050. Nuclear power would be the optimal means to supply the power. The bill of materials presented in Table 2 was restricted primarily to the building phase of the railroad, and did not include that power requirement. Table 3 documents the bill of materials to produce a 1,200 MW power plant (construction of four paired 300 MW plants, such as four pebble bed modular reactors, would require roughly the same bill of materials). Now, think of all the workers who would be needed to build the hundreds of pumps, heat exchangers, compressors, reactor vessels, etc., and the inter-mediate goods and raw materials, such as steel (see Marsha Freeman, “The Auto Industry Can Help Build New Nuclear Plants, ” EIR, Dec. 20, 2005). This Alaska-Canada rail corridor would require the manufacture of a new fleet of thousands of electric locomotives, flat cars, hopper cars, and fuel transport cars. This engenders its own bill of materials, and the creation of new jobs. Given the collapsed condition of U.S. rail manufacture, we must immediately reopen and convert a number of closed auto factories, to produce rail capital goods. Laid-off skilled auto workers would be rehired. In sum, adding up all the jobs cited above, the Alaska-Canada rail corridor would generate a new workforce of 35,000-50,000 workers, in largely productive jobs. But this is just the first phase.

Global Development

The Alaska-Canada railroad corridor, contemporaneous with the construction of a rail corridor from the Baikal Amur Mainline to Uelen, Russia—both leading vectors of the Bering Strait project—would bring about a profound and enduring change in the world economy. This would generate a second, much larger phase of jobs.
Table 3.
The Bering Strait rail and tunnel project’s path is fast, both because it utilizes revolutionary high-speed/maglev technology, and because it operates along a least-action, geodesic Arctic Circle route. The shortest distance and fastest passage for goods from Beijing to Chicago is along this proposed route. Were the current mode of transport to be used to ship a product from Beijing to Chicago, it would go by train from Beijing to a Chinese port, broken down, and placed on a ship travelling at a much slower speed across the Pacific Ocean; be offloaded at the Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach, and placed upon a train for shipment to Chicago. That process takes up to three weeks. By the Bering Strait route, it would stay on high- speed train the whole way, travel along a much shorter route, and take 7 to 10 days.
A primary function of the Bering Strait rail system is to unlock of the vast treasure-house of varied elements of the Periodic Table trapped underneath the tundra and permafrost of the Arctic North, which consists of Russia’s Far East, Alaska, the Yukon Territory, and the northern two-thirds of British Columbia. These mineral resources can be used for world economic development. The rail project, as part of what will become the World Land-Bridge, would also build development corridors in underdeveloped regions of the world, including the Arctic North.
The case of Russia in this setting is developed by Rachel Douglas in “Russia: Contours of an Economic Policy to Save the Nation,” EIR, Sept. 7, 2007), so we will focus on the other regions of the Arctic North. The case of Alaska illustrates how the development of resources can contribute to igniting overall development. Alaska has almost no manufacturing: not a single steel plant, and only a few small machine-tool shops; it imports most of its industrial goods from the Lower 48 states or Asia. Sitting on a submerged mountain of raw materials, it has but seven mines of any significance in operation. Yet, according to independent geologists and the U.S. Geological Survey, Alaska has a teeming resource base of iron ore, zinc, lead, copper, molybdenum, uranium, titanium, chromite, nickel, gold, platinum, and coal. (Russia’s Far East province has an equal or even greater supply of these and other raw materials.) A mining engineer told EIR, “Some financial people tell you that transportation has nothing to do with developing a mine, but they are totally wrong. If you don’t have transportation, you can’t ship the goods anywhere.” According to a study by University of Alaska at Fairbanks mining and geological engineer Dr. Paul Metz, Alaska has more than 500 “mineral occurrences”—sites where deposits of specific minerals have been identified—which fall within 60 miles on either side of the center line of the proposed Alaska- Canada rail connector. With rail, he indicated, several of these occurrences, perhaps dozens if they are rich enough, would become operating mines. The development of mines calls for capital equipment and other supplies, but that is just the first step. Many in Alaska want to develop a manufacturing base. There are already plans to construct a petroleum refining facility outside the city of Fairbanks, Alaska’s largest, not only for producing refined product, but also for feedstock. There is also discussion of building metal-ore-processing and -refining plants, such as for zinc and copper, and of building initially one steel plant that would utilize iron ore from Alaska and neighboring Yukon Territory. These plans require railroads to transport the goods. The Alaska-Canada rail connector, with 50 miles on either side, would be a development corridor within which new cities would be built and existing small cities would grow, following the general trajectory of the 19th-Century Transcontinental Railroad in the United States. Right now, three-quarters of Alaska’s small population (670,000 people) is concentrated in just two areas: the metropolitan areas around Fairbanks and Anchorage, in the southern part of the state. The rest of the state is virtually empty. As cities spring up or enlarge, they will build manufacturing establishments, and require con- struction of school systems, electricity grids, water systems, health and hospital systems; this will of course require an expansion of the workforce. For the short-term future, Alaska would import a host of advanced goods, in particular machine tools, principally from the Lower 48 states. Thus, as a second phase, over the next 20 to 25 years, this self-feeding process would create hundreds of thousands of jobs, most of them in Alaska and the continental United States, many of them productive.

Alaska’s population density of a mere 1.0 person per square mile (0.4 persons per square kilometer) is a measure of pitiful underdevelopment. Table 4 shows the population densities for some regions, illustrating the underdevelopment of the Arctic North. The construction of the Alaska- Canada rail connector corridor will foster an increase in potential relative population density: that areas once thought to be barren—such as vast areas of snow and permafrost—will become fecund, through scientific agriculture (including the hot-house production of food), the technological- and capital-intensiveness of manufacturing, and the productive powers of labor. Through creativity, man will increase his productive power over the universe, per capita, and per square kilometer. At a higher level, the movement of goods between Eurasia and the Americas, at previously unheard-of speeds, will transform world productive relations. It will cohere with an emerging isotope economy, and generate tens of millions of productive jobs in the United States, and hundreds of millions worldwide. The regeneration of the world economy, which would be achieved through U.S.-Russian collaboration, would shift the relations between the two nations to a positive, war-avoidance footing. The forceful implementation of Lyndon LaRouche’s New Bretton Woods monetary system, as the present financial system blows to pieces, creates the unique historical moment to bring the Bering Strait project into existence.

Micheal Ignatieff: Queen’s Knight

In December 2008, Canadians witnessed, not only an embarrassing example of the embedded flaws in our British-inspired Parliamentary system, but more fundamentally, they saw, many for the first time, the exercise of power over our country’s internal affairs by Canada’s sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II.

Illusions held by most Canadians regarding the “symbolic” nature of the monarchy began falling by the wayside. Questions also arose as to the real independence ofCanada within the Commonwealth (the Empire under financial globalization).In November of that year the financial system had entered a new accelerated phase of collapse, and a first $700 billion bailout for U.S. banks passed the United States Congress. That very same month an unannounced, disguised, $64 billion bailout of the Canadian banking system occurred!

We are living through a tumultuous economic period that requires inspired leadership and an historical model of the stature of a Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In Canada, a lack of leadership in dealing with the economic crisis was compounded by the three opposition parties hastily putting together a plan to form an alternative Canadian coalition government… if the Queen’s representative, the Governor General, would of course, kindly give her ascent! The Liberals, according to this arrangement, were to govern the country with the support of the NDP and Bloc Québécois.

In the following two days, Canadian citizens watched while one group was pitifully begging the Queen’s Governor General to allow them to take over the nation, while the other group was begging this unelected royal appendage, to let them stay in power.

At that time, the overthrow of the Conservative government did not proceed as planned, and the Conservatives were permitted to remain in power for another year, while Michael Ignatieff became the new head of the Liberal Party of Canada in the interim, breaking off all ties with his former coalition allies.

We are now in early 2010 and time is certainly running out for Michael Ignatieff to assume his assigned role as the knight on a white horse who shall come to the rescue of the nation already deep into the onslaught of a global economic meltdown. Prime Minister Harper’s government has proven itself ineffective in combating the high rate of unemployment and has mainly opted for austerity rather than producing our way out of this economic meltdown.

First on the chopping block is Atomic Energy Canada Limited which is scheduled to be auctioned off to foreign interests. This folly would penalize Canadians 1) by cutting them off from the only truly efficient energy source, 2) by dismantling the scientific and technological knowledge required to get to the next stage which is thermonuclear fusion energy, and 3) by preventing the qualitative transformation of the Canadian economy into a future advanced isotope economy.

The Canadian population, up to this very recent period, has had to suffer the injury of more and more frequent ‘horse trading’ sessions on the floor of the House of Commons amidst the ever present blackmail threats to force yet another national election. And now, the government is adding insult to injury with its decision to prorogue Parliament.

It would do well for all Canadians to understand that it is quite feasible to step outside this political chessboard and its set piece tactics and think strategically, as a Franklin Roosevelt would, as he constantly educated his fellow citizens during his speeches and famous fireside chats during the Great Depression and throughout the course of World War II; or as Lyndon LaRouche is known to do today—by exposing the inner workings of the present day globalized financial British Empire and how to defeat it by organizing a political dynamic which would 1) bring together a Four Power Alliance (of Russia, India, China and the United States) to defeat the monetarist imperial power which has chosen the financial district of London as a base from which its tentacles reach out internationally and, 2) get other sovereign nation-states interested in joining the initiating Four Power Alliance in order to form a new world-wide credit system as set out in the LaRouche Plan.

It is with this perspective in our mind’s eye that we must judge the leadership qualities and moral character of Michael Ignatieff. If he were to be elected Prime Minister of Canada, he would immediately be confronted with the challenge of getting Canada to break with British monetarist policies and join a new and exciting Pacific Basin oriented political dynamic.

Who is Michael Ignatieff?

It is therefore well worth examining if Michael Ignatieff’s principles and intentions are truly as noble as they are summarily portrayed in his self-promoting book “True Patriot Love”?(1)

Is he truly a Canadian patriot who, in the midst of an onrushing global financial meltdown, felt impelled to return to his endangered homeland to pull it out of economic turbulence and propel it into an era of genuine prosperity by getting Canada to eventually join a community of principle of nations desiring to establish a more just new world economic order?

In looking into Ignatieff’s philosophy, opinions, public statements and policies, one is immediately struck by the fact that he is a master at taking every side to most every issue.

On policy questions Ignatieff seems to be for infrastructure, for long-term investments, for cleaner tar sands, for high-speed rail between Quebec City and Vancouver, along with a four-lane highway; all fine proposals but his widely known advocacy for a carbon tax, and for a green economy contradict his ability to realize the above proposals.

Ignatieff references the Roosevelt New Deal example when discussing Canadian development projects or extensions to the Canadian unemployment insurance program. Yet when one examines how he intends to finance these FDR policies, all one finds is discussions of more free markets, more taxes and the elimination of all national protectionist measures (2) –the very antithesis of Roosevelt’s policies.

Ignatieff uses rhetoric in the same vein as Barack Obama and has taken a leaf from Obama’s presidential campaign by staying as far away as possible from committing to any tangible policy for which he would be held accountable later. Ignatieff’s bipartisan magic even surprised his liberal entourage when he received a standing ovation after he had spoken at the very conservative Fraser Institute.

He is self-portrayed as a pacifist-intellectual, and yet, he is also a frantic supporter of military interventions into small nations. He has singled out in his published writings the cases of Kosovo, (1996), Algeria, (1999) and Iraq (2002).

He swiftly defends his viewpoint by taking both the “for” and “against” side on every issue, as witnessed by his support of Cheney’s torture policies which he now defends as having done so with “right principles”. When questioned on one particular incident of indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon in 2006, which killed 56 civilians, he responded coldly with; “This is the kind of dirty war you’re in when you have to do this and I’m not losing sleep about that.” A week later, when confronted again on his statement, Ignatieff denied the statement and chastised Israel saying that it should be “punished for war crimes”.

Today, he is the leading liberal advocate of Steven Harper’s expanded militarization of Afghanistan. Ignatieff was a leading architect in the 2004 policy for a UN supranational police force “The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) Protocol”. His commitment to a necessary imperialism is sophistically presented in his recent book ‘Empire Lite’ and Times article ‘The Burden’.

It is within this context that the ‘nature of the beast’ becomes clear. The character of a man who takes both sides to every issue is that he is either confused or a liar. In the case of Mr. Ignatieff, we can presume he will not admit to confusion.

What clearly emerges is a world view that parallels the oligarchical mindset: where nations are often broken-up into smaller ‘sovereign’ entities who are at the mercy of an overreaching international structure controlled ultimately by British imperial finance.

Such a world dictatorship, with a liberal face, has to rely on key components which are already deployed in several instances such as: 1-private international criminal courts (such as the ICC), 2-militarized private police forces operating outside the constraints of sovereign nations, 3-increased private control of national finances to impose austerity 4-reducing subject nations to accept genocidal levels of ‘conditionalities’ in order to refinance inflated debts, on top of 5- an international carbon taxing body, as proposed and rejected (for now) at Copenhagen, that would police and prohibit the development of new science and technology for industrial production.

In this brave new world run by a technocratic Malthusian elite, personal and collective freedoms are to be severely curtailed on a ‘voluntary’ basis by inducing irrational fears among the population through 1) the control of so-called ‘Islamic’ terrorism which is for the most part run out of Londonistan and 2) the acceptance of depopulation and deindustrialization policies under the guise of saving the planet from man-made (read industries) global warming!

Family Baggage

Michael Ignatieff’s conspicuous family history was highlighted by Ignatieff himself during his short meteoric rise through the highest echelons of Canadian politics.

Even earlier, in a 1993 interview(3), Ignatieff expressed pride in a radio host’s acknowledgement of his title “Count”, a title he inherited from his Great Grandfather Nikolai Pavlovich Ignatiev.

One can imagine a private discussion among two elder British aristocrats in a London private club

-‘’Good genes, good blood line, Russian nobility…’’.

–‘’…Most important, that family has rendered faithful, high-level services to the Empire, while a Minister to the Tsar’’

-‘’…We must not forget the maternal side: his great-grandfather was Sir George Parkin who ran the Rhodes Trust in London for over two decades. Only Canadian ever to be entrusted with that sensitive position, I do say. The family married into the Masseys, his great-aunt was the wife of one our most effective Governor General up there. Both Parkin and later Massey were key in setting up and recruiting the first two generations of members to our Round Table Movement in the Dominion…’’

-‘’…I’ll pass the chaps’ pedigree on to the relevant people in the City…’’

Nikolai Pavlovich’s notoriety, for our current interest here, comes from the key role he played in the formation of the Okhrana (the Russia secret police). It was this institution which was instrumental in fomenting the 1905 Russian Revolution, and the later 1918 Bolshevik Revolution (4) on behalf of the British. At the turn of the century, Russia was specifically targeted for chaos by the British Empire as a response to the Russian followers of Abraham Lincoln’s policies, like Prime Minister Sergei Witte (5) and the great scientist Dmitri Mendeleyev (6). Those policies most strongly defining the fight were the Trans-Siberian rail project, national banking and ‘American System’ protectionism. The prospect of a Russian-US collaborative effort to build the great Bering Strait Tunnel-rail network stems from this time in history, and is still an ongoing threat to the British imperial stranglehold today.

While Ignatieff’s grandfather Paul Ignatiev went on to become the Education Minister under Tsar Nicholas II, the second major revolution was sparked, and Paul Ignatieff’s career in Russia was soon terminated. It is interesting to note though that Ignatieff’s grandfather was one of but a small handful of tsarist figures permitted to escape death at that point. The family promptly migrated to Canada.

Before looking at Michael Ignatieff’s father, it is necessary that we first briefly set the stage of post war British geopolitics. The Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine for organizing the post World War II “Balance of Power’’ was designed by the British to destroy all cooperation between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. As after the British-instigated American Civil War, the primary targets were again victims of British manipulations which took the form of a Cold War (7).

After being granted a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford in 1940, Michael Ignatieff’s father, George Ignatieff, quickly rose to become a leading international figure: Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations, Permanent Representative to NATO, President of the United Nations Security Council.

Prime Minister John Turner, in 1984, appointed George Ignatieff Disarmament Ambassador. From this position, George Ignatieff became instrumental in destroying President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)(8), conceptually developed by Lyndon LaRouche to defeat the Cold War MAD strategy and to set in motion a new era of American-U.S.S.R. scientific and economic cooperation for world development.

George Ignatieff was a strong proponent 1) of consolidating a global UN police force, 2) of advocating the Russell idea of world government and 3) of implementing global prohibitions on nuclear energy development. While not hereditary, this oligarchical mindset has tragically been passed on from father to son.

His home and native land:

My final journey took me back to consider the braying national identity of my adopted country- the British Isles” –Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging.

While born in Canada in 1949, Michael Ignatieff’s anglophilia brought him to live and teach in Britain for over 20 years.

In 1979, Michael Ignatieff’s service to the Empire originated from academia: research fellow at Cambridge and, from there, teaching posts at the London School of Economics and Oxford.

The book he co-authored in 1983 with Itsvan Hont called Wealth and Virtue, recounts his fascination with such British imperial thinkers as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill et al. On commenting on his work, Ignatieff has said that his time studying Adam Smith had made him a devout free market advocate.

In those early years, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had set off a major wave of destruction of the real physical economy still being felt today. Her administration’s policy of ‘saving the economy’ involved destroying between 3 and 5 million jobs, liberalizing and deregulating global markets, cracking down on unions and implementing Friedmanite economic policies which soon led to the rapid cartelization of world economies. These policies created the conditions for the Maastricht Treaty and the Euro dictatorship.

Early on Ignatieff declared his allegiance to this process, when as a journalist, he attacked the striking UK miners who were defying the budget cuts, and sided with Thatcher in declaring that the miners were “acting against the national interest” of Britain (9).

Ignatieff is known to have broken all ties with old acquaintances at this point, in order to begin his new integration into the higher social caste of London.(9)

Opportunities opened up immediately for Ignatieff, whereby weekly political columns were offered to him by major dailies across the UK, followed by book contracts, elite club memberships, Pulitzer prizes, lecture tours and an image shaping makeover as an intellectual rock star. Throughout the 1990s, he was made a celebrity television personality on the BBC, and was featured as cover boy for numerous magazines, including the British GQ.

The Behaviorist Connection

In 2000, Michael Ignatieff returned back to North America to work as Director of the Carr Institute on Human Rights at Harvard University. During this time at Harvard (2000-2005), Ignatieff became close friends with Samantha Powers, Cass Sunstein and then-President Laurence Summers.

All three figures now occupy, around narcissistic President Obama, leading positions in the White House as members of the now infamous inner circle of behaviorist economists pushing fascist policies on America on behalf of British imperial financial aims. (11)

In April of 2009, during his first visit with Obama, a closed door dinner was held with Ignatieff as guest of honor (12), and the same above mentioned behaviorist economists who do not believe in defending the United States Constitution, but rather in ‘behavior modification’(13) of a population as a governing principle.

It was understood by all present that this British-Canadian scholar would soon be given the helm of Canada’s ship of state.

This affinity of minds between Ignatieff and President Obama’s closest behaviorist entourage is best illustrated by the very close relationship that exists between US National Economic Director Larry Summers, who along with his wife have spent a few holidays vacationing with the Ignatieffs at Michael Ignatieff’s estate in the South of France, as have National Security Council member Samantha Powers and U.S Regulatory czar Cass Sunstein.

Which Way for Canada?

Nearly 30 years ago, Lyndon LaRouche presented a lasting gift to Canadians when he wrote his “Draft Constitution for the Commonwealth of Canada” (14).

This 1981 undertaking by LaRouche intersected a situation in the country where Canadians appeared increasingly predisposed to establishing a sovereign constitutional order for Canada.

The political situation has certainly changed over the course of these three decades, but the rigorous, historically-grounded arguments in favor of a republican constitutional order are as valid today as they were then in 1981.

More importantly, for the urgent task confronting us today, what Lyndon LaRouche wrote in his letter of transmittal to Canadians, dated September 5, 1981, still stands as a blueprint for defining the true mission of Canada and understanding the ‘mass strike’(15) phenomena now sweeping the United States which, like the southern winds flowing through Canada, should soon warm the spirit of patriotic Canadians.

LaRouche wrote:

“…These are greatly troubled times. The credible perils of nuclear warfare, vast genocide of peoples, and moral anarchy and degradation pose today a greater peril to mankind generally than can be compared with any peril confronted since the so-called “New Dark Age” of fourteenth-century Europe. In these times, all mankind cries out implicitly for new beacons of hope of a better, more secure order in mankind’s affairs.

“It is within the power of the people of Canada to fashion themselves into such a beacon of hope, to establish a living example which other people and nations may emulate in some fashion appropriate to their own problems, development and other circumstances.

“In the past, each emergence of some great new nation, each admirable re-ordering of the affairs of a nation, has been an efficient beacon of hope for other nations and peoples witnessing such accomplishments. If it is true that great and good ideas are the unique source of all important accomplishments of mankind, it is the example of employment of such an idea by some people which has proven repeatedly the indispensable magnifier of the power of communicating such an idea to nations and people generally.”

The great classical 19th century poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller(16) expressed our dual responsibility best when he affirmed that “man is greater than his destiny” and that “he is both, at the same time, a patriot of one’s nation, but also a world citizen”.

LaRouche often refers to Percy B. Shelley(17), the republican English poet, when discussing the ‘mass strike’ phenomena now occurring in the United States:

“…Shelley writes appropriately of moments of history in which a people experiences a greatly increased capacity for imparting and receiving profound and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature. In such rare intervals a great people rises for a time above preoccupation with the immediately personal and local concerns of the ephemeral mortal lives of each, and locates its most immediate sense of self-interest in the condition of the world as a whole”.

The present strategic mission for Canada is to orient towards the Pacific-Indian Oceans Basins in a constructive manner such that our “Pacific Gateway” policy increases in commercial volume but also increases in a qualitative political strategic mode with the goal of acting in a supportive role, and perhaps a go-between mode to get the three Asian giants (Russia, China, India) to join a soon to be renewed rooseveltian United States in LaRouche’s Four Power Alliance.

This is what Canada must orient to in 2010.

This is what Canadian patriotism, rigorously defined, should mean.

Which way for Canada, then?

–The British path detailed in True Patriot Love, the path of the Queen’s Knight?

or

–The “American System” path opened by Schiller, Shelley, Roosevelt and LaRouche?

–30—

Footnotes:

(1)It’s not in the interest of either this side of the border or that side of the border. This doesn’t end well if we go down the protectionist road. We need to say very clearly and very intently with the Americans: Let’s pull back now!” -Ignatieff July 15, 2009 speaking to FCM meeting in B.

(2)http://www.committeerepubliccanada.ca/PutLaRouchePlanToSaveTheWorldEconomyOnTheAgenda.htm

(3) Radio Canada show l’Heure G; Jan 9, 1991

(4) Ignatievs and the Russian Okrahna:

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2005/3237cheney_permwar.html

(5) “The welfare of Your Empire is based on national labor. The increase of its productivity and the discovery of new fields for Russian enterprise will always serve as the most reliable way for making the entire nation more prosperous. We have to develop mass-production industries, widely dispersed and variegated. We must give the country such industrial perfection as has been reached by the United States of America, which firmly basis its prosperity on two pillars—agriculture and industry.”

– 1899 memo from Minister of Finance Witte to Tsar Nicholas II

(6) Dmitri Mendeleyev not only discovered the harmonic ordering principle shaping the Periodic table of elements, but also served as Russian Minister of Weights and Measures, and Chairman of the Committee on the Protective Tarrif as a close ally to Sergei Witte. He wrote in his 1891 Tarrif report: “It must be understood, that the economic doctrines of the “nationalists” and the “historical school” have long since broken free-tradism at the roots, and that contemporary economic science should, for clarity, be called “anti-free trade.” This must, absolutely must be known by anyone who would speak on economic questions in the name of science”.

(7) -Lord Bertrand Russell (architect of Mutually Assured Destruction), wrote in the Bulletin for Atomic Scientists July 1947:

“If we are to preserve the peace of the world beyond the time when America ceases to have a monopoly of the bomb–which is not very distant–it must be done by having the bomb completely controlled by some one authority, and it cannot then be a national one. The period during which it can be a national authority is necessarily brief, and if the control does not pass straight from a national authority to an international authority, then we shall inevitably get an atomic war. I entirely agree that controlling atomic energy alone is not enough, and that ultimately we must have an international authority which can prevent war. But it is a step, and the machinery that is required in the one case is similar to the machinery needed in the other.

…When I speak of an international government, I mean one that really governs, not an amiable facade like the League of Nations or a pretentious sham like the United Nations under its present constitution. An international government … must have the only atomic bombs, the only plant for producing them, the only air force, the only battleships, and, generally, whatever is necessary to make it irresistible.”

(8) A brief history of the SDI: https://www.larouchepac.com/lpactv?nid=9196

(9) New Statesman, Dec 1984

(10) Being Michael Ignatieff Michael Valpy From Saturday’s Globe and Mail, 25-08-2006

(11) The behaviorists behind Obama: http://www.larouchepac.com/node/9925

(12)http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090421/libs_meeting_090421/20090421?hub=TopStories

(13) Lyndon LaRouche—January 23, 2010: [unproofed work in progress]:

In “We Are A Republic Not A Democracy”: “…That modern A.D. 1529-1763, process leading into the birth of modern British imperialism, has been the historical backdrop which must be adopted as the reference needed to situate the origins of that system of Paolo Sarpi (b.1552-d.1623) which became known by such names as “behaviorism,” a system which was based upon the prevalent, categorical rejection of any principled standard of truthfulness, as this rejection was argued by Adam Smith in his 1759 “Theory of Moral Sentiments”, as the British monetarist tradition, to the present day. The result has been, that the reigning body of so-called Liberal “popular opinion” in much of the world today, is, more often than not, a system of the sophistry imposed as a blending of induced popular stupidities and official lies.”

(14)http://www.committeerepubliccanada.ca/PDF/A%20Draft%20Constitution.pdf

(15)http://www.committeerepubliccanada.ca/PDF/MassStrikeIsOpportunity.pdf

(16) http://www.committeerepubliccanada.ca/WhatIsandtoWhatEndDoWeStudyUniversalHistory.htm

(17) http://www.committeerepubliccanada.ca/ADefenceofPoetry.htm

 

Queen Elizabeth II is guilty in Canadian Eskimo deportation

Published in Nov. 11, 1994 EIR cover story:

Royal Family Uses Indigenism to Cull the Human Flock

If Nuremberg Trial standards were to be applied to the case of what the British oligarchy did to the Eskimos, Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, Elizabeth II, would be in serious trouble. In 1953, the Canadian government deported several families of Inuits from Inukjuak, Quebec to the High Arctic, in order “to restore the Inuit to what was considered their proper state.” It was called “a rehabilitation project.”

In a 1994 report by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, a Canadian military serviceman stationed at Resolute Bay who witnessed the experiment, said that “he didn’t understand why the Inuit were not given quarters at the base to live in and why the ample food which was available at the base was not made available to them.” The report continued, “The servicemen were told that the Inuit were there to rehabilitate themselves… to learn how to survive on their own and go back to their old way of living. The project was to see if they could survive in that High Arctic environment where Inuit had lived in earlier times…. Temperatures of @ms55@dgF were common in the winter.” The servicemen were told that in no way were they to associate with the Inuits or give them anything unless escorted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which was running the project.

This insane situation recalls the “Do Not Feed The Animals” sign at the London Zoo. In this case, the zookeeper was the RCMP. The Eskimos were even tagged, and forced to wear a metal disk with a chain around the neck. Many official government documents show the name of an Inuit followed by their tag number.

– The `High North Relocation Project’ –

The Canadian government, an institution run by the British monarchy since the middle of the eighteenth century, considered the Eskimos to be just another species of animal. But, as were the black slaves who were trained to pick cotton by the British Confederate slave-masters in the southern United States, Eskimos were “tamed,” to do the trapping for the British Empire’s Hudson Bay Company. The living conditions of the Eskimos around the Hudson Bay Company-run trading post, were very bad. One could rightfully label these posts as “Arctic plantations.”

According to the report, “In 1930, Canada’s western Arctic population was estimated to have fallen to about 200 from the 2,000 who had inhabited the region a century earlier…. The reality was that during the 1920s and 1930s the health care of Inuit, particularly in the eastern Arctic, was in shambles…. Medical care was not given to the dying–they were turned away if they could get to a medical center or were turned out to die in a snow house or tent if already in one of the few treatment centers…. Canada was embarrassed by public criticism flowing back through U.S. military personnel entering the Arctic during the Second World War, and it has been said that if the whole truth had been made public, the Canadian government, already stinging from embarrassment, would have had much to answer for.”

In 1945, because of international pressure, the “Eskimos were for the first time … publicly recognized as citizens by receiving family allowances,” which are for “maintenance, care, training, education and advancement of the child.” (These allowances were later classified as “savings,” and in effect denied to the children of the families who were part of the “relocation experiment.”)

During the World War II mobilization in the 1940s, many Eskimos were employed in the building of military and related facilities in northern Canada, including the Arctic, and some were later retained, for example, to help with the maintenance of weather stations. “The effect of improved health care introduced after the Second World War was that the mortality rate began to decline and the Inuit population, by the mid- to late-1950s began gradually to increase.”

– Elizabeth II ascends the throne –

But Elizabeth II was made queen in 1952. In 1953, the Eskimo deportation projects started. Inukjuak, a major Inuit settlement in northern Quebec, was said to be becoming “overpopulated” (about 500 people lived in the area). But the evil reasoning behind the so-called need for the relocation was that the Eskimos were becoming more and more like the white man, i.e., too civilized: “In Inukjuak, there was a health facility, a church, a school, a fur trading post, a store, a port, etc…. So, slowly, the Eskimos were becoming a part of the whole society. Even if most people were still hunting, it wasn’t their main source of food. Many were getting some kind of benefits, either as salary, family allowance, or old age security payments, like all other Canadians who benefit from the universal social safety net.”

But, according to Her Imperial Majesty Elizabeth II, Inuits are not supposed to act human because they are Eskimos, and Eskimos, according to {Encyclopedia Britannica,} live in igloos and hunt seal, walrus, and polar bear somewhere near the North Pole. Thus, one of the British Empire’s departments–the Canadian government–enacted a policy to “correct” the problem. The government deported several families, especially those judged to be more in need of “rehabilitation,” e.g., those who had taken “the white man’s way of life.” The report stated: “It was recognized in the department that the cyclical nature of hunting could and did lead to periodic famine and starvation. This was considered the natural state for the Inuit. The goal of the relocation was to restore the Inuit to what was considered their proper state.”

– Canadian government was a tool –

In the Arctic, the RCMP was the government. “For decades, continuing into the 1950s, the RCMP were the embodiment and custodians of Canadian government policy and carried out almost every government function, from handing out family allowances to enforcing the law in the Arctic,” the report said. “The RCMP were seen as having extraordinary legal power and an extraordinary reputation for being able to deliver the results of this legal power.” One thing that shows the insanity of the whole project, and also has the hallmark of the royal family, is that the RCMP, aside from having been directed “to keep the Eskimos self-supporting and independent,” were also directed to enforce the “wildlife laws.” The Inuits were prohibited from killing musk ox or hunting caribou, the skins of which are a must for blankets and other warm clothing.

Maj. Gen. Hugh Andrew Young, the deputy minister of resources and development, pushed the “rehabilitation project” down the chain of command, with the help of his partner in crime, Lt. Cmdr. Bent Gestur Sivertz, an avowed freemason and former head of the king’s Officer Training Establishment of the Canadian Navy in Halifax, who was made Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1945.

On Feb. 20, 1953, Young wrote to RCMP Commissioner Nicholson: “As you are aware, we have been giving consideration to the possibility of transferring a few Eskimo families from overpopulated areas to places in the High Arctic…. It would be possible to establish these small settlements only with your cooperation as there is no one else at these places who could assist these people in adjusting themselves to new conditions…. We could not consider placing Eskimos at Resolute Bay unless we had someone to look after them and direct their activities…. I would be interested to hear, therefore, if you propose to open a detachment at that point this year.” The RCMP commissioner replied: “I would be quite willing to select a good man and have him stationed there with the specific job of taking care of the natives. He might even be able to encourage some hunting and trapping on their part and handle their furs for them.”

– Opposition arose –

There were people in the government who opposed this insane idea. A memorandum on May 2, 1952 by a senior official of RCMP, Mr. Carlson, who had 30 years of Arctic experience, said: “If the living standards of the Eskimos are ever to be raised they will require education, and education will interfere with their so-called nomadic life, but their life has, to a large extent, already been eliminated by changing them from hunters of meat to fur trappers. Fur trapping keeps them comparatively close to the trading post to which they go often with their fur, and, of course, the traders encourage them to do as much trapping as possible. If the Eskimos were living their true nomadic way of live, they would, to a large extent, be living hundreds of miles away from the trading posts, following caribou herds or fishing some good lakes or streams or camping at good sealing and walrus grounds…. There is really no valid reason why the Eskimos should be made or encouraged to continue as hunters or trappers in the Arctic, especially if they don’t want to…. The more employment that is found for Eskimos other than hunters and trappers, the better. I think it is useless to talk of them resuming the native way of life.”

But, Canada being Canada, if an order, or even a wish comes down from the commander-in-chief, Her Royal Highness Elizabeth II, there aren’t too many people who will have the moral courage to oppose it, no matter how insane it is.

– The sovereignty issue –

The deportation coincided with a “worry” of the British vis-à-vis the United States concerning the High Arctic Islands. The report said, “By 1946, the U.S. presence in the north had declined substantially, but within a few years it would increase again. The Cold War led to several large projects in the Arctic, this time involving the High Arctic Islands. First came the joint Arctic weather stations, followed by the radar stations of the distant early warning line. A large number of U.S. vessels were involved in the sea supply of these operations. Over time, Canada’s claim to Arctic waters became the predominant concern, and one that remains today.”

The report stated: “Mr. Denhez observed that the creation of the Arctic Islands Game Preserve involved the exercise of Canadian [i.e., British] sovereignty and was designed to reinforce Canadian control over the Arctic. The stated purpose of the game preserve was to preserve the game for the benefit of the Canadian Native people. However, there was no aboriginal population in the High Arctic Islands at the time. The question that then arose was the significance of populating the High Arctic Islands with aboriginal people as the logistical consequence of the adoption of such measure. Mr. Denhez asserted that the 1953-55 relocation must be seen against the background of many years of government efforts to assert a Canadian presence in the Arctic and that there were those who saw the relocation in terms of further assertion of Canadian sovereignty.” A 1929 Canadian government memorandum was quoted in the report: “The creation of this preserve and its appearance on our maps serves to notify the world that the area between the 60th and 141st meridians right up to the Pole is under Canadian sovereignty.”

As shown in EIR’s first installment of “The Coming Fall of the House of Windsor,” the British monarchy’s World Wide Fund for Nature’s creation of “wildlife reserves” all over the world is only a pretext for strategic control over specific areas, for the purpose of irregular warfare.

According to the Royal Commission report, “A Dec. 29, 1952 memorandum to J.W. Pickersgill, Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary of the Cabinet, situates the opening of RCMP posts in the Arctic in the context of a discussion about the importance of maintaining Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. The memorandum states that `About a year ago Mr. Pearson (Secretary of State for External Affairs) remarked in private that he wondered how good our claim was to some areas of the Arctic…. Probably of much greater concern is the sort of de facto U.S. sovereignty which has caused so much trouble in the last war and which might be exercised again.”’


 

A spokesman for the Royal Commission told EIR that “there have been hundreds of such rehabilitation projects” over the years, in which a substantial number of human lives were lost. He said that such projects are still going on.

The American System in Canada

The American System in Canada

Details: Category: Canada | Published: 16 May 2009 | Hits: 4597

 *Editors Note:  Alexandre Poisson did the pioneering research for this report.

Today Canada faces a choice between two systems – two conceptions of the nature of Man. The struggle is between the British and American Systems. This is not a new dispute in our country, but extends backwards to the time of the American War of Independence. [/blockquote]  [blockquote]The period with which we are presently concerned is that of the decades prior to 1867, the year of Confederation,[1] and leading up to the adoption in 1878 of The National Policy: the protectionist measures which would see Canada through thirty-three years of unprecedented prosperity, growth and development. There were, during this period, two dominant visions which vied for control over Canada’s future: one saw the Colony subsisting as an appendage to the British Empire – a “low-cost economy” devoted to agriculture, raw materials extraction, and the Liberal policies of the British Free Traders. The alternative to this impoverished, no-future society was for Canada to become a sovereign nation devoted to the welfare of its people, industrialization, “internal improvements”[2] and protectionism. The former was promoted by George Brown: populist, Father of Confederation, imperial asset, and owner/editor of the Toronto Globe.[3] The latter was the vision of a man having not only shrewd economic insight and a charismatic personality, but also a profound sense of humanistic nationalism: Isaac Buchanan – poet, merchant, statesman, and economist, not to mention Canada’s greatest patriot.

 

1. Canada in the Early Nineteenth Century

The national stage upon which Isaac Buchanan and George Brown would step was in a state of flux. The final years of the 1830’s, due to the twin rebellions of Upper and Lower Canada in 1837,[4] had seen martial law imposed upon the colony by the Queen’s representative in Canada, the Governor General; and only in 1841, after decades of agitation, did the imperial government adopt

Isaac Buchanan

the policy of Responsible Government.[5] Canadians were for the moment appeased, yet the colonists still had no real power over their own affairs. At the same time, Canada was attempting to develop alongside the United States, the most enviable nation on the planet, and the one with the most progressive and prosperous people. The policies of Alexander Hamilton and his successors were leading to widespread industrialization; whereas in Canada, free trade and the centralization of manufactures in England greatly impeded the colony from developing a mature domestic market for its own agricultural production. The British Political Economists that were behind these policies were of the Manchester School persuasion, composed of such names as John Bright and Richard Cobden, the heirs of Smith, Ricardo and Malthus. They were the leaders of the Anti-Corn Law League which had been created in 1839 by Lord Palmerston. The intent was to collapse the price of wheat and avoid paying the laboring class higher wages, to the benefit of the merchants and industrialists. Ironically, for all the emphasis the British placed upon free trade over the decades, they themselves never lowered tariffs on manufactures.[6]

George Brown (1818-1880)

The majority of the population was engaged in farming, their prosperity being dependent upon the whims of capricious international markets, struggling beneath colonial governments which, despite the changes of 1841, did little to improve the conditions of the masses. As an American observer noted in the 1840’s:

“Though the ratio of the increase of the population has been greater in Canada than in the United States, yet their increase of wealth has barely kept pace with the population, and they are as poor as they were half a century since. They have enjoyed the blessings of Free Trade with England all the time, we have only a part of the time. Whenever we have attempted to supply ourselves by our own industry, with the comforts and necessaries of life, we have improved our condition as a people; and during the intervals of Free Trade and large importations of foreign goods, we have relapsed again into a condition bordering on bankruptcy; while the Canadians have been constantly exhausted, and kept so poor by Free Trade, as to be unable to get sufficient credit to have even the ups and downs of prosperity and bankruptcy in succession.”[7]

Yet there were people working to create a nation in British North America: those involved in building the vital canal works of the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes, the early attempts at railroad construction, and the industrialists who managed in spite of free trade[8] to start manufactures in places such as Montreal, Toronto and Hamilton; men such as William Hamilton Merritt, the father of Canada’s canal system, and a crucial railroad pioneer; Merritt’s protégé – Canada’s “Prophet of Progress” – Thomas Coltrin Keefer, the founder of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers and the impulse behind many important railroad, canal and urban projects.

 

William Hamilton Merritt (1793-1862)

Then there was the little known “Father of Protectionism”, John Maclean, not to mention all of the entrepreneurs, merchants and statesmen that would draw Canada into the modern industrial era, many of whom were to be the friends and associates of Isaac Buchanan. These were the kind of citizens who set out to create the institutions and organizations which all nations depend upon absolutely, and who saw their country’s interest as being tied not merely to Britain and the Empire, but increasingly bound up in the young American Republic to the south and the principles for which it stood. Throughout the coming decades Canada would develop and be defined as a function of the changes occurring within the United States, the great questions of nationhood and sovereignty insistently propelling her colonial politics forward.

2. A Canadian Nation-Builder

Isaac Buchanan was born on the 21st July, 1810 in Glasgow, Scotland. He entered business when he was fifteen under the patronage of a friend of his father. By the time he was nineteen he was a partner in the company, and in 1833 the entirety of the firm’s Canadian operations were transferred to his care. He entered the mercantile business, and was one of the first merchants to open branches in Upper Canada, selling dry-goods in Toronto, Hamilton and London.Once he had determined to settle in Hamilton, he resolved upon building a railroad in South-western Ontario, eventually to be known as the Great Western Railway, connecting Toronto with Hamilton, Windsor and the Niagara region. In 1835 Buchanan founded the Toronto Board of Trade and was its president until 1837. That same year found him opening a branch in New York City, circulating amongst the highest echelons of the city’s merchant class, and at the same time being exposed for to the ideas of Henry C. Carey, the great American economist, who had just published his first major work, Principles of Political Economy. Besides his mercantile business Buchanan was also the founder of,

“churches, educational systems, hospitals, asylums, news rooms and commercial exchanges, boards of trade, national and immigration societies, insurance offices, banks, trust and loan companies, steam navigation, telegraphing, &c., &c., &c., and last, though not least, railroading.”[9]

Henry C. Carey (1793-1879)

 

Buchanan is known and beloved in Hamilton, Ontario, as the principal founder of the great industrial complex of that city. In response to the Repeal of the Corn Laws, Buchanan left Canada to organize with the working classes of Britain from 1846 until late 1851 in their fight against the Manchester School. He was engaged in pamphleteering, lobbying, writing widely to newspapers and politicians, and organizing essay-writing contests for the working classes on questions of free trade, protectionism and labor.[10]Buchanan ran for office in Upper Canada and was elected in 1854. From the beginning, being a man of principle and humor, he was favored by the press in proportion to the vitriol he drew from his political rivals. Buchanan was fond of saying that the reason he could remain aloof of the colony’s petty rivalries and work for the common good arose from his “being possessed of enough of the Scottish character to have the fear of God, and to have no other fear – to be able to realize [himself] as being perpetually in a higher presence than that of statesmen or kings.”[11] Such Christian and patriotic sensibilities would be instrumental in forming his economic and political thought in the years to come, and is perhaps most elegantly expressed in the following selection from his biography:

“Of the many subjects which seem to have occupied Mr. Buchanan’s mind, the great cause of labor is that to which he has devoted the greatest amount of thought and effort. He maintains that mere production, or the mere existence of food, is not the first necessary of life, under a state of civilization. He says that employment is the first necessary in our state of society, seeing that it in no degree relieves the poor man to know that all the granaries of the neighborhood are full of breadstuffs, if he is without the employment, which is the only key to these granaries. “He holds the question of our home labor to be unspeakably more important than the question of our external trade; the labor being the necessity, the trade the incident. He has striven that men should really eat and be satisfied with the bread they may earn by the sweat of their brow or of their brain, and not be perpetually offered up as a holocaust at the shrine of mammon, or become a mere part of the machinery which he oils and drives, and be looked upon by his employers with as little interest as the cranks and wheels of the world’s great power loom, in the din of which all uncertain sounds are drowned, together with the moans of the toil-worn. Mr. Buchanan differs from the Free Traders and Political Economists not only as denying that theirs is in truth a system of free exports, while it certainly is a systems of free imports; but in this, that their heartfelt interest is in the web, while his is in the weaver; theirs in the produce, his in the producer.”[12]

The philosophy which Buchanan would apply to his economic theories was simply a Canadian reflection of the American System. Buchanan references a speech delivered in 1844 by Henry Clay, several excerpts of which being sufficient to demonstrate the influence in Canada of the American System economists and statesmen:

“….We must cease our sectional jealousies, and all endeavor to promote the best interests of the country… Manufactures must have their place, commerce its centre, and agriculture its field… By a glance at the physical constitution of this country, it is easy to see that no ambition can profit it that is not an ambition for the whole country. No part can possibly be built up, on a sound and enduring basis, without building up the whole; and he who would by his policy retard and cripple the energies of a part, aims a blow at the whole.”[13]

 

Henry Clay (1777-1852)

The principle of the general welfare, upon which the preceding statement was made, would subsume Buchanan’s ideas and actions as he was to struggle against powerful imperial-financial interests determined to prevent the colony from achieving sovereignty. Those interests sought to stop industrialization, for at that time a nation lacking railroads and steel production could never entertain thoughts of independence. So George Brown and his radical-liberal associates would attack Canada’s attempts at development, while in truth attacking the question of nationhood itself.

3. The Tariff of 1858

In the years since his return from Britain in 1851, being at the same time involved in promoting railroad and canal development and the Reciprocity Treaty,[14] Buchanan was publishing frequent articles in Ontario’s newspapers, including the Hamilton Spectator, and William Lyon Mackenzie’s Message, on reforming Canada’s monetary system with the intention of promoting domestic commerce as a priority over foreign trade. In addition to this,

“Buchanan advocated repeal of the Union, a written constitution, elective governors, separation of the executive and legislative power, ‘and the People to keep the latter and the Power of the Purse in their own hands’… He therefore advocated the American system ‘under which the duty of ministers [i.e. the executive] is to carry out the law, not to make it.’ The only way to avoid annexation, he concluded, was for Canada to have a written constitution giving her ‘all the advantages of the state of things in the United States [emphasis added].'”[15]

In response to the depression which had struck Canada in 1857 and Buchanan’s organizing, many influential Canadian industrialists and merchants from Toronto and Montreal were brought together to form the Association for the Promotion of Canadian Industry (APCI) in 1858. On April 16th 1858 the Executive of the APCI, with Buchanan as “the leading force behind it”, met with Inspector General William Cayley, acting Finance Minister, the Co-Premier John A. MacDonald, George Etienne Cartier, and eleven other elected members of the government. Together they agreed on a tariff policy that, for the first time in Canadian history, had the “avowed purpose of giving protection to home manufactures [emphasis added – RDA].” Later that year tariffs were raised against sundry American and British goods from between 5% and 15% to an average height of 20%.[16] This bold move was not welcomed by the British industrialists of Sheffield nor by certain elements of the imperial government, who saw the colony’s sovereign decision as a dangerous precedent. In the United States were found some agitated interests; however Canadian tariffs were still, in the main, lower than America’s.[17] The tariff policy, contrary to the foreboding warnings of the Liberals and Globe, proved to be a great success, as Buchanan noted during a speech in 1863:

“One result of our patriotic legislation since 1858… was the existence in Canada of over a thousand tanneries. The manufacture of paper, of wool, of wooden ware and agricultural implements has equally increased. By manufacturing the articles mentioned we save the necessity of sending out of the Province at least two millions of dollars in cash per annum… By manufacturing these articles we not only cause an immensely increased employment for our own population that are not fit for other sorts of labor, but we retain in the Province the money for the use of the farming and other interests, thus not only increasing our supply of capital in the Province, but reducing the rate of interest at which it can be borrowed.”[18]

Buchanan understood that howsoever fared the colony’s farmers so fared the economy as a whole. Therefore, in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton’sReport on the Subject of Manufactures, he promoted the industrialization of Canada and the issue of the people’s employment as inextricably bound up with agricultural success, being very clear that the development of Canada’s domestic demand was the most certain means to ensuring stable markets for the produce of agriculture. Buchanan knew that under the current system, dominated by the free trade ideology of the Manchester School, Canada would never build that necessary domestic market, for he had witnessed,

“…the sad fate of Lower Canada, whose soil has been exhausted by over-cropping with wheat. Lower Canada blindly followed the interested or ignorant advice of the British Political Economists, and confined herself to growing wheat for export, little dreaming how large a percentage each year it took to represent the deterioration of the soil under such treatment of it.”[19]

Buchanan had been able to rally many people to his cause over the years and this had not gone unnoticed by the powers running Canada, who responded by unleashing a cadre of agents to undermine the progress that had been achieved by Buchanan and his collaborators, their most famous asset being George Brown.

4. George Brown: Voice of the Manchester School

To understand the role Brown would play in history, it is necessary to step back and review several of the more salient points of his life. Brown was born in 1818 into an ardently pro-Adam Smith and Manchester School family, whose views he had wholeheartedly adopted by the age of eighteen. He was “a consistent defender of the superiority of British institutions over American republicanism, and … a profound believer in the free-trade doctrines taught by British economic Liberals from Adam Smith to Richard Cobden.”[20]

An early hero of Brown’s was British leader Lord John Russell, the virulently anti-American grandfather and earliest mentor of philosopher Bertrand Russell. Through Brown’s entire life he was devoted to promoting the interests of the British Empire, even at the expense of the land in which he dwelt. In 1842 Brown and his father, Peter, had moved from England to New York. There the elder Brown wrote The Fame and Glory of England Vindicated, which included numerous attacks against the American System; in response, the anti-slavery American, Charles Edward Lester, composed The Shame and Glory of England.[21] Afterwards, Brown and his father began publishing a weekly newspaper called The British Chronicle, as an organ of the British System inside the United States.

Being true believers in the divine authority of their favored economic laws, both were very much opposed to demands within the United States in that period for a national bank, just as they opposed any legislative regulation or interference within the realm of business. In 1843 Brown began traveling to Upper Canada and in August of that year began publishing a small newspaper known as The Banner in Toronto. One year later he established the Globe and began promoting his economic theories for Canada. Brown stood for,

“[a] low-cost economy essentially shaped to benefit the primary producers who were the basis of Canadian commercial activity, for lowering trade barriers through reciprocity, limiting the expenditures of government, and above all, for no protective tariff.”[22]

A perennial populist, running campaigns from the editorial section of the Globe, he was forever enflaming the passions of the Protestant Upper Canadians against the Catholics of Lower Canada, or decrying the injustice of the parliamentary system of the time, which gave equal numbers of seats to both provinces when Upper Canada had a much larger population and generated a greater amount of government revenues, amongst other things. Through these types of tactics Brown operated as an asset of the British Oligarchy, promoting political and cultural divisions based on what amounted to petty single issues of no real importance for Canada’s future, except insofar as by them Brown was able to convince many people to neglect the greater questions of statecraft. Brown often attacked industrial and infrastructure development in the provinces – primarily over questions of corruption – not with the intent of encouraging honest development, but to discourage any development at all. Despite a thoroughly rotten character and utter lack of vision,[23] by 1853 Brown had built the Globe into the most widely read and influential paper of British North America.

In 1848-9, a group of young British radical-liberals, part of an operation of global destabilization unleashed by Lords Palmerston and Russell, came to Canada and began setting up several newspapers which at the time were rivals of the Globe. Led by William Macdougall, Charles Clarke, David Christie and Charles Lindsey, these men espoused extreme liberal views, which alarmed even Brown, who referred to them as a “Young Canada party” and a “faction linked with the rebellion and violence of earlier radicalism.”[24]

These young men began taking over the Reform movement of Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine and destabilizing the Reform government of 1848-51, forcing Merritt, Baldwin and Lafontaine, who were doing many good things for the colony, to resign in 1851. This marked the end of the first and only functional government since 1841, as colonial politics fell victim to radicalization – Canada would not see another effective government for many years.

In 1853 Macdougall assumed a policy of befriending Brown to win the support of Brownite Reformers while undermining him as a potential leader, for Brown possessed “a flourishing press enterprise with unsurpassed power to influence public opinion.”[25] Accordingly, by 1855 MacDougall had joined the editorial board of the Globe, while Brown had bought up all the radical publications, became a full convert to the radicals’ cause, and together they had reshaped the Liberal Party in the ‘Young Canada’ image. In 1857 Brown – as political leader and newspaper publisher – persuaded the Reformers of Upper Canada to adopt his populist platform including representation by population and free trade.

In July of 1858 Brown was asked to form a coalition government with a party from Lower Canada, which he was able to do; however two days later his Ministry collapsed, to the general amusement of the country. For the next year a demoralized Brown retreated from politics and his paper, entrusting the Globe to his brother Gordon and to his best editor, George Sheppard. Mr. Sheppard also happened to be a member of the APCI and a close ally of Isaac Buchanan. Sheppard seized control of the paper from Gordon, Macdougall and the other radical Liberals, and began writing many powerful editorials promoting constitutional reform modeled on the American Constitution, such as “the curtailment of executive power according to the American example.”

Sheppard denounced “the failure of cabinet government in Canada, demanding a written constitution and the separation of the executive from the legislature.”The Liberal press was “horrified” at the complete revolution at the Globe, which seemed to have abandoned every principle for which Brown had stood.[26] At the same time Sheppard was writing articles in other papers promoting the tariff of 1858 and defending Buchanan from the attacks which Brown sporadically made against him over this period. However, by the late summer of 1859 Brown had recovered enough to reassert control of the paper, and launched a war of slander against Sheppard’s character.

The summer of 1862 found George Brown in Britain, where he met several times with the Colonial Secretary, the Duke of Newcastle, who made clear the imperial government’s intentions for the colony. The imperial government desired the completion of a railroad to unite the separate British colonies which then made up Canada. Brown acquiesced, despite having been a vociferous opponent of railway development for some years. He met also with the shareholders of the Grand Trunk Railway, the company tasked with the building of the intercolonial, to discuss its continued financing as the project was mired in debt and corruption. The board chairman of the Grand Trunk was Thomas Baring of the Baring banking house, the principle financiers of the world’s opium traffickers.[27]Brown then returned to Canada in early 1863 in time to take part in two elections before the end of July. Later that year Brown would be the primary target of Isaac Buchanan’s most famous speech, and the one which would vault Buchanan into the Presidency of the Executive Council.

The Grand Trunk Railway

5. The Civil War and the Militia Bill of 1862

George Brown had conferred with England’s leaders in 1862, as the Civil War raged inside the United States. The outcome of this great crisis would determine Canada’s future. Since losing the War of Independence the British had been attempting to destroy the American Republic – to split the Union in two, the southern half residing within a sphere dominated by slavery, from Maryland to South America, while the northern states would be annexed to the provinces of British North America. This strategy was known by Henry C. Carey and his collaborators years before the Civil War erupted. The British had been running operations throughout the Republic, with most of the Presidents since the 1830’s being scoundrels and agents of Wall Street. Carey commented on the worsening situation in 1859 in a letter to a friend:

“…already [the British] are congratulating themselves upon the approaching dissolution of the Union, and the entire reestablishment of British influence over this northern portion of the continent. For proof of this, permit me to refer you to the following extracts from the Morning Post, now the recognized organ of the Palmerstonian government: “‘If the Northern States should separate from the Southern on the question of slavery – one which now so fiercely agitates the public mind in America – that portion of the Grand Trunk Railway which traverses Maine, might at any day be closed against England, unless indeed the people of that State, with an eye to commercial profit, should offer to annex themselves to Canada. On military as well as commercial grounds it is obviously necessary that British North America should possess on the Atlantic a port open at all times of the year – a port which… will make England equally in peace and war independent of the United States… “‘…if separation is to take place – the confederated States of British North America, then a strong and compact nation, would virtually hold the balance of power on the continent, and lead to the restoration of that influence which, more than eighty years ago, England was supposed to have lost.’ “Look where we may, discord, decay, and slavery march hand-in-hand with the British free trade system – harmony and freedom, wealth and strength, on the contrary, growing in all those countries by which that system is resisted.”[28]

In December 1861 the British mail steamer Trent, traveling towards Europe, was commandeered by a U.S. warship and two confederate agents were discovered and removed from the British vessel. “British Neutrality” was immediately exposed as a fraud, provoking uproar amongst the American public. Using the crisis and the pretext of a potential American invasion, 15,000 British troops were sent to Canada, by Lords Palmerston and Russell, to keep the colony under control, and also to threaten the Union with a two front war. From this point until the surrender of the Confederacy Canada was a de facto occupied country, and would serve as a base for British-protected Confederate assaults against the United States. In the spring of 1862 the Canadian government (of which Isaac Buchanan was a member) proposed the Militia Bill. The legislation called for a force consisting of 50,000 active militiamen and a reserve of an additional 50,000, in addition the Bill included the right to enact a draft if deemed necessary. Buchanan himself advocated a Militia of 240,000 men. The initial cost would be half a million pounds, although much reduced over the ensuing years. The Globe was vehemently opposed:

“We cannot believe that with the ‘chronic deficiency’ already existing between the annual Revenue and Expenditures of the Province it can be really intended to add so enormously to the burdens of the people… for a country like Canada with a heavy debt, a large annual deficiency and the prospect of a fourth increase of taxation in four years – it seems to us totally indefensible.”[29]

Yet this was not merely a question of finances, as Buchanan would argue repeatedly, since the expense of defending the colony’s people and property could have easily been covered by a slight property tax, and whatever increased burden this entailed would have been worthwhile. Buchanan did not put a price on something as important as self-determination. This was a question of sovereignty: with a great war raging to the south and a British army deployed along the border and garrisoned in the towns and cities, patriots such as Buchanan perceived an opportunity to advance the cause of nationhood – they argued, ironically, that in the face of a potential American invasion the country needed to arm itself and 100,000 troops seemed sufficient to protect the country from any threats posed by foreign powers. Palmerston and company, however, were not deceived; with imperial meddling and the intimidating factor of an occupying army playing a significant role, Brown and his fellow Liberals effectively defeated the Bill. They accomplished this in part by enticing a faction of the government to desert their party over the unrelated issue of representation by population!

With this defeat the government collapsed. In lieu of the initial Bill, a second was proposed by the subsequent government later in the year, though on a drastically reduced scale, entailing 25,000 inactive and insufficiently trained volunteers.[30] Then in the summer of 1863 came the turning point of the Civil War – twin victories for Lincoln’s Union forces at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. The American System of Lincoln and Carey was emerging as the most powerful system on the continent, and would soon demonstrate its vitality throughout the world. How London would respond was yet to be seen.

6. The Punctum Saliens

Meanwhile, Buchanan escalated his fight for a sovereign Canada by publishing The Relations of the Industry of Canada with the Mother Country and the United States[31], in which he proposed a North American Zollverein,[32] based on the American System which Germany imported from the United States in the 1830’s, due in great part to the work of German-American economist Friedrich List. The adoption of a high tariff customs union had led to strong progress for the German economy and people. This and other examples of the successful application of protectionist measures, not to mention the writings of “the great American Economist, Carey,” “than whom there is no higher authority,”[33] led Buchanan to believe that the national interest and sovereignty of Canada lay in a similar economic agreement with the United States, whereby the two nations would form a common customs union and tariff system, sharing the revenues thus collected in proportion to their populations. The policy would be free trade between Canada and America, but tariffs against Europe and Great Britain. The principles which would guide the arrangement would be the promotion of “internal improvements” and the further industrialization of both countries to the effect of ensuring the employment and prosperity of both peoples. Buchanan had been building networks of “distinguished Americans [who were] delighted” with the idea and ready to press forward with the policy. James Wickes Taylor, special agent of the U.S Treasury, who had been charged with making inquiries into the relations between Canada and America, had submitted a report to the government advocating the adoption of the Zollverein, which Buchanan published in his 1864 economic platform The Relations of the Industry of Canada, with the Mother Country and the United States.

From the early summer of 1863 and for approximately the next year there was an escalation between Buchanan and Brown, with scores of articles written by both men. In view of Brown’s aggressive populism and political opportunism Buchanan made the following observations:

“More and more, every day it is seen that Mr. Brown is a Judas in the people’s ranks, and has betrayed true Reform and the best interests of the Province with a kiss. He nominally goes for Reform… only while it suits his selfish purpose.” “Mr. Buchanan calls [Brown] the Canadian Robespierre, the difference being that when the French Robespierre could not silence the arguments of his opponents he extinguished the opponents themselves; whereas the Canadian Robespierre, less manly, deprives all who dare oppose him – to the extent the Globe can – of their character.”[34]

On December 17, 1863 at a dinner in honor of the Canadian Parliamentary Opposition Convention, Isaac Buchanan gave a speech which continues to define the ongoing struggle over the destiny of Canada. The government at the time was led by the Reformers John Sandfield Macdonald and Antoine Aimé Dorion, the party of which George Brown was the “overlord.”[35] Earlier that month Buchanan had been celebrated as one of the Pioneers of Upper Canada, along with his old and much respected friend, the late Honorable William Hamilton Merritt. Buchanan spoke in reply to a speech that had been made concerning “the internal improvements of the Province.”

“The most appropriate thing he could say in reply to the toast was that the internal improvements of the country would not be encouraged by the present Government [Cheers and laughter]…. “It appeared to him that there was a great and obvious determination among the lower radical statesmen (Richard Cobden and John Bright – RDA), in England, to interfere with our Responsible Government in Tariff matters, and no Ministry had ever gone so far in the direction of countenancing them as the present men. “The true economical policy of Canada is to promote the prosperity of the Canadian farmer. And how is this to be done is the simply political question of the Canadian patriot… “True political reform, (such as we had before the Globe came to Canada) is, in a progressive state of society such as we have in America, the truest conservatism. We must be economical not only in applying the people’s money for their own benefit, but in securing for our own people all the employment we can, in making the articles we require, seeing that when the manufacturers live in a foreign country they are not consuming the productions of the Canadian farms. No country can be great without having rotation of crops, and no country can have this without having a manufacturing population to eat the produce which is not exportable. “The adoption by England for herself of this transcendental principle [Free Trade] has all but lost the Colonies, and her madly attempting to make it the principle of the British Empire would entirely alienate the Colonies. Though pretending to unusual intelligence, the Manchester Schools (like our Clear Grits [Brown’s Liberals – RDA]), are, as a class, as void of knowledge of the world as of patriotic principle [Cheers]. “As a necessary consequence of the legislation of England, Canada will require England to assent to the establishment of two things, on the subject of which time did not permit him now further to enlarge. 1st, An American Zollverein. 2nd, Canada to be made neutral territory in time of any war between England and the United States….”[36]

The speech was widely acclaimed in the conservative press. It took almost three weeks for the Globe and its pilloried editor to patch together a response, which appeared on January 6, 1864:

“[The Conservative press] are all unanimous in their expressions of its approval. It was a great speech, a magnificent speech a regular “screecher.”…They endorse the sentiments it contains, the principles it sets forth, and not for many a long day has such an excellent speech been given to the world – so they all declare. “In other words, England must give up free trade – a principle which, the farther it is carried out, the greater has her prosperity become, a principle which is seated deep down in the hearts of the people, a principle the correctness and beneficial power of which is recognized by the greatest thinkers from Adam Smith downwards, or else what? Why the people of the colonies, smarting under the intolerable wrong done them, will rise against the Imperial authority, and foreswear for ever their allegiance to the Crown. “‘He [Mr. Buchanan] believed that, as a necessary consequence of the free trade legislation of England, Canada would require England to assent to two things. First, an American Zollverein. Second, Canada to be made neutral territory in time of any war between England and the United States.’ Only this can save us from annexation! What a modest proposition! “If not, according to Mr. Buchanan, the inevitable result is that we shall, as did the thirteen colonies, become separated from the parent State [emphasis added – RDA]. “[Buchanan intends] that Canada should be left to herself, to protect her territory… With the power of peace or war thus given to us; with all British commercial interest in us destroyed by artificial restraints [Zollverein – RDA], what else should we be but an independent country?”[37]

The lines were unmistakably drawn between these two men. Buchanan, who had been pushing such independence for decades, was clear: this was the policy that would engender Canadian prosperity, and people in the United States, under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln, were prepared to listen. Buchanan was at the height of his power and his influence. His speech of December 17th had been universally acclaimed and published extensively, demonstrating widespread support for his policies. The Globe launched a major campaign against Buchanan throughout January, repeatedly attacking him and the ideas he had presented in Toronto.

Despite the Globe‘s Jacobin tactics, in April of 1864 the new Macdonald-Taché Ministry appointed Buchanan to the Presidency of the Executive Council[38] for the purpose of developing a new relationship with the ascending United States of Lincoln and Carey, which was well on its way to victory. Immediately, on April 8th, the Globe unleashed a series of slanders about Buchanan, but he was too popular and too widely known to be much harmed by anything Brown could throw at him.

However, in June of 1864, as the last in a long series of short-lived Ministries, the Macdonald-Taché government collapsed in the face of extensive disillusionment and dissatisfaction with the union between Upper and Lower Canada. The populism that Brown and his radical collaborators had been encouraging for years had gained enough support, and had created sufficient divisions within the parties that nothing was able to function. Several months previously, Brown had gotten himself appointed to head a special committee that would move the provinces toward confederation as a way of allegedly solving the various issues that were making it impossible to govern. He presented the case for federation in June and managed to bring together a Grand Coalition to accomplish the necessary changes. This amounted to an effective coup against the progress that the patriotic forces in Canada had been making since 1858, as Buchanan was forced out of the Presidency and Brown appointed in his place.

The next several years would see the assassination of Lincoln, the cancellation of the Reciprocity Treaty on the part of the United States and the subsequent raising of American tariffs, the lowering of Canadian tariffs from protectionist to revenue levels in 1865, and the creation of a country with no purpose but, in the words of the 1867 British North America Act, to “promote the welfare of the Provinces… and the interests of the British Empire [emphasis added] “. In the meantime Isaac Buchanan had fallen into bankruptcy and out of public affairs. He would not be cleared of debt until 1878.[39]

7. Bloody Confederation

George Brown and his allies succeeded in deposing the government of Isaac Buchanan in mid-June, 1864. Brown himself became president of the executive council in the new government proclaimed June 22, 1864. Brown was chosen to begin negotiations with the imperial government on the plan for union, and to confer on the defense of British North America, necessarily including the increasingly volatile issue of the use of Canada as a base for British-protected Confederate operations against the United States. The content of Brown’s discussions with the British is of course secret. But the timing of these talks, first those with British representatives in Canada and then across the Atlantic in England, coincided with the great drama unfolding in Canada and the USA.

George Sanders arrived in Canada from England in June, 1864, to set up the action team for assaults against the United States, together with British Colonel George St. Leger Grenfell and Confederate secret service officials such as Jacob Thompson and Nathaniel Beverly Tucker. Col. Grenfell was the son and nephew of the founders of the family bank which later became Morgan-Grenfell, representing the financier oligarchy to whose service George Brown devoted his career. The Kentucky-born Sanders was the chief American spokesman for Lord Palmerston’s pet revolutionary Giuseppi Mazzini. Sanders had been hired as a paid agent of the Hudsons Bay Company by Sir John Henry Pelly, Governor of the Hudsons Bay Company and Governor of the Bank of England.

In the first week of July, the second week after George Brown’s Canadian government came into office, Sanders, Thompson, Grenfell and others of the Anglo-Confederate team were in Niagara Falls, Ontario, for a meeting with American peace advocates, led by Horace Greeley, a meeting designed by Sanders to embarrass President Lincoln. That Niagara Falls conference became famous when Greeley wrote to Lincoln about it, and increasingly famous after the Lincoln assassination, because George Sanders at Niagara Falls was openly advocating Lincoln’s murder.[40]

Confederate secret service agent John Wilkes Booth arrived in Montreal on October 18, 1864, to begin conferences with Sanders and the action team.The next day, October 19, Canadian-based Confederate guerrillas, deployed by Booth’s host Sanders, raided St. Albans, Vermont, robbing $200,000 from banks, wounding several and killing a pursuer. This was the most famous act of terrorism in the American Civil War. The raiders returned to Montreal, were arrested – and were soon released, causing a scandal throughout North America and straining U.S.-British relations. John Wilkes Booth is known to have exchanged $455 for a bill of exchange for English money, in the Ontario Bank in Montreal on October 27.[41] Booth was back in New York City on October 29 and in Washington on November 9, 1864.

George Brown left Canada for England early in November, 1864. By this time Col. George St. Leger Grenfell and others of his action team had been arrested in Chicago by U.S. detectives, and were accused of planning terror attacks and assassinations in the American Midwest. During his time in Britain, George Brown spent many hours at the Colonial Office; he met with William Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Brown had conferences at the War Office on the matter of defense. Lord John Russell summoned him to the Foreign Office and grilled him on Canadian-American relations. Brown met with dozens of other members of the British elite, and spent time with both John Bright and Richard Cobden. Before leaving, Brown spent a weekend with Prime Minister Palmerston.

Meanwhile, in January, 1865, a military commission in Cincinnati, Ohio, began the trial of British Colonel Grenfell.

Brown returned to Canada in February, 1865, having settled military matters pertaining to the approaching end of the American Civil War. Brown had imperial approval for his plan for confederation, which he took to the various provinces. Queen Victoria, after her government and military leaders had conferred with George Brown, wrote in her diary on February 12, 1865, that she had talked that day “of America and the danger, which seems approaching, of our having a war with her, as soon as she makes peace; of the impossibility of our being able to hold Canada, but we must struggle for it.”[42] The Confederate army surrendered April 9, 1865. The hit team led by John Wilkes Booth struck April 14, killing President Lincoln and wounding Secretary of State William Seward. On May 2, 1865, the new President, Andrew Johnson, issued a proclamation that “It appears from the evidence in the Bureau of Military Justice that the … murder of … Abraham Lincoln [was] incited, concerted and procured by and between Jefferson Davis … and Jacob Thompson, … Beverly Tucker, George N. Sanders, … and other rebels and traitors against the government of the United States harbored in Canada.” Booth was caught up with and shot. A military trial of members Booth’s hit team beginning May 9, charged them with “conspiring together with … George N. Sanders, Beverly Tucker, Jacob Thompson … and others unknown to kill … Abraham Lincoln….” Three were hanged and four imprisoned for life. Meanwhile the military tribunal trying Col. Grenfell sentenced him to death. British Foreign Minister Lord John Russell wrote June 17, 1865, directing the British Ambassador in Washington to urge the U.S. Government to spare Grenfell’s life. President Andrew Johnson commuted the sentence, and Grenfell joined other members of the action team in the U.S. prison on Dry Tortugas. In May, 1865, Brown returned to England on an official mission to settle Canada’s future. The Prince of Wales, who would later become Edward VII, invited Brown and his entourage to a dinner for 2000 at Buckingham Palace, and afterward “gave them entrée into the cozy inner circle of 100.[43] He invited them to private dinner parties, then kept them upstairs to all hours, smoking cigars with him, as he chatted at ease in a superb Turkish dressing gown.”[44] They met with the Imperial cabinet, the French Royal Family, the heirs of Louis Philippe, and with Queen Victoria herself. With these meetings concluded Confederation could go ahead and the British oligarchy could rest assured that their interests would be maintained, the policy of looting Canada remaining standard procedure. This new relationship was much better for the empire, as the Oligarchs could avoid all the messy considerations of actually running such a vast territory and concentrate instead on what they really enjoyed – stealing.[45] After a series of meetings and conferences, with George Brown as a driving force, and Canadians having basically thrown away their sovereignty, the “nation” of Canada was born, with the passing of the British North America Act in March 1867, by the British Parliament.

8. Resurgence of the American System

In response to the take-down of the protective tariff in 1865, the APCI was revived to begin lobbying government to have the tariff returned to the pre-1865 levels. Also in the late 1860’s the Manufacturers’ Association of Ontario was founded, which later became the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association in 1887, an organization which grew to include approximately 50,000 members by the 1950’s. In addition to the response from industry, a new voice for Protection in Canada entered the arena of political-economic debate. John Maclean,[46] one of the founders of the Manufacturers Association of Ontario (MAO), published in 1867 the first in a series of pamphlets attacking free trade and promoting protectionist measures for the young country. The tract was eloquently written and was a thorough examination of the arguments used by the Free Traders. Maclean argued that the widespread support of free trade in Canada was derived from,

“A superficial, only partially informed, and uncritical idea of what is English opinion on the question of Protection and Free Trade, and a weak deference to so-called commercial authority, [these] are the main supports upon which popular Free Trade public opinion rests in these Provinces… “We are asked to believe in Free Trade because, say its advocates, if it were not the right decision, the eminent statesmen and great political economists of the day, with the nations whose opinions they lead, would not be found adopting it.”[47]

Maclean cites the authority of Henry C. Carey frequently, also referring to articles published in the New York Tribune, which was the mouthpiece of the American System in the United States, and owned by Horace Greeley, who had also been the associate of Isaac Buchanan since the early days of the APCI and the 1858 tariff. Maclean also made numerous references to Buchanan’s writings, who was one of the most important influences on the shaping of Maclean’s own policies. Maclean uses examples of the successful application of protectionist measures by the United States as well as the German Zollverein to make the case for Canada’s adoption of similar policies.

Maclean would remain active as a journalist and pamphleteer until the adoption of the National Policy in 1879, in which he played a crucial role, being then employed by the Minister of Finance after 1878.

In the years immediately following the turmoil of the Civil War, American exports did not rise above the level reached before the war. But after this lull, the ultra-high tariffs, the government-sponsored railroad construction and the other pro-industrial measures of the Lincoln Administration took their full, spectacular effect.During the decade of the 1870s, America industrialized at a pace never seen in the world before or since. The U.S. became the leading industrial country. U.S. exports tripled in the 1870s. Soon Germany, imitating American protectionism, soared past Britain into second place. Russia and Japan, both American allies, were advancing fast, threatening to leave Britain a minor power. American-style nationalism was the order of the day.

In a pamphlet published in 1879, John Maclean wrote, “Great was the change … witnessed, during the later period [1873-78], when the failure of European and other markets sent British prices tumbling down [beginning in the Depression of 1873], and when our American neighbors, but recently the most profuse and extravagant buyers in the world, suddenly stopped all that and became a nation of pushing and eager sellers instead. A vast commercial revolution had burst upon the world, while Canadian affairs were in the hands of men who saw nothing worse than a slight temporary disturbance, that must soon blow over.”[48]

Maclean, attacking the policies of the Alexander Mackenzie government of 1874-78, which was the party of George Brown, compared them to a ship which, having sailing under prosperous trade winds, now finds itself steering directly into the middle of a hurricane. “The storm struck the ship just when she had been taken in charge by a new captain and pilot, who thought that to steer her out of the storm’s path was no business of theirs at all.”[49]

9. Reciprocity Revisited

The response by Mackenzie to the collapse of 1873 was to send George Brown, now a member of the Canadian Senate, to the United States to secure a renewal of the Reciprocity Treaty. Then, at the request of Canada’s “sovereign” government, the imperial government in Britain appointed George Brown and the British Minister in Washington, Sir Edward Thornton, to negotiate with the United States.

But the U.S. turned down Brown’s proposals of various concessions to American trade. What the American government wanted was “to have differential duties against British goods inserted into a trade agreement with Canada.” “But Brown was firmly opposed to the idea of giving American goods a privileged position in Canada through preferential duties over British goods, or to anything like a North American customs union [emphasis added].”[50] Over this point the negotiations, for all intents and purposes came to an end. Brown and his beloved free trade had failed. Meanwhile the numbers calling for Protection were mounting.

10. The Election of 1878 or ‘Brown’s Last Stand’

In the fall of 1877 Canada remained in the grips of depression, widespread unrest amongst the working classes, collapsing public revenues and an increasing clamor for protectionism.

“Brown’s Globe still stood unshakably for the British Cobdenite principles of free trade and economic liberalism. Trade would right itself, it confidently proclaimed. The harvest had been good; the world-wide slump was a necessary purge after speculation and over-indulgence that would bring a return to economic health; and Canada was suffering far less than other countries.”[51]

The paper continuously denounced the Conservatives’ National Policy, which would introduce the American system of high tariffs and national development, as heralding a disastrous fate far worse than anything experienced during the course of the current depression. Canada was, after all, a country inevitably committed to producing “low-cost raw materials” and foodstuffs for the world market.[52] Despite the arguments of Brown’s newspaper, the Canadian people were not prepared to wait for the invisible hand to make things right in its own good time. They wanted a government which would boldly act in a time of crisis. The National Policy was sounding increasingly attractive to a population confronted with,

“…the Globe‘s disquisitions on the infallible working of economic laws or the Mackenzie government’s insistence that austerity and retrenchment offered the only possible way out. The discussion went on into the bleak winter of 1877-8, as the Globe repeatedly tried to sniff out signs of recovery and prove the soundness of the sensible Liberal policy [emphasis added – RDA].[53]

But there was no recovery to be had. In fact Canada was bleeding out its people. Emigrants to the USA sought a better life where government protection made the native industry thrive. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 1860 and 1880 the number of Canadian-born persons living in the United States rose by 287%, from 250,000 to 717,000. The election was set for September 19, 1878. In the last weeks Brown himself left the confines of the Globe editorial room and toured Ontario, delivering excruciatingly long diatribes against the National Policy, ranting for hours on end. But on election day the will of the people rang clear – the Liberal government of Brown and Mackenzie had been smashed, shattered, and routed completely; their free-trade, laissez-faire policies rejected wholeheartedly.

11. The National Policy

The Conservatives came to power and immediately began implementing their plans for recovery. John Maclean was hired by the Minister of Finance, Sir Francis Hincks,[54] and being a founding member of the Manufacturers’ Association of Ontario, would play a crucial role in making the Conservatives’ election promises a reality. In 1879 a meeting was convened with the MAO in Toronto, where the leading members of the various industries met separately to draft tariffs covering their own goods. A similar meeting was held in Montreal for the industrialists of Eastern Canada. The two groups then met in Ottawa and agreed upon a tariff which was submitted by Hamiltonian industrialist Edward Gurney, the Association’s President, to Sir Leonard Tilley on the advice to adopt it as it stood; with few exceptions this was to be the case. That same year a jubilant Maclean would write,

“In vain are the arguments of Adam Smith, powerful as they were against certain absurdities at the time, invoked against Protection as it is shaping itself in ours. He denounced Protection of the few at the expense of the many, but what would he have said had he lived to see Protection demanded by the millions, and resisted chiefly by a few learned doctrinaires and by the narrower interests of mere carrying, buying and selling, as distinguished from the broader and more popular interests of actual production?”[55]

The National Policy included more than a simple tariff. The tariff itself was designed to encourage the manufacturing of whatever Canada had the potential to produce – wheat, textiles, coal, and steel, for example; while leaving the import of such goods as coffee, tea, and cotton duty-free. There was a special emphasis placed upon developing the country’s machining capacity for agricultural equipment, an area in which Canada remains a world leader to this day. Because of the need to move goods rapidly to all parts of such a sprawling country, the other critical feature of the National Policy was the intention to build a continental rail system, completed in 1885, after which Canada would boast of having the longest rail network in the world. The combination of tariff and railway contributed to developing a strong east-west exchange of goods; meanwhile the government’s revenues increased substantially. Industries of all sorts began appearing. In Toronto, the number of manufacturing companies more than doubled between 1881 and 1891, from 890 to 2109. The number of industrial companies nationally went from 38,898 in the early 1870’s to 69,716 by 1891, and the number of people employed by these companies increased from 182,000 to 351,000.[56] The Conservative government held power until 1896, when they fell to the Liberals under Wilfred Laurier. These Liberals, however, maintained the essential characteristics of the National Policy, until they lost in 1911. Thirty-three years of successful protectionism, that gave birth to modern Canada as an industrialized country – not too bad for a policy that George Brown called a “miserable will o’ the wisp”![57]

12. A Patriotic Legacy

In 1879 John Maclean referred to the National Policy as “Canada’s declaration of independence;”[58] to a certain extent it was, even though the country remained tied to the British Crown. But despite the events of 1864-7, something of that patriotic and visionary spirit, evinced by men such as Isaac Buchanan, has endured. In 1876 the fruits of the legacy of Canada’s patriotic nation builders were displayed to the world, when, at the Philadelphia Centennial Celebration Exhibit, Canada displayed the third largest number of machine tools, with only America and the combined German states showing more. Canada received an astounding amount of praise, as related by Thomas C. Keefer, noting the observations of various international figures:

Thomas C. Keefer (1821-1915)

“No other country produced a stronger feeling of surprise by the extent and excellence of the general machinery exhibit than did [Canada]… ‘Canadian machinery has a character of its own; unlike some of the Continental nations, theory has not gone before practice, from the circumstance that her engineering knowledge and experience, have not reached the foundry and smithy through the technological college, or classroom, but rather from the teachings of necessity… the style is a mixture of English and American, but more of the latter than the former… but with a considerable trace of original thinking

 

interspersed throughout all’… ‘Perhaps their most perfect tool was a large slothing machine of fine proportions, most consistently carried out in all the details, with every part in good keeping with the other, which is a rare virtue, and seldom manifested by those makers who can only imitate’… ‘There is a freshness and a youthful vigor manifested both in design and execution that foretell a future giant.'”[59]

Furthermore, Keefer, in 1899 (and at 89 years of age no less), gave a speech to the Royal Society of Canada where he “projected an ecstatic vision of the tremendous industrial future which lay ahead for Canada in the hydroelectric age, the one prospect that particularly excited his imagination was that of smokeless, high-speed, electric trains racing noiselessly between clean well-lighted conceived of progress as being tied to our ability to improve ourselves and our environment, was crucial to understanding how they were able to shape their societies imperial dictates from the mother country, but of our dynamic relationship with

the Republic of the United States. That men such as Buchanan and Keefer as they did; just as this same idea, rooted in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, continues to be the defining factor in that nation’s greatness. A nation without cities.”[60] Canada, like America, was built by visionaries who purposefully set out to create a nation. Anything good which we have today in this country is the result, not of the

a purpose is no nation at all, and insofar as America has pursued that purpose, so has she prospered; to the extent that she turns from her mission she suffers.Canada as a nation remains a nascent proposition. Knowing this to be the case, will the young generation of Canadians take up the legacy of Isaac Buchanan and the principles he represented? Will we create a truly sovereign nation devoted to the advancement of its people? These are the questions held perpetually before our eyes, as we of the LaRouche Youth Movement strive for the creation of a Canadian Republic, so we might form that more perfect union amongst our fellow men.

[1] But not the year we became a nation, for that happy time eagerly awaits the blossoming of leadership represented by Lyndon LaRouche’s Youth Movement, who are dedicated to the creation of a Republic committed to an idea: the promotion of the happiness and welfare of all Canadians and their posterity.

[2] i.e., infrastructure development.

[3] Today’s Globe and Mail, the period’s most influential newspaper.

[4] Ontario and Quebec respectively.

[5] The British decided to grant the colonies of the Empire control over any matters of trivial consequence, while the matters of true import, such as trade and defense remained in the hands of the Crown.

[6] Since that time “Manchester School” has referred to 19th century radical liberalism, meaning laissez-faire, free trade, government withdrawal from the economy, and intentional lying with regard to the “harmonious” effects of free enterprise capitalism. The doctrine of the Manchester School has been kept alive through such morally upstanding characters as Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman and the ideologues of the Mont Pelerin Society.

[7] Ezra Champion Seaman, Essays on the Progress of Nations (1853), p. 599. The Seaman passage is quoted in Isaac Buchanan, Relations of the Industry of Canada with the Mother Country and the United States (hereafter “Relations“) (1864) p. 152.

[8] Prior to the Repeal of the Corn Laws of 1846, Canada had been a part of the Imperial Free Trade system, whereby the colonies would supply raw materials, and in return would purchase their finished goods from Britain. This was the policy of centralization of manufactures. After 1846 Free Trade was extended beyond the empire, pitting Canadian farmers against U.S. and other farmers for exports to England.

[9] Morgan, H. J. Sketches of Celebrated Canadians (1862) (hereafter “Sketches“).

[10] “One of the greatest compliments (according to his own estimation) paid to Mr. Buchanan in Britain, was by the working classes whom he had assisted against the Free Traders, in their successful struggle for the “ten hours’ bill,” on which occasion he was waited upon by a deputation representing a hundred thousand men, at that time mostly unemployed in London, with their tribute of thanks. A proposal was at the same time made, to purchase, if he would agree to become a party to it, a London evening daily newspaper, for sale, the Courier, to advocate their common views, which then they proposed, in his honor, to call the Currency Reformer.” Relations pp.438-439.

[11] Sketches.

[12] Sketches.

[13] Relations p. 41. As proof of Clay’s profound influence over his own policies, Buchanan had included on page 30 of that volume his decades-earlier endorsement of that statesman as “the greatest living American.”

[14] In 1849, in the aftermath of the Repeal of the Corn Laws and the depression of 1847, a large group of colonial businessmen formed a league which published a document entitled the Annexation Manifesto. Their argument was that due to the adoption of free trade, the British left Canada with no option, but to seek protection behind the American tariff system by joining the United States. Eventually Britain responded to the plight of her colony and organized the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, a ten year trade agreement, which had granted access for Canadian farmers to American markets, while at the same time giving Americans free access to Canada’s canal systems and Atlantic fisheries.

[15] Gates, Lillian F. After the Rebellion: The Later Years of William Lyon Mackenzie. Toronto & Oxford; Dundurn Press 1988. p. 268. Mackenzie, a contradictory character himself, did not necessarily endorse Isaac Buchanan’s theories, but he was engaged in an extensive dialogue with him throughout this period and felt that it was important that Buchanan’s ideas were circulated widely.

[16] Careless, J.M.S. Brown of the Globe, Macmillan Company of Canada Limited; Toronto 1959. Vol. 1 p. 259.

[17] American tariffs were generally higher than Canadian tariffs by anywhere from 5% to 20%. Interestingly, America actually saw its manufactured exports to Canada increase by $899 399 from 1858 to 1859. This likely has to do with British exports being penalized by the significantly greater transportation costs required to bring British goods to Canadian markets, thus creating, in a sense, a two-tiered tariff system which gave an advantage to the proximity of American manufactures. A hint of Buchanan’s Zollverein can be detected.

[18] Relations p. 13. When specie (gold) was withdrawn from the country the money supply was contracted, and bankers would raise interest rates to as much as 20 – 30%, strangling the economy.

[19] Relations p. 14-15.

[20] Careless Vol. 1 p. 160. Buchanan would refer to the Manchester School and the Free Traders, Brown included, as “holding the doctrine of Robespierre – perish the Colonies rather than our theory.”

[21] Lester, while Consul to Genoa, wrote of his travels to England, describing the widespread poverty amongst the lower classes, and the pervasive corruption of the aristocracy, all of which functioned beneath the yoke of a tyrannical monarchy.

[22] Careless Vol. 2 p. 337.

[23] Some may object to our portrayal of Brown, saying that we should not judge him so harshly; perhaps he just didn’t know any better, for he seemed to treat his friends and family well enough! But “decent” people often perpetuate evil policies. Look at the world-destroying policies that today’s financiers promote – slave labor systems, genocide, financial speculation – yet they probably kiss their children and wives goodnight and shake hands with their neighbors like the rest of us.

[24] Globe, December 23, 1849.

[25] Careless p. 181.

[26] Careless Vol. 1 302-3.

[27] The railway was to run from Quebec City to Windsor. The intention was not to promote the development of industry and infrastructure in the colony, since the policy of free trade and the centralization of manufactures continued; instead, it would seem, that the desire to have an intercolonial railroad was rooted not only in imperial cronyism, but also the Empire’s fear of American influence within British territory. The Grand Trunk’s construction was being financed by Canadian revenues, which went directly into the pockets of the British investors who were directing this vast looting operation from London.

[28] Salisbury, W. Allen, The Civil War And the American System, EIR 1992. pp. 30-1. Henry C. Carey, “The Financial Crisis, Their Causes and Effects,” in Miscellaneous Works pp. 21-24.

[29] Globe April 10, 1862. Brown never supported a colonial militia. He preferred to have Canada call upon the British army whenever defense became an issue. Of course, a country without an effective means of defense, and lacking the capacity to manufacture the necessities of war, can never seriously consider a bid for independence.

[30] Regardless of the decisions made by the government Buchanan founded the 13th (Hamilton) Battalion of Infantry (later the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry) and held the rank of lieutenant-colonel for about two years. He had seen service during the rebellions of 1837 and was one of the highest ranking officers in the Militia service. Under any Canadian military operations Buchanan would have played an important role.

[31] Composed of a compilation of his speeches, pamphlets, essays and letters. It also included excerpts from economic authorities such as Henry C. Carey, J. Barnard Byles, and the writings of other Canadians and international figures, including an 1832 essay entitled A Monarchy Surrounded by Republican Institutions, by Marquis de Lafayette, translated by James Fennimore Cooper. This publication strongly advocated protectionism and sovereignty over economic, domestic and foreign policy. The central feature which emerges from the text is the need for a Canadian-American Zollverein.

[32] The intention of the Zollverein, the opposite of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), was to create high wage, highly industrialized economies on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border.

[33] Relations p. 155. Excerpts from Henry C. Carey’s writings, sometimes at lengths of over three pages, are littered throughout Buchanan’s own work, particularly inRelations, declaring, “Of these works I trust there will soon be got up cheap Canadian Editions for the million, through the exertions of the Association for the Promotion of Canadian Industry [emphasis in original – RDA].”

[34] Relations p. 118, 144.

[35] Careless Vol. 2 p.65.

[36] Relations pp. 9-22. See also footnotes 25, 30, 31.

[37] Globe, January 6th 1864.

[38] The President of the Executive Council was the most influential political position in the colony. The president was second only to the Governor General himself, and thus wielded a proportional amount of power. Merritt, as President from 1848 until 1851, had been able to launch numerous infrastructure projects, and had incredible influence over domestic and foreign affairs.

[39] His brother Peter, who ran the family’s affairs while Isaac was engaged in politics, had died in 1862 in a hunting accident in England. Almost bankrupted in 1864, Isaac retired from Parliament on 17th January, 1865. The business struggled on until 1867, and then collapsed completely.

[40] New York Times, Dec. 30, 1880.

[41] Gen. William A. Tidwell, Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln, 1988, Univ. of Mississippi Press, p. 334).

[42] The Letters of Queen Victoria, 1926, London, John Murray, Vol. I, page 250.

[43] The core of the British Oligarchy.

[44] Careless, Vol. 2 p.195.

[45] Maclean, John. Protection in Canada, 1879. “When Confederation came up the people of Ontario and Quebec were called upon to make sacrifices, partly to meet the views of the people of the Maritime Provinces, but still more, it is believed, in obedience to pressure from England, political, financial, and social, brought to bear upon our public men, in favor of Free Trade.”

[46] Maclean is an enigmatic figure. There is almost nothing written about him, except a rumored entry for the Canadian Dictionary of Biographies that was never published, and this author has not yet been able to discover. Much of our knowledge comes from a Master’s Thesis published in 1983 by Kevin Henley, University of Quebec at Montreal.

[47] Maclean, John. Protection and Free Trade, 1867 pp. 6-7.

[48] Maclean, John. Protection in Canada, 1879 p.10.

[49] Ibid. “Mr. Mackenzie and his colleagues were thoroughly imbued with the Benthamite idea that the best government is that which governs least, and that … the sphere and duties of government should be reduced to a minimum and drawn within the narrowest possible limits.”

[50] Careless Vol. 2 318-320. The U.S. government had been fully aware for over a decade that the idea of a customs union/Zollverein was being promoted by certain leading figures such as Isaac Buchanan.

[51] Globe, October 26, 1877. Evidently Canadians should have been thankful to experience such suffering!

[52] Globe, September 3-8, 12, 1877.

[53] Careless 352-3. Globe, November 20, December 14, 24, 1877.

[54] Hincks had been a close associate of Merritt, Baldwin and Lafontaine, holding an important position in the 1848-51 government; he was an enemy of Brown and had been the target of numerous personal attacks from said personage over the years.

[55] “The Alliance of Democracy and Protection” Rose-Bedford’s Canadian Monthly and National Review, II (1879) 275.

[56] Couturier, J.P. en collaboration avec Un Passé Composé – Les Canadas de 1850 à nos jours.

[57] Globe, September 16, 1878.

[58] Protection in Canada p. 27.

[59] Keefer, T.C. Universal Exhibition 1878 Paris: Canadian Section; Handbook and Official Catalogue.

[60] Railroads p. xxii.

 

At Ottawa EIR Conference: Renewed Commitment to Inter-Continental Grand Infrastructure Projects

Preliminary reports from the session indicate that attendance included officials from eight foreign embassies, five Canadian institutional agencies, as well as over 30 from the EIR networks, and 10 youth from the LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) networks, and the continental speakers’ roster (below). Among the provinces and states represented were Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, Washington state, Massachusetts, Michigan, Virginia, and Sonora, Mexico.

The event was initiated by the Canadian LYM, after their representative, Robert Ainsworth, attended the September Schiller Institute Land-Bridge event in Germany, hosted by Helga Zepp LaRouche. Ainsworth moderated today’s sessions.

LaRouche Keynote: A Renaissance in North America

Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. gave the keynote presentation today, after opening music by a LYM choral ensemble. LaRouche set the stage for discussion by starting, “We’re presently at a point of a great world crisis…There are remedies. But the remedies require a certain kind of optimism about the future of mankind…” He elaborated this in terms of policy, culture, wealth of natural resources, and call to action for the Bering Strait/rail corridor, nuclear and priority projects.

“…If we can link these [regions], as we can, that is, Siberia to Canada, Alaska, and down into the States and into Mexico, we have the basis for a real renaissance in the economies of these regions of the world…”

Over the next 45 minutes, LaRouche fielded wide-ranging questions. A Sonora, Mexico attendee began by harking back to the 1970s and 1980s, when then Mexican Pres. Jose Lopez Portillo visited Canada, to enlist Canadian nuclear-building companies to engage in plans for 20 new nuclear plants in Mexico. Another questioner from Calgary, asked about relative per-mile costs of building maglev. A resident of central Quebec asked about what to do to repair infrastructure, given his own local example of a faulty bridge, for which the steel repair components cannot be obtained.

Mega-Projects Panel

The principal panel of the afternoon included six presentations:

  • The Eurasian Land-Bridge: Russia, Eurasia’s Keystone Nation, Ready for the Bering Strait Crossing, by Rachel Douglas, EIR Russia Desk. With a slide show of both Eurasia, and also of LaRouche’s interventions of 30 years, she reported on the latest strategic developments in Russia.
  • “New Agreement Between Canada, the United States and Mexico,” by Alberto Vizcarra Osuna, Pro-PLHINO, from Ciudad Obregon, Sonora. Vizcarra called people to the task of, “changing the face of the Earth.” He said, we must break with the failed axioms of NAFTA. He gave a vivid account of the destruction of NAFTA. Since 1994, 14 million Mexicans have left his nation. Each year, there are one million people newly thrown into unemployment.
  • Manuel Frias Alcaraz, Eng., from Mexico City, reported on his own experiences working in infrastructure projects, especially water, from the Congo Basin in Africa, to the PLHINO and PLHIGON in Mexico. He gave a ringing refutation of the global warming insanity, including explaining of the procession of the Earth. Frias invited Canada and the United States “to work with us” to rebuild. He said that we must show how Mexico, a nation that has experienced so much destruction, can be restored to full life.
  • Secretary General of the CTM of Ciudad Obregon, Sonora, Antonio Valdes Villanueva. He reported that Mexico-wide, his union has 5 million members. Thanking the EIR and LYM for their work, he said that, no matter how deep the crisis, ‘our nations are great,’ and we must proceed with our work.
  • Message from former Rep. Jeannette James (R-Alaska), former Majority Leader of the Alaska House of Representatives. She sent greetings and hearty support for the infrastructure projects, from her home at the town of North Pole, Alaska (audio-taped Dec. 8).
  • “The Worldwide Strategic Importance of the Canadian Rail Corridor Connections to the Eurasian and North American Land Bridges” by Hal B.H. Cooper, Jr. PhD, PE, Cooper Consulting Co., Kirkland, Washington

Following a supper break on site, the conference was set to continue on the theme of, organizing for world reconstruction, by viewing a video taped presentation on “Nuclear Power–Technology and Leadership Required for the Nuclear Future,” by Jim Muckerheide, the nuclear engineer for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, for 37 years. (Taped Dec. 5 for the conference).

LYM Panel: Creating A Global Renaissance

The last panel of the day, before the LYM choral closing, features presentations by three LYM members. Besides moderator Rob Ainsworth, Limari Navarette will report on the LYM organizing drive in the United States, and Canadian LYM leader Valerie Trudel will speak on rebuilding nations with the American System.

Conference translation for Spanish/English, was provided by Gabriela Arroyo-Reyes.

LaRouche’s Keynote Address to Ottawa Land-bridge Conference

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 December 11, 2007 (LPAC)–Here is Lyndon LaRouche’s keynote to the EIR conference on “The Strategic Importance of the Eurasian Land-Bridge: Canada and the Coming Eurasian World,” held in Ottawa on Dec. 11, 2007. LaRouche spoke very briefly for about 10 minutes, and then fielded questions for an hour. The conference was moderated by Rob Ainsworth.

Optimism About the Future of Mankind — The Time Has Come!

ROB AINSWORTH: I think we’re ready to hear from Mr. LaRouche, who is currently in Germany, but he’s given us his time today to discuss these great issues.

LYNDON LAROUCHE: We’re presently at a point of a great world crisis. It’s one of the biggest–probably will be unless we can control it–the biggest crisis in modern European history. We had something in the 14th century, the so-called New Dark Ages, with collapse of a number of the banks of Italy, the Lombard banks, so-called. We’re facing something similar today, but in a different time, with different characteristics.

There are remedies. But the remedies require a certain kind of optimism about the future of mankind. And here we are, in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, which essentially is the hard-core of the northern hemisphere of the Americas. We’re also at a point that we have an option for close co-development with parts of Asia, particularly the Russian part of Asia, the connection between northern Siberia, and northern Alaska and Canada is fairly obvious. Here we have areas to the northern part of the hemisphere, in two continents, which are very thinly populated, but rich in mineral resources and other kinds of resources, and also which are capable of supplying improvements in the water management, fresh water management of the respective continents, or the northern part of the continents.

And if we can link these, as we can, that is, Siberia to Canada, Alaska, and down into the States and into Mexico, we have the basis for a real renaissance in the economies of these regions of the world: Which, in the case of northern Siberia, for example, is largely an area which will be of mineral significance, and transport significance, for some time to come. We have a similar kind of situation in northern Canada and Alaska, areas which are thinly populated because of the climate, but which have rich resources underneath the soil, and which means that this is a great leverage for developing the respective countries, and for participating in the development of the hemisphere as a whole.

We had, recently, of course, this meeting in Russia, in which I was an indirect participant, but an enthusiastic one, for the development of a railway system, a tunnel, from northern Siberia, into Alaska, down into Edmonton and so forth, and into the States, a railway system which would connect obviously with some additional rail development, through Central America into South America.

This would mean, with this kind of rail development, the larger part of the world, including Africa, Eurasia, the Americas, would be directly connected by rail lines, which would be a much more efficient way, and cheaper way of transporting valuable goods, at fairly decent lapse of time, around the world. It means we can make more efficient and cleaner use of our resources. It means a great improvement in the prospects for populations throughout the region.

For example: Take the area of Northern Mexico. Mexico has had for some time, a development project, particularly one for the Pacific Coast, which is most relevant for our concerns here, which runs up into the state of Sonora. Now, here, we have a problem of population of migration: We had a great influx of population fleeing Mexico, because of a lack of employment opportunities and so forth, into the United States. And now, there’s a reversal of that, of pushing the people who are immigrants into the United States, largely as cheap labor, and pushing them suddenly back–1 or 2 million or more Mexicans–back to Mexico, where there are no places of employment open for them. They have, however, in that area, they have one project which is quite accessible, in this water project, which could open up a whole section of the state of Sonora for the kind of production which these families largely were involved in beforehand. This would connect the water system to that of the United States and to Canada and to Alaska, which would mean that we would have a better management of fresh water. We would be able to overcome in large parts of the continent, the fact that we’re running out of water in areas where fossil water has been relied upon, that is, water that was deposited there a long time ago, and we’re now drawing it down. We have collapse of the entire central United States, a collapse of the soil, literally, through the collapse of these central water systems. We’ve have a project for that purpose, standing for a long time.

Then you look at the other end of the thing, take the northern, the Arctic region, and the Russians have some excellent ships there, which are nuclear powered, which means that the entirety of this Arctic region is now opened up for transportation. And considering the kinds of things we have to transport, that’s pretty valuable. But it means that the whole region now is opened up as an area of development, at least for mining and related kinds of things.

So this is a chance to open a new era, for this part of the world, for Asia through Siberia, Canada, Alaska, the United States, and Mexico. And from there on, to other parts of the world.

The time has come, where we’ve had so many crises up to now, we’ve been through periods of wars–two wars in the last century, major wars, world wars, so-called; we’ve also had the long period of the Cold War; we have the recent strife which is destroying the United States, it’s being sucked down into the dirt, by the costs and drag of this war in Southwest Asia–and the time has come to rebuild. The time has come to rebuild with peace, to rebuild, not on the basis of globalization as such, but on the basis of sovereign nation-states, in partnership and cooperation in the tradition of the great Treaty of Westphalia, the Peace of Westphalia. The time has come to get out of these wars, and to bring nation-states into modes of cooperation where their sovereignty is assured.

And of course, that’s very important for us in North America. And Mexico is very proud of its sovereignty, the United States is proud of its sovereignty, and Canada is proud of its own sovereignty in its own territory. And there should not be any imposition of one nation on another, or dilution of these sovereignties.

But we can cooperate, in the tradition of the Treaty of Westphalia, the Peace of Westphalia. We can consider the advantage of our neighbor, our partner, and find that, by cooperating with them, like the United States assisting the development of Canada, Canada assisting the United States, the United States and Canada assisting Mexico and the reverse, that the principle of Westphalia, “the advantage of the other,” the benefit of the other, can be the proper relationship among nation-states, sovereign nation-states. And if we can do that, among ourselves, with a project like this we’re discussing here, today, we can probably inspire other parts of the world to join us, and get out of this mess we’re in, and been in for the past half-century and longer, and finally get to a system of sovereign nation-states, but sovereign nation-states consistent with the Treaty of Westphalia, the Peace of Westphalia, to cooperate, and to benefit one another. And our motives should not be to compete with one another as such, not to try to beat one another, to take advantage over one another, but rather to see what each of us can do as a nation, to contribute to the benefit of the other.

And that was laid down in the Peace of Westphalia. And if we remember what that time was like, and see certain similarities to that kind of war situation, in the wars of the past century, and in the recent wars in Southwest Asia and the threat of the spread of these wars, the spread of terrorism, now in the Americas as in Southwest Asia, the time has come to bring about peace.

We had a similar situation just recently, with the Annapolis conference held inside the United States, with nations represented from various parts of the world, especially from Southwest Asia. We had Syria, Israel, other states, meeting in Annapolis, and coming to an attitude of cooperation–it’s not yet home, we’re not yet secure on this. But we took a great step forward, not a great accomplishment, not a great treaty, but a change in attitude, a change in attitude which promises an opportunity for bringing to an end this mess in Southwest Asia. And by cooperating to that purpose, in other parts of the world, we can do the same thing.

As I would say: The time has come to make a fundamental shift, in the way in which nations have functioned in recent times. The wars of the last century, the continuation of wars, and threats of wars in this century, the onset of a financial crisis which is certainly the worst in modern history, unless we control it.

So we’re now at the point, we have to control this financial crisis. We can. I won’t deal too much with that, here, today: But one step in that, is large-scale projects, of cooperation in building infrastructure, in particular, which involves cooperation among nations, in developing raw materials where we need, to deal with a very threatening shortage of raw materials. To get into new kinds of power, which are cleaner, and better, and more powerful–this sort of thing. If we can reach that kind of cooperation now, then there’s a chance for humanity as a whole. And what we’re doing here, in this hemisphere, in the northern hemisphere of the Americas, what we’re proposing to do, with Canada, the United States, including Alaska, and Mexico, and in conjunction with Asians, through what is going to be a new tunnel between Asia and Alaska, and development of a new rail system, modern rail system, to unite these parts of the world which are among the great important raw-materials areas of the world for this kind of project.

That’s essentially my intention. That’s my mission. And with that, I leave that back to you.

– DIALOGUE –

AINSWORTH: If people have questions, there’s a microphone here, and Mr. LaRouche will take questions, for about 30-40 minutes.

Q: [translated from Spanish] Good evening Mr. LaRouche. My name is Jesús María Martínez. And my question is around the visit that José López Portillo made to Canada, some time in the late ’70s and early ’80s. And at that time, he made a proposition, an offering to the government of Canada to support Mexico in its endeavors around nuclear power. José López Portillo said to Canada, that it was that the world collaborated around this kind of nuclear development project. And he suggested that Canada be part of that effort so that Mexico could create at least 20 nuclear power plants at that time. Do you believe that those projects should be revived and put on the table, in the spirit of this collaboration with Canada and the United States and Mexico?

LAROUCHE: Yes, absolutely. This is required. Canada has a certain capability, in terms of nuclear technology, which means it’s integrated into the international nuclear technology community. The water projects are important. The use of nuclear power, as a source of power is important for the Arctic region of Siberia, and Canada and Alaska. So to deal with that climate, and to deal with handling that ice that comes up there are times, despite the global warming rumors, is important.

It’s extremely important for us in the Americas, especially in North America, to set a precedent, for the world, in a sense, admire. Mexico is actually much closer to the United States historically, than most people would believe from the outside. That is, the struggle for independence of Mexico, the struggle for its development in the 19th century, and into the 20th century, was an heroic struggle which had the sympathy of the typical American, and the American leader. My grandfather, for example, was very much attached to Mexico in this account. And Canada, the same thing: Canada is a different kind of country, but it has also its own tradition, or a couple of traditions. We have ours.

Now, we are not very strong on oligarchy, on aristocracy. We’ve had unpleasant experiences with that, and therefore we are republics in our way of thinking. We think of ourselves as citizens, we think of ourselves as equal, at least in rights. And we prize ourself on our cooperation, we pride ourself on being beneficial to our neighbors–at least, most of the people I respect, do that. And so therefore, it’s extremely important, that if you can not get this kind of cooperation in North America, I don’t think we can get it on the planet anywhere, at this point.

Or, there’s a willingness to cooperate–China has a great willingness to cooperate, for the long term. So does Russia, presently. Italy has a desire for that kind of cooperation; France does. I think most of the people in Germany do. You have this from Denmark, we have people in Sweden, and so forth. So there’s a desire for this kind of cooperation, but there’s a very poor performance in realizing it.

I think there’s a natural tendency for an alliance, as neighbors, between Mexico, the United States, and Canada. I think that by saying, “We can be sovereign, we don’t have to globalize, we don’t have to give up our sovereignty–we can be sovereign. We all can be neighbors, and we can cooperate in a positive way, not to fight each other, but in joint projects of our common interest.” It’s extremely important to do that.

I’ve dealt with this: López Portillo was a dear friend of mine, in the time that we were working together, much closer than most people know. and I think it’s a very good thing to have a friend like López Portillo–now deceased–who was victimized by people who were oppressing Mexico at the time.

And to remember a friend, and this friend, who did something good in his time for his people. He was frustrated in realizing what he was doing for his people. It’s a good thing to remember that, to honor that, and make his dream, which is a valid one, come true. It brings us all closer together, by knowing that we are cooperating with one another to a common interest.

Q: Mr. LaRouche, I want to thank you, first of all, for being with us. I’m Peter [Margot] from Montreal, and I’d like to address a practical question to you: We’re in a year of Presidential campaigning in the United States, and we have problems in Canada as well, with a minority government, which can’t really make very large decisions. What do you think the political potential is realizing some of your visionary hopes, in terms of the present political situation, both in North America and elsewhere?

LAROUCHE: Well, first of all, let’s take the North American area, because, what I say about this area does apply in Europe, and in Africa, for example: That, there’s going to be a great change in the United States. It’s coming on fast. Objectively, we face the worst depression, the worst economic depression, in the history of European civilization since the 14th century New Dark Age. Now, that does not mean that we’re necessarily going to go into a New Dark Age. It means that the present financial crisis, which is hitting us now, unless corrected, will bring us into a New Dark Age, within a matter of months.

You can not make precise predictions in politics, because you have will, the factor of public will, decisions made by voluntary decisions. So crises like this are not governed by mechanical principles. They’re governed by principles, but not mechanical ones. So we don’t know exactly the date, that anything would happen if we left things alone, or just let them go on the way they are now.

But we know we’re very near. We’re already in the process of a general collapse, around the world. All of Europe is collapsing. The banking and financial systems of Europe are collapsing. The banking and financial systems of the Americas are now collapsing, in general, especially North America. And you have similar problems in other parts of the world, even though you have an Asian factor which is rather deceptively better. But if the markets of Europe and the Americas collapse, China will collapse, Russia will collapse, India will collapse, and the suffering in Africa will become unspeakable.

So therefore, we’re now at a point, where people are going to be forced to make some decisions. We’ll not be able to go along, the way we’re going now–I think that’s apparent to you, implicitly in what you’re saying: This depression is coming on, it’s deep, it is like the 14th century.

Can we stop it? Yes.

But you look at the situation inside the United States, gives you a good idea what’s going on. We find, that among the lower 80% of family-income brackets, and in the states and localities, as opposed to the Federal government level, you find, that there is a surge of demand for reform, such as for the defense of housing against foreclosures; the defense of banking institutions, the essential ones that people need to keep their communities functioning; and other measures of that type would come along. So, the will is there in the people, a growing, rapidly expanding will to make a reform, a reform which could save us.

At the same time, you have a great reluctance at the top, especially in the Presidential pre-candidates. None of them has presently done anything that has any indication that they’re going to be competent if they were elected.

But I’m more optimistic: Because I know that they’re going to be forced to change their way of thinking, during the coming weeks and months. So therefore, the opportunity exists, for a fundamental change in political, now, in North America, in particular.

But the key thing here, is the subjective factor: The important thing in a crisis like this, is not to sit back and whine and complain, but is to present something which is concrete, which is feasible, and which will reverse public morale from fear and desperation, to one of optimism. As Franklin Roosevelt said, “There is nothing so much to fear, as fear itself.” But you have to do something to eliminate the cause for the fear. And the elimination of the cause of the fear, is positive actions, which respond to the needs of the people, when the people are ready to respond, because they realize the problem. And that these things are competent.

So, it’s the best we can do. I think there are no guarantees in history–there are no mechanical guarantees, one way or the other. But we do have, as you indicate, a great crisis–at least that’s implicitly what you said–and this crisis, the way it’s going on now, is no good for humanity, no good for us, no good for humanity.

Therefore, we need a factor of optimism: It has to be concrete, it has to be valid. It has to have a base in the general population, a base of support. And you have to have the resistance to this, coming from the top.

Let me give one example of this: One of the problems we have, is that we have lost our farmers in the United States; we have lost our industries, we just lost the auto industry essentially–we haven’t seen the bottom of it yet, but that’s what’s going on. And we’ve been taken over, largely by financial interests typified by the hedge funds, and these various kinds of things like that. Which are parasites. The parasites, the hedge funds, have bought up most of the candidates. Look at the campaigns in the United States: Most of the candidates are bought and paid for by the hedge funds! And they’re not prepared to do anything, to make the kind of reforms which are obvious reforms, which are necessary and will work, though you have the people want these reforms, or want reforms like them.

So therefore, you have a typical situation, in which we have to use the fact, there is going to be a general revolt, against the financial predators who have taken over politics, and have bought up most of the candidates. And so, the time has come when, if we give a clear set of alternatives to people in general, who are now rising, in fear, in revolt against what’s happening, and these are practical ones, and they involve international cooperation: I think we can win. I can’t guarantee it, but it’s worth a shot. And it’s better than sitting back and doing nothing.

Q: [translated from Spanish] Mr. LaRouche, I’m Antonio Valdez Villaneuva and I’d like to thank you for everything that you’re saying, and I’m here representing some of the biggest labor unions in all of Mexico, and I think what you’re doing is extremely important for all of our nations.

My question is very specific: I want to know why our nations, specifically, have abandoned these great infrastructure projects over the years?

LAROUCHE: Well, it’s a result of globalization, it’s called. You see that in the Americas, in particular, over the period since about the time of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; that we went into, very quickly, into a war in Indo-China, which there was no legitimate reason to go into. This war, which was a dragged-out from 1964 to 1975, really, weakened us. We had a similar development in England, under the government of that time, in the United Kingdom, which also did something similar, to begin to destroy the industry, the technologies of the country.

We have been declining as economies, in agriculture, industry, and infrastructure, since about 1967-68, since about the time of the Harold Wilson government’s collapse of sterling in England, and since the 1968 crisis in the United States, the result of the sterling collapse, and then the ’71-’72 change: We have been collapsing.

What’s happened is that political institutions and financial institutions have “gone with,” so to speak, these trends, to destroy industry, to destroy agriculture, to destroy infrastructure. And to rely going upon going to areas where there’s cheap labor, and looting these areas of their cheap labor, while sinking, collapsing the industry and agriculture in the more developed areas. This was a big mistake.

As a result of that, the actual per-capita productivity, physical productivity of labor internationally, has generally declined, despite a significant improvement in part of the population, about 300 million people, out of 1.1 billion in India; and a significant improvement in a minority of the population in China, and similar effects. Despite these improvements in countries like parts of China and parts of India, and other countries, the net per-capita physical productivity of the planet has been collapsing. This is particularly conspicuous in basic economic infrastructure, in industry and in agriculture, the development of land and all these kinds of things.

So we have been in a long trend. We have now come to the point, that this trend has brought us to the point of a collapse, a collapse which resembles what happened in the middle of the 14th century in Europe, in the plunge into a New Dark Age.

We find in the history of mankind, as we know it, particularly since about 700 B.C. or so forth, that we have a fairly good track on these kinds of things, that throughout our knowledge of Eurasian civilization and so forth, extended into the Americas, we find that these patterns exist: Of rise and fall, rise and fall. We have now been in a long period of decline, actually since about the time of the Kennedy assassination, in the decline in the economy. And habits have come into play which are not the best.

So, we’ve reached the point for a Renaissance. And in my view, we should look back at European experience to the fact that we had religious wars which dominated Europe from 1492, with the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, through 1648, until the Treaty of Westphalia. There were periods of lesser conflict, but throughout the entire period, 1492-1648, Europe was being destroyed, at the same time it was struggling to bring out modern society, it was being destroyed by this religious warfare and similar kinds of things. We’re going through something comparable to that now.

And what we have to do, is two things: First of all, the immediate thing, is to solve the problem before us, to get a Renaissance in economy, a Renaissance in social outlook. But then, we have to think beyond that. We have to think to the long term: Do we want to succeed in saving society from what’s coming on now, and ignore the dangers down in the future? Or shall we use this as an occasion, not only to solve the immediate problem, but also to think ahead to the future. And therefore, that’s why I put the emphasis on 1648 and the Peace of Westphalia. When people generally, in politics, think about how they can “get the better” of competing countries, for the benefit of their own, in the Peace of Westphalia, we didn’t do that: The Peace of Westphalia which made possible peace in European civilization and its progress, as much as it did progress, was on the basis of “the advantage of the other.” When we think about what we can do in our country, for the people of another country, or when we think of similar ways about social relations in general, then we bring out the best in ourselves. And that’s the best chance for surviving.

I could tell you that during my lifetime, I’m 85 years of age, in my lifetime, I’ve gone through wars and a few things like that, I’ve seen this: We have turned away from the Peace of Westphalia, we’ve turned away from recognizing the important thing, is, we’re human beings, we’re not animals. Animals die. Human beings don’t really die. They die, yes, physically. But they can contribute something while they were alive, which will benefit generations to come. Or help to do things that will benefit generations to come. It’s when we commit ourselves to help one another, as nations, without taking away our sovereignty, or the sovereignty of our neighbor, that the best comes out in us. My view is, that the best hope for us, is to recognize that: The advantage of the other, as laid down as the opening principle of the Treaty of Westphalia. And when you think about the thirty years of religious warfare, tearing apart central Europe, and suddenly, people who had been practically eating each other, suddenly came to a moment and said, “No more! No more. We’re now going to realize, the important thing, is to think of the advantage of the other, rather than ourselves. And when we’re united on that basis, then peace is durable, and prosperity is durable.”

And my view, is, we’ve got to get back to that.

Q: Good afternoon, Mr. LaRouche. My name is Meredith Hayes [ph], and I’m from Montreal. I’ve had the pleasure of working with the youth in Montreal, as well as in Boston, and California, and other places from the States.

My question is with regard to what needs to happen–with regard to specifically Canadian solutions to the current crisis. You’ve spoken extensively about the types of political and legal interventions that must happen in the United States, that have happened before and can happen again, in terms of a Roosevelt-style solution to the economic crisis in the world, within the United States. And I’m just wondering if you can give us some insight into some things that can happen in Canada, specifically, politically and legally, to facilitate this process of reforming the economy and contributing to this Renaissance, and this new optimistic economy?

LAROUCHE: Well, I think the first thing is that you’ve got–the obvious thing is the relationship of the Canadian economy to the U.S. economy. When the U.S. economy is functioning, I think the Canadian economy tends to better. And the relationship extended to Mexico, which means, essentially North America as a whole.

You can start to define some very clear missions, for example, let’s take the case of water. Or take the case of rail, take the relationship to raw materials. Quebec, for example, has a very significant raw materials potential; other parts of Canada do, too. You have industrial and agricultural capabilities in Canada, which are quite respectable, in terms of what the standards are of achievement in the past.

The Americans in the United States and in Canada, tend to think very much the same, on economic questions–there are differences, of course–but on economic questions, economic opportunities, pretty much the same. The interrelationship between the automobile industry in Canada and in the United States for example, is one of the examples of this. The way in which the Great Lakes, and St. Lawrence were integrated in terms of certain economic functions. The relationship of agricultural development in Canada, especially in the Prairie Provinces and so forth, and in the United States, in our better periods.

Then you think about the raw materials potential of the Arctic, or sub-Arctic regions of Canada, and compare that to Alaska and to Siberia. And we’ve now, then, touched upon some of the greatest opportunities for development in the world: Because, with adequate power systems, particularly high energy flux-density nuclear power systems, we can now manage most of the water problems, and most of the raw materials problems of the world. And assuming that we’re going to, within a couple of decades, get thermonuclear fusion as a technology at our disposal, we’ll be able to handle most of the problems we can foresee for a couple of centuries to come ahead.

And obviously, when you’re talking the United States and Canada, the culture capabilities are so similar, that it’s practically the same thing. It’s simply a matter of saying, we have a sovereign country, Canada, a sovereign country, the United States, which are quite comparable–English language does tend to bring us together–and has very common needs, and needs for cooperation. When you include Mexico, and look at the present problem of Mexico, and you put these opportunities, and requirements of the United States and Canada together, with that, you’ve got a package!

Particularly, when you take the Alaska connection to Siberia–and this is going to be extremely important: Because China is going to be a major indirect factor here. China is very much underdeveloped. And don’t kid yourself. While China is doing well, in some respects, China has long-term problems which are really frightening, unless you completely understand them. First you understand them well enough to understand how frightening they are; then you get to a higher level of understanding, and understand there are solutions. [laughs] But China is going to be–if it doesn’t collapse as a result of the present financial crisis–is going to be a great market for infrastructure and industry, especially infrastructure. You have a similar situation in India, but it’s also different; India is not the same thing as China.

So, the chances for work are enormous. And it generally means, go back to high technology; and go back to agriculture, industry, and also infrastructure. There, we have no problem. We need each other! Canada and the United States need each other, in a sense, also for very special reasons, Mexico also has this same relationship to the United States and Canada.

AINSWORTH: Sorry, Lyn, could you just repeat what you were saying about China? We lost connection with you there, just as you were talking about China.

LAROUCHE: Oh. Well, China has an impressive performance as a source of cheap labor, and for assimilating technologies, and production of technologies for world consumption. The relationship to Germany, the relationship to the United States, are crucial in that effect. But also China has a very large percentile of its population, and territory is very much undeveloped. So China needs, on the one hand, it can produce, and can continue to maintain itself as long as we remain a market and Europe remains a market for them. But! If China does not develop its basic economic infrastructure, and raise its standard of living among about 80% of the population, China, too, has a crisis.

But when you put together these problems, with what Europe could do if it’s revived, what Russia can contribute–take this Siberian project–over a period of a couple of generations, we can have for a couple of centuries to come, a very successful development, of China and Siberia, together with the United States, Europe, and Canada, and so forth.

So, we have difficulties, but also the difficulties, when seen properly, are also opportunities.

Q: Mr. LaRouche, my name is Jim Weber, I’m from Canada. I have a couple of questions, one which is concerning the financing of the project of the maglev train; and I’m wondering if that could be financed out of Treasury, where the workers and paid, and spend the money back into the community? Also I have some question, has there been any calculation what the cost per mile for that system would be? Thank you.

LAROUCHE: Hmm. I don’t have the figures before me, but it has been made. Actually, it’s cheaper than conventional rail, where you have sufficient utilization.

Look, for example, several factors have to be considered on this, and I’ll talk first on the price business: We’re relying too much on trucks on the highway, which is very inefficient. We should put a lot of that transport–the long-range transport, as opposed to short-range transport–put it back on rail. For large movements of high grade freight, you want speed is extremely important, speed and efficiency in delivery. Whereas for low-grade freight, you can use water transport, for example. But if you’ve got high-value-per-ton freight, you want to move it fast, otherwise, you build up your cost to the economy, and overhead cost is building too rapidly.

But, we went through these calculations some years ago, and have gone through them again and again–I don’t have the figures before me right now–but actually, maglev is actually cheaper than friction rail, when you use it properly. When you use it for high-value, people-moving, over long distances.

Let’s take one, for example, let’s take highway, maglev, rail, and air, and compare them: Now, air transport is very inefficient as a movement of freight, unless it is very high, premium value freight. It’s much cheaper to move it by rail. Now: If you have magnetic levitation systems, which are modern systems, you can actually do several things. You can move freight and people more efficiently by maglev, than you can by air, except for the longest intercontinental distances. So, it means you solve a problem: We have too much weight burden on air transport, and too much on truck, automobile, and bus generally cost. Excessively cost, when you take all of the costs, including the costs to the communities of maintaining the highway systems and so forth, it’s all higher.

So, on the relative scale, in terms of physical parameters, maglev is the most efficient. And because of its speed, and because of what you can do with it, that you can’t do with a friction rail, it gives you many advantages. But you have to see, to understand this thing–you have to see that you’re talking about a change in the structure of transportation, not just the use of one mode or another mode, for the same mode.

This means we are spending too much on air transport for short haul–it’s insane. We’re also using air transport for freight, where it should be going by rail. We’re using trucks for long-distance hauling, and the cost of operating trucks, as for hauling freight over long distances, is inefficient. Therefore, you’re moving your freight back into the rail-type of transport, and rebuilding a system that can handle it.

The general financing of this operation has to be on a state level. What it means, in the United States, we’re going to have to go back to Roosevelt’s system. We’re going to have to, essentially, take over 50% of the capital investment in the United States, for the foreseeable future, should be in basic economic overhead. For example: We should be moving from reliance upon petroleum as a fuel: Because it’s a cheap fuel, and you move it great distances at great costs, and it becomes a tool of manipulation. Whereas, if we have high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, saying of the 800MW type of the high-density reactor, we can produce synthetic fuels from water, hydrogen-based fuels, which are much more efficient. We can produce them wherever we have the appropriate type of nuclear plant. So therefore, instead of relying upon petroleum, as a fuel, or a fuel stock, we rely on water as a fuel stock, by producing hydrogen-based fuels from that.

So, what we’re talking about essentially is that.

Now, this also means, that you’re going into public financing, of long-term public investment. This doesn’t mean you’re going into a general investment of that type for all things, but for basic economic infrastructure; and this will be the biggest driver.

And also, we’re in a depression, financial depression. There is no significant amount of financial capital around, to be invested. It’s going to have to come from reorganizing the financial systems, and from using state long-term financing–I’m talking about 25-, 50-year financing–in order to build the infrastructure; the infrastructure projects will give you the driver for the industrial and related projects. And that’s the way it’s going to have to be. But it’s all quite feasible.

Q: Hi Mr. LaRouche. My name is Steve Belanger, I come from Val d’Or which is a small town in the middle of Quebec. Just some months ago in the Province of Quebec, some of our infrastructure collapsed which forced people to realize that we have to take care of our infrastructure–so, it was, “Oh!! We have to take care of our infrastructure!” [laughs] Sort of in a surprised state, “we have to take of it.” And just recently, they wanted to repair some bridge where I come from, and there was some delay, because the steel was unavailable fast enough. And I’m just thinking, we’re in a situation where we lack steel just to maintain current infrastructure, this is where we are starting from, and we are here, talking about building more infrastructure, and new ones, so we’re starting from way back!

But I wanted to ask you, what you think about the current fashion in the engineering community, about this just-in-time kind of thinking, a kaizen kind of a fashion? I don’t think everything in it is wrong–I think this idea of pushing in an assembly line, instead of pulling, or that kind of thing, I think there’s good ideas in it; I’m not too familiar with it. Unfortunately, I haven’t read on Deming, but I would want you to tell us what you think currently of the engineering community–and how, things can be built?

LAROUCHE: Well, first of all, the problem here, is that we went away from an agro-industrial policy, generally in terms of labor force employment, to a so-called service industries–especially non-professional, unskilled services. The result of that is, that you have to maintain the entire population, but you have only a diminishing part of the population, over the past 30, 40 years–a diminishing part is actually working, that is, in the sense of physical producing something. So we have to shift back toward an agro-industrial policy, and with an emphasis on higher technology. That’s progress, hmm? Therefore, you’re changing that.

Now, in just-in-time, that is a bad policy in general. Because what you want to consider is, what’s economic lot-size. When you produce something, you want to produce it in such a way that you don’t get into a lot of short-time production, which is much more inefficient, in costs, than longer term. Generally, in the old days, we used to produce things on the basis of economic lot-size, and we understood what that meant.

The problem we have today, is that we’ve gone away from an industrial society. We have most of the population is not really producing anything! They’re working, or they’re unemployed, but they’re not producing! And therefore, we have to shift back to a high-technology agriculture, high-technology industrial orientation. We also have to have much more emphasis on basic economic infrastructure. Because, the people don’t understand this, because we don’t have many people who are trained in this any more.

The importance of infrastructure: If I have a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor system, I can produce power in a higher quality, more cheaply in effect, than I can with other systems. So therefore, a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, you know, up to 800MW size, or something like that, is much more efficient for producing a kilowatt of power, than a lower, or older type. The idea that so-called soft-energy supplies, is absolute idiocy! It’s the most costly, inefficient thing you can have.

So, an investment in infrastructure–we’re talking about industrial, transportation, and so forth–actually high technology, is much more efficient in terms of cost reduction than any other system.

And the problem is, we have gone to post-industrial orientation, which means the economy is extremely inefficient; we have a paucity of high technology in infrastructure, which makes the whole thing much more inefficient. So we’ve gone in the wrong direction, I would say, since about the middle of the 1960s, just absolutely in the wrong direction, all throughout North America, and other parts of the world, as well as in Europe. And that’s where the problem is.

We have to get back to that, we have to get to a high-technology orientation, we have to get to a point where people out there, who are coming up in the educational system, are looking forward to skilled employment, technologically skilled employment, in the professions or in production. We’re going to have to upgrade the quality of employment opportunities, in terms of productivity–things like that. That’s the kind of policy we need.

It’s a big subject area, so I won’t try to explain everything at once. But that’s the direction I would reply to on this one.

AINSWORTH: Mr. LaRouche, do you have time for another question?

LAROUCHE: Yeah, sure.

Q: Hello, Mr. LaRouche. My name is Sasha Lechaine [ph], I’m also from Montreal.

I just wanted to get your opinion concerning a certain renewable resource, that there’s very little information on, at the present: As you know, the American economy in its infant stages, would not have developed the way it was, if it wasn’t for the resource hemp. The great American Constitution, its first copy was written hemp paper; George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both a large percentage of their crops dedicated to hemp. That being said, what place do you think hemp can have, in terms of this global development in terms of agriculture, ending starvation, its uses in industry, particularly in plastics?

LAROUCHE: Well, hemp is not too significant. It’s simply a fibrous plant, which lends itself to precisely those kinds of applications. And it’s not necessarily the most efficient, but it does have uses, and it’s strictly a naturally produced, industrial source of supply. It fits in just that way.

But it’s a question of economy. You have to consider the question of economy from the standpoint of agricultural production, and the use of processing this stuff, whatever you want to make of it.

AINSWORTH: Lyn, since that was a short one, do you want to take one more?

LAROUCHE: Oh, okay! [laughs]

Q: Mr. LaRouche, I want to say thank you. I appreciate very much all the education for what you do for your convictions. And my question is, when I looked all the factory in Montreal, or whatever, all the factory are transferred into shopping center. Everywhere you go, you have shopping center, you have to produce that! Then they produce mostly in China, or India, or all those place. That’s kind of bugging me. Because the more you buy, the more you pollute, isn’t it? And if you pollute, you have to take care of those pollutions. So how do we go about it? You look at the finance, the financial system is built on goods, but right now, we produce too much goods, I think. And we don’t know what to do with the rest of it.

LAROUCHE: Well, we don’t produce too much; we don’t give people enough money to buy them! [laughs]

What happened is, we formerly had, up until 1971-72, the prevalent policy from throughout the beginning period of Second World War, into the post-war period, up into the late 1960s, our policy was a protectionist policy. We used to call it, as opposed to “free trade,” we spoke of “fair trade.” For example, in the 1950s, early 1960s, you would find industrial corporations like General Electric would be talking about “defending fair trade” as opposed to “free trade.”

Now, free trade essentially, by using cheap labor, and an open market of cheap labor, tends to undermine high-technology production, which means that you go into countries, like the so-called Third World, with these runaway shops which leave the industrialized areas of the United States and Europe, and go into other countries, and use cheap labor. And they loot the country. And you find the pattern, and they go from one country to the other, loot it, and go down to another country, loot that, and so forth.

Now the result of that is, that we’ve destroyed our industries, because we destroyed, what was called protectionism, and the protection was fair trade: The idea that you take the cost of production, over the life of the investment, to produce a certain quality of production. And you would say, the price–you can not allow competition to undermine the investment. But that’s what happened: So we used cheap labor to undermine the investment in the United States, Europe and so forth. We used virtual slave labor in other countries, where this production went to.

For example, take the case of China: China has, in about 20% of the population, has benefited significantly from employment running in industry, into China. But 80% of the Chinese population is still in desperate conditions. You have in India, maybe 30% of 1.1 billion people, have a somewhat improved standard of living, relative to the time I was in military service in India, during World War II. But 70% is more miserable, than ever before!

So the point was, is the cheap labor policies, the runaway shops to cheap labor, seemed to be the law of the economy. But it means, you’re actually ruining every economy into which you introduce this kind of labor–if you look at the total population. You may find some part of the population has these jobs, which have something. But the majority of the population is being ruined, and the area is being ruined by this kind of employment.

It means we have to go back to what was called “a protectionist system,” in which we say that “the laborer is worthy of his hire, and the investor is worthy of his investment, if it’s a productive investment.”

You described this thing in Montreal: You can take any part of the United States, you will the same thing. It’s disgusting. We have to go back to the point where our people produce the value which they need to have, in order to buy what they need. Take the case of health-care, take the case of housing, take the case of education, all these factors: You must provide a standard of living which raises our people, with a quality of life which we think they should have. And that determines the price.

We cut the price down, how? By going down to higher technologies, becoming more efficient, that sort of thing–which is generally capital-intensive, or science-intensive. Get back to what we used to try to do. We were going in the right direction: We shouldn’t have gone and fallen off the bridge.

AINSWORTH: Lyn, how much longer do you want to go?

LAROUCHE: I think not too much longer. Yeah, I figured about an hour. Unless you got something real important.

AINSWORTH: Do you have any concluding thoughts to transmit to the people here?

LAROUCHE: Yeah, sure: Simply, as I said, I think that we should look at this prospect we’re discussing, in terms of cooperation among Canada, Alaska and Mexico, and the implications of that for cooperation with other parts of the world, such as Siberia and so forth: We have to look at that as, it has its own merits, intrinsic merits, particularly in a time of crisis now, when we need a recovery program, so to speak, to compensate for the collapse of the world economy. But more important, is to look at this as the reality of the advantage of the other: The reality that each of us, in each of our nations, should think about what we can do that’s going to be beneficial for other nations. And saying that the benefit we do for other nations, with what we’re doing, means that our children and grandchildren will benefit from the good that we’re doing for the world at large. And that, I think, which is the principle of Westphalia, which is also the ancient Greek term agape, which is an essential element of Christian belief, of agape, or what’s called “charity,” or what’s called “love”: That this is the essential principle.

If we love mankind, and can love the benefit given to the other nation, what are doing that’s good for them? If we can think in those terms, then we will get away from the dog-eat-dog tendency which we’ve seen again, lately, and get back to the idea that we are not animals; we do not breed progeny. We develop human beings, and we hope that the next generation will have a life better than ours, because we’ve made that improvement possible. And we see progress of this type, induced by our love of mankind, as being the motive for the way we do things, as well as what we do.

If we can get that back, that conception of agape, that principle of the Treaty of Westphalia, I think we not only can recover from this crisis which is coming down on us now, but we can also assure ourselves, that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will benefit from what we’re doing. And perhaps in this way, we’ll avoid more of the kinds of Hell we’ve had, particularly in the past hundred years. [applause]

AINSWORTH: Thank you very much for you time, Lyn.

LAROUCHE: Okay, thank you. My best wishes.

Will Canada Choose The American System

With Russia’s recent proposal that Canada and the US join it in building a tunnel across the Bering Strait, a question of great historical importance has been set before the Canadian people:


will Canada join the growing chorus of nations which are denouncing the neo-liberal ideology of free trade and globalization, or will Canadians blindly follow the dictates of lunatic environmentalists such as David Suzuki and Al Gore?
Around the world nations are moving in a new direction: towards what is now being universally heralded as the “nuclear renaissance”.  Russia and China are leading the way, with plans to build dozens of plants each, both domestically and internationally.  What these nations and others are implementing is the vision of Lyndon LaRouche: of continental corridors of development and infrastructure, connecting and uplifting all mankind.  These international shifts have also released the potential for great changes in Canada, centered upon plans to build as many as twelve new reactors in the next ten to fifteen years.  At the same time, with the Bering Strait project, with rising clamour over the miserable state of Canada’s rail infrastructure, and with the inability of North America’s west-coast port facilities to deal with the massive volume of Pacific trade, Canada is being presented with new opportunities to revolutionize its railways.

Nuclear Redux

After more than 25 years of domestic neglect, the Canadian nuclear power industry, now operating 22 facilities nationally, 20 of which being in Ontario, is gearing up to take part in the global nuclear renaissance.  While Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) has completed construction of a second reactor at Cernavoda, Romania, the latest in a string of overseas projects that recently included two reactors in China on-budget and ahead of schedule, the company is now looking to do business in Canada itself.  General Electric is planning to expand its production and research center in Peterborough Ontario, a facility which has been in operation since 1955, but has never before experienced such incredible growth rates in sales of nuclear technology; the management claims that orders are up 600% over recent years.  The expanded GE facility will include an R&D lab, both for developing new methods of manufacturing fuel and a production line for new fuel bundles.  Meanwhile, the Ontario Government plans to begin construction of two new plants and to refurbish others; however the two Ontario-based nuclear power providers, Bruce Power and Ontario Power Generation (OPG), are seeking permission to build four new reactors each.  Add to this list a project in the Alberta tar sands to construct two 1,100-megawatt reactors, providing power to the area, as well as heat and steam for industrial purposes.  Finally, MDS Nordion, the world’s largest producer of medical isotopes, is building two reactors in Chalk River Ontario, which will be dedicated solely to the production of medical isotopes, such as Cobalt-60, used for cancer treatment and the sterilization of medical supplies.

The Darlington site in OntarioThe Darlington site in Ontario

In a recent poll by Ipsos Reid, available at the website of the Canadian Nuclear Association, it was found that support for nuclear power in Canada is on the rise, now at 44% nationally compared to 35% only two years ago.  Support in Alberta is 47%, and 38% in British Colombia, up 16% and 18% respectively in the past year alone.  Of great significance is the support in Ontario, the province with the vast majority of Canada’s reactors, registering at 63%.  As late as 1988 more than half the nation supported the commercial use of nuclear power; however, with the overwhelming propaganda campaign launched by the lying environmental lobby after Chernobyl, public support collapsed.  It has been a long road back for the nuclear industry since that time; and, with an immaculate record of safety and reliability, it is ever more difficult for the greenies to maintain their fanatically ideological opposition.  Ironically, with the current hysteria over climate change, many greens are also changing their tune.  Who would have imagined that nuclear power could be the white knight of the environmental movement!  Even Prime Minister Stephen Harper is turning towards nuclear energy as a necessary part of any viable, long-term energy strategy, although he is not overly vocal for fear of being harassed by the environmentalists.
As the nuclear renaissance gains momentum, the anti-nuclear lobby continues to regurgitate the same tired and baseless complaints, such as AECL’s inability to complete projects on time.  Claudia Lemieux, spokeswoman for the Canadian Nuclear Association, debunked this claim in discussions with this writer.  “They use that excuse because it scares people.  AECL has been a very active nuclear reactor builder.  Their Cernavoda II is actually being fuelled now, and it’s going to be providing electricity to the grid in September.  They are doing the refurbishment of the reactor in Argentina, and they are doing refurbishment in South Korea, so they are not getting these contracts because they aren’t delivering.  They are delivering.  So these are old arguments, primarily due to Darlington [which was delayed by environmentalists], which was primarily due to a lot of political interference.  They are holding onto those old arguments because people just don’t know, they have no idea how [nuclear power] works.”
By 2020 more than two-thirds of Canada’s coal-fired power plants will reach the end of their useful lives, the replacement of which will require approximately $150 billion in capital investments.  Despite the calls from environmentalists for increased spending on “renewable” energies, governments are turning to nuclear as the cheapest, most reliable source of energy to replace whatever capacity is to be decommissioned.  Under current conditions Canada’s nuclear plants are producing power at approximately five cents per kilowatt hour, while the most competitive wind farms come in at more than eight cents per kilowatt hour; solar power is not even close to these numbers.  Other forms of power, such as oil and gas, are cheap as long as oil and gas prices are cheap, which is no longer the case.
Within several years AECL will be ready to produce its new generation of advanced CANDU (CANada Deuterium Uranium) reactors (ACR).  These ACR units will use enriched uranium, with 2.5-3% fissionable material, as opposed to the current CANDU reactors, which use natural uranium containing approximately 0.7% fissionable material.  Using enriched uranium will increase the operating efficiency of the reactors as well as their total energy output.  The ACR will have a lifetime of sixty years.

Next Generation Candu
Other fascinating prospects for the Canadian nuclear industry include the development of thorium-based power systems.   Currently India is engaged in research to take advantage of the vast thorium reserves they control.  Canada, also having reserves sufficient to power Canada’s economy for many hundreds of years, could engage India in joint projects to more rapidly develop this area of knowledge.  As reported by Boczar, Chan et al to the IAEA, “The high neutron economy of the CANDU reactor, its ability to be refuelled while operating at full power, its fuel channel design, and its simple fuel bundle provide an evolutionary path for allowing full exploitation of the energy potential of thorium fuel cycles in existing reactors.…  AECL has done considerable work on many aspects of thorium fuel cycles.… Use of the thorium fuel cycle in CANDU reactors ensures long-term supplies of nuclear fuel, using a proven, reliable reactor technology.  Those same CANDU features that provide fuel-cycle flexibility also make possible many thorium fuel-cycle options.”

The Future is Rail

In a January interview with EIR, Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) director Ian McCreary voiced his frustration over the miserable state of Canada’s rail infrastructure, describing how, for example, many farmers are being compelled to truck their produce sometimes fifty miles to a rail depot, while the service even then has been abysmal – that is, if the trains show up!  Since the 1960s, Canada has ripped up thousands of miles of track, mostly branch lines which served outlying farm districts, while investment in what remains has been meagre at best.  Incredibly, as Brian Morris, transportation analyst for the CWB, reports, it currently takes 9-10 days for freight trains to travel from the mid-prairies to Vancouver, a trip of less than two thousand kilometres!  The policy of the rail companies has been to shift their costs onto the backs of farmers and manufacturers; however, this policy is fast approaching its end.  Derailments are increasing in number across the country, the system is over-taxed, and the total amount of track continues to shrink.  Last summer, when water levels in the Great Lakes were significantly lower than usual, the fragility of the system became apparent as the additional freight could scarcely be managed.  The extent of the crisis also becomes clear in the raw fact that Canada has zero capability to produce its own tracking; any new rail tracking must be imported.  Although it is true that Canadian Pacific is engaged in certain projects along its main Vancouver-Winnipeg corridor, these are simply not sufficient for the future needs of the country.

The belief of some, particularly in the deindustrialized east, that Canada can function without a comprehensive, advanced rail network is an absolute fantasy; there is little future for the country should it not make the leap to high-speed, electrified rail as a primary mode for the transportation of goods and people, while also preparing to leap into magnetic levitation technologies, which will eventually replace high-speed rail.  One option for maglev development would be a transportation corridor from Montreal to Windsor, which is the most heavily populated and industrialized region of Canada, to serve as a test case for future maglev systems across the nation.  This system could also tie into similar systems being examined in the United States.

Maglev Train


One of the great economic benefits of such projects, apart from the massive savings that would accrue from reduced transportation costs, would be the overall stimulation of the productive economy.  The government, by financing great infrastructure projects, can create the demand for increased production of goods, while at the same time increasing the productivity of the population, per capita and per square kilometre.
Recently the Chinese shipping firm COSCO announced that it will begin shipping to Prince Rupert, as the facilities in Vancouver, like most major ports on the west coast, are experiencing great congestion.  This will require an upgrade of current port facilities as well as local rail infrastructure to handle the expected increase of goods.  This type of project, and the obvious need for it, demonstrates the viability of the Bering Strait project.
Thus it is most propitious that Russia has stepped forward with exactly the type of great project required to uplift mankind.  Were Canada to participate in the building of this transportation link, the basis would be laid for the long-delayed development of northern Canada, and for expanded collaboration with Russia to overcome the many difficulties posed by the north.  Furthermore, the demand for hundreds of thousands of tonnes of steel, concrete, and rail tracking, as well as the demand for massive investments in capital goods and jobs, would give Canada’s failing industries a new birth; as the economic benefits accrue, the entirety of Canada’s existing rail infrastructure can be upgraded and expanded to the benefit of the entire nation and its neighbours.

Overcoming the Culture

While the Federal Government has issued no response, that from the Canadian media to the Bering Strait project has been lukewarm at best; at worst, typified by the Vancouver Sun and the National Post, the coverage has been deliberately fraudulent.  When energy economist Vince Lauerman was recently interviewed by the National Post, he demonstrated his and the paper’s incompetence when he claimed, “You’re sort of going from one fairly underdeveloped, underpopulated place to another that’s somewhat underdeveloped and underpopulated and doing it in an extremely expensive way.”  Lauerman’s stupidity is revealed with a simple reflection on how the once barren Canadian West was populated in the first place!  That is, that the continental railway had, necessarily, to be built first.  However, to those unversed in physical economy, and lacking a more rigorous understanding of history, his critique could perhaps seem plausible.  Lauerman should consider that if humankind actually listened to his advice, we would still be living in caves.
Lauerman is only typical of the cultural deficiencies which plague Canada.  Having never fully experimented with the American System of Alexander Hamilton, President Lincoln, and Henry C. Carey, nor having taken measures equivalent to those of President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression, Canada has yet to experience that unique progress which has occurred historically when American System methods are coupled with sovereign governance.  Rather, our history reveals but piecemeal applications which, up to this point, have left the bulk of the nation’s territory empty of human habitation.  Canadians have forgotten that the primary issue of 19th century Canada, as for the United States, was the development of continental railways, industrialization, and the settlement of the western territories.  
At the same time, fools such as David Suzuki parade around the country, attacking human progress as essentially evil!  In April of this year, Suzuki and Al Gore spoke to a fawning mass of young Canadians in Montreal.  In his speech, Suzuki compared humanity to cancer, because, in his view, apart from man, only cancer can multiply exponentially.  He also employed a metaphor of bacteria living in a jar, consuming their limited food supply at an escalating rate as population increases, finally reaching the point at which the entire colony of bacteria perishes: this, Suzuki said, was human nature.  Suzuki also made the outrageous claim that the point at which humanity “went wrong” was the agricultural revolution!  Suzuki represents the fascist tendency within the so-called “left”; a man who hates humankind, yet is considered one of Canada’s greatest icons.  And yet, despite the operations of those openly against civilization, Canadians are picking themselves up once again, after so many decades of decadence and backwardness.  Nuclear engineering is increasing in popularity in Canada’s universities, with an entirely new technological institute in Oshawa Ontario, the doors of which first opened in 2003 – the University Of Ontario Institute Of Technology.  The nuclear engineering program and similar programs at other Universities receive generous grants from the nuclear industry to help meet the growing demand of an expanding nuclear industry.  Canada is also participating, in conjunction with other leading nuclear-powered nations, in the development of fourth generation reactors; because, as Claudia Lemieux explains, “the thinking is shifting.…  [AECL is] looking at developing in their next generation of reactors – they’re looking at another kind of system – and then that changes the whole dynamic.  They are looking at what are called ‘non-proliferation technologies’ which are proliferation resistant: you are using them to produce electricity, but they can’t be used for other things – that’s what they’re working on now, because the thinking is that the only way used fuel is going to be acceptable to people is if it is used and used and used again.”
Whether or not Canada joins the international rail and nuclear renaissance will be determined by the political battle now being waged by the patriotic forces of the nation.  Therefore, Canadians should reflect upon the words of Friedrich Schiller, who wrote of the failure of the French Revolution to establish true Republican government, as in the United States: that a great moment found a little people.  Will Canadians fall victim to their worst cultural tendencies, or will they rise above their littleness, their regionalism, and their pessimism?  Will Canada choose the path towards true sovereignty?  In 1903, when Canada’s population was a paltry 5.6 million, perhaps our greatest Prime Minister, Wilfrid Laurier, envisioned a Canada of sixty million citizens, criss-crossed with railroads, factories and farms, before the youth of his day had passed on.  With a little under thirty-three millions today, with collapsing infrastructure and industry, and with true Canadian patriotism (which simply means a passion for development) seemingly forgotten, it is clear that much is yet to be done; but if the Canadian LaRouche Youth Movement have their say, Canada will become the nation it has often promised to be.

http://www.iaea.org/inis/aws/fnss/fulltext/te_1319_4.pdf

Will Canada Join the Rail and Nuclear Renaissance?

will Canada join the growing chorus of nations which are denouncing the neo-liberal ideology of free trade and globalization, or will Canadians blindly follow the dictates of lunatic environmentalists such as David Suzuki and Al Gore?
Around the world nations are moving in a new direction: towards what is now being universally heralded as the

Letter to the Inhabitants of the Province of Québec

 In the Letter to the Inhabitants of the Province of Quebec, the delegates of the First Continental Congress, then presided by Henry Middleton, address the people of the said province following the adoption of the Quebec Act of 1774 .
  The overwhelming majority of the people in the province speaking French, the letter was also translated and submitted as Lettre aux habitans de la Province de Quebec, ci-devant le Canada, de la part du Congrès général de l’Amérique Septentrionale, tenu à Philadelphie. (Literally “Letter to the Inhabitants of the Province of Quebec, formerly Canada, from the General Congress of Septentrional America, held in Philadephia.”)

The delegates informed the people of Quebec of five important rights of British constitutional law which were not in force in their colony over a decade after the peace treaty of 1763, which ended the French and Indian War, and resulted in every French subject becoming a new British subject equal in rights to all other British subjects.

The people of Quebec were invited to give themselves the provincial representation the Quebec Act did not provide for, and have this representative body send delegates for the next continental Congress, to be held in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775.


October 26, 1774,

Friends and fellow-subjects,

We, the Delegates of the Colonies of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts-Bay, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, the Counties of Newcastle, Kent and Sussex on Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North-Carolina and South-Carolina, deputed by the inhabitants of the said Colonies, to represent them in a General Congress at Philadelphia, in the province of Pennsylvania, to consult together concerning the best methods to obtain redress of our afflicting grievances, having accordingly assembled, and taken into our most serious consideration the state of public affairs on this continent, have thought proper to address your province, as a member therein deeply interested.

When the fortune of war, after a gallant and glorious resistance, had incorporated you with the body of English subjects, we rejoiced in the truly valuable addition, both on our own and your account; expecting, as courage and generosity are naturally united, our brave enemies would become our hearty friends, and that the Divine Being would bless to you the dispensations of his over-ruling providence, by securing to you and your latest posterity the inestimable advantages of a free English constitution of government, which it is the privilege of all English subjects to enjoy.

These hopes were confirmed by the King’s proclamation, issued in the year 1763, plighting the public faith for your full enjoyment of those advantages.

Little did we imagine that any succeeding Ministers would so audaciously and cruelly abuse the royal authority, as to with-hold from you the fruition of the irrevocable rights, to which you were thus justly entitled.

But since we have lived to see the unexpected time, when Ministers of this flagitious temper, have dared to violate the most sacred compacts and obligations, and as you, educated under another form of government, have artfully been kept from discovering the unspeakable worth of that form you are now undoubtedly entitled to, we esteem it our duty, for the weighty reasons herein after mentioned, to explain to you some of its most important branches.

“In every human society,” says the celebrated Marquis Beccaria, “there is an effort, continually tendingoppose this effort, and to diffuse their influence universally and equally.” to confer on one part the heighth of power and happiness, and to reduce the other to the extreme of weakness and misery. The intent of good laws is to

Rulers stimulated by this pernicious “effort,” and subjects animated by the just “intent of opposing good laws against it,” have occasioned that vast variety of events, that fill the histories of so many nations. All these histories demonstrate the truth of this simple position, that to live by the will of one man, or sett of men, is the production of misery to all men.

On the solid foundation of this principle, Englishmen reared up the fabrick of their constitution with such a strength, as for ages to defy time, tyranny, treachery, internal and foreign wars: And, as an illustrious author of your nation, hereafter mentioned, observes,–“They gave the people of their Colonies, the form of their own government, and this government carrying prosperity along with it, they have grown great nations in the forests they were sent to inhabit.”

In this form, the first grand right, is that of the people having a share in their own government by their representatives chosen by themselves, and, in consequence, of being ruled by laws, which they themselves approve, not by edicts of men over whom they have no control. This is a bulwark surrounding and defending their property, which by their honest cares and labours they have acquired, so that no portions of it can legally be taken from them, but with their own full and free consent, when they in their judgment deem it just and necessary to give them for public service, and precisely direct the easiest, cheapest, and most equal methods, in which they shall be collected.

The influence of this right extends still farther. If money is wanted by Rulers, who have in any manner oppressed the people, they may retain it, until their grievances are redressed; and thus peaceably procure relief, without trusting to despised petitions, or disturbing the public tranquillity.

The next great right is that of trial by jury. This provides, that neither life, liberty nor property, can be taken from the possessor, until twelve of his unexceptionable countrymen and peers of his vicinage, who from that neighbourhood may reasonably be supposed to be acquainted with his character, and the characters of the witnesses, upon a fair trial, and full enquiry, face to face, in open Court, before as many of the people as chuse to attend, shall pass their sentence upon oath against him; a sentence that cannot injure him, without injuring their own reputation, and probably their interest also; as the question may turn on points, that, in some degree, concern the general welfare; and if it does not, their verdict may form a precedent, that, on a similar trial of their own, may militate against themselves.

Another right relates merely to the liberty of the person. If a subject is seized and imprisoned, tho’ by order of Government, he may, by virtue of this right, immediately obtain a writ, termed a Habeas Corpus, from a Judge, whose sworn duty it is to grant it, and thereupon procure any illegal restraint to be quickly enquired into and redressed.

A fourth right, is that of holding lands by the tenure of easy rents, and not by rigorous and oppressive services, frequently forcing the possessors from their families and their business, to perform what ought to be done, in all well regulated states, by men hired for the purpose.

The last right we shall mention, regards the freedom of the press. The importance of this consists, besides the advancement of truth, science, morality, and arts in general, in its diffusion of liberal sentiments on the administration of Government, its ready communication of thoughts between subjects, and its consequential promotion of union among them, whereby oppressive officers are shamed or intimidated, into more honourable and just modes of conducting affairs.

These are the invaluable rights, that form a considerable part of our mild system of government; that, sending its equitable energy through all ranks and classes of men, defends the poor from the rich, the weak from the powerful, the industrious from the rapacious, the peaceable from the violent, the tenants from the lords, and all from their superiors.

These are the rights, without which a people cannot be free and happy, and under the protecting and encouraging influence of which, these colonies have hitherto so amazingly flourished and increased. These are the rights, a profligate Ministry are now striving, by force of arms, to ravish from us, and which we are, with one mind, resolved never to resign but with our lives.

These are the rights you are entitled to and ought at this moment in perfection, to exercise. And what is offered to you by the late Act of Parliament in their place? Liberty of conscience in your religion? No. God gave it to you; and the temporal powers with which you have been and are connected, firmly stipulated for your enjoyment of it. If laws, divine and human, could secure it against the despotic caprices of wicked men, it was secured before. Are the French laws in civil cases restored? It seems so. But observe the cautious kindness of the Ministers, who pretend to be your benefactors. The words of the statute are–that those “laws shall be the rule, until they shall be varied or altered by any ordinances of the Governor and Council.” Is the “certainty and lenity of the criminal law of England, and its benefits and advantages,” commended in the said statute, and said to “have been sensibly felt by you,” secured to you and your descendants? No. They too are subjected to arbitrary “alterations” by the Governor and Council; and a power is expressly reserved of appointing “such courts of criminal, civil, and ecclesiasticalwill, by which you hold your lives and religion. The Crown and its Ministers are impowered, as far as they could be by Parliament, to establish even the Inquisition itself among you. Have you an Assembly composed of worthy men, elected by yourselves, and in whom you can confide, to make laws for you, to watch over your welfare, and to direct in what quantity, and in what manner, your money shall be taken from you? No. The power of making laws for you is lodged in the governor and council, all of them dependent upon, and removeable at, the pleasure of a Minister. Besides, another late statute, made without your consent, has subjected you to the impositions of Excise, the horror of all free states; thus wresting your property from you by the most odious of taxes, and laying open to insolent tax-gatherers, houses, the scenes of domestic peace and comfort, and called the castles of English subjects in the books of their law. And in the very act for altering your government, and intended to flatter you, you are not authorized to “assess, levy, or apply any rates and taxes, but for the inferior purposes of making roads, and erecting and repairing public buildings, or for other local conveniences, within your respective towns and districts.” Why this degrading distinction? Ought not the property, honestly acquired by Canadians, to be held as sacred as that of Englishmen? Have not Canadians sense enough to attend to any other public affairs, than gathering stones from one place, and piling them up in another? Unhappy people! who are not only injured, but insulted. Nay more!–With such a superlative contempt of your understanding and spirit, has an insolent Ministry presumed to think of you, our respectable fellow-subjects, according to the information we have received, as firmly to perswade themselves that your gratitude, for the injuries and insults they have recently offered to you, will engage you to take up arms, and render yourselves the ridicule and detestation of the world, by becoming tools, in their hands, to assist them in taking that freedom from us, which they have treacherously denied to you; the unavoidable consequence of which attempt, if successful, would be the extinction of all hopes of you or your posterity being ever restored to freedom: For idiocy itself cannot believe, that, when their drudgery is performed, they will treat you with less cruelty than they have us, who are of the same blood with themselves. jurisdiction, as shall be thought proper.” Such is the precarious tenure of mere

What would your countryman, the immortal Montesquieu, have said to such a plan of domination, as has been framed for you? Hear his words, with an intenseness of thought suited to the importance of the subject.–“In a free state, every man, who is supposed a free agent, ought to be concerned in his own government: Therefore the legislative should reside in the whole body of the people, or their representatives.”–“The political liberty of the subject is a tranquillity of mind, arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order to have this liberty, it is requisite the government be so constituted, as that one man need not be afraid of another. When the power of making laws, and the power of executing them, are united in the same person, or in the same body of Magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same Monarch or Senate, should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.”

“The power of judging should be exercised by persons taken from the body of the people, at certain times of the year, and pursuant to a form and manner prescribed by law. There is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.”

“Military men belong to a profession, which may be useful, but is often dangerous.”–“The enjoyment of liberty, and even its support and preservation, consists in every man’s being allowed to speak his thoughts, and lay open his sentiments.”

Apply these decisive maxims, sanctified by the authority of a name which all Europe reveres, to your own state. You have a Governor, it may be urged, vested with the executive powers, or the powers of administration: In him, and in your Council, is lodged the power of making laws. You have Judges, who are to decide every cause affecting your lives, liberty or property. Here is, indeed, an appearance of the several powers being separated and distributed into different hands, for checks one upon another, the only effectual mode ever invented by the wit of men, to promote their freedom and prosperity. But scorning to be illuded by a tinsel’d outside, and exerting the natural sagacity of Frenchmen, examine the specious device, and you will find it, to use an expression of holy writ, “a whited sepulchre,” for burying your lives, liberty and property.

Your Judges, and your Legislative Council, as it is called, are dependant on your Governor, and he is dependant on the servant of the Crown, in Great-Britain. The legislative, executive and judging powers are all moved by the nods of a Minister. Privileges and immunities last no longer than his smiles. When he frowns, their feeble forms dissolve. Such a treacherous ingenuity has been exerted in drawing up the code lately offered you, that every sentence, beginning with a benevolent pretension, concludes with a destructive power; and the substance of the whole, divested of its smooth words, is–that the Crown and its Ministers shall be as absolute throughout your extended province, as the despots of Asia or Africa. What can protect your property from taxing edicts, and the rapacity of necessitous and cruel masters? your persons from Letters de Cachet, gaols, dungeons, and oppressive services? your lives and general liberty from arbitrary and unfeeling rulers? We defy you, casting your view upon every side, to discover a single circumstance, promising from any quarter the faintest hope of liberty to you or your posterity, but from an entire adoption into the union of these Colonies.

What advice would the truly great man before-mentioned, that advocate of freedom and humanity, give you, was he now living, and knew that we, your numerous and powerful neighbours, animated by a just love of our invaded rights, and united by the indissoluble bands of affection and interest, called upon you, by every obligation of regard for yourselves and your children, as we now do, to join us in our righteous contest, to make common cause with us therein, and take a noble chance for emerging from a humiliating subjection under Governors, Intendants, and Military Tyrants, into the firm rank and condition of English freemen, whose custom it is, derived from their ancestors, to make those tremble, who dare to think of making them miserable?

Would not this be the purport of his address? “Seize the opportunity presented to you by Providence itself. You have been conquered into liberty, if you act as you ought. This work is not of man. You are a small people, compared to those who with open arms invite you into a fellowship. A moment’s reflection should convince you which will be most for your interest and happiness, to have all the rest of North-America your unalterable friends, or your inveterate enemies. The injuries of Boston have roused and associated every colony, from Nova-Scotia to Georgia. Your province is the only link wanting, to compleat the bright and strong chain of union. Nature has joined your country to theirs. Do you join your political interests. For their own sakes, they never will desert or betray you. Be assured, that the happiness of a people inevitably depends on their liberty, and their spirit to assert it. The value and extent of the advantages tendered to you are immense. Heaven grant you may not discover them to be blessings after they have bid you an eternal adieu.”

We are too well acquainted with the liberality of sentiment distinguishing your nation, to imagine, that difference of religion will prejudice you against a hearty amity with us. You know, that the transcendant nature of freedom elevates those, who unite in her cause, above all such low-minded infirmities. The Swiss Cantons furnish a memorable proof of this truth. Their union is composed of Roman Catholic and Protestant States, living in the utmost concord and peace with one another, and thereby enabled, ever since they bravely vindicated their freedom, to defy and defeat every tyrant that has invaded them.

Should there be any among you, as there generally are in all societies, who prefer the favours of Ministers, and their own private interests, to the welfare of their country, the temper of such selfish persons will render them incredibly active in opposing all public-spirited measures, from an expectation of being well rewarded for their sordid industry, by their superiors; but we doubt not you will be upon your guard against such men, and not sacrifice the liberty and happiness of the whole Canadian people and their posterity, to gratify the avarice and ambition of individuals.

We do not ask you, by this address, to commence acts of hostility against the government of our common Sovereign. We only invite you to consult your own glory and welfare, and not to suffer yourselves to be inveigled or intimidated by infamous ministers so far, as to become the instruments of their cruelty and despotism, but to unite with us in one social compact, formed on the generous principles of equal liberty, and cemented by such an exchange of beneficial and endearing offices as to render it perpetual. In order to complete this highly desirable union, we submit it to your consideration, whether it may not be expedient for you to meet together in your several towns and districts, and elect Deputies, who afterwards meeting in a provincial Congress, may chuse Delegates, to represent your province in the continental Congress to be held at Philadelphia on the tenth day of May, 1775.

In this present Congress, beginning on the fifth of the last month, and continued to this day, it has been, with universal pleasure and an unanimous vote, resolved: That we should consider the violation of your rights, by the act for altering the government of your province, as a violation of our own, and that you should be invited to accede to our confederation, which has no other objects than the perfect security of the natural and civil rights of all the constituent members, according to their respective circumstances, and the preservation of a happy and lasting connection with Great-Britain, on the salutary and constitutional principles herein before mentioned. For effecting these purposes, we have addressed an humble and loyal petition to his Majesty, praying relief of our and your grievances; and have associated to stop all importations from Great-Britain and Ireland, after the first day of December, and all exportations to those Kingdoms and the West-Indies, after the tenth day of next September, unless the said grievances are redressed.

That Almighty God may incline your minds to approve our equitable and necessary measures, to add yourselves to us, to put your fate, whenever you suffer injuries which you are determined to oppose, not on the small influence of your single province, but on the consolidated powers of North-America, and may grant to our joint exertions an event as happy as our cause is just, is the fervent prayer of us, your sincere and affectionate friends and fellow-subjects.

By order of the Congress,
Henry Middleton, President

A Draft Constitution For The Commonwealth of Canada

On the cover : the statue of George the III being taken down in New York City.

 

A Draft Constitution

For

The Commonwealth of Canada

By Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

PDF Version of this Document to download

 

On the cover : the statue of George the III being taken down in New York City.

© Committee for the Republic of Canada. All Rights reserved.

Preface

 

As this first printing of Lyndon H. LaRouche’s Draft Constitution for the Commonwealth of Canada goes to press, the world is rapidly plunging into the hell of thermonuclear confrontation. A military junta installed in Moscow is poised for a global showdown foreshadowing a war that would leave the United States and Canada a desolate wasteland of radioactive rubble.

 

It is my duty to expose the evil behind Prime Minister Trudeau’s “peace mission.” If this mission of appeasement is successful, according to the scenario of the Pugwash-Ignatiev circles, then, history will judge our Prime Minister a greater fool than Neville Chamberlain.

 

I “The people of Canada are among those portions of mankind relatively more advantaged to set the kind of example which this imperilled mankind of today’s most sorely requires.” This 1981 judgement, by U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, on Canada’s opportune role in establishing a model republic for the world, could also stand as a statement of our people’s special moral responsibility today to safeguard Western Civilisation against destruction by nuclear obliteration or to repel a conquering Russian Empire.

 

We must stand up as one, and demand that our government set the proper policy course that would make available to Canadians “. . . the means of rendering nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete” as President Reagan announced to the world, on March 23, 1983, the new strategy of energy beam defence systems.

 

Such a strategy, while guaranteeing the continued survival of the human race, would generate the scientific and technological progress necessary to lift our nation out of economic depression, to cut the bonds of indebtedness and free the Third World from IMF genocide; in short, to provide the foundation for a flourishing cultural and technological renaissance world-wide.

 

Therefore, I am calling upon every able citizen to run for political office upon the measures and policies that can save the nation and the world .

 

I especially urge those patriots who are in moral agreement with this proposed Draft Constitution of the Commonwealth of Canada, to get in touch with me and join our forces to establish a new federal political party.

 

Canadians must rise above routine issues and act to ensure that Canada joins a Community of Sovereign Nation States based upon a community of principle as defined in this Draft Constitution.

 

 

 

Gilles Gervais

 

Secretary General of the

 

Committee for the Commonwealth of Canada

 

Montreal,

 

February 28, 1984

SECOND PREFACE

 

More than 15 years have now elapsed since communist tyrannies in Berlin and Moscow were overthrown.

 

And while the full promise of economic betterment and human dignity that these momentous events portended have still to be fully realized as we enter the dawn of a new century, we are nonetheless greatly encouraged today to observe that when Lyndon LaRouche was called upon to play a leading role on that stage of history in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, his legacy in the form of the European Productive Triangle and his later Eurasian Land Bridge concept have today become policies which are earnestly studied and debated by a growing number of government institutions and of patriotic circles across Eurasia.

 

Indeed, Lyndon LaRouche’s two most recent additions to his several decades long committment to bring about a more just new world economic order, have just been released: Toward a New WestphaliaTreaty: The Coming Eurasian World and The Dialogue of Eurasian Civilizations: Earth’s Next 50 Years. These documents will serve as the basis for discussion at an historic conference to be held in Berlin on January 12, 2005, that will bring together leaders from many nations of Europe and Asia.

 

The recent worst flood catastrophe in history which has hit South and South East Asia now make this previously scheduled conference all the more urgent.

 

Canada, with its unique geographical position bordering on three oceans, with its diversified cultural heritage, with its modern export-based engineering and industrial capacity and with its vast resource base, is one of the countries most advantageously situated to lead such an historic endeavour of rebuilding the planet.

 

This great endeavour could not work under the present axioms of free trade and globalization.

 

It is therefore imperative that Canada resolves to foresake its two decades long experiment in free trade which has resulted in increased hardships, inequalities and the continuing looting of the world’s labour force.

 

In order to acquaint Canadians with the republican constitutional principles of government and political economy which might serve them better, both in this coming period of probable “financial tsunamis” and in the longer term, the Committee for the Republic of Canada is urgently reprinting Lyndon LaRouche’s Draft Constitution for the Commonwealth of Canada for rapid distribution among the patriotic circles within the government and other institutions.

 

This draft proposal for a republican Canadian constitution was originally a gift by LaRouche presented to Canadians in 1981, accompanied at that time by the following best wishes: “may the Commonweath of Canada prosper in security and sovereignty in the present and in time to come”.

 

 

 

In LaRouche’s constitutional proposal for Canada, he situates true prosperity in the creation of a hamiltonian national bank of Canada and in the willingness to join a new community of principle of sovereign nation-states dedicated to the establishment of a more just new world economic order.

 

 

 

The soon, expected-to-be, first test of this new dedication will be the establishment of a Westphalia type of treaty agreement with the nations of Eurasia, reminiscent of Cardinal Mazarin’s famous “advantage of the other”.

 

 

 

That new adopted positive mission would certainly guaranty the security and sovereignty of a prosperous Canada in the present and in time to come.

 

 

 

Gilles Gervais

 

President

 

Committee for the Republic of Canada

 

January 1st, 2005

 

Letter of Transmittal

 

 

The International Caucus of Labor Committees, a cultural association in the adopted image of Plato’s Academy at Athens, is inclusively dedicated to the proposition that the highest quality of political development of the modern individual person is to be at once a dedicated patriot of a sovereign republic and also a world-citizen.

 

In relatively modern times, the recognition that no proper contradiction exists between the conditions of patriot and world-citizen was argued by such figures as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and by one among the modern world’s greatest poets, dramatists, and historians, Friedrich Schiller.

 

While some among us are Canadians, others are not. Yet, all among us are equally dedicated on principle to giving to Canada something of great value to its present persons and their posterity. It is our informed conviction, premised upon as intensive a collaborative reflection upon history as has been undertaken during this century, that the following proposed draft of a national constitution is the finest and most appropriate gift our efforts could offer presently to the people of Canada.

 

These are greatly troubled times. The credible perils of nuclear warfare, vast genocide of peoples, and moral anarchy and degradation pose today a greater peril to mankind generally than can be compared with any peril confronted since the so-called “New Dark Age” of fourteenth-century Europe. In these times, all mankind cries out implicitly for new beacons of hope of a better, more secure order in mankind’s affairs.

 

It is within the power of the people of Canada to fashion themselves into such a beacon of hope, to establish a living example which other peoples and nations may emulate in some fashion appropriate to their own problems, development and other circumstances.

 

In the past, each emergence of some great new nation, each admirable re-ordering of the affairs of a nation, has been an efficient beacon of hope for other nations and peoples witnessing such accomplishments. If it is true that great and good ideas are the unique source of all important accomplishments of mankind, it is the example of employment of such an idea by some people which has proven repeatedly the indispensable magnifier of the power of communicating such an idea to nations and people more generally.

 

To such a purpose, the people of Canada are among those portions of mankind relatively more advantaged to set the kind of example which this imperilled mankind of today’s world most sorely requires, It happens, as the Prime Minister of Canada has publicly echoed such a rumbling within the population of that nation, that the people of Canada appear as increasingly predisposed to establishment of a sovereign constitutional order for the Commonwealth. Such an undertaking at this juncture would represent potentially one of the great works of the present interval of world history.

 

We, each among us impassioned patriots of our respective nations, and also world-citizens, are persuaded that the Commonwealth of Canada ought to enjoy the best constitution adopted by any republic up to this time, a constitution which takes proper advantage of the lessons of past experience, which incorporates those superior features the patriots of other nations might desire for the ordering of their own affairs.

 

For reasons peculiar to the character of our own labors and experience, we are exceptionally qualified to prepare a draft constitution emphasising such advantages.

 

This draft is intended to acquaint others, not Canadians, on the meaning of “constitutional law.”

 

It is not our constitution, citizens of Canada. It is our gift to you, and therefore no longer ours, but yours.

 

May the Commonwealth of Canada prosper in security and sovereignty in the present and in time to come!

 

 

 

Lyndon H. LaRouche

 

September 5, 1981

ARTICLE §1: The Commonwealth of Canada

 

The people of the provinces and territories known heretofore as Canada establish herewith the Commonwealth of Canada to be henceforth a sovereign, federal and constitutional form of democratic republic.

 

  • 1.1 Sovereignty of the Commonwealth

 

The sovereignty of the Commonwealth is absolute, expressed in a manner delimited only by the principles of law set forth in this Constitution.

 

No condition may be imposed in limitation of this sovereignty by any foreign power, be that a foreign nation, a supranational political or financial institution, or a private interest.

 

Each and any attempt to impose a prohibited form of limitation upon the absolute sovereignty of the Commonwealth shall be judged an act of either foreign aggression or of treasonous sedition, whichever classification of the offence is more appropriate to the action or actions of the offender or offenders.

 

  • 1.2 A Federal Commonwealth

 

This Constitution establishes a Federal Government of the Commonwealth as the sole central governing authority for the nation as a whole. The powers of the Federal Government are broad, but well-defined and delimited, in the manner stipulated in this Constitution.

 

Those powers not awarded by this Constitution to the Federal Government are either delegated to local self-governments of political subdivisions of the Commonwealth, as stipulated in this Constitution, or to the persons designated by this Constitution as members of the general electorate of the Commonwealth.

 

This separation of powers among the Federal Government, local self-government and the electorate is variously detailed or identified by category, in the manner specified for each case, by this Constitution.

 

Each of the political subdivisions of Canada formerly known as Provinces is established herewith as a Federal State of the Commonwealth.

 

All other territories of Canada are defined herewith as Federal Territory.

 

Federal States of the Commonwealth shall be self-governed in local affairs by authority of a charter having the form of a State constitution. Such a charter, once adopted, shall be law insofar as it does not conflict in any provision with the Constitution of the Commonwealth or Federal laws enacted according to powers delegated to the Federal Government by this Constitution.

 

Under those terms and conditions, each of the Federal States authorizes the charters of local self-government of subdivisions of that State.

 

Federal Territory is under the complete administration of the Federal Government, and under the direct administration of the Executive branch of that Federal Government, subject to such limitations as the Constitution and Federal law may provide.

 

Insofar as laws existing prior to implementation of this Constitution are neither nullified nor otherwise superseded by this Constitution, they remain in force until amended, or repealed.

 

Except as nullified or superseded by this Constitution, or as subsequently altered by laws enacted, all institutions of the former Provinces shall be continued as institutions of the States.

 

All institutions and authorities of government not previously assigned to the governments of one or more of the Provinces are herewith assigned to the Federal Government. Each such element will be assimilated within whichever of the departments of the Federal Government its function is categorically assigned by this Constitution.

 

  • 1.3 Constitutional Law Established

 

This Constitution of the Commonwealth defines principles of law, defines institutions of self-government, and defines the ordering of the relationships among those established institutions. These features of this Constitution, taken as a coherent body of law, define the governing doctrine of the Constitutional Law of the Commonwealth.

 

In each and every instance of a conflict between all ordinary legislative and civil law, on the one side, and the Constitutional Law, on the other side, the portion of legislative or civil law which is in the area of conflict is nullified.

 

In each and every instance of conflict between the civil law and the legislative law of the Federal or a relevant State government, the portion of civil law which is in the area of conflict is nullified, except as the Federal Court may judge a relevant portion of the legislative law to be in conflict with the Constitutional Law.

 

In each and every instance of conflict between the acts of the Federal Legislature and legislation enacted by a political subdivision of the Commonwealth, the portion of the legislative law of the subdivision in the area of conflict shall be nullified, except as the Federal Court may find the relevant area of Federal law to be in conflict with Constitutional Law.

 

The Constitutional Law as a whole is both the Constitution itself and the written practice of Constitutional Law conducted within the processes of the Federal Court of the Commonwealth. The relationship among the components of Constitutional Law so defined is ordered by the following principles.

 

There are two aspects of the Constitution itself which shall not be amended. The principles of law set forth in the Constitution may not be amended. Although the composition of the entirety of the institutions of the Federal Government. might arguably have been ordered in a manner different than that stipulated in this Constitution, to alter a part of the entire institutional fabric would threaten jeopardy to the lawful functioning of the whole fabric. Consequently, for that stated reason, the Constitution may not be altered in any respect it either defines an institution of the Federal Government, or that it defines the division of functions and ordering of powers and checks and balances among the institutions of Federal Government defined by this Constitution. These elements persist as the unchanging foundation of the whole Constitutional Law, to the effect of nullifying any subsequent contrary interpretation of Constitutional law.

 

Other, amendable features of this Constitution have the force of Constitutional Law for as long as they exist and in respect to any consequence of their having existed, should one such feature be amended in the manner provided within this Constitution.

 

As stipulated in this Constitution, the Federal Court and other designated functions of the Federal Government shall act to the effect of working to perfect the coherence of the whole body of law with the law flowing directly from this Constitution. The Constitution itself is the source of Constitutional Law; written decisions as to matters of Constitutional Law’s bearing on the legislative and civil law within proceedings of the Federal Court is the process of elaboration for Constitutional Law.

 

  • 1.4 The Democratic Republic Defined

 

A republic or commonwealth is a nation self-governed under the rule of law, rather than by the caprice of an individual, an oligarchy, or episodic whims of a ruling majority of an electorate. The law to which a people submit themselves and their posterity in establishing a republic or commonwealth is nothing more nor less than what is properly termed constitutional law.

 

In the most desirable form of republic, the democratic republic, all members of the adult population of a nation who are neither criminals nor mentally incompetent constitute an electorate. This electorate chooses from among its own ranks which persons shall occupy offices of government, and by what manner of choosing. By this means of democratic selection, the electorate regulates the making of ordinary law and directs the course of the nation to those practical objectives which the majority of that electorate judges to be preferable alternatives. In these matters of choice, the electorate and its selected representatives are constrained only by the constitutional law.

 

In the reality of practice, as history and the adoption of this Constitution both exemplify that fact, it is in relatively rare intervals of the life of a people that the majority of that people are enabled to rally themselves to establish an improved order of lawful self-government. The English poet Percy B. Shelley writes appropriately of moments of history in which a people experiences a greatly increased capacity for imparting and receiving profound and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature. In such rare intervals a great people rises for a time above preoccupation with the immediately personal and local concerns of the ephemeral mortal lives of each, and locates its most immediate sense of self-interest in the condition of the world and nation bequeathed to its posterity as a whole.

 

In such inspired moments of its existence, a great people, sensible of the fact that that inspired moment will pass all too quickly, imposes upon itself and its posterity a rule of constitutional law.

 

When that has been done, too soon the soldier forgets the perils of battle, in pursuit of immediate family affairs and career. The inspired statesmen of moments of crisis too soon become once again mere politicians. Pettier passions predominate in the majority of the electorate, passions which would erode and perhaps destroy the nation unless an efficient ordering of institutions under constitutional law held the dangerous potentialities of such pettier passions in check.

 

So, the ancient and revered law-giver, Solon of Athens, counseled the fellow-citizens of that republic he did so much to rescue from self-imposed ruin.

 

So, in an inspired and ennobled moment of their existence, the people of the electorate of Canada have chosen to establish this sovereign Commonwealth as a nation self-governed under constitutional law. They have chosen the name Commonwealth, rather than republic, to emphasise the great sixteenth-century alliance between the people of England and France, that alliance of the political heirs of Erasmus of Rotterdam whose common principles are exemplified by Jean Bodin’s Six Books of The Commonwealth.

 

The principles of law consulted by the drafters of this Constitution are by no means original to this time or place. The problem of composition of a democratic republic is the established classical knowledge of all European civilisation since earlier than those dialogues of Plato treating related problems. The treatment of the same problems by St. Augustine’s writings has been among the principled influences informing the consciences of the greatest monarchs, other statesmen, churchmen and ennobled strata of the general population of Europe and North America, among other places, for longer than a millenium and a half. St. Augustine spoke authoritatively not only in support of the Nicene doctrine of Christianity, but also in principle, for the ecumenical agreement respecting principles of natural law between Nicene Christianity and the exposition of Judaism by the great Jewish collaborator of St. Peter, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria. The emergence of the modern sovereign nation-state in forms consistent with the teachings of St. Augustine was centred around the influence of the writings of Dante Alighieri, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, and their allies among the great republican statesmen of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.

 

This knowledge is affirmed by examining the causes for the rise and fall of nations and empires over the course of two and a half millennia of the record of the civilisation which has sprung from the Mediterranean littoral. This history permits no doubt that to neglect certain principles of constitutional law were to incur the moral and other decay, and perhaps the doom of a nation.

 

Accordingly, the people of the Commonwealth have embraced those certain principles as those which shall bind them and their posterity, and this Constitution has configured the design of their constitutional institutions of self-government in a manner to channel deliberation and its outcome as to government in directions consistent with those principles of law.

 

At the same time, sensible that the quality of government and its consequences depends upon the moral development and advancement of productive powers of the nation’s people generally, the people of Canada have affirmed in this Constitution the counsel of Dante Alighieri’s great Commedia, to ensure that as small a portion of its present and future electorate as possible shall fall into that morally degenerate state of hedonistic irrationalism, sometimes termed “philosophical anarchism,” which Dante depicts as the condition of the inmates of the “Infemo” canticle of the Commedia. The moral education of the present and future citizen of the Commonwealth, and the promotion of both the development of the productive powers of labour and fostering of opportunities for fruitful employment of those powers, are the cornerstones of policy for the day-to-day business of self-government.

 

Every adult national of the Commonwealth has the right to be registered as a member of the electorate in such locality within the Commonwealth as he or she establishes and maintains lawful personal residence. This right shall not be denied except for cause, and shall not be denied for cause except through due process of law as the Federal Legislature of the Commonwealth shall prescribe.

 

The sole causes for disqualification of any adult national shall be these: (1) Treason or sedition; (2) Adoption of citizenship in another nation; (3) Complicity in perpetrating attempted or actual fraud in any Federal or local election; (4) A legal condition of criminal mind; (5) A condition of legal insanity; (6) A legal condition of such degree of functional illiteracy that the person is adjudged incompetent to comprehend the implications of policies and candidacies for election to office presented for votes by the electorate. The Federal Legislature shall enact legislation providing determination by due process for each and all of these causes for disqualification of a person from the roster of citizens of the electorate.

 

The Federal Legislature shall determine the legal age a national is eligible to be registered as a member of the electorate, provided the minimum age for such registration shall not be less than eighteen years nor greater than twenty-one years.

 

For such cases the applicant is not a former minor child of native-born or naturalised nationals of Canada, the qualifications of the applicant for registration shall be determined according to such laws governing this determination which shall be enacted by the Federal Legislature.

 

Only registered members of the electorate shall be eligible for nomination or appointment to any Federal, State or local public office or civil service position. Only registered members of the electorate shall be eligible for service on grand or petit juries. However, this shall not be construed to deny any person, national or other person, the right to petition government in any of the orderly methods and procedures otherwise provided for this purpose, or to enjoy the same freedoms of speech and writing afforded to citizens in their capacity as persons.

ARTICLE §2: The Composition of the Federal Government

 

The central government of the Commonwealth of Canada is named the Federal Government. This government, when identified as an entirety, shall not be designated by any other names than “Federal Government,” or “Federal Government of the Commonwealth,” or “Federal Government of the Commonwealth of Canada.”

 

The choice from among these stipulated names to be used in each legal document, or other transaction within and with that Federal Government, shall be the shortest of those three names which permits no confusion of meaning within the context of that document or transaction.

 

The Federal Government is established solely by the authority of this Constitution, and is accountable to the terms of this Constitution, as such terms are stipulated herein. No other agency, or past, present or future law or treaty shall be an exception to this.

 

The Federal Government is composed of four major divisions, called Branches. These four are the Federal Executive, or simply “Executive;” the Federal Bank, or simply “Bank;” the Federal Court; the Federal Legislature, or simply “Legislature.” Only one additional institution is to be considered respecting the ordering of relations among Branches of the Federal Government: an agency of the general electorate named the Presidential Electors.

 

Subject to the interrelationships among these five entities as ordered by this Constitution, each of the five entities is autonomous to the degree that no member of these bodies may be called to account in any other place than that body for his or her actions taken in lawful pursuit of the functions established for that entity by this Constitution.

 

  • 2.1 Federal Electoral Districts

 

The Commonwealth of Canada is divided into Federal Electoral Districts, such that each Federal Electoral District lies entirely within either a single Federal State or within the Federal Territory.

 

These Districts are determined in the following manner.

 

For the first Federal Election under this Constitution existing election-districts shall be reconfigured in the most reasonable approximation of the intent of this provision of the Constitution.

 

Thereafter, Federal Electoral Districts shall be determined by the following methods and procedures.

 

Early during the first calendar year following the first Federal election under this Constitution, the President of the Commonwealth shall submit a Redistricting Bill to the upper house of the Federal Legislature. This Bill and all calculations pursuant to its enactment and implementation shall be based on the number of enrolled registered members of the electorate at each local place of registration at the date the Bill is submitted to the Legislature. This Bill shall propose an average number of such previously registered members of the electorate for each Federal Electoral District of the Commonwealth. The upper house shall enact that Bill speedily, either in its original form or with proper amendments.

 

Neither the Bill as submitted by the President, or as enacted by the upper house of the Legislature shall violate the following Constitutional conditions. The total number of Federal Electoral Districts of the Commonwealth shall neither increase nor decrease the previously established number of Federal Electoral Districts by more than ten percent, except for the case of the first Redistricting Bill, which shall establish the reference-level to be considered in ordering subsequent redistrictings. The total number of Federal Electoral Districts shall not exceed 250 proposed Districts.

 

Unless the President of the Commonwealth shall have weighty cause to veto the Bill returned by the upper house of the Legislature, the President shall sign the enacted Bill into Law. If the President shall have sufficient cause to veto the Bill, he shall promptly resubmit the Bill to the upper house together with proposed amendments. If the upper house of the Legislature shall override the President’s veto by a two-thirds majority of its members, the Bill voted in that form shall become law.

 

When the Bill becomes law, the President shall direct the Executive to conduct the Redistricting according to law by the following Constitutional methods and procedures.

 

The determination of the number of Federal Electoral Districts in each Federal State or in the Federal Territory shall be determined by the use of two figures. The first figure shall be the number of registered members of the electorate in that State or Territory at the date the original Bill was first submitted to the upper house of the Federal Legislature. The second figure is the recommended average number of members of the electorate registered as of the date proposed by the Redistricting Bill enacted as law. The first figure shall be divided by the second, yielding a dividend composed of a whole number plus a fractional number. If the fractional number is less than or equal to one-half, the number of Federal Electoral Districts in that State or the Federal Territory is equal to the whole-number portion of the dividend. If the fractional component of the dividend has a value greater than one half, the number of Federal Electoral Districts shall be the whole-number component of the dividend plus one.

 

The average size of the Federal Electoral Districts within that State or the Federal Territory shall be the total number of the registered members of the electorate for that political subdivision divided by the total number of Federal Electoral Districts into which that State or the Federal Territory is to be divided.

 

The method for defining a District shall be the approximation of the smallest moment of number of electorate-times-distance for each District, as determined in the following manner. The distance from the place of local registration of members of the electorate to the assumed centre of the District shall be multiplied by the legally relevant number of previously registered members of the electorate in that place of local registration. The most direct and commonly traveled route from that locality to the centre of the District shall be the basis for this calculation. That product is termed the Moment of the electorate for such locality of registration. Each District shall be defined in such a manner that its boundaries provide approximately the smallest moment for the electorate in that region of the Commonwealth within the boundaries of that State or the Federal Territory.

 

The first estimate of boundaries of Federal Electoral Districts within a State or the Federal Territory shall be effected in the following manner. The First District of that State, or of the Federal Territory, shall be defined with reasonable approximation in the southwest corner of the territory. If the State or Territory requires additional Districts, the estimated Districts shall be established by the following method. The Second District shall be defined in the north-east comer of the remaining territory. The Third District in the south-east comer of the remaining territory. The Fourth District in the north-west comer of the remaining territory. This cycle shall be repeated for the remaining territory, until the State or Federal Territory is completely mapped.

 

The preliminary mapping, conducted in that manner, shall be optimised solely for the purpose of enhancing the reduction of total moments among adjoining Districts, and subject to the restriction that no District should vary in number of legally relevant count of registered members of the electorate by more than five percent for the average previously determined for the State or Federal Territory as a whole.

 

The President of the Commonwealth shall publish a report of the completed Redistricting, together with appendices reporting the steps of calculation employed. On condition that the methods of calculation employed correspond with show of good faith and reasonable accuracy to the methods and procedures provided in this Constitution, neither the Federal Court or the Federal Legislature shall order any amendment of the Redistricting.

 

Redistricting shall occur each ten years following the first Districting under this procedure.

 

  • 2.2 Federal Elections

 

No person shall be a candidate for election to or appointment to any position in the Federal Government, or to become a Presidential elector, unless that person shall have been (a) a registered member of the electorate in his or her lawful place of residence for a period of not less than ninety days prior to filing application to become a lawful candidate for such election or appointment, and (b) not disqualified by reason of non-frivolous challenge of his or her standing as a member of the electorate. No qualified member of the Federal electorate shall be a candidate for appointment to any office defined by name in this Constitution unless that member of the electorate shall satisfy the requirements of an incumbent as specified either in this Constitution or as this Constitution directs the Federal Executive or Federal Legislature to determine.

 

All candidates for election to an office of the Federal Government or to the position of Presidential Elector shall have filed all required proof of qualifications as a candidate not less than ninety days preceding the Federal election in which they seek to be listed as candidates for election.

 

A Federal general election will occur in each and every District of the Commonwealth each two years following the first such election under this Constitution. That election shall occur on the first Monday of October in that year.

 

The persons eligible to cast ballots in an election shall have been registered as members of the Federal Electorate at their current lawful place of personal residence within the Commonwealth not later than ninety days prior to such election, and shall not have been disqualified for cause subsequent to such registration.

 

All votes counted in Federal elections shall be cast by paper ballot. Auxiliary means for tallying votes may be employed. The tallies determined by such auxiliary means may be certified on condition that no candidate listed on the whole ballot in that District contests such tallies, and also that no non-frivolous grounds for requiring a thorough audit are filed with the Federal Court within one week of such election. If tallies compiled by auxiliary means are challenged by any candidate, or if some other member or members of the registered electorate present probable cause for any error or nonfeasance by equipment or persons in any part of the election a thorough, rigorous audit of paper ballots cast shall be made in the entirety of the affected unit of such election.

 

The smallest unit for audit is the entire polling-place. If more than two polling-places are shown by evidence of probable cause to be subject to error or nonfeasance, the balloting of the entire Federal Electoral District shall be audited.

 

The Federal Legislature shall enact rigorous precautions for ensuring the integrity of casting and processing of paper ballots, and shall define electoral fraud as a major crime subject to appropriate penalties for major crime on conviction.

 

The Justices of the Federal Court and all election officials are instructed herewith, that any and each alteration or dilution of the vote cast by a member of the electorate is a major crime of disenfranchisement of a citizen of the Commonwealth. The Federal Government is instructed herewith to bring the potentially crushing power of that government to bear against all such offences, and also against both toleration of such offences and laxity by officials in respect to detection, prevention and remedy of such offences. The Federal Legislature shall enact appropriate laws in this matter, stipulating punishments consistent with the title of major crime.

 

During each of the Federal elections so prescribed, each Federal Electoral District shall elect one member of the lower house of the Federal Legislature. This member shall be the sole representative of the District in that house, and shall be elected for a term of two years. The member so elected shall be inaugurated either thirty-one days following the Federal election in which the member was elected, or, if the results of the election are contested in such a manner as to prevent certification of the election of a member for that District within thirty-one days, as soon after that time as the results of the election are certified in the manner which shall be prescribed by the Federal Legislature.

 

During the first Federal election held under this Constitution, the electorate of the Federal Districts of each State shall elect three members of the upper house of the Legislature. The first shall be elected for a six-year term, the second for a four-year term, and the third for a two-year term. Thereafter, except to fill a previous vacancy in an uncompleted term of office for one of its representatives in that upper house, the electorate of that State shall elect one member to the upper house for a six-year term during each Federal biannual election. These shall be inaugurated at the same time as newly elected members of the lower house.

 

During the first Federal election held under this Constitution, and each six years thereafter, the majority of the electorate voting in each Federal Electoral District shall elect one Presidential Elector to a six-year term in office. These Electors elect the President of the Commonwealth and also the Ministers of the Cabinet. During the six-year term of the President of the Commonwealth, the same body of Presidential Electors will be reconvened to select a new President of the Commonwealth should that office become vacant, and shall also compose the jury in designated cases of impeachment of high officials of the Federal Government other than members of the Legislature. In the case of a vacancy in the upper house of the Legislature, the Presidential Electors of that State shall elect a replacement to complete the term of office up to such time as the electorate of that State shall have not less than one-hundred-twenty days notice prior to a biannual Federal Election, to elect another to complete such portion of the incomplete term of office, if any shall exist, beyond the next inauguration of new members of that house. In the case of a vacancy in the lower house, the Presidential Elector from the corresponding District shall appoint a replacement to complete the term of office, unless the position of Elector in that District shall have become vacant, in which latter case the Presidential Electors of that State shall elect the replacement.

 

The Presidential Electors are the tribunes of the electorate in such matters. They shall be elected from among members of that electorate of forty years of age or more, and shall have resided in the State or Federal Territory whose District they represent for not less than six years. The persons filing as candidates to become Presidential Electors may choose to run for election as preferring a particular lawful candidate for President or may stand for election without indicated preference for any such candidate. In the latter case, it is the business of the candidates and the electorate to determine by the means available to them respectively whether a Presidential Elector chosen will be committed or uncommitted to some specific lawful candidate.

 

  • 2.3 Election of the President of the Commonwealth

 

On or shortly after thirty-one days following the election of a new assembly of Presidential Electors, those Electors shall convene at some suitable place within or proximate to the Federal Capital for the purpose of electing a President of the Commonwealth.

 

As soon as they have chosen a new President of the Commonwealth, the President-elect shall submit to that assembly nominations for each of the Ministers prescribed by this Constitution. The Electors may elect or reject nominations submitted, but must eventually choose from among the nominations the President-elect shall submit to them.

 

When that business shall have been completed, the Presidential Electors shall recess until such time as all or a portion of their numbers are recalled to session by the Presiding Officer of the upper house of the Legislature. They shall be called only to elect a new President of the Commonwealth, to elect temporary members to fill vacancies occurring for any cause in the upper or lower house of the Legislature, or to serve as a jury in impeachment proceedings against high officials of the Federal Government who are not members of the Federal Legislature.

 

  • 2.4 Composition of the Executive Branch

 

The Executive Branch of the Federal Government is the extended person of the President of the Commonwealth. This President embodies all of the authorities and responsibilities, subject to law, for that Branch of the Federal Government.

 

Immediately subordinate to the President are those members of the President’s Cabinet whose rank as both Ministers and Vice-Presidents of the Commonwealth is established by this Constitution.

 

  • The first Vice-President is the Minister for Foreign Affairs.

 

  • The second Vice-President is the Minister for Finance.

 

  • The third Vice-President is the Minister for Defence.

 

  • The fourth Vice-President is the Minister for Justice.

 

  • The fifth Vice-President is the Minister for Education and Labour.

 

  • The sixth Vice-President is the Minister for Industry and Commerce.

 

  • The seventh Vice-President is the Minister for Agriculture.

 

  • The eighth Vice-President is the Minister for Public Works and National Resources.

 

  • The ninth Vice-President and chief political-intelligence officer for the Executive Branch is the Minister for Information.

 

The initial roster of such Ministers, inaugurated together with the President of the Commonwealth, is established by elective confirmation by the Presidential Electors. The President and the Vice-Presidents are inaugurated on the second Monday of the January following the relevant Federal election preceding. Otherwise, if the President of the Commonwealth shall have been elected to fill the vacant term of office of a predecessor, that President and a newly elected Cabinet shall be inaugurated on the first Monday thirty days following such election of President and Cabinet by the assembly of Presidential Electors.

 

After the President’s inauguration, the President may discharge Ministers, and may reassign Ministers within the Cabinet, without being accountable to any institution but bodies of opinion. The President may not fill vacancies in the Cabinet except by confirmation of his nomination to such post by a majority of members of the upper house of the Legislature, and the President may not create new positions of Minister nor alter the Constitutional composition of the divisions of the Cabinet and its functions by any means.

 

The President is responsible for the nomination of Ministers and for the appointment of First Secretaries and such Deputy Secretaries of each Department as may correspond to positions established by the Legislature. The President shall assign to the Ministers the. responsibility for selecting persons to fill the positions of assistants to the Ministers and Secretaries authorised by law for such appointment. The Minister of each Department is also assigned responsibility for ordering of promotions within the Federal Civil Service, as both subject to law and on basis of determination of performance and merit.

 

The President is responsible for appointments to the President’s Executive Staff.

 

  • 2.5 The Federal Civil Service

 

The Federal Civil Service of the Commonwealth is established herewith.

 

The Federal Civil Service pertains only to the permanent and provisional staffs of the Ministries of the Federal Executive, not including members of the military services.

 

The Administration of the Federal Civil Service is the responsibility of the Minister of Education and Labour. A Deputy Secretary for Federal Civil Service is the designated appointed officer responsible for the policy directives of the Executive Branch in this matter. Immediately subordinate to that Deputy Secretary is the Director of Federal Civil Service Personnel, or simply “Director of Personnel.”

 

The Director of Personnel has authority and responsibility for directing the recruitment, selection, training, and determination of qualifications of all regular and provisional Federal Civil Service personnel. The Director of Personnel shall define the correspondence among titles, qualifications and recommended compensation-scales, which the Minister, on behalf of the President, shall submit to the upper house of the Legislature for confirmation by a majority of the members of the upper house. (This is distinct from the authority of the lower house to determine the total expenditure for a category of Civil Service personnel within Ministries.) The Director of Personnel is empowered to discharge provisional personnel by such standards of severance as the Director may determine, and shall propose the methods and procedures for severance of regular Civil Service personnel and other disciplinary measures, which shall become law if submitted to and ratified by the upper house of the Legislature.

 

The Director of Personnel shall act within the law established for this purpose by ratifying action of the upper house, to upgrade or downgrade the rating of Civil Service personnel as to qualifications and merit, but has no discretionary authority as to the promotion of those personnel within the Ministries to which they are assigned, nor discretionary authority to determine what the assignments or duties of particular personnel shall be.

 

The Director of Personnel is responsible to establish methods and procedures for processing of grievances initiated from within the ranks of the Federal Civil Service. If the Director or the Deputy Secretary for Personnel can not negotiate the matter either within the body of the Civil Service itself or with the Ministry affected, the Minister of Education and Labour may employ discretion to determine whether or not the matter merits treatment at the Cabinet level.

 

Insofar as the law defines the conditions of Civil Service, members of the Civil Service have potential recourse to the Federal Court.

 

No person may be considered as an active applicant for appointment to the regular lists of the Federal Civil Service unless that person shall be a qualified, registered member of the Federal Electorate. Applicants not turned back after preliminary screening by Civil Service Personnel officers shall be submitted to at least two written and three oral examinations, as follows.

 

The first written examination will be subsumed under a topic in which the applicant is presumed to be qualified by combination of education, experience and other indicated development of potentialities. The applicant shall have no advance knowledge of the specific subject on which he or she is to be examined under the application before he or she shall have entered the secured examination room or area in which the response to a topical question is to be written. The applicant shall be provided reasonable reference-materials and tools such as calculators, as may be appropriate to the topic and shall be given a maximum of three hours to compose a literate and appropriate response to the assigned topic.

 

The second written examination will be conducted in the same manner, but will involve some topic for which the applicant has indicated no special skills. The object is to, examine the applicant’s ability to muster efficient creative insight under intellectual stress, and to express useful insights into strange topics in a literate and well-reasoned manner without resort to rhetorical devices of attempted deception or evasion.

 

The first two oral examinations, of between one-half and one hour each, shall conduct the same two kinds of examinations in the form of oral exchanges with qualified Personnel officers who are specialists in the topical areas. The final oral examination will be conducted to examine the applicant on points of interest to the Personnel department after that department shall have considered both the results of the four preceding examinations and other relevant information respecting the applicant.

 

Such examination procedures shall not be regarded as an avoidable form of cost and effort, nor shall they be conducted in a perfunctory or disinterested manner. These measures are established to compensate the Commonwealth and electorate for the inappropriateness of direct or efficiently indirect access by the electorate to the election of the particular officials of the Federal Civil Service lists, and to form part of the entire complex of measures deployed to establish the highest professional standards for that Civil Service as a body. This is related to the arrangement by which the Federal Civil Service is placed under the direction of the Minister for Education and Labour.

 

In general, all applicants for appointment to regular lists of the Federal Civil Service shall have the equivalent, as the Legislator shall determine, of the following minimum requirements of the graduate of a well-ordered secondary school.

 

  • Fully literate in English grammar, poetry and leading sixteenth through early nineteenth century prose classics.

 

  • Literate command in speaking and writing of a vocabulary of between 50,000 and 100,000 words of vocabulary in either English or French.

 

  • Literate in either at least one classical language (classical Greek or Latin) or at least one modern language other than either English or French.

 

  • Literate in principles of composition of both classical poetry and classical music, as a part of literacy in language in the proper and fuller sense of that. Literate in geometry and basic physics into the elementary calculus.

 

  • Literate in the history and geography of: Canada, the Western Hemisphere as a whole, Europe, an ancient and medieval history from approximately the time of Solon.

 

Such a basic foundation in classical education is to be considered the normal method for fostering the broader range of the future citizen’s moral and specialist potentialities through secondary-school age. Developed specialist qualifications added to these will be defectively developed unless based on such a foundation in equivalent of well-ordered secondary-school education.

 

In practice, the Civil Service shall make the best approximation of available qualified applicants, but without surrendering the principle of the matter. The minister of Education and Labour shall establish and maintain educational programs for both provisional and regular members of the Civil Service. These programs shall remedy deficiencies in the education of the person taken into the regular lists or employed as a provisional with a view to the provisional’s acquiring qualification for entering the regular lists. These programs shall also provide advanced specialist education and shall foster increase of depth in knowledge of classical culture among members of the Service.

 

The Minister of Education and Labour shall cause to be developed proposed programs to this effect, utilising options of educational programs conducted with cooperation of existing educational facilities, as well as the establishment of in-service educational institutions. With the concurrence of the President, the Minister shall submit proposals for confirmation by the upper house of the Legislature. If proposals are confirmed they shall become law.

 

The Director may cause provisional members of the Civil Service to be employed temporarily without tenure as the Federal Government may require this. For this purpose, the category of provisional employee of the Civil Service shall not be confused with the initial twelve-months’ probationary status of applicants taken newly into the regular lists.

 

Provisional employees shall be nationals of the Commonwealth, but need not be members of the Federal electorate and need not possess any special qualifications for their employment except those required for the form of employment to which they are assigned.

 

  • 2.6 The Federal Bank

 

The Federal Bank of the Commonwealth is the central bank of Canada, accountable to no agency but the Constitution and the Federal Government as a whole. It is subject to direction by the President of the Commonwealth within the limits imposed upon the President’s direction by law.

 

The chief policy-making officer of the Bank is the Chairman of the bank’s Board of Directors. The Chairman is appointed and recalled by the President of the Commonwealth, subject to confirmation of appointment by the upper house of the Legislature. This Chairman has the governmental rank of Minister within the Federal Executive, but is not a Vice-President of the Executive Branch, nor a member of the Cabinet.

 

In addition to the Chairman of the Board, the President of the Commonwealth shall appoint, and may recall, six additional Directors of the Board. Two of these shall represent Industry and Commerce, and at least one each shall represent banking, agriculture and labour. There shall be no additional Directors.

 

All Directors, including the Chairman, shall be appointed for a term of six years, not necessarily or even desirably concurrent terms. Each appointment to fill a vacancy shall be for a new, full term of six years.

 

The Board of Directors of the Bank shall appoint and recall the President of the Bank, who shall be deemed a qualified specialist and executive officer in banking matters, and whose appointment is subject to confirmation by the upper house of the Legislature. The Board of Directors, with the concurrence of the President of the commonwealth, shall propose the establishment of such statutory operating vice-president’s positions of the Bank as is indicated to be warranted. If the creation of such positions is confirmed by the upper house of the Legislature, those positions shall be filled and occupations recalled by the President of the Bank with the concurrence of a majority of the Board of Directors. Positions of lower rank than statutory Vice-President shall be established by the President with approval of the Board of Directors, and the President shall have the authority, responsibility and duty of competently staffing and supervising those functions.

 

  • 2.7 The Federal Court

 

The Federal Court is the defender of the Constitution as to proceedings at law.

 

The Federal Court is constituted principally of seven Permanent Justices, including one Chief Justice. The Chief Justice shall be appointed to that position by nomination of the President of the Commonwealth, as shall each of the six additional Permanent Justices. The term of office to which a Permanent Justice shall be appointed is life. These appointments are subject to confirmation by the upper house of the Legislature.

 

The Federal Court shall be augmented by such Regional Courts and by Federal Courts subordinate to one or another Regional Court as the President of the Commonwealth shall propose on recommendation of the Chief Justice, and as shall be confirmed by the upper house of the Legislature.

 

Regional Courts shall consist of a three-Justice Tribunal. Federal Courts inferior to a Regional Court shall be staffed by panels of assigned Justices. Justices of the Regional Courts such be appointed for a term of fourteen years, and Justices of inferior Federal Courts shall be appointed for a term of eight years. All appointments of Justices to these courts shall be by nomination of the President of the Commonwealth and by confirmation of nomination by the upper house of the Legislature.

 

The only offence for which a Justice of the Federal Court shall be impeachable on grounds of defective conduct as to matters of law shall be proposing or condoning either a corruption of the absolute sovereignty of the Commonwealth or an evasion of the principle of Constitutional Law. A Justice may be called to account outside the internal disciplinary methods and procedures of the Federal Court itself only if the violation is a prima facie violation of such provisions of law, either in written form, by oral statement from the bench, or some other verifiable act or acts in which the Justice’s actions in question have the effect of a Justice of the Federal Court aiding the subversion of these cited cornerstones of the Constitutional Law of the Commonwealth.

 

The only other circumstance under which a Justice may be subjected to disciplinary action for incompetent conduct in matters of law are those prescribed by the Permanent Justices of the Federal Court. In this and other matters of the Federal Court’s internal affairs, the Chief Justice is the chief executive and policy officer of the Federal Court, establishing policies by concurrence of a majority among the Permanent Justices.

 

The Justices of the Regional Court are the executive officers for that Court and inferior branches of that Regional Court.

 

In only one way can a decision of the majority of the Permanent Justices of the Federal Court be overruled as to law. The President of the Commonwealth may submit a Bill to the upper house of the Legislature opposing the decision of the Federal Court in a particular case. If this bill is enacted with support of not less than two-thirds of the members of the upper house, the decision of the Federal Court in that particular case is overruled. However, this shall not be a binding precedent in law respecting other cases, although such action must in fact have significant colour of influence over the future deliberations of the Federal Courts in related kinds of matters.

 

A Justice may be removed from term of office by voluntary withdrawal, may be removed by the Permanent Justices on basis of finding of incompetence as to practice at law, or may be impeached for reasons not directly bearing on the Justice’s conduct as to matters of law.

 

  • 2.8 The Federal Legislature

 

The Federal Legislature is divided between an upper house, called the Legislative Court, and a lower house, called the General Assembly.

 

The members are elected either by direct election in a regular, biannual Federal election, or by appointments made by the Presidential electors, to fill a vacancy which may occur.

 

Each house shall elect its own Presiding Officer, and shall not be accountable for this or any other measures of internal organisation of its composition as to special functions and committees by any other body, insofar as this does not infringe in efficient effect upon some constitutional prescription.

 

Each house may expel a member for cause, if the charges presented in a bill of impeachment enacted by a majority of the members of the house shall be substantiated by two-thirds of the members after hearing accusers and the defence before the full body of that house.

 

In the case a member is expelled once on grounds, and the member were returned to the Legislature by the electorate after such expulsion had occurred, the alleged acts for which the member was previously charged publicly in any place shall not constitute competent basis to introduce a bill of impeachment.

 

  • 2.9 Qualifications of Officials

 

The President of the Commonwealth shall be not less than forty years of age at the time of his inauguration to that office and shall have been a citizen of Canada for not less than nineteen years prior to that inauguration.

 

Ministers occupying the positions of the first three Vice-Presidents of the Executive Branch shall have the same qualifications as the President.

 

Other Ministers shall be not less than thirty-five years of age, and shall have been each a citizen of Canada for not less than fourteen years prior to that inauguration.

 

Permanent Justices of the Federal Court, Justices of the Regional Courts’ Tribunals, the Chairman of the Board of the Federal Bank, and members of the Legislative court shall have the same qualifications as the President.

 

Other Justices of the Federal Court, Directors of the Bank other than the Chairman, shall be not less than thirty-five years of age and shall have been citizens of Canada for not less than fourteen years at the time of their inauguration.

 

Members of the General Assembly and Secretaries of Ministries shall be not less than thirty years of age and shall have been citizens of Canada for not less than nine years at the time of their inauguration.

 

No exception to these requirements shall be made for the positions of President, the first three Vice-Presidents of the Executive branch, or Permanent Justices of the Federal Court. In other cases, requirements for a specific person may be reduced by majority-vote for a private Bill to that effect enacted by the Legislature.

 

In respect to other points of qualification of candidates for election or appointment, the Federal electorate shall determine what qualifications it requires by the act of voting, and by efficiently expressing its displeasure with appointments which displease the majority of the citizens.

ARTICLE §3: The Legislative Process

 

All legislation is assorted among four general classifications.

 

Priority Legislation: Declaration of a State of War, Condition of Hostility Between the Commonwealth and some Government or Governments, State of Insurrection, State of Disease or Pestilence Emergency, State of Catastrophe, or any legislation or other proposed action of the legislative bodies directly related to implementation of governmental measures under one of the aforesaid conditions.

 

Privileged Legislation: Any legislation required to be drafted and enacted by this Constitution.

 

Ordinary Legislation: Any proposed or enacted general laws of the Commonwealth which are neither Priority nor Privileged Legislation.

 

Private Legislation: Bills of Impeachment, Legislative Presentiments which address as their specific object some person, particular persons, class of persons defined as a class, or which afford Legislative Relief above and beyond that explicitly required by laws otherwise provided to some person, persons or class of persons defined as a class.

 

In respect to the legislative process, the distinctions and separations of powers, duties and responsibilities of the Legislative court and General Assembly are these.

 

The upper house of the Legislature, the Legislative Court, is the legislative arm of the Constitution itself. The Legislative Court expresses this typically by its exclusive legislative authority, duty and responsibility to:

 

Approve or reject treaty-agreements negotiated with foreign governments by the Executive Branch.

 

Veto and to amend within Constitutionally prescribed limits Bills submitted by the Executive Branch establishing or dissolving functions of the Federal Government other than those explicitly established by this Constitution.

 

Veto appointments of officials of the Federal Government, including both those titles and categories stipulated in this Constitution and all titles and categories of officials of created functions other than those explicitly established by the Constitution.

 

Veto drafted Charters of the governments of the States of the Commonwealth, and Temporary Charters of self-government of local communities established within the Federal Territory.

 

Conduct impeachment proceedings against officials of the Federal Government in all instances but those of internal discipline of the General Assembly. Have sole power to conduct trials of incumbents of any office created by this Constitution, both respecting indictments premised on Federal law, and offences defined as major crimes in which indictment has been effected within a State.

 

Veto bills of the General Assembly by a simple majority of votes cast for the veto within the upper house, except if the bill shall have been reenacted after any earlier veto by a two-thirds majority supporting that bill in the lower house: then, a two-thirds majority of the upper house shall be required to veto such a bill.

 

Be the sole legislative authority for privileged legislation respecting methods and procedures of composition of the Federal electorate and matters pertaining to preparation and conduct of Federal elections.

 

Be the sole legislative authority for all law providing protection of those individual rights of citizens and other persons, as stipulated by definitions provided in this Constitution.

 

Be the sole legislative authority as to the institutional implications, but not the general features bearing upon regular and capital budgets of the Commonwealth, for all contractual agreements, other than treaties with foreign governments, undertaken by the Executive Branch.

 

In such instances, the Bill respecting the contractual agreement is first presented by the Executive to the Legislative Court, which vetoes or amends and certifies the elements of the contract and contract as a whole as to its institutional implications. If such Bill shall pass, either as presented or in amended form, the Bill shall be passed to the General Assembly for legislative disposition as to its budgetary implications.

 

Enact such laws and procedures it deems appropriate and warranted for ordering the internal affairs of the Legislative Court.

 

All other legislative functions, insofar as they are within the bounds of the principles of law provided by this Constitution, are the authority, duty and responsibility of the general law-making body, the General Assembly.

 

The General Assembly has legislative authority, duty and responsibility to:

 

Determine the authorised quantity of new issue of currency of the Commonwealth by the Executive Branch; and make laws governing the price and stocks of new purchases of monetary gold used as a reserve for settling imbalances in the foreign payments accounts of the Federal Bank.

 

Establish such laws as the Constitution permits for the ordering of national banking respecting the authorised capital and operating policies of the Federal Bank.

 

Authorise the level of the national debt of the Commonwealth, on condition that such consequences of this as debt-service obligations and payments and debt-retirement obligations and payments incurred by such legislation shall be acknowledged by the General Assembly explicitly to be exact or estimated sums of present or future items of expenditure of either the regular or capital budget of the Commonwealth, to whichever budget each of the items most appropriately applies.

 

However, the General Assembly shall discourage the accumulation of a large fixed debt for financing the operating budget of the Federal Government, except for temporary short-falls of revenues of the operating budget below authorised operating expenditures. The cumulative debt of the Commonwealth shall be preferably for fruitful capital investments, either by the Federal Government or in the forms of capital-investment loans taken as debt to the Federal Bank or Ministry of Finance by States or performance-worthy private entrepreneurs for fruitful undertakings in the interest of the Commonwealth.

 

Enact laws empowering the Ministry of Finance to regulate the accounting practices and reserve-requirements of private banks, insurance companies, and other private financial institutions.

 

Amend the regular operating budget of the Federal Government, with the restriction that the sums provided by law for the existence of institutions which have been established either by this Constitution or by authorisation of the Legislative Court may not be reduced in part or whole.

 

To amend the regular capital budget of the Commonwealth.

 

To veto or amend supplementary operating and capital budgets of the Commonwealth.

 

To amend or to enact on its own initiative such taxation as is in the form prescribed by this Constitution.

 

Enact all statutes respecting those Federal crimes which are not the privileged authority of the Legislative Court.

 

Enact all other ordinary law not the privileged authority of the Legislative Court.

 

Enact all private Legislation, except those Bills of Impeachment reserved to the upper house.

 

Enact laws and procedures respecting the ordering of the internal affairs of its own house.

 

No legislation may be enacted which subsumes matters of two distinct subjects of this Constitution, except as the matters of currency, credit, banking, debt, operating budget, capital budget are directly interconnected aspects of the whole monetary and economic functioning of the economy of the Commonwealth. No bill shall be drafted or amended in such a manner as to render the will of the legislature on one subject conditional on the will of the legislature on another subject, unless what might appear to be different subjects are proven to be inseparable in some immediate sense of connection.

 

The sole exception to this foregoing rule shall be omnibus legislation enacted solely for the duration of a national emergency period.

 

The distinction between the two categorical legislative functions, of Legislative Court and General Assembly, is between the function of creating, improving and maintaining the Ship of State as capital, and the steering of the Ship of State. In all matters pertaining to the first of these functions, the Legislative Court is the sole legislative authority. In the second, the General Assembly is the original legislative authority, subject to veto by either or both the Legislative Court and President of the Commonwealth.

 

A two-thirds vote in support of any Bill previously enacted by the General Assembly and reintroduced to that Assembly after veto of an original Bill by the Legislative Court, President of the Commonwealth, or both, shall uphold that Bill unless the Legislative Court shall affirm the previous veto by a two-thirds majority of its members.

 

The Legislative Court is a deliberative body of matured representatives of the electorate, relatively freed of the more exuberant passions and hurly-burly of the business of the General Assembly.

 

The members of both houses are the directly elected representatives of the Federal electorate for the States and Federal Electoral Districts each is elected to represent, and are subject to recall by the appropriate section of the Federal Electorate as well as replacement at the conclusion of the term of office of each elected member of those houses. The acts of the Legislature, in whole or part, may not be overridden in the haste of momentary popular passion, but the power of the Federal Electorate is retained, to control the composition and prevailing opinion of each house after due deliberation and through deliberate courses of action.

 

The obstacles which the constitutional process places in the pathway of hasty decisions are obstacles whose intent and necessary function is to oblige representatives and the electorate to force their respective attentions to the general interest of present generations and posterity combined, and to inhibit the expression of those heteronomic impulses of local or special-interest passion which threaten to undermine the rule under law, and which threaten to degrade the condition of the processes of self-government to heteronomic irrationality or even moral anarchy. The true rights of both the individual person and his or her posterity are protected against the crushing oppression of episodic passions of a heteronomic majority. To each citizen and other person, the constitutional process so ordered affords a well-founded sense of dignity and security in the pursuit of a meaningful individual life under a self-government by law. Thus, the principle of rationality embedded in the constitutional specifications of law, law-making and governmental actions that any error of government, if it is indeed error, will be righted and remedied by the processes of lawful self-government. The citizen or other person is rightly assured: “My government commits errors, but it corrects and remedies such errors as the ordering of constitutional law affords it latitude to err.”

 

  • 3.1 Order of Precedence of Legislation

 

At the moment any proposed Act of Priority legislation shall be proposed to either house of the Legislature, the prompt disposition of that proposed Act shall have precedence over continuation of any other business of that house, and over any other matter but another matter of Priority Legislation waiting to be heard in that house.

 

In establishing and maintaining the calendar of each house, Privileged legislation shall have precedence over Ordinary legislation and Private Legislation, except for the special case of proposed bills of impeachment.

 

In some cases, the facts of the matter will warrant the General Assembly’s judgement that a proposed Act of Private Legislation (other than impeachment) should not be delayed. Otherwise, during any session, Ordinary Legislation introduced at the beginning of a session shall have precedence over Private Legislation introduced at that time. This shall not be construed to signify that most Private Legislation must wait until the hurly-burly of the closing moments of a session of the General Assembly; rather, Private Legislation should be settled at the first occasion a hiatus can be located amid the calendar’s Priority, Privileged and Ordinary legislation.

 

The first precedence among proposed acts of Privileged Legislation in the Legislative Court for each session shall be the veto or confirmation of appointments made according to law by the President of the Republic, which nominations shall be placed in consideration before the members and then resolved as speedily as due reflection implies.

 

The second order of precedence among Privileged Legislation presented to the Legislative Court shall be Privileged Legislation presented to the upper house following its enactment by the General Assembly.

 

Precedence among Privileged Legislation in the General Assembly during each year’s calendar shall be afforded certain fixed matters of recurring legislation which the President of the Commonwealth must submit to the General Assembly by not later than the closing business day of February each year. The closing business day shall be the last day of that month which is neither the Sabbath-days of Sunday or Saturday, nor a date established as a national holiday by law.

 

These certain items of recurring legislation are:

 

Bills concerning the issuance of new amounts of currency.

 

Bills concerning changes in the level of authorised public debt of the Federal Government.

 

Bills concerning the Federal Bank.

 

Bills proposing the Federal capital and operating budgets.

 

Bills respecting taxation.

 

The regular bills of this description submitted prior to or on the closing business-day of February each year shall bear the prefixed term “Annual” plus the names or numbers of the fiscal year for which they are submitted in the name of the Bill. All bills of this description submitted after the indicated date, or after an Annual bill of the same category has been previously submitted for that designated fiscal year, are Supplementary bills for that fiscal year, and shall be so identified in the prefixed elements of the name of the bill.

 

Supplementary items of Privileged Legislation have a lower order of precedence than regular, Annual items. However, the General Assembly may choose to combine an Annual and supplementary such Bill into one, common bill, if Supplementary bills have been submitted prior to the date of either mandatory disposition or prior to the date of disposition by the Assembly, whichever date is earlier.

 

Annual bills concerning matters of currency and banking shall be processed by the General Assembly within thirty calendar days of the date the President of the Commonwealth will have presented them to that house. All other annual bills concerning the monetary and fiscal matters of the Federal Government and banking shall be processed by the General Assembly by not later than the last business-day of June of the calendar year.

 

Bills respecting currency, increases of public debt, and banking either may be rejected or may be amended prior to enactment. Bills respecting budgets and taxation may be amended, but not rejected.

ARTICLE §4: Currency & Banking Law

 

All law of the Commonwealth pertaining to the production and distribution of goods, and to matters of currency, credit, debt, and banking, is subsumed under the purpose of existence of the Commonwealth. The purpose of the Commonwealth of Canada is to promote the development of the individual, both the living and posterity, in respect to those divine potentialities imago vivo Dei which distinguish all true persons immediately from all beasts.

 

The security of the individual in such forms of fruitful pursuit of realisation of such development is therefore incorporated into the purpose of the Commonwealth, insofar as the development and pursuits of the individual are consistent with that purpose.

 

 

In that manner, the Federal Government of the Commonwealth becomes the instrument of this purpose, and shares in enjoying the protection of law afforded by that purpose.

 

The relationship of the Commonwealth to other nations is not heteronomic. Those sovereign nation-states which are dedicated to the same purpose respecting their own existence as is this Commonwealth, and which are governed by that perceived congruence of purpose in their efficient intent, constitute an implicit community of principle together with this Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is a sovereign individuality within such a community of principle; we seek to extend such community to include the greatest portion of humanity, and to act to that purpose in the conduct of our relations among the nations and peoples of the world.

 

Those purposes and associated elaboration of purpose govern the ordering of monetary and economic affairs within the Commonwealth and in the external affairs of the Commonwealth.

 

  • 4.1 The Currency of the Commonwealth

 

The legal tender of the Commonwealth shall be only the currency issued by the authority delegated to the Minister of Finance for this purpose. The specifications of the currency shall be determined by law, through legislation presented to and enacted by the Legislative Court. The amount of each new issue shall be determined by law, by enactment of legislation presented to the General Assembly for this purpose.

 

Laws affecting the form and amount of the currency shall be presented to the Legislature by the Minister of Finance, as directed by the President of the Commonwealth.

 

The currency issued by the government of Canada and its laws prior to the inauguration of the first government under this Constitution shall be honoured as legal tender, as if it has been authorised for issuance under this Constitution. The possession of such currency of earlier issue by the Federal Bank shall automatically empower that Bank to present such currency as a claim for payment against the account of the agency which originally issued it. This shall be a claim for payment, or for consideration of value equal to payment, against private banks which may have issued such currency or other form of tender, or shall be a bookkeeping adjustment for the case of currency or other form of negotiable tender issued by the government prior to establishment of government under this Constitution. All further specifications of withdrawal of such earlier currencies from circulation shall be defined by laws enacted to this effect.

 

The currency issued by the Commonwealth shall consist only of either coin or gold-reserve notes of the Ministry of Finance. Monetary stocks of gold possessed by the Ministry of Finance for this purpose shall be priced at the current market-price on world markets for purchase of replacement-stocks of gold bullion from mines selling on the world market. Disbursements of such gold stocks of the Ministry of Finance shall occur only for settlement of shortfalls in the Commonwealth’s foreign balance of payments, and such disbursements shall be made only to governments or central banks which have entered into agreements to settle international payments among themselves at such a prevailing world-market price for purchase of gold bullion from mines.

 

The prevailing market-price of gold shall be determined as a parity price, determined as the aggregate of a standard cost of production by mines plus a competitive margin of gross profit to miners. Standard cost shall be determined according to the estimated effects of bringing into production mines on a scale sufficient to satisfy world requirements for new stocks of gold over an extended period.

 

The Federal Government is awarded the power to regulate tariffs and foreign commerce of the Commonwealth to the purpose of regulating the shortfall in the national balance of payments on foreign account. This is to be understood as the authority to protect private agriculture and industry. of the Commonwealth against efforts to dump goods or services into the internal market of the Commonwealth at prices below a fair determination of a parity price.

 

COMMENTARY

 

As a matter of economic fact pertinent to law, the following cautionary statements are interpolated as advice respecting the interpretation of this Constitutional provision.

 

The use of “parity price” has had its broadest and usually most-impassioned occurrence in connection with agricultural production. The problem has been that the fostering of increased yields per hectare and per man-year in agriculture since our earliest knowledge of Mesopotamia and Egypt has been broadly inseparable from the family-owned and family-operated farm, in which a family or group of families share ownership, and functions as entrepreneurs, technologists, and skilled labour as one and the same person. For related reasons, such farms are easily looted and destroyed by the action of powerful combinations of purchasing agencies which create artificial degrees of competition among individual farmers and groups of farmers. At issue in such a development is not only the unjust victimisation of the farmers, but a peril to the nation’s supplies of food and fibre. Hence, on those two grounds of argument in law, wise governments have intervened to regulate the conditions of the market for agricultural product in nations as a whole and in respect to world trade.

 

The application of the “parity price” policy of law to agriculture has proven both its feasibility and general merit, despite some vehement objections from impassioned ideologues of the “free trade” variety of pagan religious profession.

 

The attempts to extend the same policy of law to other sectors of production of goods have been less pleasing in results, a misfortune which is not lacking in ascertainable political causes. The danger is that the specific methods and procedures employed by government to determine parity price for a category of goods produced may foster obsolescence in affected sectors of production, both as to techniques of production and design of goods produced. This arises as a problem of government not because a fair and workable parity price could not be determined; such a price could be determined. It arises because of the cupidity of politicians and political parties, which attempt to buy votes in effect through fostering distorted values of parity price.

 

The most practicable remedy for potential abuses is found in the area of taxation-policy. If a high, graduated rate of taxation of income at levels above a certain base-level exists, but with general investment tax-credits to farms, firms, holders of paid-in equity and savers represented by unpaid balances of loans, and if investment tax-credits are directed to promote technological progress in production and transport of goods, “parity price” or “fair price” protection for industries will tend to serve its proper purpose, and standard direct costs of industries so protected will decline progressively.

 

Insofar as competition is determined only by the amount of investment, technology, skill and diligence of an industry in respect to both methods of production and quality of product, it is generally undesirable that government intervene by regulation of price-environment. The only general exception to that is the fostering of the development of some new industry whose development is in the national interest, but which can not reasonably achieve internationally competitive standards during less than some medium-term period.

 

In general, the government should restrain itself from employing its implicit power to intervene except to either defeat efforts to introduce unfair forms of competitiveness or to introduce anarchy into the market of a sector of production or distribution, or to foster the development of some new branch of industry for which latter case a clear determination of national interest to this effect exists.

 

The cases of the English colonies in eighteenth-century North America and the young United States are an appropriate case-study, as is the case of post-1868 Japan, or the case of the successful industrialisation of Germany through measures typified by the work of Friedrich List during the nineteenth century. Where reasonable measures of protection were employed, the United States prospered in development, as it did under Presidents George Washington, John Adams, Monroe, John Quincy Adams and Lincoln. Where rampant “free trade” policies prevailed, as under Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, and Van Buren, economic catastrophes ensued directly from this.

 

The relatively successful transformation of the economy of France, under Charles de Gaulle’s leadership of the Fifth Republic, is exemplary of relevant cases for study, as are certain features of the relatively more successful periods of progress in prosperity among nations within the European Community.

 

The limited application of the power to defend a determined parity-price, as suggested in this commentary, serves the nation well. Although, from the standpoint of economic science, parity prices could be accurately and usefully determined for a greater range of applications, the tendency for cupidity among political parties and politicians forewarns us against permitting governments to employ parity-price methods more broadly than the clearest evidence of national interest as a whole requires.

 

END OF COMMENTARY

 

 

The currency issued by the Minister of Finance shall be distributed only through the Federal Bank. The Bank, in turn, shall issue such currency only through secured loans, as the Bank is authorised to make loans of such assets by law.

 

The Federal bank shall issue such currency in three categories of transactions, as it is directed to do so by law or is afforded the discretionary power to do so by law.

 

The Bank may be the direct lender to the Federal Government, the government of a State, a municipality, or to such business undertakings in which the Federal Government conducts business as a matter of Public Works or as an investing partner associated with private interests.

 

The Bank may participate in a portion of the total amount of a loan granted by a private lending institution to a borrower.

 

The Bank may issue loans to private lending institutions by discounting securities pledged to the Federal Bank for this purpose.

 

The circumstances and manner in which each such action shall or may occur shall be determined by law enacted by the General Assembly. The General Assembly is limited explicitly in its powers in this matter only by the relevant provisions of this Constitution.

 

The General Assembly shall determine which categories and sub-categories of lending by the Federal Bank are authorised by law, and shall determine also the maximum amount of lending authorised during a specified period as new issues of lending.

 

Borrowing from the Federal Bank on this account by the Federal Government is determined solely by the regulation of the authorised public debt of the Federal Government by the General Assembly. However, the accumulation of a large public debt to meet requirements of the operating budget of the Federal Government is to be deplored in the clearest and strongest terms, as has been emphasised in another part of this Constitution.

 

The Federal Government shall borrow from the Federal Bank at the Federal Government’s discretion, within the limits established for the public debt by law. The Federal Government, with aid of the advice of the Directors of the Federal Bank, shall determine what proportions of borrowing from the Bank and from the public market are. the most prudent recourse.

 

The Federal Government shall not borrow against the public debt from foreign lenders without explicit consent by act of the General Assembly. The General Assembly shall determine whether or not the Federal Government shall be authorised to borrow from foreign sources, and in what maximum amount. The Federal Executive shall determine from whom to borrow, with aid of advice from the Directors of the Federal Bank.

 

The Federal Bank shall issue loans against deposit of new issue of currency by cashier’s check of the Bank. Such check shall be drawn on authorisation of a loan agreement which has been negotiated with the borrower by authorised officers of the bank. At the time the loan-agreement has been signed by the authorised parties and countersigned to reflect approval by empowered loan-review committees, the designated officer of the bank shall issue a disbursement-order causing the proper cashier’s check to be drafted and delivered to the borrower.

 

These loan-agreements shall bear a borrowing charge within a range established by law. The President of the Commonwealth shall include in appropriate privileged legislation proposed ranges of borrowing costs for stipulated categories of lending against the issue of currency notes. The Bank shall exercise its discretion in selecting the applicable borrowing cost within lawfully established ranges.

 

The currency shall be placed into circulation through issue of cash to the banking institution in which the borrower maintains that account to which the cashier’s check of the Federal Bank is deposited.

 

The general purpose of such loans shall be to cause the utilising of goods-producing capacities which would lie fallow without the margin of lending represented by these modes of new issue of currency. Such loans represent sums which are used principally for purchases of materials, semi-finished goods, new, improved items of goods-production or goods-transporting capacity, and employment of goods-producing labour. The supply of credit directed to fostering commerce in sales of goods and services, except for the transportation of produced goods, should be chiefly, and usually supplied by private lending-channels, and not new issues of currency.

 

The general effect of such loans shall be to promote increases in the average national productivity per capita in production of useful goods, with emphasis upon capital-intensive modes of technological improvement of the production of goods.

 

What is to be avoided and abhorred is the employment of the credit-creating powers of government for funding of expansion of non-goods-producing categories of employment and commerce. In such ill-advised practices lie the viruses of inflationary credit-expansion.

 

All loans on capital account to entities of or controlled by the Federal Government shall be entities under the direction of the Minister of Public Works and National Resources. These entities shall be authorised to borrow by means of relevant items of the Federal capital budget. The loan issued to such an activity under direction of the Minister of Public Works shall be repaid from all or some combination of (a) income earned by the entity, (b) public sale of the entity as a public-stock corporation, (c) public sale of bonds of the entity, (d) disbursements allotted to that purpose by the Federal budgets.

 

In this connection, it is to be stressed that the Federal Government may properly use its powers to create entities for any among three categorical purposes. (a) To create a public work which the Federal Government intends to operate and maintain for the foreseeable future period, (b) To establish an entity intended to be sold to a private interest, under those conditions in which the existence of the entity is in the national interest and in which the creation of the entity in time cannot be reasonably expected to occur without such intervention by the Federal Government, (c) To assist a State government or to assist a municipal government which the State government has authorised to seek such assistance from the Federal Government. In the last of these three instances, it shall be the agreed intent of the parties that the State or municipal government shall purchase the entity from the Federal Government.

 

Capital expenditures for facilities of the Ministry of Defence, as well as all other capital expenditures in buildings and other physical assets, shall be under the title of Public Works and National Resources, to whose control such assets shall revert if and when another element of the Federal Government shall cease to require their use. In principle, other elements of the Federal Government shall be tenants in possession of such assets for the period such assets are assigned for the use of said elements.

 

 

  • 4.2 Other Federal Bank Functions

 

The Federal Bank is the bank of deposit and disbursement accounts for the Federal Government, which accounts shall be designated as accounts of the Minister of Finance, and otherwise designated in each case by a name and number indicating the function of that specific account with respect to receipts and disbursements of the Federal Government.

 

The Federal Bank is also the central clearing-bank for the Commonwealth of Canada, and shall earn an amount determined by the Legislature for this service.

 

The Federal Bank is empowered to negotiate and receive such loans of capital from domestic and foreign sources as the Bank is authorised to do categorically by laws enacted by the Legislature and subject to the direction of the President of the Commonwealth.

 

The Federal Bank is empowered, as the President of the Commonwealth may direct and as the Legislature shall provide by appropriate authorising acts, to lend in international markets. It shall act, to the limit it is authorised to do so, as the Federal Export-Import bank of the Commonwealth, either as sole lender or prime lender for the export and import of goods. It shall make loans to foreign governments under the same categorical restrictions when instructed to negotiate such lending by the President of the Commonwealth.

 

The Federal Bank is also the day-to-day regulatory agency with respect to all banks, insurance companies and related financial institutions of the Commonwealth. In the same way, the Bank also supervises the transparency of foreign-based financial institutions seeking or continuing business with or within the Commonwealth. In these matters it acts as the agent of the auditing functions of the Ministry of Finance, subordinate to and complementing those functions of the Ministry of Finance.

 

All exchange of foreign currency, claims against foreign currency, export of currency of the Commonwealth or claims against that currency shall be processed through the foreign-exchange clearing-facilities of the Federal Bank, and implicitly subject to such regulation by the Bank as the Bank may be directed to employ mandatory or discretionary use of such powers by the President of the Commonwealth according to laws on this subject enacted by the Legislature.

 

This shall not be construed to prevent nationals or persons of foreign nationality travelling in the Commonwealth from transporting amounts of currencies appropriate to their personal convenience across the border of the Commonwealth. The General Assembly shall enact appropriate legislation in this matter at its discretion.

 

Under the title of Annual or Supplementary legislation pertaining to the Federal Bank, the General Assembly shall enact appropriate legislation pertaining to the regulation of a well-ordered private banking system for the Commonwealth, which shall include all savings institutions, insurance companies and related varieties of financial institutions under such regulation.

 

Legislation regulating banking shall not prevent State governments of the Commonwealth from authorising the establishment of private banks within the border of that State, nor from regulating private financial institutions within that State, excepting branches of the Federal Bank operating within that State. The general principles of precedence of categories of law-making powers under constitutional law otherwise apply to the discretionary powers of the governments of States in this and related matters.

 

The included purpose of legislative acts regulating financial institutions shall be to restrict the general power to create credit within the nation’s financial institutions to (a) credit created by the Federal Government’s new issues of currency, and (b) credit generated on the basis of paid-in deposits currency to lending institutions. It is the creation of “book money” by domestic or foreign lending institutions or complexes of financial institutions which is to be suppressed.

 

COMMENTARY ON “BOOK MONEY”

 

Assume the hypothetical case, that a foreign bank issues a check to a person or national public or private institution of the Commonwealth, and in return obtains a debt from the Canadian recipient. Later, it is discovered that the bank’s check was to one degree or another an unsupported I.O.U., later supported by the Canadian’s debt listed as an asset on that foreign bank’s books. One would cry havoc! “A swindle!”

 

Precisely so. Over the course of the 1970s, especially following U.S.A. events of August 1971, such a “swindle,” or approximation thereof, became commonplace international practice, and a principal cause of the deadly global inflation afflicting so many nations during the relevant period. The ratio of deposits to lending of certain complexes of such unregulated, “offshore” financial groups was often in the vicinity of an order of magnitude less than was required of the banking systems of nations which became those “off-shore” bankers’ debtors.

 

The Commonwealth of Canada is now to issue a gold-reserve backed currency, in which the gold value of that currency reflects the wealth-producing powers of Canada’s economy and people. Are we to exchange our good currency, so founded in true value, for a relatively valueless scrap of paper issued by whatever small islands are generating such fictitious assets under the auspices of financial lawlessness in such places?

 

We oblige foreigners, therefore, to provide credible transparency of the relevant features of deposits and other assets of their financial institutions before we honour their financial paper under our laws.

 

Meanwhile, with respect to domestic financial institutions, the Federal Government takes the constitutional responsibility to forestall monetary inflation, both by regulating its own conduct and by preventing private interests from subverting the value of the currency by means related to the production of “book money.”

 

END COMMENTARY

 

  • 4.3 Fostering Technological Progress

 

The Federal Government is given authority and responsibility to be the sole creator of increased volumes of credit, in excess of both the credit extended by sellers to buyers and credit generated on the basis of paid-in cash deposits to lending institutions. To this end, the Federal Government is given authority and responsibility to regulate financial institutions established within the nation or doing business within or with the nation.

 

Except as stipulated, there should be virtually no creation of credit within the nation’s economic life.

 

This places upon the Federal Government a two-fold responsibility for providing adequate sums of well-regulated credit, to the effect that productive labour be afforded optimal opportunities for employment, and that no worthy public work, farm or firm shall fail for reason of want of adequate credit at reasonable prices to all credit-worthy borrowers; yet, this credit must be issued in such a manner as to prevent inflationary credit-expansion.

 

To compose the relevant institutions and practices of the Federal Government in the manner these functions require, we have restricted the lending of newly created Federal Government credit to a combination of public works, hard-commodity foreign trade, and to participation in loans extended in expanded production of goods and distribution of newly produced goods.

 

By fostering technologically progressive investment in production and distribution of new goods produced by farms and firms, we foster the expansion of productive employment and the currency-base of the economy in the manner which provides adequate generation of credit by sellers and depository institutions for other needs but those of production and distribution of newly produced goods.

 

This restrictive lending policy of the Federal Government enables that Federal Government to saturate the banking-system with credit, without generating inflationary modes of credit-expansion.

 

The regulatory authority of the Federal Government in these matters is to ensure not only that newly created credit serves its intended function but also that no inflationary or other debasement of national currency and credit erupts within the private financial community of the nation or through action of foreign agencies.

ARTICLE §5: The General Law

 

In the history of Mediterranean-centred civilisation, over a span of more than 2,500 years, the meaning of the term law for practice has meant predominantly either the oligarchical or republican doctrine of law. The oligarchical law is epitomised by such cases as the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle and Roman Law. The opposing tradition of law, republican law, is associated with Solon of Athens, Plato, St. Augustine, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, the Erasmians of England and France, and such German authorities in natural law as Leibniz and the Prussian law-commentator Puffendorf.

 

The general interpretation of law for the Commonwealth of Canada is the standpoint of republican law, and hostility to the oligarchical current running through such exemplars as Aristotle and Roman Law.

 

  • 5.1 Separation of Church & State

 

Although modern republican law traces its literary origins from the work of the Seven Sages of Greece and Plato, the form in which that law has been transmitted into the development of European civilisation since the Irish renaissance and Charlemagne has been Apostolic Christianity as identified by the Nicene doctrine and the commentaries of St. Augustine. Western republican civilisation is consequently Christian civilisation. If and only if the separation of church from state is situated in the context of Christian civilisation is the whole matter of constitutional and ordinary law properly understood by courts and other institutions occupied with the profession of practice at law.

 

The key reference on which one usefully focuses, to resolve the apparent paradoxes of separation of church from state is the work of the fifteenth century’s Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, beginning with Cusa’s Concordantia Catholica. Special emphasis in study and application of law is to be placed upon Cusa’s formulation of the ecumenical doctrine, including such of his writings as De Non Aliud and De Pace Fidei. The principles underlying law which are common to the Nicene doctrine, the Judaism defended by Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, and the Islam of Ibn Sina’s Metaphysics are common principles of those religions, so defined, and of any body of law which is congruent with such an intersection of the cited three.

 

This is the reference-point for defining the proper basis for separation of church from state. Any body of professed religious belief which is congruent with such principles is a protected right of private choice of practice, but no one body of such professed belief may acquire any of the privileges of an established religion or church.

 

  • 5.2 Natural Law

 

The notion of natural law, opposed to Aristotle, consistent with republican law, is centred for human understanding in the following terms of reference.

 

The rational individual locates the source of that rationality in the individual’s perception that each individual life is mortal, a mere ephemeral in the breadth and duration of humanity and within the universe as a whole. To rise above the moral condition of a mere beast, the individual must contribute to an enduring Good beyond the limits of merely any immediate benefit to his or her mortal passions, to some Good which radiates from the practice of the individual into the breadth and duration of humanity and the universe in which humanity as a whole is situated.

 

It is only as the individual rises above hedonism and hedonism’s intrinsic irrationalism, to become the instrument for a higher purpose greater than the individual’s mortal life, that morality, rationality, and true law become possible for mankind.

 

The problem confronting each moral individual is the problem of discovering in what way the consequences of the individual’s acts, and acts of omission, are ordered in respect to the breadth and duration of reality outside the scope of the ephemeral mortal life of that individual. To this end, there can be no efficient morality or law, unless the individual is governed by knowledge of the lawful composition of cause and effect in the universe more broadly.

 

It happens, that mankind proves the efficiency for good or bad of the policies of societies in the rise and ebb of cultures and nations over thousands of years. Mankind proves the appropriateness or failure of adopted policies by the effect of those policies in determining what is most efficiently named the potential relative population-density of mankind, man’s progress in greater mastery of nature, expressed as an increase in the power of the individual, an increased power expressed as an advancement of the individual’s knowledge of practice.

 

These advances prove that certain directions of improvement in knowledge governing practice are in greater agreement with the lawful ordering of the universe. Although man’s knowledge at any time is always imperfect, always waiting to be superseded by the next scientific revolution in technology of human productive practice, there is a facet of such progress which endures all such scientific revolutions: the provable principles of discovery which order a succession of advances in such knowledge.

 

Thus, although we usually view technological progress as a source of increased material benefits to the nation and its individual persons, accompanying the possibility of such benefits, there is something divine. That divine correlative is the increase of agreement between man’s actions of Creation and the lawful ordering of Creation. Man becomes in this way, equipped to be the more efficient Gardener in the service of the Creator, ordering changes in the universe according to those lawful principles embodied in the lawful composition of Creation.

 

The Erasmian tradition in education has demonstrated that a classical education in literate language, accompanied by classical principles of poetic and musical composition, painting, sculpture, architecture, and geometry, produces in the graduate of secondary schools so ordered an individual in whom all of the potentialities have been cultivated, an individual empowered, in the words of Shelley, to impart and receive profound and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature. The superior aptitude of the person benefiting from such a classical education for science is but an inseparable facet of a larger whole. Technology is man’s duty, man’s day-to-day work. It is the whole individual’s divine potentialities which are the self-evident object served in an indispensable manner by technological progress.

 

It is the coherence of scientific progress with the conceptions of great poetry, music, drama, painting, sculpture, and architecture, which the people of a great nation seek to perfect and to celebrate in common, as a reflected expression of the Goodness of which man’s divine potentials render mankind capable. It is that Goodness for which the constitutional republic is properly the instrument.

 

The special significance of the Golden Renaissance for mankind’s present comprehension of these conceptions of natural law is the emphasis placed upon the development of the sovereign nation-state republic. A people speaking one of a collection of relatively brutish local dialects or argots is a brutalised people, morally incapable of self-government. The development of the individual in terms of a literate form of language, in the power to think and to impart and to receive profound and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature, is the necessary basis for ordering the affairs of mankind. The proper ordering of human affairs must be based on sovereign nation-states among peoples sharing appropriate moral principles in common and also deliberating matters of self-government in a common literate form of language.

 

We republicans of today are the heirs of St. Augustine, of Italy’s Golden Renaissance, and of the great Erasmian movements of sixteenth century England and France, typified for France by Henri IV, Richelieu, Mazarin, Colbert and the Oratorian teaching-order. It is only by avowing the unity of an English-speaking and a French-speaking population in terms of that Erasmian heritage that the Commonwealth of Canada finds a basis for a unity that may endure.

 

O, Canada, let the common use of a literate English and French for national affairs be the rule, but this can be durably accomplished only if the noblest form of the English and the French languages are the standard of popular literacy, and if the rich contributions of your immigrants from numerous parts of the world are lovingly assimilated as the shared heritage of all of your people. Where two languages exist as they do in Canada, the differences arising from language must be bridged by a powerful unity in conscious perception of shared moral principles, and in which each of the languages is raised to the highest degree of literacy of which it is capable.

 

  • 5.3 Morality & Law

 

In Plato’s writings, the writings of St. Augustine, of Dante Alighieri’s Commedia, the most essential secrets for ordering of ordinary law and judicial decisions is provided, in connection with the three qualitative levels of moral development of which the individual is capable.

 

On the lowest moral level, the individual represents the “Inferno” of Dante’s Commedia. The individual is an irrational hedonist, a philosophical anarchist, an existentialist or structuralist. Legal arguments from the philosophical stand-point of judgement of hedonism, anarchism, existentialism, structuralism, or such derivatives of these as fascism have no standing in the general law of the Commonwealth of Canada.

 

Unfortunately, only a rare few individuals have succeeded in locating their sense of personal identity in being a useful instrument of the Logos, as Dante portrays such development within the “Paradise” canticle of his Commedia. This does not signify that the individual does not eat, does not enjoy certain forms of pleasure. It signifies that the individual requires such mortal means as those means are the mediation of accomplishing self-development and practice to a higher purpose.

 

Most of the moral persons within societies belong to the moral categories Dante portrays in the various cantos of his “Purgatory” canticle. Such persons are men and women of good will and of conscience. Although these men and women are seized from moment to moment of life by pursuit of gratifications and security of ephemeral mortal life, they restrain those impulses which they recognise to be in contradiction to a higher ordering of natural law in Creation. These are, generally, the citizens of a republic, a rational citizenry to the extent their knowledge and mortal passions permit them to act as rational persons.

 

The Commonwealth of Canada is not St. Augustine’s City of God, a “New Jerusalem” standing midway between Heaven and Earth. A republic based on a rational citizenry recruited from the ranks of Purgatory can only hope to be what Plato describes as the “second-best form of republic,” a constitutional republic, in which the constitutional ordering of affairs and constitutional law mediates the force of wisdom to the conscience-informed practice of the general citizenry.

 

This three-canticle ordering of the moral development of the individual has many reflections in the shaping and application of ordinary law, including law as it bears on the maturation of the child into adult, on the definition of criminal mind, and the definition of insanity.

 

The child is born as an irrational hedonist but with a divine spark of potentiality to become a human adult. The irrational hedonism of the infant is the form in which the law recognises the doctrine of “original sin.” It is the child transformed into an adult, weaned of irrational hedonism and of dependency upon parents, assuming the full responsibilities of a rational adult, who is qualified to be a citizen.

 

It ought to become the standard, that successful matriculation through a secondary institution, after an assimilation of classical education, ought to be a formal precondition for full rights of citizenship, although defects in qualifications for citizenship do not necessarily disqualify the individual in respect to rights of an adult person.

 

The criminal mind and insanity are both expressions of “infantile regression.” The criminal is the irrational hedonist who asserts actions against the law in defiance of the lawful requirement that the person order behaviour by intent to submit to dictate of a rational conscience. The insane person is one who has disassociated his or her consciousness from significant aspects of rationally ordered reality in order to assert in practice the impulses of an infantile irrational hedonism. Both expressions of irrational hedonism are to be denounced as immorality, and their effects to be contained efficiently with aid of humane efforts to rid the person afflicted with infantile regressions of domination by infantile, or by irrational hedonistic impulses and beliefs.

 

The further obligation of society is to order the development of the child, especially through education and through influencing the cultural environment to which the child is exposed, to uplift the child to rationalism with aid of a classical education and classical culture as rapidly as is determined to be possible by all reasonable means.

 

There is no right to expression of or cultivation of irrationalist hedonism in a constitutional republic.

 

  • 5.4 Rights of Persons and Associations

 

The development and propagation of ideas other than irrational-hedonistic incitements is the subsumed purpose of society’s activity from day to day, together with the freedom to practice attempted contributions to the improvement of society and individual condition according to moral forms of ideas.

 

The principle governing this is efficiently illustrated by the proper view of the meaning of “free press.” Freedom to communicate ideas is constrained by the law’s abhorrence of irrational hedonistic incitements and by the authority of truth. Any statement or interpretation of fact which is publicised orally after being contrived in good faith and promulgated to some morally acceptable purpose must be a privileged ‘ statement under the law, unless it be clearly defined as irrationalist-hedonistic incitement. This must be the only standard for proceedings in libel and slander under statute and civil law.

 

Association is governed by the same principle of privilege as public communication, on condition that the practice of that association is not criminal under law, nor a violation of constitutional law.

 

COMMENTARY

 

The sensitive area for judgement under law in matters pertaining to associations is the problem of balancing necessary forms of regulation of associations against the risk of infringement on the privilege of association itself. This matter is simplified by dividing between ordinary business associations, not including associations engaged in publishing or distribution of publications, and other associations.

 

Financial associations warrant the relatively greatest degree of supervision of their standards of practice. Other businesses less so categorically. Other, non-business associations, should be broadly viewed as either political associations or bodies tantamount to political associations.

 

The sensitive areas for publishing activities are typified by the case of pornography. Pornography has been afforded far, far too much license during the course of the recent two decades. It is a dangerous form of irrational-hedonistic political incitement, most dangerous as such political propaganda when directed to susceptible adolescent youth. Any contrary opinion by any court has been a plain error in respect to judgement of fact, and hence as to law. The close association of pornography networks, such as that linked to Playboy, with the promotion of mind-destroying recreational substances, is not coincidence, nor is there a coincidence in the links of the porno-drug lobbyists’ network to violence-prone associations such as the U.S. Yippies and pro-terrorist political associations internationally.

 

The problem of law in matters which some persons might regard as pornography is that the judgement as to law must be premised on determination of fact as to purpose of the act being reviewed. If the purpose is shown to be preponderantly, explicitly or implicitly, the promotion of irrational hedonistic impulses, the action is objectionable.

 

The fact that a borderline problem as to judgement exists is illustrated efficiently by the cases of Chaucer and Boccaccio’s Decameron. The latter is a powerful attack against the degeneracy it portrays, was intended so and had such a political benefit. Whereas, Henry Miller, or modern “naturalistic” or “realistic” entertainment produced for a purely commercial purpose clearly falls into irrational hedonistic propaganda either explicitly (Henry Miller) or implicitly (the “pandering” quality of commercial-only materials employing pornographic elements).

 

Some regulation of petitioning and election practices may be required, apart from ballot-security measures. These should be limited to providing both the association and society an orderly means for exercise of a privileged activity in an efficient manner. (Permitting an organisation to hold political rallies only in a swamp several miles from the nearest centre of population is clearly an unlawful measure.)

 

In general, except as the Constitution provides categorical guidelines for regulation of associations, the Legislative Court and Federal Court should strongly discourage any attempt to regulate against anything but criminal association and irrational hedonistic incitement.

 

END OF COMMENTRARY

 

 

  • 5.5 Criminal Justice

 

The primary function of law-enforcement bodies of the Federal Government and States is not that of detecting and punishing offenders after the fact of an offence. The primary function of law-enforcement bodies is to prevent the occurrence of crime and to minimise the impact of criminal associations and criminal acts upon society. The means required for this proper purpose include the detention of perpetrators of offences.

 

The regular functions of law-enforcement are chiefly twofold, to keep the peace among and in defence of the general body of citizens and other persons, and to wage war against what are properly to be viewed as criminal associations and their influence.

 

COMMENTARY

 

For purposes of constituting law-enforcement institutions and ordering the functioning of courts and places of confinement, we distinguish broadly among professional criminals and offences perpetrated within the context of families, other close personal associations, and drinking-places, sports exhibitions, and so forth. Among persons usefully classed as habitual criminals, we have neighbourhood criminals, such as one or two thieves operating together in some “territory” for a period of time, living in the vicinity of that neighbourhood or visiting it for criminal purposes. We have more serious forms of criminal associations, up to the level of drug-rings and terrorist-support groups, the latter coordinated internationally.

 

The first sort of criminal activity, typified by “family crime,” is the duty of forces of ordinary peace officers. The second category, professional criminals and criminal associations, require law-enforcement capabilities analogous in quality to a national secret intelligence service.

 

A good law-enforcement structure might be built up as follows. The primary peace-keeping units are local police units, each with its own self-contained headquarters. Walking neighbourhood patrolling officers are supported by mobile units (today, using radios carried by foot officers). The local headquarters has its own staff of detectives and administration of case-processing. At a higher echelon, a number of local units are commanded by a regional headquarters, in which special task-forces and criminal-intelligence functions are based. Independent local law-enforcement organisations are coordinated on a State and national level by law-enforcement intelligence networks, with aid of a State-wide and Commonwealth-wide law-enforcement intelligence agency. The State-wide and Commonwealth-wide agencies must avoid becoming a “national police force” except for categories of organised crime operating on a scale beyond the resources of law-enforcement agencies of local governments, and as forces which supply detachments to aid local law-enforcement agencies on basis of request and need. It is the national-intelligence function which is crucial.

 

The problem posed by criminal associations is to prevent the necessary measures of crime-control and crime-prevention from evolving into an intrusion on the privileged associations and individual rights of persons. This problem appears more difficult than it is in fact.

 

Case in point: “The sympathisers of international terrorism.” These sympathisers have been conclusively demonstrated in fact to be an integral part of the functioning of a hideous form of criminal association, terrorist gangs, providing logistical and political support for the terrorists, and assisting the terrorists in realising the political intent of the acts of terrorism. A surgically precise law-enforcement-intelligence surveillance of the associations of political sympathisers of the terrorists is clearly warranted, and incurs no colour of infringement of rights of persons who have not associated themselves with advocates of a hideous crime: terrorism aimed at destabilising the lawful order of government itself as well as murder.

 

The principle of law-enforcement action for such cases is elementary. Act on the basis of the nature of probable cause for action. A group which is avowedly sympathetic to terrorists or the use of unlawful recreational substances should be appropriately surveilled for intelligence, without any other law-enforcement action except as probable cause of preparation of or commission of a crime in progress demands this.

 

In the recent practice of the United States under such arrangements as the “Levi Guidelines” and “Civiletti Guidelines,” we have seen the same Attorney-General Civiletti who protected terrorists and drug-advocates from surveillance jealously engaged in organising elaborate political frame-ups against labour, business and political figures hostile to the Carter administration. The use of the law and colour of law for politically motivated harassment of honest persons has been accompanied by virtually condoning terrorists and related criminals of the “left wing.” When the law is enforced for the sake of the law, abuses tend to be endemic errors usually corrected by good administration of law-enforcement.

 

END OF COMMENTARY

 

 

Punishment of convicted offenders shall not be construed by design or interpretation of law as retribution. The function of punishment is to:

 

Remove from society for as long as due process of law permits, the insane, the criminal mind, and the dedicated adherents of criminal associations.

 

To maintain the majesty of the law, not to make the penalty for a lesser offence greater than for a larger offence.

 

To prefer contribution of remedies to victims, when the offender is not insane or a criminal personality, to prolonged imprisonment.

 

Offenders should be classified as follows:

 

Ordinary Offenders: Neither an habitual criminal nor member of a criminal association, and also neither insane nor of criminal mind.

 

Criminal Offender: Neither insane nor of criminal mind, but otherwise either an habitual offender or member of a criminal association.

 

Pathological Offender: Diagnosed as perpetrating offences under the influence of an anarchistic philosophy.

 

Insane Offender: A dissociation from reality, either persisting or recurring, which is relevant to the perpetration of the offence or to the accused’s capability to undergo trial.

 

None of any of the four classes of offenders should be incarcerated at a place of confinement holding members of other classes of offenders, except for pre-trial confinement. No two persons of different classifications should be confined to the same cell or equivalent housing during pre-trial confinement.

 

COMMENTARY

 

Places of confinement for ordinary offenders should plainly be predominantly educational institutions of minimum security, at which a regular week’s goods-producing or technical-specialist labour should be performed and compassionate family visiting arrangements provided to inmates who have passed a probationary period and have not violated reasonable standards of good behaviour.

 

For Criminal Offenders, similar programs should be provided under stricter standards of security, including rigorous precautions against homosexuality.

 

The last two classes of offenders are maximum security problems, and psychiatric problems as well, but subject to psychiatric classification for this purpose, a work-regimen and educational development orientation should be supplied, the latter in hope of fostering a breakthrough to qualitatively improved personalities.

 

The sentences should tend to follow obvious lines of differentiation within the upper and lower limits required by regard for the majesty of the law.

 

The blend of emphasis on rehabilitation and of “destabilising” pockets of criminality and criminal associations should be the governing considerations in sentencing and penal administration. Since, in most cases, members of categories two and three must be returned to society, it is important that the work habits of productive labour be developed in them, with emphasis on goods-producing employment of skilled to semi-skilled competence.

 

END OF COMMENTARY

ARTICLE §6: The National Defence

 

War is the pitting of the will and in-depth logistical and war-fighting capacities of the population of one nation against the will and in-depth war-fighting and logistical capabilities of an opposing nation. If both nations sustain an equal-will to fight, the war is won by the nation which musters a relative advantage in depth of logistical and War-fighting strength in the course of war. The conduct of war combines development of one’s own national will and in-depth capabilities while acting to weaken decisively the relative in-depth capabilities and will of the opposing nation.

 

The capacity to wage war, if necessary, in such terms is an expression of the sovereignty of a nation. The maintenance of a national-defence capability is not to be viewed merely as a matter of preparing to fight a possible war. It is also the organisation of the people of a nation around a patriotic determination to secure the enduring sovereignty of that nation.

 

Consequently, the scale of expenditures and other mobilisation for national defence is properly governed by estimates of the international situation. The establishment of the basic organisation of the institutions of defence is properly a matter independent of any present features of the international situation. Even if we are never required to use it, it must be there. Our willingness to maintain a competent institution of defence measures the efficiency of our commitment to the principle of being a truly sovereign republic.

 

It is impossible to conceive that the conduct of war could ever have any conclusion but the successful, unopposed occupation of the territory of a defeated nation by the armed infantry of the victorious nation. Whatever development occurs in the technology of the arms of warfare, it is the strength of the infantry in depth around which the development and deployment of other arms is properly shaped. It is possible that a war might be aborted by agreement among the warring parties before the territory of one nation were occupied by another; in principle, in any war fought to its ultimate conclusion as war to the finish, it is the delivery of one’s armed infantry to occupy the territory of the opponent which is the end-game of warfare. Whoever is not prepared for the end-game of war, must lose the war against a qualified adversary either in the middle-game or at the beginning.

 

Therefore, the defence of Canada begins with the matter of the infantry. This shall consist of two parts: the regular and reserve military forces of the Federal Government of the Commonwealth, plus a general civilian militia ready to be inducted into military service only under conditions that induction is required by war, military hostilities not formally defined as war, or insurrection.

 

The President of the Commonwealth is the Commander in Chief of the regular and reserve military forces, but exerts no command over the general civilian militia except under emergencies in such manner as the Legislative Court shall determine by law.

 

  • 6.1 The General Militia

 

The general civilian militia is composed of nationals of the Commonwealth who shall receive training in arms, tactics and relevant specialities in such manner as the Legislative Court may determine by law.

 

The general civilian militia may include persons who have received commissions as officers of that militia, as the Legislative Court may authorise by law, but commissioned officers in that militia shall have the status of the regular or reserve military forces of the Federal Government except at such time they are inducted as temporary commissioned officers into the military forces, or the units with which they are associated are inducted as units into military service.

 

The general civilian militia shall be organised into units. Each unit shall be established within a State or the Federal Territory, and shall be based upon an area within that State or the Federal Territory which includes the regular place of residence of the member of that unit.

 

Although the standards for training and promotions within the militia shall be established by the President in such manner as the Legislative Court shall establish by law, the militia remains an entity of the State or of the Federal Territory in which the specific units are located. Those units remain militia units of that State of the Federal Territory until such time those units may be inducted temporarily into military service.

 

  • 6.2 The Military Service

 

The Federal Government shall establish and maintain a sufficient number of commissioned officers, suitably qualified, to meet national requirements for full-scale national mobilisation. This shall include combined officers in active service and in reserve rosters. Reservists may be assigned to training duties with militia units and should be encouraged and aided otherwise to secure civilian employment of a sort consistent with the maintenance of their specialist qualifications in the military service.

 

The Federal Government shall also establish and maintain a combined active-service and reserve roster of non-commissioned officers above the rank of corporal to meet the requirements of full-scale national mobilisation. Some of the reserve non-commissioned officers should be assigned to training duties with the militia, and specialists encouraged and aided to find civilian employment consistent with their military specialities.

 

The programs of military academies and other training activities should be inclusively directed to provide a regular commissioned officer’s corps with a classical and scientific education, in addition to specific military skills. Emphasis in training must stress logistics, including competence to direct the rapid development of functioning economy in occupied regions previously substantially reduced to rubble.

 

To keep military capabilities as intact as possible, under conditions significant portions of trained forces are not required as budgeted standing forces, stress should be placed on productive engineering-projects and analogous assignments, to maintain and enrich so the non-combat aspects of basic war-fighting skills.

 

The general policy is to develop and maintain as great a war-fighting potential in depth as possible without reliance upon a large standing military force to accomplish this.

 

 

  • 6.3 Military Technology

 

In military and other respects, the Commonwealth must maintain itself in the forefront of scientific and technological advancements. Except for special requirements of design of military equipment, all advanced technology of military relevance has an economical realisation in non-military aspects of the economy.

 

The Minister of Defence has the included duty of putting proper military interest in scientific research and applications into the balance, insofar as the budget permits, to foster research and development in all areas of potential interest to military applications.

ARTICLE §7: Local Self-Government

 

All functions of government not assigned to the Federal Government by this Constitution are reserved to the people of each State or to local political units of self-government established within the Federal Territory.

 

  • 7.1 The State Charter

 

The government of a State is established by a charter having the form of a constitution. This charter is established as law if and when it is approved by the Federal Legislative Court.

 

Thereafter, except as the law of a State is subordinate to Federal law and the Federal Constitution, the State functions as an autonomous self-governing body subject to review of its action as to matter of law by the Federal Court.

 

Each State Charter shall establish an executive branch of State government, a legislature of two branches, and a system of state courts.

 

The State shall define its powers to collect taxation and to set tax-rates and establish assessments of taxable valuations, and also its power to delegate taxing and assessing powers to local self-government within the State.

 

The State may not tax the income of residents of the State, except as the Federal Legislature shall elect to return to each of the States a portion of the tax-revenues collected from residents of that State. The State may not tax property in possession and use of the Federal Government, of the Government of another State, or of foreign governments for such cases as the Federal Government may determine by treaty or other law.

 

The State may tax the real estate within the State, determine the rate of taxation to be applied, and determine the manner in which assessments of valuation of real estate are to be made. The State may impose excise taxes as delegated the authority to do so by the Federal Legislature.

 

The State shall conduct all aspects of criminal justice and keeping of the public peace within its territory, except as Federal law may take precedence.

 

The state courts shall be the original courts for legal actions in all private matters but those involving the Federal Government or a foreign government, subject to review of decisions of state courts as to law by the Federal Court.

 

The State is authorised to establish banks within its territory by issuance of charter, and to regulate those banks, subject to Federal Government regulation of all financial institutions.

 

The State shall have authority to conduct public works in all categories delegated to it by act of the Legislative Court, on condition that no Federal public work conflicts with a public work projected by the State, in which case, the Federal public work shall have precedence.

 

The State shall have the power to licence and regulate such categories of professions within its territory as this power is given to it by the Legislative Court.

 

  • 7.2 Municipal Charters

 

Except for local self-government within parts of the Federal Territory, all charters of self-government are issued by the government of the respective State.

 

Local self-government within the Federal Territory is chartered by the Ministry of Public Works and National Resources, subject to law governing a class of such chartering by the Legislative Court.

 

ARTICLE §8: Federal Law

 

Federal Law is the sum of this Constitution, Acts enacted by the Federal Legislature and signed by the President of the Commonwealth, and final opinion by the Permanent Justices of the Federal Court which amends Acts of the Legislature by judicial finding respecting the constitutionality of such Acts.

 

Subsumed under Federal Law are Orders issued by the President of the Commonwealth and Directives Issued by Ministers and by Secretaries and Deputy Secretaries of the Federal Executive and the Chairman of the Board of the Federal Bank. These Orders are Federal Law insofar as they are subsumed under the Constitution or enacted statutes in effect, and insofar as the President of the Commonwealth has delegated the authority to issue Directives by Presidential Order.

 

Foreign Treaties, once approved by act of the Legislature, are also Federal Law.

 

ARTICLE §9: Amendments to the Constitution

 

No Amendment of this Constitution should be entertained which nullifies the entire Constitution on the pretext of professing merely to amend a part of this Constitution. The definitions of the Commonwealth of Canada as a sovereign, constitutional democratic nation-state republic, as defined herein is a provision which cannot be amended in whole or in part without destroying the Constitution as a whole. The process of composition of the Federal Government, and the specified division of authorities, duties and responsibilities among the elements of the Federal Executive and among the Executive, Legislature, Bank, Federal Court and States cannot be altered in part without destroying the composition of government as a whole.

 

Otherwise, this Constitution may be amended by the lowing procedure for enacting a Bill of Amendment.

 

A Bill of Amendment must successfully pass a second hearing after having previously successfully passed a first hearing, on condition that a Federal election intervenes between that first and that second hearing.

 

A Bill of Amendment originates in the Legislative Court. If and only if that bill is upheld in the Legislative Court, the General Assembly and by the President, it passes a first hearing successfully. If it fails to pass a first hearing, it may not be reintroduced in the effort to secure passage of a first hearing until after the next intervening Federal election.

 

The proposed Bill must first secure two-thirds majority in the Legislative Court. It must next secure a simple majority in the General Assembly. If it fails in either place on first presentation, the Bill is dead. If the Bill passes both branches of the Legislature in that order and with those majorities, it is presented to the President of the Commonwealth. If the President vetoes the Bill, the Bill is dead unless the General Assembly overrides the President’s veto by a two-thirds majority.

 

A dead bill is one treated as if its had never been submitted for legislative action. Any favourable vote in either the Legislative Court or the General Assembly is dead as if that vote had never occurred.

 

The Legislature can consider any bill, included a Bill of Amendment as vetoed by the President of the Common wealth, after the President has possessed that Bill for fifteen calendar days without returning it, and may act to override the veto.

 

If the Bill of Amendment passes a first hearing successfully it may be submitted to the Legislative Court for a second hearing after the next Federal election. If the second hearing fails, the Bill is retroactively dead, and cannot be introduced until after the next Federal election, when it may be introduced in the effort to pass a first hearing of the Bill.

 

If the Bill passes both a first hearing and a second hearing, without becoming dead in either effort, the Bill of Amendment becomes law, and is an amendment to this Constitution, so designated by becoming attached as an appendix to this Constitution.

 

 

 

Alberto Vizcarra: Address to Ottawa Conference

In recent days, Chinese media published widely, and in different languages, statements of U.S. statesman Lyndon H. LaRouche, reiterating that the international financial system is disintegrating, and calling upon the governments of Russia, China and India to press the United States to reach an agreement on the bases for a new international financial system which can pull the world out of the profound economic collapse in which it finds itself, and save it from the looming threat of a third world war.

The Chinese media coverage is a signal which we must know how to interpret. Headlining the ideas of the American political figure who in the modern day represents the best of the hemisphere’s republican tradition, is a good indicator of what the Eurasian countries are looking for from the Americas. The marked turn of those nations towards economic cooperation around great infrastructure projects, has led them to conclude that there is no way they can sustain a solution to their common problems, if we continue under the tutelage of a financial system which persists in the irrationality of saving income and speculative debts, at the cost of destroying the economy’s physical potential and the population’s well being.

We are meeting today in Ottawa, determined to provide an appropriate response to what the world expects from the Americas. The best way to do this, is to document the great development potential which our nations have, if we agree upon a solid basis for cooperating on infrastructure projects which increase the availability of our water, energy and food. If we hear Eurasia knocking at our door at the Bering Strait, we in Canada, the United States and Mexico can decide upon a new agreement among ourselves, based on fair trade, and not on the disastrous, predatory axioms of free trade.

The results of the North American Free Trade Agreement exemplify the kind of relations which our countries cannot and must not continue. The physical decline of infrastructure; the growth of speculative assets which have become unpayable debts; unemployment; emigration transformed into exodus; and the hunger of tens of millions, are the dramatic expression of the failure of these policies.

The principal infrastructure projects conceived as a platform for just relations between our countries, were born in the heat of the great forward motion which the United States enjoyed under the influence of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s economic policies, which made public investment in infrastructure the key principal factor in pulling that nation out of the Great Depression of the 1930’s.

Thus, in different regions of the United States important dams, reservoirs, hydroelectric power plants, agricultural projects, waterways, highways, and railroads were built, feeding an overall economic development unmatched in modern history, such that 20 great infrastructure projects were built simultaneously! Institutions such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and similar agencies for the Colorado and Columbia rivers, as well as others, were established, transforming areas threatened by uncontrolled rivers, wildernesses and unproductive territories, and water-scarce cities into well-planned urban, industrial and agricultural This is where NAWAPA and the PLHINO meet. developments.

In the 1960s, in this same spirit, a plan was drawn up, with a framework of joint public and private collaboration, to transfer extraordinary amounts of water from the rivers of Alaska and northern Canada, to the vast areas which form the Great American Desert, which extends across the southwestern U.S. down into north central Mexico. This project is known as NAWAPA, the North American Water and Power Alliance.

The economic success of these policies sparked a drive for similiar policies in Mexico, creating the climate in which a generation of engineers flourished who began to consider the idea of great infrastructure projects for transferring water. This was how projects such as the Northwest Hydraulic Plan, for the Pacific coast, and the Northern Gulf Hydraulic Plan, for the Gulf Coast of Mexico, were conceived.

In the following map, we can see the integrated idea of these water projects, which we have dubbed “NAWAPA Plus,” and which can be built in stages over a 30 year period.

NAWAPA is an integrated water, power, and agricultural project which proposes to take about 17% of the annual runoff of the rivers of Alaska and northern Canada (some 1,000 cubic kilometers of water), most of which now flows unused into the Arctic Ocean, and channel it southward to Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

According to the original design by Parsons Engineering Company, the water would first be channelled into the Rocky Mountain Trench, a natural reservoir some 800 kilometers in length which runs from the center of Canada down into the northern United States, and which is about 15 kilometers wide and some 100 meters deep, on average. It would store some 400-500 cubic kilometers of water, at a height of about 900 meters above sea level.

Cutting across the extreme northern tip of the Trench, a navigable waterway would be built in Canada, from Vancouver in the West to Lake Superior and the St. Lawrence Seaway in the East–that is, a great waterway that would connect the Pacific with the Atlantic.

The eastern branch of NAWAPA would run south from this Canadian canal, through the center of the United States, where it would help to recharge the gigantic Ogallala Aquifer, which today is overexploited. From there, another canal would connect it to the Gulf of Mexico.

At the extreme southern tip of the Rocky Mountain Trench, the Montana Pump Lift would be built, a pumping station that would lift the water from 900 meters above sea level to some 1,500 meters above sea level, on both sides of the Continental Divide in the Rockies. This would require some 80 gigawatts of energy, certainly a large amount of power, but the total plan proposes to build numerous hydroelectric dams along NAWAPA’s entire route, which would produce some 180 gigawatts of energy. In other words, there would be a net surplus of some 100 gigawatts.

From there, the central branch of NAWAPA would run along the eastern side of the Rockies, cutting across the Great American Desert through Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. Here it would connect with the tributaries of the Rio Grande –what we call the Rio Bravo– which forms the border between the United States and Mexico at that point. This would enable the transfer of large quantities of fresh water–some 6.8 cubic kilometers–to the arid Center-North of Mexico.

The western branch of the project would cross through the states of Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. From Arizona, a canal would be built to carry water across the border to Mexico, to the Yaqui River in Sonora, which would receive nearly 12 cubic kilometers of water a year. The western stretch of the project would also supply water to the north and center of California, and to the Colorado River, which in turn, would carry more than 5 cubic kilometers of water a year to northern Baja California.

NAWAPA is, without a doubt, a great infrastructure project–a project that would change the very face of the Earth in the region of the Great American Desert, producing geological and climatic changes that will raise the biosphere’s potential. 10,000 kilometers of canals and 2,900 kilometers of tunnels would be built. It is estimated that it would cost some $800 billion. That may sound like a lot of money, but it is about the same amount of money as what the international drug trade generates each year, or nearly half of the trillion and a half dollars in speculative financial flows that are carried out worldwide every day.

Linking NAWAPA with Mexico’s water projects, the PLHINO and the PLHIGON, would allow the country to resolve the hydrological paradox, of having great volumes of water in the south and southeast, which don’t have much land apt for agriculture, and scant availability of water in the north, where there are great extensions of land and soil of great agricultural potential. In the following map, prepared by Mexico’s National Water Commission, you can clearly observe the elevated water stress which the country suffers in the northern states. Water stress percentages are calculated, as per the United Nations, by comparing water withdrawals for use in the economy, to total water availability.

Average water stress in the north of the country is 67%, reaching an alarming 86% in the state of Baja California. But, look at the southeastern region, where the water stress barely reaches 4%. Look at the shocking 120% water stress in Mexico City, the capital of the Mexican Republic, which points to the demographic aberration caused by the lack of infrastructure which would allow an increase in the growth potential of cities located on the coasts of our country.

The NAWAPA-PLHINO-PLHIGON system would provide from the north, via NAWAPA, some 24 cubic kilometers of water to us, and from the south to the north, via the coasts of Mexico, 44 cubic kilometers, for a total availability of 68 cubic kilometers of new fresh water, which would allow Mexico to significantly expand its agricultural frontier, to sustain its urban and industrial development, generate electricity, develop fish-farming and tourism, produce food, and create the hundreds of thousands of jobs which the nation urgently needs.

The idea of transferring water must be combined with a nuclear power program: we must not only transfer water; we must also manufacture fresh water, as a by-product of the generation of electricity by nuclear power, bringing with it the desired non-linear effects which come from introducing the most advanced fields of science and technology into economic development.

We have no other way to reverse the disastrous consequences of NAFTA upon our three cuontries. In a scenario based on the pernicious idea of “comparative advantage,” the most fragile nations end up suffering the worst consequences. This is the case in Mexico, which, as a result of such policies, faces a great vulnerability in confronting the disintegration of the international financial system.

Since NAFTA was signed in 1994, Mexico has become the leading exporter of cheap labor to the United States. Mexicans, because of the economic damage done to the country, have fled in search of an economic refuge which the nation has been unable to offer. * From 1994 to today, close to 14 million Mexicans have migrated, while domestically, 50% of our people live in poverty, at the same time that nearly one million unemployed are generated yearly.

The inexorable disintegration of international financial system, with its epicenter in the real estate market in the United States, hits Mexico when it is most vulnerable. Its principal vulnerability is its enormous dependency on imported food, a result of the free trade model which promoted the absurdity that it was cheaper to import basic grains than to produce them nationally. Today, we are among the top importers of grains and powdered milk in the world.

This is happening at the same time that food prices are being slammed by hyperinflation generated by the speculative practices of the financial system, and when world grain stocks are falling, and the United States is reducing its exports of products such as corn, in favor of biofuel production.

To this, we must add the fact that the mortgage crisis in the United States is generating unemployment in the construction sector –where 20% of the Mexicans who emigrated since 1994 are employed. This is the reason that it is being said that by the end of the year, a million undocumented Mexicans may have been deported, at the same time that there is a 3% reduction in the dollar remittances sent back by Mexican workers living in the United States.

This set of factors constitute what could be called “the perfect storm” against Mexico. However, it is not only Mexico’s problem, but it is a result of what free trade economic policies have done to our three nations, and to the world. It is, thus, a common problem, which requires a common solution. Only a New Agreement among our three countries, an agreement which breaks with the failed axioms of NAFTA, and takes up great trinational infrastructure projects such as the NAWAPA-PLHINO-PLHIGON, can bring us out of the Hell in which we find ourselves.

This new agreement will also be the way in which we open our doors to the countries of Eurasia and Western Europe, through the Bering Strait, so that the Americas receive with open arms the nations which share the idea, and recognize the need, of creating a new international financial system such as that proposed by the American statesman Lyndon H. LaRouche.

Jeannette James: Address to Ottawa Conference

It is a pleasure for me to welcome you this morning to your very important conference. The title of your conference introduces a very important story. So, good morning to: “Ottawa EIR Conference on the World Land-Bridge for Economic Revival.”

A rail connecting the continents is not a new idea, but is one that is long overdue. With a special opportunity of the Bering Strait–56 miles wide, 173 meters deep at the deepest place, and two islands in the middle for staging–this is a no-brainer. Also important is the fact that the area, which at one time in history was a land-bridge, is solid granite and not on a fault line.

I grew up by a railroad track, and have always been a fan of railroads. Railroads are the most environmentally friendly way to move people and freight over the surface of the Earth. And, as well, trains are economically superior to other methods.

My active participation in this economical vision began when I entered the Alaska Legislature in 1992. During Alaska’s 18th Legislature, I was instrumental in passing two related pieces of legislation:

First, there was already an established rail corridor from the Canadian border to Fairbanks, but it needed a breath of life. My legislation was simple: It required the Department of Transportation to determine the approximate value of private property within that corridor, for planning purposes, and authorized $10,000. The purpose was to keep this idea alive. However, it seemed to provide a reverse message to our next governor. Gov. Tony Knowles, elected in 1994, served until December 2002. After the money was spent, and a determination made, he canceled the permits with the Bureau of Land Management that had been there for years, believing that this rail corridor would never be built.

The second piece of legislation authorized a 500-foot-wide transportation and utility corridor from Fairbanks to the Seward Peninsula, which was not subject to Title 38 requirements. Title 38 requires specific processes that are overwhelming and time-consuming, which could result in the inability to complete such a project. This legislation was 1994 Session Law, and will remain on the books for 50 years from the date of passage. Thirteen years of those 50 years have now passed.

The renewing of Alaska’s interest in this rail project soon traveled around the world. The Russians had already expressed their interest. I received communications from the U.K., China, and Australia. Our Arctic University in Fairbanks communicates with other nations, and has been very instrumental in attracting support. Since that time, a number of conferences have been held.

During the Gov. Frank Murkowski administration in Alaska, from 2002 to 2006, we partnered with Canada through Yukon and British Columbia to do a feasibility study. I served as Railroad Advisor to Governor Murkowski during that time. Headed by Governor Murkowski, a group of us visited Prime Minister Paul Martin in Ottawa: We were looking for Federal Canadian support. I had met the prime minister when he was on the campaign trail in Yukon. We visited then, and I made my thoughts clear to him. There were smiles on his face, when he recognized my attendance, and he commented on my insistent attitude related to the rail issue. He seemed supportive. We were successful getting a commitment for that Canadian Federal input for our upcoming study.

This study resulted from Federal legislation, sponsored by then-U.S. Senator Frank Murkowski, and identified as “Rail to Resources.” Federal funds were authorized. Yukon and Alaska added money to those funds, and that study is now complete.

The often-heard statement that “it takes a village to raise a child” is a good vision of what it will take to complete this project. I believe we must have enthusiasm, money, education, and desire from the world community for this to be completed. During the construction, and after completion, the World Land-Bridge and the economic revival will be recognized, experienced, and appreciated by the entire Earth’s population. I will continue to support, and look forward to legislation passing our U.S. Congress making this vision a reality.

Again, congratulations! You are off to a good start. I wish for your ultimate success, and I wish I could be there with you.

Why Canada Needs The Bering Strait Tunnel, or Philosophy of Railroads for the 21st Century

 [available in a pdf dossier here]

The relationship ofCanada to its railways has always been an existential one; this was true in 1849, the great launching point for 19th century Canadian railroading, as it is true today.

There are even parallels between the two eras, such as the resistance to change that confronted Canada’s early patriots, as it confronts anyone today, who has a greater vision for Canada than the narrow strip and isolated patches of civilization, currently hugging the U.S. border. The future of Canada is the Northwest, with its untold resources and vast supplies of freshwater; it is one of the final terrestrial frontiers.

Canada is now faced with this era’s existential choice: either to develop or collapse. As these words are written the entire international financial system is breaking apart in a series of banking crises, which are only a slight foretaste of what imminently approaches. In the meantime, the condition of the country’s infrastructure grows increasingly wretched; our industries continue to disappear, our companies to be seized by thieving hedge and equity funds, while sovereignty seems no more than a quaint dream. Fortunately, however, Russia, taking up Lyndon LaRouche’s visionary Eurasian Landbridge proposal of the early 1990’s, has offered, both to the US and Canada, to trilaterally build a Bering Strait Tunnel in order to connect the Americas with the entire Eurasian landmass. The Tunnel is in actuality part of a Russian offer of a new relationship between the two great powers, to lead the reorganization of the global economy. A new strategic alliance is in the offing, and the basis for solving the economic crisis is now at hand. A great moment has found us: shall we rise to meet it, or fall victim to our propensity for national littleness? The government of Canada has answered: it claims to not know of Russia’s proposal. Thus it falls to the people to organize themselves and attain to the objective, which their currently elected representatives are too cowardly or incompetent to dare.

When nations take it upon themselves to consider such weighty questions – questions which will undoubtedly affect the entirety of the human race and its posterity, it seems proper that a moment or two be taken to reflect upon the less obvious reasons – at least for the current generation – for this project’s overwhelming importance. It would also be fitting to add to my own voice that of the man who, perhaps more than any other, was responsible for Canada’s first rapid expansion of railroads, an expansion that saved Canada from certain economic ruin beneath the yoke of British rule. The man was Thomas Coltrin Keefer, Canada’s “Prophet of Progress.”

Keefer was born in 1821 into a family of civil engineers, growing up immersed in the construction of one of the greatest infrastructure projects of the period: the Welland Canal, which circumvented the previously indomitable Niagara Falls. Keefer’s father was the first President of the Welland Canal Company, and a close friend of the driving force behind the project – the man who was also the mentor of young Keefer, William Hamilton Merritt. At 17, Keefer left home and spent two years, 1838-40, working on the Erie Canal, the preeminent American engineering school of its day, digesting American System methods and philosophy. Keefer then spent the 1840’s working on the Welland Canal, as well as on other engineering jobs, until 1849, when Merritt, who had just attained one of the top posts in Canada’s colonial government, commissioned him to compose a pamphlet promoting railroad development in Canada, at a time when all of Canada had no more than sixty miles of railway. The pamphlet was entitled Philosophy of Railroads; and it was a direct attack, not only upon the domineering British System of free trade, but also that depraved and bestial conception of man so beloved of the British oligarchy, as well as their philosophers and economists.

The pamphlet’s success was immediate and astonishing. In less than a year Philosophy of Railroads was in its third printing, had been reprinted in scores of Canadian newspapers, and was circulating throughout the United States as well. By 1853 there was also a French edition. One contemporary biographer claimed that Keefer contributed more than any other to the building of railroads in Canada, even though he himself would never actually supervise one’s construction; rather, Keefer’s power was located in his capacity to convey ideas, and to overcome the colonial axioms within the people themselves, which prevented the adoption of American System policies in Canada. As a direct result of his political intervention and the work of Merritt in passing crucial railroad legislation, over the course of the 1850’s Canada’s patriotic circles would build several thousand miles of track, adopt American System protectionism, and lead an attempt during the U.S. Civil War to break Canada away from the British System.

Keefer would go on to play a leading role in the construction of water management systems in a number of cities, as well as to found the Canadian Society of Civil Engineering, serving as its first President. Moreover, he is the only Canadian to have also served as President of the American Society of Civil Engineers. In 1878, as his crowning achievement, Keefer was named the executive commissioner for Canada at the Paris Exhibition, assembling a greater show of domestically produced machine tools than any nation save Germany and the United States. He was one of the first Canadians to agitate for a continental railway; he also had an ecstatic vision for Canada’s economic future when, in 1898, he spoke of a future of high-speed, electrified trains, running silently between clean, well-lighted cities.

Now, to return to the issue at hand. As every true humanist and national patriot has understood, the issue of development is not merely one of balance sheets and cost-benefit analysis; nor is it simply about the expansion of trade and production; but rather, it is a question of the very nature of man: that we have the capacity not only to improve ourselves, but nature as well; that nations must be dedicated to the improvement of their people; that the Hobbesian nightmare of globalization is not inevitable; that we may forge instead that prescient vision of Franklin D. Roosevelt – a community of sovereign nation states, working together for the welfare of all. For this reason is it necessary to speak of the Bering Strait Tunnel not simply as an infrastructure project, but as an idea, as a transformative process with profound economic, cultural and moral implications. Similarly, Keefer himself often referred to the railroad as “the iron civilizer;” or as one of his biographers, H.V. Nelles, wrote, “as a train of consequences as opposed to a simple line of track,” that “the aim of Philosophy of Railroads was to establish a direct linkage between the railroad and the noblest ideals of the age, and to illuminate the process through which steam technology would necessarily advance the material improvement and the moral perfection of man.”

Today we may not speak of “steam technology”, but we surely speak of nuclear fission, thermonuclear fusion, and magnetic-levitation trains. These represent, as Lyndon LaRouche has repeatedly pointed out, the metaphorical fire of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, for the giving of which to humankind the immortal Prometheus is eternally punished by an oligarchic Zeus. As Keefer argues, and as the testament of history proves, great projects have the effect of elevating an otherwise backward population out of their often self-imposed cultural darkness, such as the “Sleepy Hollow” that was early 19th century Canada (see appendix and below). Speaking before the Montreal Mechanics Institute in 1853, he asked,

“is there not reason for belief that the regeneration of the dark corners of the earth is to be accomplished…by a practical elevation of the people, to be brought about by a rapid development of commerce and the arts? Ignorance and prejudice will flee before advancing prosperity. Wherever a railway breaks in upon the gloom of a secluded district, new life and vigor are infused into the native torpor – the long desired market is obtained…the hitherto useless waterfall now turns the laboring wheel, now drives the merrier spindle, the cold and hungry are now clothed and nourished.”

Keefer understood that without economic prosperity, peace and stability would be impossible: whether it was the development of North America then, or the prospects for peace today in the Middle East, the same principle applies. He observed that, “the steamboat and the railroad…have diffused a degree of comfort and prosperity unprecedented in history. Every new manufacture, every new machine, every mile of railway built is not only of more practical benefit, but is a more efficient civilizer, a more speedy reformer, than years of declamation, agitation, or moral legislation.”

But what was it that Keefer and Merritt recognized in the culture that required their intervention? In Philosophy of Railroads Keefer observes, of revolutionary projects and systems, that, “their origin and maturity are the work of the well-informed few, whose foresight has been rewarded frequently before it has been acknowledged… who have contended with the chilling influences of popular apathy, ignorance, and incredulity.” Could Keefer not just as easily be speaking of the national malaise of today? The railway system of Canada was once a source of pride for Canadians – it was a demonstration of our command over nature. We had straddled the vast continental expanses with an iron belt of power; the railways were the sinews and the great commercial arteries of the nation. There was a time when Canada hummed with the excited energy of national expansion, there was nothing that could not be overcome; and yet today, beneath the tyranny of the Baby Boomer generation’s anti-progress ideology, we no longer build, we no longer produce, we only desire to consume, and increasingly the future has become our fare.

Keefer’s answer, which is the central feature of Philosophy of Railroads, is to paint a comic miniature of Canadian society, as true today as it was in his time: a little town called ‘Sleepy Hollow,’ where nothing happens and there are no railroads to trouble the residents with “the hideous screech of the steam whistle;” where the people believe they have “attained the limit of improvement. If they have no waterpower…it is clear to their minds that they were never destined for manufacturing; …it is still more evident, from their position, they are not to become a commercial people and build up large cities; they, therefore, jog along with evident self-satisfaction – the venerable churchyard is filling up with tombstones – and the quiet residents arrive at the conclusion that they are a particularly favored people in having escaped the rage for improvement.” Of course all this changes when the railway comes to town, though first the people suffer from terrible visions of “bloody skirmishes” with railway workers, of “plundered poultry yards and abducted pigs,” of children “‘drawn and quartered’ on the rail by the terrible locomotive”, while the railway engineers and surveyors “are met with curses both loud and deep.”

These terrible visions come to an end, however, when the townspeople begin to realize the manifest benefits that the railroad brings with it: the population is enriched and elevated, for while “our little hamlet [is] undergoing such a wonderful transformation, the moral influence of the iron civilizer upon the old inhabitants is bringing a rapid ‘change over the spirit of their dreams.’” The citizens become worldlier, they become wealthier, more educated, their politics take on a national scope. Progress, “that invisible power which has waged successful war with the material elements, will assuredly overcome the prejudices of mental weakness or the designs of mental tyrants. It calls for no co-operation, it waits for no convenient season, but with a restless, rushing, roaring assiduity, it keeps up a constant and unavoidable spirit of enquiry or comparison; and while ministering to the material wants, and appealing to the covetousness of the multitude, impels them to a more intimate union with their fellow men.”

Keefer playfully finds a way to outflank the culture’s axioms. The individual can look at the silliness of the townspeople and their response to the “terrible locomotive,” and chuckle at finding that same silliness in him or herself; but Keefer does more than that, for he is not just concerned with poking fun at the population – he wishes to uplift the reader to a nobler conception of human potential, and to establish a mission of national progress. There is an urgency to his tone, when, at the close of the pamphlet, he writes,

“…We are placed beside a restless, early-rising, ‘go-a-head’ people – a people who are following the sun westward. …We cannot hold back…we must use what we have or lose what we already possess – capital, commerce, friends and children will abandon us for better furnished lands unless we at once arouse from our lethargy; we can no longer afford to loiter away our winter months, or slumber through the morning hours. …But when once the barriers of indifference, prejudice and ignorance are broken down, no physical or financial obstacle can withstand the determined perseverance of intelligent, self-controlled industry.

We submit the foregoing view of the railway system and our position to it, to the generous and patriotic consideration of every intelligent merchant, manufacturer, farmer, and mechanic – to every Canadian, native or adopted – and ask them: Shall we have Railroads in Canada?”

There is another point of consideration in the case for the Bering Strait Tunnel and great projects in general: the geopolitical and strategic implications, which are understood much more clearly today than in Keefer’s time, thanks to the tireless work of Lyndon LaRouche: the kernel of which is human creativity – the great fear of every imperial or oligarchical system. In his recent paper, Man & the Skies Above, LaRouche writes:

“The great paradox which oligarchism represents, is that the ability of the human species to maintain a level of population above that of the great apes, depends absolutely on those creative powers unique to the human individual mind through which scientific and related discoveries produce the means for increase in both the potential size of population, and its life-expectancy. If the population were permitted to share, freely, the knowledge and freedom to employ such knowledge corresponding to presently knowable scientific and related skills, where would there be inequality on which the oligarchical systems depend?”

“If the capabilities for scientific and related discoveries, which advance the standard of life and power over adversities, make societies stronger, per capita and per square kilometer of territory, why hold back scientific and technological progress? Why insist on wildly hedonistic, irrational entertainments, rather than Classical culture which enhances the individual’s power to think, and sweeten the social relations with other persons? Simply, because the power which such means promote among the generality of the population would bring an end to the system of oligarchy.”

Herein lies the fundamental issue of the Bering Strait project; just as World War I and II were organized by the British oligarchy to destroy Russia and Europe (documented extensively by Executive Intelligence Review), now today these same British networks, typified by BAE, and their lackey, U.S. Vice President Cheney, are driving for expanded war throughout Eurasia.

Thus, the struggle for Eurasian development and a new international financial system, free of oligarchical control, is the latest phase in this Promethean contest for the minds of humankind: the very question of whether the citizens of the world will have the opportunity to participate in scientific and technological progress, whether they will have the opportunity to develop themselves and make positive contributions to the advancement of civilization. These are the issues of statecraft that drive men such as Lyndon LaRouche to make the breakthroughs in science and economy that he has made, and then organize the population to see them implemented; these are the issues that drove Keefer and his collaborators to mobilize Canada around an idea of the future potential of what were still a collection of impoverished British colonies, clinging to the verge of an awesome wilderness of nine million square kilometers. For Keefer, as for LaRouche, the greatest gift that can be given a human being is access to his or her own immortality – something that Globalization denies the vast majority of human beings. In the same 1853 speech, Keefer concluded with this idea of immortality, in the spirit of the ‘pursuit of happiness’ clause of the U.S. Constitution:

“I venture to believe that, as mechanics we may devote some moments to a consideration of the tendencies, the prospects, and the utility of the great enterprises, which give character to the age, and in the execution of which we are in a greater or lesser degree the agents – that this feeling of being useful in our day and generation will while away with a diminished degree of weariness the many hours of labor – that as you ply the busy hammer or wield the heavier sledge, some of you may dream that you are fast driving nails into the coffin of prejudice, of ignorance, of superstition and national animosities; that as you turn down the bearings or guide the unerring steel over all the 500 parts of a locomotive engine, fancy will picture you cutting deep, and smooth, and true, into obstacles which have so long separated one district, one family, one people, from another – and that you may exult in the reflection that those huge drivers will yet tread out the last smoldering embers of discord, that those swift revolving wheels – by practically annihilating time and space and by re-uniting the scattered members of many a happy family – will smooth the hitherto rugged path, fill up the dividing gulf, break through the intervening ridge, overcome or elude the ups and downs of life’s checkered journey, and speed the unwearied traveler upon his now rejoicing way.”

 It is this joyful Promethean impulse which has built Canada into one of the most prosperous nations in the world, not the British imperial legacy. That Canada even exists today is in spite of Britain. This nation – though restrained by British philosophical dogmas, such as Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations or Theory of the Moral Sentiments, in which Smith claims that humans have no capacity to think beyond their sensual appetites, acting only in their immediate self-interest, and that the greater issues of the common good are to be left to the (hopefully) munificent designs of some unknowable deity – has still managed to do many great things. The inspiration for those deeds came not from Britain, but from the U.S. Republic and the republican tradition that found its beginnings in Ancient Greece. Prometheus, the fire-giver, the ennobler of mankind, is the only true identity of Canada’s historical nation-builders. It is this same latent impulse, which the Bering Strait Tunnel calls upon today. Entire peoples await the enlightening force of nuclear power, the rushing sound of the maglev, and the sight of bounteous fields, laden with well-watered crops, where desert once had reigned. Canada has a great role to play in this dawning era, if it so chooses. Canada’s mission and purpose is to be sought not only within the bounds of our own lands, but deep below the arctic sea, across and beneath the Siberian steppe, and in the deserts of Asia and Africa. It begins with the Bering Strait. Thus, as Keefer once before, now again the Canadian LaRouche Youth Movement submits this treatise, to all manufacturers, farmers and people of commerce, Canadians born and newly landed, of all who would see a single nation, dignified and beneficent towards others, and we ask: Canada, shall we build the Bering Strait Tunnel?

 

 

 

Go West Young Man! Questions Relative to American and Canadian History

 [available in a pdf dossier here]

 [Following my internal memo on THE TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE QUEBEC ACT OF 1774, sent to you on 7/4/2007, I am putting out some questions for public discussion to the Montreal LYM in order to suggest guidelines for a joint Canadian-American history project in line with LaRouche’s mission of {America’s Manifest Destiny}. This report was written before the author had the opportunity to read the book of Henri Gosselin, {George Washington’s French-Canadian Spy.}]

 

  1. The Significance of the Quebec Act for the US and Canada.

In 1776, at the time when in the American colonies, the greatest liberation movement in all of history was asserting itself, as the “{Beacon of Hope and the Temple of Liberty}” for all of mankind, a wall of British oligarchical lies, known as the Quebec Act of 1774, was erected around a “{neighboring Province}” in order to prevent the United States from being born. For the American Continental Congress, the Quebec Act became the most important reason for pushing the 13 colonies of America to unite and to “{dissolve their political bands}” with Britain on July 4, 1776.

The irony of this Quebec Act is that it was not designed for improving the lives of Canadians, but for the purpose of destroying Americans and their constitutional principles. This Intolerable Act, as it was called in America, was concocted by the British East India Company, otherwise known as the Lords of Trade and Plantations, for extending invasively the territorial boundaries of the Province of Quebec deep inside of the American territory, south to the Ohio River and West to the Mississippi River, by means of the Gentleman Adventurer’s Hudson’s Bay Company, in order to prevent the Americans from reaching westward toward the Pacific Ocean, thereby, putting an end to the unique experiment of American exceptionalism, that is, George Washington’s {Manifest Destiny}. From that strategic standpoint, both North and South America were to be secured and isolated from the infection of British oligarchism that had taken root in Canada. It was within the context of that exceptional moment of history that the Quebec Act was also meant to prevent the French Canadians from joining the American Revolution. Moreover, this infectious disease known as the Quebec Act was to hang like a Damocles’ sword over the Americas from that day forward.

Since the Quebec Act is still, to this day, the founding document that established British Canada as a colony, the following thoughts are therefore aimed at provoking public discussion that will help define political guidelines for taking appropriate actions in changing this continuously intolerable and fraudulent state of affairs inside of Canada, and to see how that nation-state can become a fruitful participant in the Grand Design of the LaRouche Bering Strait tunnel proposal linking up the Americas with Eurasia.

If 1776 reflected a great moment of history that was missed by a little people in Canada, let it be understood that the current opportunity of the LaRouche Grand Design, today, is a similar moment of history. So, the question is: will the Canadian people seize the opportunity of joining this second American Revolution?

Here, however, a note of caution is required. These questions are not aimed at raising a public debate over the Constitutionality of Canada at this time. It would have been better to initiate that dialogue, a few years ago, when the Vancouver proposal for a constitutional consensus amendment formula was introduced. But it is too late for that now. However, there is a preliminary step which can be taken before a full debate over the Constitutional reform of Canada may be undertaken. The focus for raising these questions must be the mission of planetary self-development for the next fifty years, along the lines of LaRouche’s Eurasian Landbridge and the Bering Strait. This requires absolutely that Canadian citizens and Canadian political leaders resolve in their own minds the crucial anomalies posed by the Quebec Act. Without solving these fundamental questions, there is no chance that Canada could appropriately tackle the challenge of the next fifty years and more, in collaboration with the four primary powers, namely, the United States, Russia, China, and India. Therefore the time has come to get rid of the fallacious British oligarchical thinking that has been preventing the nation of Canada and the rest of the world from developing.

  1. America’s Manifest Destiny.

In the retrospective search for attempting to explain the causes for the deeply rooted discontent between the English and French in Canada, invariably, one has to come to grips with the nature of the Quebec Act of 1774 that created the modern form of Canada in the first place. So, investigating the historical specificities that derived from this legislation is the prerequisite historical work that can help explain what caused the present state of political and cultural crisis in Canada. This work will also help us discover the alternate policies that will restore Canada as a more truthful sovereign nation-state for future generations. Therefore, the first and most important aspect to be considered lies in the fact that this intolerable Quebec Act did not succeed in destroying Americans but has been destroying Canadians for over 200 years. In other words, to this day, this founding legislation has not been serving its intended purpose. This is not a matter to be taken lightly and with fleeting discussions; this is a matter of life and death for a people and its posterity.

The truth of this matter is so crucial that it was deemed necessary to be included explicitly in the American Declaration of Independence itself. The signers of the Declaration denounced this Quebec Act:“{For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies.}”

There are two points to be considered here. One is with regard to Americans and the other is with respect to Canadians.

To Americans, the Quebec Act was considered to be the most dangerous of all five Intolerable Acts legislated by the British Parliament between 1763 and 1774. The Quebec Act created, in North America, the precedent that actually banned the idea of self-government and erected a barrier against the George Washington project of {Manifest destiny,} that is, the project for the development of western territories all the way to the Pacific Ocean. This {Manifest Destiny} idea was precisely the original root-idea that gave birth to the LaRouche’s Bering Strait project, linking the entire world with anti-oligarchical republics around the principle of basic human rights and self-development of constitutionally sovereign nation-states and grounded in the principle of the benefit of the other of the Peace of Westphalia.

Figure. 1. Painting by John Gast entitled {American Progress} (Around 1872). Gast used Columbia as the personification of the United States to represent the {Manifest Destiny} of America leading civilization westward.

As LaRouche demonstrated, the idea of {Manifest Destiny} actually originated in ancient Greece, with Solon of Athens, was later restored with the Renaissance of Nicholas of Cusa and was defined in America by the founder of New England, John Winthrop. The founding father who most embodied the idea of {Manifest Destiny} was Silas Deane. However, the idea became the official American policy doctrine under John Quincy Adams and was established as the basis for a community of principle in his Monroe Doctrine. This policy is always standing today and must pursued with renewed vigor.[1]  

The term “destiny” attached to this policy was coined originally by John Quincy Adams in a letter written from Russia to his father John Adams, and in which he stated: “{The whole continent of North America appears to be destined by Divine providence to be peopled by one nation, speaking one language, professing one general system of religious and political principles, and accustomed to one general tenor of social usages and customs. For the common happiness of them all, for their peace and prosperity, I believe it indispensable that they should be associated in one federal Union.}”[2]

The idea was meant to cut off the newly created republic from the poison of oligarchism coming from the East and to push the development of American republicanism westward. Bring civilization to the West. “{The struggle was always–colonize westward}, noted Lyndon LaRouche. “{Bring the best people from Europe, the best common people who believed in this idea; bring them to this land, develop this land, move westward, open the way to the west, keep moving westward.}”[3]

This is why, in their {Declarations and Resolves of Oct. 14, 1774}, the American Continental Congress of Philadelphia recognized that the Quebec Act was a direct assault against the idea of {Manifest Destiny}. They identified the Quebec Act as being “{unjust, and cruel, as well as unconstitutional, and most dangerous and destructive of American rights.}” I will recall, here, only a few of the most vocal American leaders who denounced the Quebec Act for the fallacy of composition that it is and for the danger it represented against the American progress of civilization westward.

On October 21, 1774, John Jay, the first Chief Justice from New York, drafted a letter to the People of Great Britain, in which he denounced the Quebec Act as follows:”{In the session of parliament last mentioned, an act was passed, for changing the government of Quebec, by which act the Roman Catholic religion, instead of being tolerated, as stipulated by the treaty of peace, is established; and the people there deprived of a right to an assembly, trials by jury and the English laws in civil cases abolished, and instead thereof, the French laws established, in direct violation of his Majesty’s promise by his royal proclamation, under the faith of which many English subjects settled in that province: and the limits of that province are extended so as to comprehend those vast regions, that lie adjoining to the northerly and westerly boundaries of these colonies.}”[4]

On the same day (October 21, 1774), Patrick Henry of Virginia drafted the following address to the king: “{Judge Royal Sir what must be our feelings when we see our fellow subjects of that Town & Colony suffering a Severity of punishment of which the British History gives no Example, & the Annals of Tyranny can scarcely equal? And when we see in the Fate of this our sister Colony that which awaits us, we are filled with the most terrible apprehensions–Apprehensions which are heightened & increased almost to Despair, when we turn our Attention to the Quebec Act.}”

It was Silas “Ticonderoga” Deane, Chairman of the Committee on Safety for the colony of Connecticut, who sounded the alarm about the explicit danger to {Manifest Destiny}, by sending a letter to Samuel Adams, Chairman of the same committee for Massachusetts, warning him of the dangers respecting western territories. Deane called for immediate migration of large numbers of Europeans (up to a million settlers) to stake their claims in these territories. He considered that “{This, or some such plan, will most effectually defeat the design of the Quebec Bill, which if not broke thro’ & defeated in some shape or other, will be the most fatally mischievous to the British Colonies of any Bill ever framed by the Ministry, or that may possibly ever enter into their Hearts To conceive of}.” In fact, the Quebec Act had stripped Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Virginia of their lawful claims to western lands. Like Silas Deane, the Virginian, Richard Henry Lee, considered the Quebec Act as the “{worst grievance}” of all intolerable acts against America.

On November 13, 1774, Silas Dean explained why the Quebec Act represented such a great danger to the grand design of {Manifest Destiny}:

“{The extending & fixing Settlements of Protestants Westward will not only bring about this wished-for event, but will be in future Days Our greatest Strength & Security. Another Tier as I may say of Colonies settled back of Us will be, an inexhaustible resource to Us, &c render Us humanely speaking invincible though the united Powers of the whole World should attack Us. Look at a Map, & see, the situation of the Countries between 40.° & 45.° through the Continent. This is the New England Inheritance, as fairly secured for them, by their Ancestors, as any one Acre they Now possess, and once well settled with Our People, & their descendants, will give Law, not to North & South America alone, but to the World if they please.

“This will, & must be the most independent Country on the Globe, inland Seas or Lakes, and Rivers extending quite across the Continent in those parallels, and the Western extremity lands Us at the very Door, of the Treasures of the East, and The South. If the Contemplation of these future events give Us pleasure every effort of Ours to ripen them if successful, in degree realizes them. This can hardly be called the pleasure of the imagination only, but rather the pleasure of anticipating great, & important realities, & such as are hastening on, & in the arrival of which, the happiness of Mankind is most deeply interested}.”[6]


Figure 2. Map of colonial America representing how under the Quebec Act 1774 the British had claims west of he American colonies.[5]

  1. The American Congress Invitation to French-Canadians.

For the benefit of Canadians, however, the most important American intervention against the Quebec Act came on October 26, 1774, from Richard Henry Lee, a Senator from Virginia, who drafted for the Continental Congress a 12-page letter {To the Inhabitants of Quebec,} calling on the French-Canadians to repudiate the Act and join the American Revolution.

“[…]{The injuries of Boston have roused and associated every colony, from Nova-Scotia to Georgia. Your province is the only link wanting, to complete the bright and strong chain of union. Nature has joined your country to theirs. Do you join your political interests? For their own sakes, they never will desert or betray you. Be assured, that the happiness of a people inevitably depends on their liberty, and their spirit to assert it. The value and extent of the advantages tendered to you are immense. Heaven grant you may not discover them to be blessings after they have bid you an eternal adieu.”

“We are too well acquainted with the liberality of sentiment distinguishing your nation to imagine, that difference of religion will prejudice you against a hearty amity with us. You know that the transcendent nature of freedom elevates those who unite in her cause above all such low-minded infirmities. The Swiss Cantons furnish a memorable proof of this truth. Their union is composed of Roman Catholic and Protestant States, living in the utmost concord and peace with one another and thereby enabled, ever since they bravely vindicated their freedom, to defy and defeat every tyrant that has invaded them. […]}”

After describing to the French-Canadians the American “{invaluable rights}”; 1) the right to share in one’s own government; 2) the right to a trial by jury; 3) the right of liberty of the person with a writ of Habeas Corpus; 4) the right of holding lands by the tenure of easy rent; and 5) the right of freedom of the press, the letter made an amazing critique of the Quebec Act by identifying its shortcomings, point by point. The complete version of the letter {To the inhabitants of Quebec} accompanies this text in attachment.

{These are the invaluable rights that form a considerable part of our mild system of government; that, sending its equitable energy through all ranks and classes of men, defends the poor from the rich, the weak from the powerful, the industrious from the rapacious, the peaceable from the violent, the tenants from the lords, and all from their superiors.

“These are the rights without which a people cannot be free and happy, and under the protecting and encouraging influence of which these colonies have hitherto so amazingly flourished and increased.

“These are the rights a profligate Ministry are now striving by force of arms to ravish from us, and which we are with one mind resolved never to resign but with our lives.

“These are the rights you are entitled to and ought at this moment in perfection to exercise. And what is offered to you by the late Act of Parliament in their place? Liberty of conscience in your religion? No. God gave it to you; and the temporal powers with which you have been and are connected, firmly stipulated for your enjoyment of it. If laws, divine and human, could secure it against the despotic caprices of wicked men, it was secured before.

“Are the French laws in civil cases restored? It seems so. But observe the cautious kindness of the Ministers, who pretend to be your benefactors. The words of the statute are-that those “laws shall be the rule, until they shall be varied or altered by any ordinances of the Governor and Council.” Is the “certainty and lenity of the criminal law of England, and its benefits and advantages,” commended in the said statute, and said to “have been sensibly felt by you,” secured to you and your descendants? No. They too are subjected to arbitrary “alterations” by the Governor and Council; and a power is expressly reserved of appointing “such courts of criminal, civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, as shall be thought proper.” Such is the precarious tenure of mere will by which you hold your lives and religion.

“The Crown and its Ministers are empowered, as far as they could be by Parliament, to establish even the Inquisition itself among you. Have you an Assembly composed of worthy men, elected by yourselves and in whom you can confide, to make laws for you, to watch over your welfare, and to direct in what quantity and in what manner your money shall be taken from you? No. The Power of making laws for you is lodged in the governor and council, all of them dependent upon and removable at the pleasure of a Minister.

“Besides, another late statute, made without your consent, has subjected you to the impositions of Excise, the horror of all free states, thus wresting your property from you by the most odious of taxes and laying open to insolent tax-gatherers, houses, the scenes of domestic peace and comfort and called the castles of English subjects in the books of their law. And in the very act for altering your government, and intended to flatter you, you are not authorized to “assess levy, or apply any rates and taxes, but for the inferior purposes of making roads, and erecting and repairing public buildings, or for other local conveniences, within your respective towns and districts.” Why this degrading distinction? Ought not the property, honestly acquired by Canadians, to be held as sacred as that of Englishmen? Have not Canadians sense enough to attend to any other public affairs than gathering stones from one place and piling them up in another?

“Unhappy people! who are not only injured, but insulted. Nay more! With such a superlative contempt of your understanding and spirit has an insolent Ministry presumed to think of you, our respectable fellow-subjects, according to the information we have received, as firmly to persuade themselves that your gratitude for the injuries and insults they have recently offered to you will engage you to take up arms and render yourselves the ridicule and detestation of the world, by becoming tools in their hands, to assist them in taking that freedom from us which they have treacherously denied to you; the unavoidable consequence of which attempt, if successful, would be the extinction of all hopes of you or your posterity being ever restored to freedom. For idiocy itself cannot believe that, when their drudgery is performed, they will treat you with less cruelty than they have us who are of the same blood with themselves.

“What would your countryman, the immortal Montesquieu, have said to such a plan of domination as has been framed for you? Hear his words, with an intenseness of thought suited to the importance of the subject.— ‘In a free state, every man, who is supposed a free agent, ought to be concerned in his own government: Therefore the legislative should reside in the whole body of the people, or their representatives.’—The political liberty of the subject is a tranquility of mind, arising from the opinion each person has of his safety. In order to have this liberty, it is requisite the government be so constituted, as that one man need not be afraid of another. When the power of making laws, and the power of executing them, are united in the same person, or in the same body of Magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same Monarch or Senate, should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.

“The power of judging should be exercised by persons taken from the body of the people, at certain times of the year, and pursuant to a form and manner prescribed by law. There is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.” […]

“We do not ask you, by this address, to commence acts of hostility against the government of our common Sovereign. We only invite you to consult your own glory and welfare, and not to suffer yourselves to be inveigled or intimidated by infamous ministers so far as to become the instruments of their cruelty and despotism, but to unite with us in one social compact, formed on the generous principles of equal liberty and cemented by such an exchange of beneficial and endearing offices as to render it perpetual. In order to complete this highly desirable union, we submit it to your consideration whether it may not be expedient for you to meet together in your several towns and districts and elect Deputies, who afterwards meeting in a provincial Congress, may chose Delegates to represent your province in the continental Congress to be held at Philadelphia on the tenth day of May, 1775.}[7]

The point to be made here, for Canadians, is that the entire sequence of historical events, which have shaped the national character of Canada for the last 233 years, including most prominently the conflicts between the French and English parts of its population, have been caused by the fallacy of this fraudulent Act of Quebec as explained by the members of the American Continental Congress. This means that the very history of Canada cannot be understood without explicit reference to the American Declaration of Independence prepared and established by such a Continental Congress and without investigating its historical specificity with respect to Canada. This must be done simply because the {Arbitrary government}, created by that Quebec Act, had been designed, in reality, under the guise of flattery. How can the people of a nation live under such false pretense of its founding moment and continue living the same lie after two centuries, year in and year out, without ever looking for ways and means to properly correct that long standing mistake?

Now, unless the Americans were wrong in their declarative judgment of 1776, this also means that, for Canadians, the Act of Quebec must also be adjudicated as intolerable to themselves, as against their own self-interest, and that the matter must be dealt with, consequently, in light of the very same principles that the British had trampled on two hundred years ago. Indeed, if the signers of the American Declaration of Independence saw fit to explicitly identify that neighbouring “{Arbitrary government},” as evil and despicable to human freedom, its correction must therefore be viewed by Canadians from the vantage point of the very same principles of {life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness}, that such an Act had been aimed at eradicating also in Canada during the last two centuries.

So, in the spirit of the American {Manifest Destiny}, the time has come for Canadians to break with the chains of oligarchism within your own minds. Let’s get to work! Go West young man!

[1] John Quincy Adams described in a most beautiful manner the purpose of his policy of Manifest Destiny with respect to the American Declaration of Independence. He wrote:

In a conflict [of] seven years, the history of the war by which you maintained that Declaration, became the history of the civilized world…It was the first solemn declaration by a nation of the only legitimate foundation of civil government. It was the cornerstone of a new fabric, destined to cover the surface of the globe. It demolished at a stroke, the lawfulness of all governments founded upon conquest. It swept away all of the rubbish of accumulated centuries of servitude. From the day of this Declaration, the people of North America were no longer the fragment of a distant empire, imploring justice and mercy from an inexorable master in another hemisphere. They were a nation, asserting as of right, and maintaining by war, its own existence. A nation was born in a day…It stands, and must forever stand, alone, a beacon on the summit of the mountain, to which all the inhabitants of the earth may turn their eyes for a genial and saving light…a light of salvation and redemption to the oppressed.” (Quoted without source by Nancy Spannaus, Adams’ Community Of Principle: The Monroe Doctrine, EIR, November 16, 2007, p. 68.)

 

[2] Letter from J.Q. Adams to J. Adams, St. Petersburg, August 31, 1811, in {Writings}, IV, p. 209. Italics added by Samuel Flagg Bemis, {John Quincy Adams, and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy}, New York Alfred A. Knopf, 1949, p. 182.

[3] Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr, {The issue of America’s Manifest Destiny for today}, EIR, January 28, 2000.

[4] John Jay, {Journal of Continental Congress}, October 21, 1774.

 

[5] The Times Atlas of World History.

 

[6] Letters of Delegates to Congress: Volume 1, August 1774 – August 1775, Silas Deane to Samuel Adams, p. 262.

[7] Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1774. {To the inhabitants of Quebec}.