{"id":34309,"date":"2013-05-18T06:18:08","date_gmt":"2013-05-18T05:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/canadas-ndp-denounces-china-signals-support-for-obamas-asia-pivot\/34309\/"},"modified":"2013-05-18T06:18:08","modified_gmt":"2013-05-18T05:18:08","slug":"canadas-ndp-denounces-china-signals-support-for-obamas-asia-pivot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/canadas-ndp-denounces-china-signals-support-for-obamas-asia-pivot\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s NDP denounces China, signals support for Obama\u2019s \u201cAsia Pivot\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u00a0<\/h3>\n

\n By
\n Graham Beverley
\n
18 May 2013
\n <\/h5>\n

Canada\u2019s Official Opposition, the trade union-backed New Democratic Party (NDP), brought forward a motion last month to scuttle the recently negotiated Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA).<\/p>\n

Though their motion was doomed to be overwhelmingly defeated and quickly forgotten, the social democrats used the occasion to repeatedly denounce the \u201cCommunist\u201d regime in China. And in heated nationalist terms, they charged that the adoption of FIPA would \u201cdo serious damage to Canada\u201d and \u201cbe dangerous for the future of our country.\u201d <\/p>\n

In a circular sent to party members after the failure of the NDP motion, Guy Caron, the Deputy Critic for International Trade, wrote, \u201cThis week, [Conservative Prime Minister] Stephen Harper came one step closer to selling out Canada\u2019s resources to China… Under FIPA, China\u2019s state-controlled companies will have the same rights as [private] Canadian companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn other words\u2026the Chinese government will have access to Canada\u2019s natural resources\u2013for the next 31 years. The Conservatives negotiated this deal behind closed doors for a reason. They know that Canadians would never stand for the selling out of our resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

Based on poisonous Canadian nationalism, the NDP\u2019s opposition to FIPA\u2013like its opposition to last fall\u2019s $15 billion takeover of the Calgary-based oil giant Nexen by a state-owned Chinese oil company\u2013was aimed at convincing Canadian big business that the NDP is a more aggressive defender of its profit and geostrategic interests than the Conservatives. <\/p>\n

But this was not all. The NDP has mounted its campaign against growing Chinese investment in Canada, especially in the country\u2019s oil and natural gas sector, with a view to convincing the Obama administration and U.S. big business that they will find in Canada\u2019s social democrats a reliable ally.<\/p>\n

Federal NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair visited New York and Washington in March to speak with numerous representatives of the US political and economic elite. In an interview he gave to Bloomberg News Service, Mulcair argued that \u201ctogether, FIPA and CNOOC\u2019s takeover of Nexen, effectively limit the ability of Canadian governments to independently control our own natural resource policy, while ceding enormous control over our resources to a foreign power.\u201d<\/p>\n

By adopting such aggressive anti-Chinese rhetoric, the NDP is signaling that should it form Canada\u2019s government it can be counted upon to provide staunch support to the Obama administration\u2019s \u201cpivot to Asia,\u201d under which Washington is building up its military power and strengthening its strategic alliances in the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions. U.S. imperialism is pressuring its allies throughout the region, including the NDP\u2019s social democratic \u201cbrethren\u201d in Australia\u2019s Labour government, to join it in isolating and preparing for war against China.<\/p>\n

Mulcair\u2013continuing the policies of his predecessor, the late Jack Layton\u2013has lavished praise upon President Obama and the Democratic Party. He has repeatedly declared that Canada and the U.S. have \u201cshared values\u201d that must be defended in the face of \u201can increasingly complex set of challenges,\u201d while employing Cold War rhetoric to characterize China. <\/p>\n

Decades ago the NDP postured as an opponent of Washington\u2019s predatory foreign policy. But since the beginning of the 1990s, the NDP has supported Canada\u2019s participation in a series of U.S.-led wars in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Libya, justifying these crimes as \u201chumanitarian interventions.\u201d At Layton\u2019s insistence, the NDP in 2004 dropped its nominal opposition to Canada\u2019s participation in NATO. <\/p>\n

The NDP critic for International Trade, Don Davies, led the NDP\u2019s anti-China charge in parliament last month, lacing his speech introducing the anti-FIPA motion with chauvinistic, anticommunist rhetoric. He began by describing the judicial system in China as \u201cweak\u201d and \u201cunreliable\u201d, something that \u201cCanadian companies cannot trust\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Addressing a Conservative member of the International Trade Committee, he continued: \u201cYet, my honorable colleague then says that the Chinese will treat Canadian companies just like it treats its own. I have some news for my honorable colleague. China is a communist command economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

A second NDP MP, Marc-Andre Morin, chimed in: \u201cEvery Chinese Canadian I know loves their adopted country and their homeland\u2026 Those people fled a corrupt totalitarian communist regime whose economy is controlled to the nth degree\u2026 Now they see that China could end up exerting the same type of control over our Canadian economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, who voted for the NDP motion, echoed its rightwing nationalist claims, describing FIPA as \u201can attack on our sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Explicit anticommunism and Canadian chauvinism are nothing new for the NDP or its allies in the trade union bureaucracy. However, that the NDP chooses to use such harsh and inflammatory language to denounce China at a time when Washington has clearly identified Beijing as its most important global rival is a clear message to the Obama administration: an NDP government would be a loyal U.S. ally in any confrontation or outright clash with China.<\/p>\n

Such a clash, which would bring with it the threat of a nuclear conflagration, could\u2013it must be emphasized\u2013emerge very rapidly. Over the past year, the US has been encouraging its Asian allies, including Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Vietnam, to more aggressively pursue their territorial disputes with China.<\/p>\n

A key NDP ally\u2013the Australian Labor Party [ALP]\u2013is already playing a major role in supporting the U.S. \u201cpivot to Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Australian Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who seized the party leadership with the blessing of Washington, has wholeheartedly welcomed the U.S.\u2019s strategic shift. In 2011, her government agreed to establish bases for U.S. marines, ships and aircraft in the north and west of Australia, from where they can threaten to block Chinese access to vital sea-lanes between the Indian and Pacific Oceans and cut off China\u2019s essential supplies of energy and other raw materials.<\/p>\n

The NDP has close relations with the ALP. ALP Labour Minister Bill Shorten gave a lengthy keynote address to the NDP Convention held in Montreal last month. <\/p>\n

The massive slide to the right on the part of the NDP is part of an international phenomenon: parties like the ALP, the French Socialist Party, the German SPD and the British Labour Party have openly repudiated any program of \u201csocial reform,\u201d brutally implementing austerity programs and aggressively pursuing imperialist interventions around the world.<\/p>\n

The NDP, though it has never held office in Ottawa, has enthusiastically offered its services to the Canadian ruling class and is now \u201cpreparing for government\u201d by seeking to gain the trust of Washington and Wall Street.<\/p>\n

The NDP\u2019s criticisms of the Harper government\u2019s China policy are made with this dual audience in mind. <\/p>\n

Before the Canadian ruling elite, the NDP argues that the FIPA does not offer enough benefit to Canadian capital. NDP MP Guy Caron, speaking in the language of a corporate executive, appealed to big business: \u201cIn 2011, we had only about $5 billion worth of investments in China, whereas China had over $22 billion worth of investments in Canada in 2012. From the outset, the agreement is not providing equal protection. This demonstrates a lack of reciprocity and is a blatant problem with the agreement before us today.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, and with a view to catching the attention of the U.S. ruling elite, the NDP is voicing alarm over the rapid growth of Chinese investment in Canada\u2013most of it in the pivotal oil and natural gas sector. This has included denouncing both the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation\u2019s acquisition of Nexen and decrying as woefully inadequate the subsequent restrictions the Conservative government has placed on takeovers in the oil and natural gas sector by state-owned companies. <\/p>\n

Mulcair and other NDP spokesmen have repeatedly quoted\u2013including before U.S. audiences\u2013a study that estimates that \u201cby 2020 China will be Canada\u2019s second largest investor, largely in oil and gas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mulcair is clearly trying to win U.S. favour by indicating that an NDP government would limit, if not outright block, Chinese investment in Canada.<\/p>\n

The fate of Canada\u2019s resources is no small matter for Washington and Wall Street. Canada is the largest supplier of oil to the U.S. and its share of U.S. oil imports is expected to grow sharply in the coming decades due to the development of the Alberta tar sands. <\/p>\n

Chinese competition and investment could drive up the price of Canadian oil, divert energy supplies from the U.S. and weaken U.S. capital\u2019s strong presence in Canada\u2019s oil and natural gas sector. <\/p>\n

The Harper government, though it welcomes Chinese investment and the massive profits it generates for Canadian big business, is also lining up with the U.S. drive to war in Asia.<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s military has begun to take on a greater role in the Pacific and a recent National Post<\/em> article suggest that there are discussions now underway in government circles about redeploying Canadian naval resources from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coasts.<\/p>\n

Last summer the Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force took an unprecedented role in a giant U.S.-led maritime warfare exercise\u2013the biannual RIMPAC or Pacific war games off Honolulu. A Canadian Air Force general has recently been posted to the U.S.\u2019s Pacific Command in Hawaii and in January a Canadian warship made a rare port call in the Philippines.<\/p>\n

With U.S. support, Canada and Mexico recently gained entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership\u2013a proposed free trade agreement among U.S. Pacific allies meant as a counterweight to China\u2019s economic rise.<\/p>\n

Like the Harper Conservatives, the NDP recognizes that Canada\u2019s economic and military alliance with the American capital is of paramount importance to the entire Canadian ruling elite.<\/p>\n

By opposing Chinese investment, the NDP is seeking to rally ruling class support, presenting itself as a \u201cgovernment in waiting\u201d that can champion the \u201cnational interests\u201d of the Canadian bourgeoisie and partner effectively with US imperialism.<\/p>\n


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This article originally appeared on : World Socialist Web Site<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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