Editor:
Our federal Parliament has now dissolved and the 2019 election has been called. Every eligible voter, all of us, must decide to whom among the candidates in our own federal constituencies we will give our vote. Will I vote for my current MP? No, I will not.
Why not? Partly for the same reason that I could not vote for her during the last election. At the time I found much about her candidacy that attracted my vote. Yet, to me, the sovereignty-deleting ISDS provision in so-called free trade agreements then under negotiation or pending negotiation had to be a major national issue.
I questioned each of our then candidates on this matter. My then MP, a senior cabinet minister in the previous government, easily supported her government’s ready abrogation of our national sovereignty through ISDS and its inherent characteristic of raising international corporations from being subjects of their home nations and welcome guests within other nations to be, in effect, non-territorial sovereign entities (I called them non-territorial kingdoms) equal in stature with sovereign nations.
As a candidate, my current MP never answered my question or commented on the issue and that turned my vote away from her. After that election, I learned why as the new government, of which she became a part as a cabinet minister, instead of the “Real Change” promised during the election, proceeded to perpetuate the previous government’s support for ISDS.
Dismayed at this let-down, I later wrote an open letter to my new MP, made a submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade and an open letter to our prime minister with my concerns, all to no avail.
Sadly and to Canada’s shame, that the renegotiation of NAFTA into the USMCA removed ISDS had nothing to do with Canada’s negotiating position but resulted entirely from American effort. TiSA, still under negotiation with Canada’s participation continues to provide “backdoor” access to sovereignty-deleting ISDS. As a member of our current government, my current MP continues to support subsuming our sovereign right to govern ourselves as a free and independent nation to ISDS.
As a more immediate reason why I cannot give my vote to my current MP, I look at the SNC Lavalin scandal. My MP supports our prime minister in spite of his interference in the judicial process, an unethical and, likely, unconstitutional action that, in times past, would have either brought on the resignation of a truly honourable minister of the Crown or generated a cabinet or even caucus revolt to force such a resignation.
Not only that, but my MP then accepted, however temporarily, the appointment to replace Jane Philpott at her cabinet ministry when Philpott took the highly honourable step of resigning in support of former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould’s concerns over attempted prime ministerial interference with her authority concerning the judicial case involving SNC Lavalin.
So, to whom will I give my vote? Right now, I simply do not know.
When I vote, I vote the person; I do not vote the party. I will listen to whatever all our candidates have to say on various issues. In particular, I will listen for strong affirmation of judicial independence from political interference and for strong acknowledgement and support for Canada’s independence as a free, self-governing, and sovereign nation not subject to corporate overrule via ISDS. I will look for commitments to support and/or enhance Canada’s existing health care system. I will also want to listen to candidates thoughts on local issues of a federal nature.
Above all, though, and even more importantly under the growing environmental crisis, I will look for substantial intention to contribute to bringing Canada into a strong role in precluding the impending world-wide anthropogenic climate disaster and ending the currently proceeding anthropogenic mass extinction of living species.
I will anticipate learning of intended action to transfer subsidies away from carbon dioxide and methane releasing industries and personal activity, turning those subsidies over to industries and personal activities that require no carbon dioxide or methane release, even including to industrial activity that isolates carbon for non-carbon dioxide releasing purposes or sequesters it.
Delta candidates, I await all that you have to say. Please say it with grace and intelligence.
Edwin M. Hopkins
