SELF-GOVERNING MEANS TAKING A STAND

The office dictionary takes a pretty simple approach to define
sovereignty: self-governing. While there may be no clear agreement on
what exactly is entailed to be a sovereign, or self-governing state,
it seems obvious to me that it should involve as much security and
self-sufficiency as possible.

Canadians are probably in agreement that defense is a great conundrum.
We simply could never amass the resources to put up a serious defense
against our American neighbors, not only the most heavily armed nation
on the planet, but one of the great suppliers of arms to other
countries including those that might be defined as enemies.

In areas of feed production, legal systems and energy supply, however,
there is little reason why we should not act as though we could be
under siege tomorrow. In fact, it would be prudent to do so, given
that under the current regime the United States is now as dogmatic in
its determination to impose its values on the rest of the world as the
U.S.S.R ever was. (Witness the recent appointment of an ambassador to
the United Nations, in which the president bypassed Congress.)

That dogma includes an almost religious adoration of the marketplace;
George Bush has been quoted as saying that U.S. energy policy should
include encouragement to consume energy - as if Americans and
Canadians need a push. The difference of course, is that Canada can
be as self-sufficient as it chooses when it comes to energy, and the
Americans can't

If we had been presented with an announcement 40 years ago that our
provincial natural gas supplier was to be sold to an American firm I
think there would have been tremendous protest. Forty years later,
however, a plan to sell Terasen Gas to a privately-held U.S.
corporation is barely creating ripple of dissent. Apparently, we have
been so brainwashed by the notion of globalization that we just take
it as inevitable that if a foreign country wants secure access to our
resources (as opposed to simply paying for the commodity) they can
simply buy existing supply and delivery mechanisms.

It was a peculiar coincidence that on the day the Terasen sale was
announced the news was also dominated by the story of a raid on the BC
Marijuana Party Bookstore by Vancouver police. It wasn't the raid the
generated the controversy though. Police were acting as agents for
the US Drug Enforcement Agency, which takes exception to the export
from Canada of marijuana seeds to the U.S.

Given that we are a mouse in bed with an elephant, affected by every
movement of the behemoth, I wonder if Canadian police could demand the
arrest of, say, George W. himself, because we believe that he's broken
laws by going to war against, oh say, Afghanistan, without genuine
provocation.

I don't think Canadians, on the whole, are thrilled that so many of us
are unwilling or unable to get through our days without the use of
mind-altering drugs. But we are certainly realistic enough to realize
that, on a scale of genuine societal problems, marijuana isn't high on
the list, pragmatic enough to realize that the vaunted "war on drugs"
is unwinnable and intelligent enough to focus our efforts in ways that
don't simply throw hundreds of thousands of people in jail for what
are essentially victimless crimes.

No reasonable person could argue that the export of marijuana seeds to
the U.S. is on par, for instance, with the planeloads and shiploads of
cocaine and heroin that daily enter the U.S. The actual act of the
DEA "request" for Canadian police to do their bidding would seem more
like a testing of the waters, just to see whether Canadians are as
docile and compliant as we often seem to be.

Canadians need to ask some hard questions of themselves. Have we
truly benefited from free trade (which, keep in mind, is only really
free for businesses, and not for you and I) and globalization, and are
any of the perceived benefits worth the inevitable loss of sovereignty
that comes from not securing our energy supplies and allowing outside
influence on our legal systems?

Americans are a fiercely independent lot and the Bush administration
is adamant that all relations with other countries be designed so
Americans reap the greatest benefits. We could take a lesson.