Canada in Danger of Dissolving?

"This is one of the few polls that I just looked at -- and I've been doing this for 30 years, so I did polling around the Oka Crisis -- I was astonished when I saw some of these numbers, but I'm not surprised."
"People are truly frustrated with the inability of their leadership to come together and recognize that human beings are being affected by their decisions and that they're not simply voters."
John Wright, pollster, DART

"A lot of the blame has been centred on the prime minister and the Liberal government."
"There was some form of void. The government left the impression -- at least many people came to the conclusion -- that there was no one really in charge of the situation [of rail blockades]."
Daniel Beland, director, McGill Institute for the Study of Canada

"Canada is not broken. Canada's institutions are broken."
"In 1867 [year of Confederation], the concern was to protect Canada against democracy, not to protect regional interests."
"Until we have an institution that can speak on behalf of the regions, we are going to have a problem."
Donald Savoie, Canada Research Chair, Public Administration and Governance, University of Moncton

A nation united? Appears not; more accurately, a nation acutely polarized. The West -- blessed by natural resources which resulted in wealth, has enabled, through tax transfers via the federal government to dole out 'equalization' payments to the 'have-not' provinces to ensure that all Canadians regardless of where they live are equally endowed in social services -- has been left by the central government in Ottawa to flounder. Its resource sector, the source of much of Canada's wealth, has been hit by the Liberal government's commitment to its environmentalist backers.

Demonstrators in London blocked several intersections as they made their way toward RCMP offices on Dufferin Avenue. (Sofia Rodriguez)

A government which has done all it possibly can to place roadblocks in the way of investment and development of petroleum resources, causing tens of thousands of job losses, and the firesale of Canadian energy at steeply reduced rates exported abroad, for lack of pipeline delivery stymied time and again through legislation and the courts doing the bidding of the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau. A prime minister whose agenda is reconciliation with Canada's First Nations and meeting environmentalists' demands of shutting down the conventional fossil fuel energy sector.

Both coming together in a sudden and stunning shutdown of Canada's national rail system, both freight and passenger, through sometimes violent, and always illegal blockades launched by five Wet'suwet'en ancestral chiefs, defying the agreement of 20 Wet'suwet'en elected chiefs and the majority of the Wet'suwet'en who signed an agreement of cooperation meant to result in employment and profit through the operation of the northern B.C. Coastal GasLink project.

The transport of critical perishables, production parts, chemicals and heating products across Canada has been halted. This, at a time when Canada is preparing for a possible epidemic of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus that has devastated China, and has emerged as an epidemic in South Korea, Japan, Iran and Italy, and now infects people in over 50 countries globally, and growing. The poll results indicating that a majority of Canadians now feel strongly that the country is not being governed well, is indisputable.

While the country's prime minister was jetting abroad in Africa to drum up support for his legacy project of having Canada elected to a two-year stint on the United Nations Security Council, Aboriginal and environmentalists' protests have virtually shut down cross-country transit. Shipped goods have been piling up on docks awaiting transfer to rail for distribution throughout the country. For two weeks and counting the government urged patience and failed to see that the law went into action to shut down the illegal and dangerous blockades of rail across the nation.

Hundreds of Londoners joined an Indigenous-led demonstration in solidarity with opponents to a pipeline in Wet'suwet'en territory in northern B.C. The demonstrators marched toward RCMP offices in downtown London to show their opposition to the arrests of protesters. (Sofia Rodriguez/CBC)

Now that Justin Trudeau has finally declared that Canada has waited long enough for protest leaders to agree to discussing the issues with government leaders, giving clearance to federal, provincial and municipal police to act, and a few of the blockades have been shut down, others spring up in their place, with 'activists' lighting tires on fire on rail tracks, and setting up blockades that engines narrowly miss hitting. Some activists have taken to standing on tracks, moving out of the way at the last moment.

A full 62 percent of those polled feel Justin Trudeau's promise to Canada's Indigenous people has failed on delivery. Two-thirds of respondents are not averse to supporting one-time payments to Indigenous Canadians for immediate acquisition of "food, clean water and housing" for the "necessities of life", which in actual fact, does go out regularly to Indian reserves throughout the country for those very purposes, and more.

What the agreement that the Wet'suwet'en elected chiefs signed with the Coastal GasLink project would have done was provide dignity through employment, and independence through the share of gasline profits. The current situation has led to another project, in Alberta, for a giant mine investment by Teck Resources, a Canadian firm prepared to invest $20 billion and having reached similar sharing agreement with Aboriginals, being cancelled in view of the ongoing roadblocks, including a decision whether to approve the project expected in days from the Trudeau government.

Over 80 percent of Canadians believe politicians have a greater care for their partisan interests than to do the work they were elected for on behalf of all Canadians. This feeling is supported at 90 percent in Alberta. The federal government under Justin Trudeau and his Liberals has alienated Canada's Western provinces, leaving the country worryingly polarized and increasingly leaderless, while a small minority of Canadian 'activists' and unwanted visitors from the U.S. work to shut Canada down.

Protesters in support of the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs stand near the entrance to the blockade of the commuter rail line in Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, near Montreal, Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

Labels: Aboriginals, Blockades, Canada, Crisis Management, GasLink, Poll, Trudeau

Containing Novel Coronavirus : Global Pandemic

"This is about containing the virus, this is about isolation of the virus, not isolation of people. It has nothing to do with discrimination whatsoever. It's a global fight against this virus. Let's contain it if we can."
"If you transmit it to somebody, who will this person be? Those will be your close family members, the person who greets you at the airport, hugs you. Your wife, parents, kids, very close friends."
"We [group of 23 Chinese-Canadian doctors] are a step ahead of the policy ... but we believe it's the right thing to do."
Dr.Stanley Zheng, family physician, Toronto

Volunteers on WeChat have facilitated "no-touch" pick-ups from the airport for people flying in from China, meaning they arrange for a running car to be waiting in the pick-up zone. Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters

This family doctor practising in Toronto, along with a group of 22 other Chinese Canadian doctors in Toronto have urged, through an open letter, that anyone returning to Canada from a trip to China be instructed to self-quarantine; enter a voluntary, 14-day quarantine. This recommendation is a critical step beyond what now constitutes public health policy. As far as Dr. Zheng and his colleagues are concerned, tougher measures are required to control the emerging infectious outbreak.

The federal government should, according to the contents of the letter, take steps to ensure such isolation is mandatory for not only people returning to Canada from visits to China, but should include other COVID-19 hot spots like South Korea, Iran and Italy, all with significant outbreaks. The fly in that ointment, of course, is that with the rapid spread of the coronavirus and its demonstrated ability to proliferate as it has done in Italy, Iran and South Korea, before long visitors arriving from just about anywhere in the world may bring the virus with them.

Canada and the United States also bear the risk of becoming one of those countries, and should the status of global pandemic be bestowed upon the global outbreak by the World Health Organization, it may become imperative that all countries close their borders in an effort to contain the virus internally while halting additional influxes from abroad. There are now 50 countries of the world known to identify instances of the novel coronavirus in their populations.

A woman wears a surgical mask in Vancouver amid fears over the COVID-19 coronavirus. Seven of Canada’s 13 cases are in British Columbia. Arlen Redekop/Postmedia

 In Canada, health authorities are urging people to take action to prepare for a worst-case scenario of a possible lock-down of cities similar perhaps to what has taken place in China where Hubei province with its hugely populous cities, including its capital Wuhan, with a combined total close to 60-million people have been quarantined; people instructed to remain where they are, no one permitted to leave or to enter the cities.

Canada's chief public health officer has advised businesses, governments and individuals to prepare for a pandemic.That individuals stock up on necessities such as non-perishable foods and prescription medications. Above all, health authorities advise to do the simplest and most effective of routine hygienic practices; wash hands, frequently and thoroughly to aid in a bid to stop transmission of the virus.

Out of China comes news that infectious disease authorities there reveal that 14 percent of patients who recovered from the virus continued to test positive after recovery and it is unknown whether they remained contagious. Scientists have concluded that this disease represents a dangerous mix of lethal, communicable and difficult to detect, with a long incubation period where people showing no symptoms could be infecting others for days or weeks before becoming symptomatic.

A member of the Japanese house of representatives, in Tokyo, adjusts her face mask during a session on 27 February. Photograph: Masatoshi Okauchi/REX/Shutterstock

Toronto has now identified its first COVID-19 case traceable to Iran. The Canadian Pandemic Influenza Preparedness: Planning Guidance for the Health Sector represents a document "that outlines how jurisdictions will work together to ensure a coordinated and consistent health sector approach to pandemic preparedness and response". It sounds reassuring but only when it becomes necessary to bring it to action will we know if it is effective.

Should it become necessary, the plan is to advise people not to gather in large groups. It might become necessary, as Japan has now done, to close all schools even though the spread of the virus within child populations has not yet been identified. What is generally seen as impractical and potentially costly is to close down borders given the obvious detrimental effects on trade and food shipment along with "significant negative social, economic and foreign policy consequences".

COVID-19 is known to cause only mild illness for most people infected, even though a small proportion of people become severely ill. The death rate is counted between two and four percent in Wuhan the epicentre of the infection, and 0.7 percent elsewhere in China and around the world. For older people it is more fatal, along with people having pre-existing medical conditions and/or compromised immune systems; there the death rate leaps to nearly 15 percent for those over 80.

Theft in Technical Innovation Research Blueprints

"These are [now] Huawei employees associated with great technological accomplishments ... and I recognized so many of them. At one level you're proud to be a Canadian, at the same time you're upset to be a Canadian."

"They [Nortel Telecommunications] lost sales not because of technology copying, not because of inferior technology, they lost because the customers lost faith in them. They did not believe that Nortel would be alive in ten years."

Jonathan Calof, business professor, University of Ottawa

"What people need to hear is that economic espionage caused Nortel's failure."

"So others better beware lest they succumb to the same fate. It was sickening hen and it is sickening now to see what was stolen."

Brian Shields, security advisor, Nortel

Huawei Canada’s VP, corporate affairs Alykhan Velshi. Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia

"None of our products or technologies have been developed through the theft of trade secrets."

"Huawei's development is the result of our huge investment in R&D and the hard work of our employees over the past three decades."

Alykhan Velshi, spokesman, Huawei

"What we knew from my point of view was about the agents, the people, human actors in and around Nortel. Definitely Nortel was targeted."

"To this day, I believe there might have been one or more agents of influence controlled by the Chinese which succeeded in neutralizing our warning [of] spying activities the Chinese were conducting [against Nortel]."

Michel Juneau-Katsuya, then head, CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) Asia-Pacific desk

"That's what threw all the alarms. We just knew that we had a major problem, that an executive's credentials are being hacked and being used to infiltrate documents."

"This was a very capable adversary. You have to be pretty darn good to achieve such a level of stealth."

Larry Bill, Nortel security staff, Raleigh, North Carolina

Some have warned against Chinese tech giant Huawei's operations in Canada. Now, a new perspective from someone who says he's seen the damage spying did to Nortel. CBC

Professor Calof was on a trip to China and with him MBA students, touring Huawei Technologies' Shenzhen, China campus. Despite rumours -- and despite his own previous investigation into the possibility that Nortel employees and employees of Huawei who were then networking and where Nortel had given over an entire floor of its operations in Ottawa to Chinese technology operatives in a cooperative venture -- was shocked to recognize so many faces at the Huawei headquarters that had been familiar to him when they were working for Nortel years earlier.

Both companies produced similar equipment for telecommunications and ended up competing for contracts and through their history together negotiated joint ventures. Nortel had achieved impressive advances in its technology, becoming a giant in the field of telecommunications. Now, Nortel is gone, no longer in business, while it is Huawei whose technological advances and business enterprise represents a colossus in the field, internationally established and respected as Nortel once was.

Nortel, it seems, was victimized through an invasion of hackers based in China for at least ten years, according to information unveiled in 2012. Sensitive internal documents belonging to Nortel mysteriously ended up with Huawei, unbeknownst to Nortel's top executives. Nortel had received warning from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service as well, of spies within its operations working for China, but that warning appeared to have been given short shrift.

When the spacious Nortel headquarters building was being renovated to be transformed to a new headquarters for Canada's National Defence department, listening devices were found within the building. Ex-Nortel staff are convinced that Nortel was destroyed partly as a result of plundering on the part of the Chinese of Nortel's intellectual property, enabling Huawei to benefit hugely from Nortel's research and development and to grow into a worldwide telecommunications giant.

Just incidentally, U.S. prosecutors filed a new indictment recently accusing Huawei of using surreptitious methods to purloin the intellectual property of other companies for decades. Professor Calof and some of his colleagues at the Telfer School of Management at University of Ottawa had once undertaken a major study into the collapse of Nortel, a blow to Canadian high-tech and communications industries.

The study, when completed, made no mention of hacking or espionage; it was felt that Nortel's stellar reputation in the development of cutting-edge technology aside, sales fell because clients failed to be impressed with its performance. As for Huawei and its $15-billion annual research and development budget, $650 of that budget, Huawei reminds us, has been spent in Canada over the last decade where Huawei has 1,200 employees. 

Nortel, at the height of its industry success, provided a wide array of Internet-based networking solutions and had 90,000 employees working for it, with a market capitalization accounting for a third of the value of companies on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Nortel researchers in Ottawa developed the Orbiter, a mobile phone with a user-interface screen years before the iPhone revolutionized the cellphone market.

Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei Shenzhen, China June 17, 2019. REUTERS/Aly Song

The 2000 Internet bubble suddenly burst, taking Nortel with it as the company's stock plummeted overnight, triggering thousands of Nortel layoffs. During that time frame of a slow demise for Nortel, Huawei flourished. Founded by a former People's Liberation Army engineer, Ren Zhengfei, Huawei began life as a small producer of phone switches in 1987, eventually branching into building telecommunications networks and producing mobile phones. Low prices gave it an outsize market share.

In 2004 a Nortel employee in the U.K. noted documents he had stored in the "LiveLink" dababase for Nortel had been downloaded by a senior executive in Canada. He emailed the manager offering help with any questions about the material, but the manager had no idea what he was talking about. Another person on Nortel's security team based in Raleigh noticed the same manager had signed into the Nortel system from multiple global locations. That manager's account had been hacked.

Seven Nortel executives had been hacked and an alarming volume of sensitive material had been plucked out of the company's databases. Most of the hacks were later traced back to IP addresses and four Internet service providers in China, mostly appearing to wind up at an ISP in Shanghai. A hugely sophisticated theft of Nortel files undetected for years, pointing to the involvement of government-directed skilled thieves. 

In 2013, a report was produced by cybersecurity firm Mandiant, revealing the existence of a major Internet-espionage organization in Shanghai, ostensibly "Unit 61398" of the People's Liberation Army. Thefts of data were tracked by Mandiant from 141 companies in twenty major industries. Among the reams of material from Nortel was a document laying out Nortel technology, various products, sales proposals including pricing and network design, along with technical papers on optical circuits and an analysis of Nortel's lost contract with former Internet firm Genuity.

Security advisor Brian Shields describes one document pilfered in 2004 was "high speed data over UMTS Quad". Huawei beat out Nortel on a Telus/Bell contract four years later; its first major project in North America, involving a form of mobile data transmission called universal mobile telecommunications service; UMTS.

Blue lights illuminate a Huawei Technologies Co. NetEngine 8000 intelligent metro router on display during a 5G event in London, U.K., on Thursday, Feb. 20, 2020. Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Canadian Diplomacy

"In Iran, we're told they still want to get the equipment or expertise [to examine the black boxes of the Ukraine civil airliner shot down by the IRGC in January]."
"I'm saying, well after 30 days you haven't managed to, and since the appendix says 'without delay' I interpret the spirit of the text and the law to be without delay. So what I'm telling Iran is: let the French experts do it. France has offered to analyze the black boxes."
"We are seeing the emergence of a multipolar world with new epicentres of influence and competition over ideas and models of government. Around the world, human rights are increasingly under threat."
"On behalf of the grieving nations of this tragedy, we told [the Islamic Republic Foreign] Minister [Mohammad Javad] Zarif in no certain terms that Iran must take steps toward resolving many outstanding questions of fact and of law."
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne

Soldiers carry a coffin containing the remains of one of the 11 Ukrainian victims of the Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 disaster during a memorial ceremony at the Boryspil International Airport, outside Kyiv, on Jan. 19, 2020.  Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters

On February 15, a joint committee met -- representing the nations whose citizens were killed when Iran shot two missiles on January 8 over Tehran bringing down a 3-year-old Boeing 737-800, flight 752 operated by Ukrainian International Airlines, mere minutes after it lifted off from Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had fired two anti-war missiles, killing all 176 passengers and crew aboard the passenger jet instantly. The meeting comprised of representatives of the nations whose nationals were killed issued a statement emphasizing the Islamic Republic's international obligations to respond to questions surrounding the plane's deliberate destruction.

The committee,  the "International Coordination and Response Group for victims of Flight PS752", stated its expectation that Iran would live up to its international obligations, and that the five nations involved were awaiting closure to the many unanswered questions. The crash saw the death of 82 Iranians, 57 Canadians, eleven Ukrainians, ten Swedes, four Afghans, three Germans, and three Britons, along with Iranian victims. The committee comprised of representatives of Canada, Ukraine, Germany, Britain and Afghanistan has been patient but their patience is running thin, finding it necessary to remind Iran of its unmet responsibilities.

People walk near the wreckage after a Ukrainian plane crashed near Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran early in the morning on January 8, 2020, killing everyone on board. The Boeing 737 had left Tehran's international airport bound for Kiev, semi-official news agency ISNA said, adding that 10 ambulances were sent to the crash site.

AFP via Getty Images

The meeting took place on the sidelines of the annual Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany. Tehran insists the shoot-down of the plane was the result of a misunderstanding, an unfortunate accident. But it steadfastly refuses to send the black boxes to Ukraine, to the United States or elsewhere for expert interpretation, although it is well known it has neither the equipment nor the expertise to do so on its own. Iran has tentatively offered financial compensation to the victims, as is recognized in such events, but its offer fails to reflect the seriousness of the event.

By preventing the examination of the flight records from the jetliner Iran is deliberately flouting international law. Overcoming its initial reluctance, Iran has cooperated in the repatriation of the victims' remains to their countries of origins. The many questions surrounding the 'inadvertent' shooting down of the airliner killing all aboard remain unanswered, however. The Islamic Republic's refusal to comply with Annex 13 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation ensures that those answers will not be forthcoming to the satisfactjon of the international community.

Officials inspect the wreckage of the Kyiv-bound Ukraine International Airlines jet that crashed near Tehran, killing everyone onboard. Photograph: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA

As it happens, the International Civil Aviation Organization has its head office based in Montreal. Canada's Foreign Minister Champagne has asked the president of the ICAO to disallow "that situation to continue because we're going against international law here". Canada is polarized on pursuing its insistence that Iran respond to entirely reasonable expectations from the international community, and most specifically from the International Coordination and Response Group for victims of Flight PS752, which had demanded of Iran that it commit to the most basic of its responsibilities; the turnover of the black boxes for expert analyzing.

Riccardo Vecchio Imprints illustration for Foreign Policy

That issue has managed to slip into the background of Canada's foreign relations agenda irrespective of the fact that Canadian citizens, Iranians seeking refugee status in Canada and living in Canada with landed immigrant status pursuant to qualifying as Canadian citizens, as well as Iranian students studying in Canada who were all killed by the Iranian regime's IRGC as a result of its conflict with the United States after the assassination of the commander of the IRGC Brig.Gen.Qasem Suleimani.

The conflicting issue is the vanity project undertaken by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as his legacy, to return Canada to one of the two-year revolving United Nations Security Council seats. To which end he has fastened his attention, and dedicated time and funding in travelling to Africa to speak with leaders of countries whose vote in the United Nations he covets, leaders of countries whose human rights record is that of brutality and compromise. His diplomatic overtures are beyond naive in his willingness to overlook corrupt leaderships for the greater interest of bribing human rights abusers so Canada can have a seat where nations manipulate world events to suit their singular agendas of division and hatred.

Just as he sought to soft-peddle Canada's position in urging Iran to meet its international obligations to bring closure to the families of the dead on board the Ukrainian airliner. And in the interests of being a friend to anyone whose influence could be bought at the United Nations, bowed and scraped in amity to the foreign minister of a country whose warped designs in assigning itself power and recognition, supporting terrorism and designing intercontinental ballistic missiles to threaten the world with nuclear warheads can be overlooked for a seat on the Security Council.

Enabling the Islamic Republic of Iran to use the photographs and video of a smiling, ingratiating Prime Minister of Canada to show its disaffected Iranian public that the government they would prefer to unseat has friends in the West. An Iranian public horrified by the deaths caused by their government of Iranian citizens and foreign citizens, and who have protested the conditions under which they are forced to live by a theocratic regime whose malevolence on the world stage is without question. And whose brutality can be seen in the fact that 1500 Iranians were killed during the protests. But smilingly countenanced by Canada's wish to rejoin the Security Council.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shakes handing with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif at the Munich Security Conference, Friday Feb 14, 2020.   IRNA