Final Document from Canadian Peace Congress Convention, November 2011

Main Political Report

Dear Sisters, Brothers and Friends,

This meeting of the Canadian Peace Congress convenes at a critical moment for peace and progressive forces worldwide. As the global, systemic economic crisis continues and deepens, competition for resources, markets, influence and profits has grown much more fierce and desperate. Capitalist governments have moved quickly to attack social and labour rights and impose severe austerity measures that will impoverish and marginalize masses of working people, at the same time that they are prosecuting wars and increasing military budgets. In response, popular resistance to these reactionary policies is building and spreading – from the progressive uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, to the anti-austerity movements in Greece and throughout Europe, to the “Occupy” protests in North America.

Alongside this resistance, imperialism has become much more aggressive, as witnessed by NATO’s violent regime change in Libya. While expansion and violence are constant features of imperialism, the current sharpening economic crisis has compelled capitalists to increasingly pursue military-based solutions. In part, this is related to the massive profits that can be quickly derived from a military economy. Beyond that, this increased aggressiveness also has the aim of co-opting and coercing popular movements, establishing new intelligence bases in strategic regions of the world, facilitating blockades and direct military involvement in foreign countries, and seeking out new pretexts for interference and war.

November 28, 2011

Main Resolution

Introduction

The Special Extraordinary Renewal Convention of the Canadian Peace Congress in Winnipeg Manitoba October 25^th 2008 convenes at a moment when Canadian membership in NATO embroils Canada’s armed forces and commits public wealth to US instigated imperialist wars of aggression and occupation.

We declare our confidence in the deeply held beliefs of the Canadian people who uphold and support a foreign policy of peace and disarmament and express our support and solidarity for all of the progressive forces of peace and anti-imperialist solidarity that oppose aggressive US imperialism and its NATO-EU allies that foment wars and brutal occupations, revive the arms race and destabilize international relations and the global economy.

US imperialism and its NATO and EU allies seek to perpetuate in the 21^st century the cycle of wars of aggression, militarization and economic crisis that characterized the 20^th century resulting in two world wars, the use of nuclear weapons against civilian populations, the seizure of global resources and markets, the dismemberment of nations and the exploitation and impoverishment, including mass starvation of entire people’s.

October 28, 2008

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Canada First Defence Strategy (CFDS) is in fact the foreign policy doctrine of the minority Conservative Government. CFDS is the manifesto of the most aggressive, chauvinistic and reactionary circles of Canadian finance capital seeking with a bigger military budget to strengthen its influence at the imperialist round tables in Washington and Brussels.

Prime Minister Harper flaunts military power as the sine qua non of Canadian diplomacy in international affairs. CFDS promotes the growth, modernization and combat readiness of the Canadian military and its interoperability with US military forces for one main reason, to commit Canada to current and future US-NATO wars, interventions and occupations as the first principle of Canadian government foreign policy. CFDS boasts of the experience gained by Canadian forces in Afghanistan as a “military that can operate far from home on a sustained basis”. According to Prime Minister Harper the ability to wage war is the path that will return Canada to the international stage as a “credible and influential country.”

June 24, 2008

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