2020- 2022 Policy Process | Green Party of Canada
Where GPC membership collaborates to develop our policies
G21-P027 Reduce Strategic Dependency on Gross and Systematic Human Rights Violators
Submitter Name
Elvin Kao
Ratification Vote Results: Adopted
Proposal
Be it resolved that the Green Party of Canada advocates for the disentanglement of trade with, the reduction of economic dependency from, and the implementation of multilateral restrictive measures against authoritarian states where evidence confirms gross and systematic violations of International Human Rights Law (IHRL).
Objective
To develop Canada’s political leverage and economic independence on our approach to relations with countries that have demonstrated major human rights violations and deep economic ties with Canada.
Benefit
Reduce the effects of coercive diplomacy on Canada, thereby strengthening our ability to safeguard our values on democracy and human rights both at home and abroad.
Supporting Comments from Submitter
China is Canada’s second largest trading partner after the U.S. British think tank Henry Jackson Society warned in a report that members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, U.K., U.S.) were strategically dependent on China in 831 categories of goods, including in critical industries such as communications, energy, transport systems, and information technology. Canada is strategically dependent on China for 367 categories of goods. 83 of these have applications in critical national infrastructure.
Saudi Arabia is Canada's 17th largest trading partner, and is Canada's second largest export market in the Middle East. Originally negotiated in 2014, the Canadian government renegotiated the $14 billion agreement in early 2020 to continue the sale of light-armoured vehicles (LAVs) to Saudi Arabia, citing that cancellation would have meant penalties up to the full value of the agreement, along with thousands of Canadian jobs in southwestern Ontario and across the defense industry supply chain. Both the Auditor General and UN Human Rights Council subsequently found the export of LAVs to Saudi Arabia carries significant human rights concerns.
Rogers, James. Breaking the China supply chain: How the ‘Five Eyes’ can decouple from strategic dependency. Henry Jackson Society, May 2020, henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Breaking-the-China-Chain.pdf
Chase, Steven. Crown company responsible for Saudi combat vehicle deal failed to screen for human rights risks: Auditor-General. The Globe and Mail, July 8, 2020
Chase, Steven. Canada is fuelling war in Yemen with arms sales, UN report says. The Globe and Mail, September 9, 2020.
Green Value(s)
Participatory Democracy, Social Justice, Respect for Diversity, Non-Violence.
Relation to Existing Policy
Add to current GPC policy.
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I condemn involvement with Saudi Arabia. On that alone, I would support this proposal. However, there is a very evident problem- one that I think most Green Party members will catch onto when they notice. This is regarding the report which this proposal cites entitled "Breaking the China supply chain: How the ‘Five Eyes’ can decouple from strategic dependency".
For us to endorse this report misses the key nature of the issue: other members of the Five Eyes are greater human rights violators than China. If our goal is to reduce dependency on gross human rights violators, our first move should be reducing dependence on the world's biggest human rights violator (Hint: It's one of the Five Eyes). A report about why the Five Eyes should decouple from human rights violators is, without exaggeration, an example of "The pot calling the kettle black".
I'm surprised to see that any GPC proposal which cites a report from the Henry Jackson Society.
Henry Jackson, the US senator for whom the think tank was named, was a Vietnam war supporter who thought that the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII didn't go far enough.
What a surprise that a think tank named after an anti-Japanese/anti-Vietnamese politician would go on to put forward an anti-Chinese agenda! Do you notice a pattern here?
Of course, one can look into the article itself to read essays by a Fab-Four of Neo-cold-warriors (I'll spare the effort of associating each one with a particular Beatle):
Bob Seely: A UK Tory MP who was gifted free vacations by Bahrain, a human rights abuser not mentioned in this proposal.
Andrew Hastie: A member of the "National Right" faction of the recently-ousted Australian Liberal Party
Marco Rubio: The US senator who pushed Trump to the right on Cuba
Peter MacKay: A Canadian conservative "Prince Charming" whom you likely already know for his tenure as Harper's minister of defense.
It's no surprise to see these four characters contribute to a report by a cold-warrior think tank. What is surprising is that the Green Party of Canada would sign onto such. How did a report like this get this far? How did it sneak past us from right below our eyes?
If I wanted Peter MacKay's foreign policy, I would have joined the conservative party.
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