Can con
Stefan Christoff
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Shockingly nasty: Canada's Black Book
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Yves Engler reveals the sordid and underreported details of Canadian foreign policy
Backpackers who proudly sport the Canadian flag when travelling may want to think twice about the patriotic posturing. While one of the few pillars of Canadian national identity is our perceived role as both a peacekeeper and peacemaker around the world, it's Canada's darker side local author and activist Yves Engler scrutinizes in The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, a thick account of the country's foreign policy record - one that seriously challenges the perception of Canada as a force for good in the world.
"Canadians often seem more interested in what the U.S. is doing internationally rather than our own government," explains Yves Engler. "This book is an honest analysis of what our government is doing around the world and unpacks the mythology that Canadian businesses and politicians act benevolently outside of Canada."
In fact, Engler's book is a reality check about Canada's role on the world stage and a shockingly dirty laundry list of our colonial ambitions and corporate marauding.
"Canada played an important role in the UN mission that undermined one of Africa's first independence leaders," says Engler, citing just one example from the book. "Canada provided support to the Belgian battle against Patrice Lumumba who threatened to wrest control of the Congo's immense natural resources away from Belgian business interests. Our participation in the UN mission in Congo was one of the worst crimes of the last half of the 20th century, and led to the 30-year-plus rule
of the brutal dictator Joseph Mobutu. He even thanked Canada on a visit to Ottawa just after the coup for the country's role in getting rid of Lumumba!"Also detailed for the first time in print is Canada's supporting role in the coup against the anti-colonial leader Kwame Nkrumah in 1966 - Canada and the U.S. provided military training to armed forces in Ghana that led to Nkrumah's ousting and then backed the post-coup government.
As for our in Middle East meddling? The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy offers a salient picture of Canada's long-standing role in Israeli colonization and Palestinian dispossession since 1948, countering the commonly held view that Canada's pro-Israel posturing only became pronounced since the Conservative government took office in 2006.
In many ways, Engler's latest book can be viewed as the international sequel to Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority, a popular book in which he dissected Canada's role in the 2004 coup in Haiti which ousted Jean Bertrand Aristide, the democratically elected president.
Broad in scope and packing many a punch, The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy is likely to become an important reference for international solidarity activists in Canada working to reverse the adverse affects of Canadian government policies and corporate activities abroad - especially ones that undermine our supposedly fundamental commitments to social justice, equality and liberty. The Black Book launch takes place on Sunday, May 3 at Le Divan Orange (4234 St-Laurent), at 5 p.m. For more information or to buy the book, go to http://blackbook.foreignpolicy.ca.
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THE TOP 10 THINGS YOU PROBABLY DON'T KNOW ABOUT CANADIAN FOREIGN POLICY
10. On dozens of occasions since 1915, Canadian gunboats have been deployed to the Caribbean and Central America.
9. Canada has been the fifth- or sixth-largest contributor to the U.S. war in Iraq.
8. Ottawa asked London for its Caribbean colonies after World War I.
7. Days after the elected President Salvador Allende was overthrown, Canada's ambassador to Chile called victims of dictator Augusto Pinochet's repression the "riffraff of the Latin American Left."
6. In a number of countries, Canadian "aid" has been used to rewrite mining codes to the benefit of Canadian mining companies.
5. Canada had between 250 and 450 nuclear-armed fighter jets based in Europe in the 1960s.
4. Washington did not press Ottawa to break relations with post-revolution Cuba because it wanted Canada to spy on the island.
3. Throughout Pierre Trudeau's time in office and before, Canadian companies were heavily invested in apartheid South Africa.
2. Canada helped depose Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, one of Africa's first independence leaders, who was then killed.
1. Many commentators, including the world's leading intellectual, Noam Chomsky, consider Lester Pearson a war criminal because of his significant support for the US war on Vietnam, particularly Canada's role in delivering US bombing threats to North Vietnam.
(Compiled by Yves Engler)
