Khushwant Toor writes from Toronto

ANOTHER month into the recession and Canada has lost 61,000 more full-time jobs in March, where as, the U.S. reported a further job loss of 663,000 jobs in the same month.

Canada's present unemployment rate has hit 8 percent mark, where as the U.S. takes the lead at 8.5 percent. In fact, in the month of March, in Canada 79,500 full-time jobs were lost but some part-time jobs were added last month. The current unemployment rate is back to where it was in December 2001, more than 7 years ago.

Stats Canada reported that since October of 2008, the unemployment rate has increased every month with a total of 357,000 jobs lost, which is the largest employment decline over a five-month period since the 1982 recession. Losses were reported in manufacturing; finance, insurance, real estate and leasing; construction; and natural resources.

According to Stats Canada, employment in manufacturing fell by 34,000 in March, for a total of 134,000 since October 2008. Construction employment declined by 18,000 up to 99,000 since October 2008, however, employment in natural resources which relies heavily on mining, oil and gas extraction in Alberta, declined, by 11,000 in March.

Province vise, contrary to the general expectations that British Columbia due to the upcoming Winter Olympics will be gaining jobs showed the biggest job loss of 23,000 jobs, followed by Alberta with 15,000 and Ontario with 11,000 job losses, in March.

With the unemployment rate rising in Canada the Employment Insurance benefits for most of the unemployed Canadians are running out. According to a Stats Canada EI report, in January only 42.8% unemployed Canadians received EI benefits which was down from 44.4% in December of last year.

Having exhausted their EI benefits more and more families are turning to rely upon Food Banks for their daily survival. Food Banks across Canada are reporting sharp influx of their first time visitors and the number is expected to grow in the coming months.

Trucking industry is the biggest indicator of economic situation to follow for the next four to six months. Tuck operating companies in Canada are finding it hard to sustain given the present state of job losses and plant closures in Canada. Numbers of trucks on roads have considerable reduced and the truck operators are worried about their near survival.

Many economists now expect the unemployment rate in Canada will rise above 10% by late 2009, and near 11% sometime in 2010. Presently there are over 1.48million people ready to work but cannot find a job.

In the U.S.. Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported that since the recession began in December 2007, 5.1 million jobs have been lost, with almost two-thirds (3.3 million) of the decrease occurring in the last 5 months. In March, job losses were large and widespread across the major industry sectors, and now the total number of unemployed people in U.S. equals to 13.2 million.

People around the world are getting worried day by day as the there seems to be a no end to the current recession.

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Politics: Cleared of Terrorism, Canadian stranded in Khartoum

Paul Weinberg

THE murky post-9/11 sharing of information between western security and intelligence agencies and Sudan's notorious human rights-abusing regime appear to be at the heart of a year-long marooning of Canadian citizen Abousfian Abdelrazik at his country's embassy in Khartoum.

The 47-year-old unemployed former resident of Montreal had been cleared of terrorism charges following imprisonment by Sudanese officials in 2003 and subsequent interrogation by a team of Canadian and U.S. counter-terrorism agents.

"It was a close relationship [between Canadian and Sudanese security] and of course now has broken down largely over the handling of Abdelrazik. The Sudanese are justifiably angry with us," said Amir Attaran, a University of Ottawa law professor.

Attaran is one of the lawyers assisting Abdelrazik in his case before the Federal Court of Canada against the Canadian government, which has refused so far to provide the exiled man with the travel documentation that would allow him to legally return home.

Official government memos obtained by the Globe and Mail national newspaper show that the Canadian department of Foreign Affairs arranged to have Abdelrazik arrested while visiting Khartoum to see his mother in 2003.

By 2007, Sudanese and Canadian security and intelligence officials had separately reached the conclusion that Abdelrazik, a practicing Muslim, has no links to either criminal activity or al Qaeda-style Islamic extremism.

Furthermore, it is apparent that the Sudanese government wanted to send back the exiled Canadian on a private jet but Ottawa declined the offer, Attaran told IPS.

"Canada gave the promise to Sudan that if Sudan would release him from prison, Canada would bring him home. We reneged on it," he said.

Also an editor for medical journals, Attaran expressed concern for Abdelrazik's physical health, which includes high blood pressure, poor vision and possible symptoms of a stroke. Currently, the man is living in the Canadian Embassy, reluctant to go to a local hospital in the city and get a medical examination for fear of being re-arrested by the Sudanese police who had previously tortured him, Attaran said.

"Is Canada torturing him? No. But is Canada abusing him? Oh my God, yes, most definitely yes. I would say beyond the legal process, the international prohibition in law is against torture and cruel and degrading treatment. Torture is the one that you hear about. But the treaties we've signed also prohibit cruel and degrading treatment."

Abdelrazik, in a rare recent public statement to the Canadian media, blames his exile on continued suspicions of the Conservative government of Stephen Harper.

"I have been imprisoned and tortured. I am safer now because I live in the Canadian Embassy but I miss my children in Canada. They grew up and my ex-wife died. My teenage daughter is an orphan now and still the Harper government does not let me go home," he said. In a recent twist to the case, the Canadian foreign affairs minister, Laurence Cannon, has indicated that Abdelrazik could not fly back to Canada on Friday, Apr. 3, courtesy of an airline ticket purchased by about 200 Canadians, until he can get himself removed from a United Nations Security Council 1267 list of alleged terrorists.

"It's up to him, it's incumbent on him to make sure he gets off that list," the minister told reporters, even though his predecessor in the same Conservative government had sought unsuccessfully in December 2007 to have Abdelrazik de-listed from U.N. Security Council 1267 Committee's terrorist watch list after both the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had cleared him of any involvement in terrorism or crime.

"The Security Council watch list expressly allows Mr. Abdelrazik to return home, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms compels the government to respect a citizen's right to re-enter the country," stated Irwin Cotler, an opposition Canadian Member of Parliament and former justice minister in the former Liberal government, in an online commentary for the Globe and Mail.

Also in question is the role of Deepak Obhrai, the Calgary-based Conservative MP, the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Canadian government spokesperson on the stranded Canadian's file in the House of Commons.

During testimony under oath from a department of Foreign Affairs official, it was revealed that Obhrai flew to Khartoum last March and personally interrogated Abdelrazik inside the Canadian embassy about alleged links to terrorism, adds Attaran.

[The MP did not return repeated phone calls from IPS].

"[Abdelrazik] was living destitute on the streets of Khartoum. He had no means of support, beside 100 dollars a month that the Canadian embassy was loaning him, not give but loan, and Deepak Obrai, member of parliament, shows up in Khartoum to question him, I mean this is the most shocking thing on earth," Attaran said.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) is seeking a formal probe by the agency overseeing its activity, the Security Intelligence Review Committee, to clear its name from the charge that it had any role in the detention of Abdelrazik.

A Canadian academic with reputedly close ties to CSIS backs up the Canadian spies' assertion.

"I had my doubts that CSIS was involved in this matter. It simply doesn't fit with what we know about CSIS operational practices," said Martin Rudner, director of the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies and professor emeritus at Carleton University in Ottawa.

He also said that Sudan's ties to Islamic radicals and western abhorrence regarding serious human rights violations and war crimes in that country's Darfur region has made it a pariah in Washington and other western capitals including Ottawa.

"We have no information, other than reports that [Abdelrazik] himself has given to journalists as to whether or not CSIS actually forwarded questions," Rudner told IPS.

But a number of journalists, including the U.S.-based Ken Silverstein in a piece for the Los Angeles Times in 2005, have documented the supplying to the CIA of information by Sudan's Mukhabarat on the activities of Osama Bin Ladin's al Qaeda network which had been active at one point in that African country.

"The head of the Sudanese intelligence service, Salah Gosh, came to [Washington DC] when I was working on the story, flown from Khartoum on a CIA jet sent to fetch him in Khartoum. He had multiple meetings with top CIA officials while here," Silverstein told IPS.

"What I wrote was subsequently (maybe a year or so later) picked up and expanded by two excellent intelligence reporters at the LA Times," he said.

Silverstein added that "[Rudner] doesn't know about anything of which he speaks with such certainty." [Courtesy IPS]

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G20: Next Time, Perhaps...

Sanjay Suri

IF the draft declaration of the G20 meeting in London is anything to go by, the most specific outcome of this summit is that there will be another one later in the year.

Several governments have begun to lobby already to host the next G20, in apparent confidence that this one is not going to take care of the problems that the leaders are gathering to address, if not resolve.

As governments take their time, real dangers look so large that the problem may rapidly outpace any solution.

A 24-point draft declaration published by the Financial Times reveals little sign of any agreement with teeth. The Consensus declared by G20 leaders in Washington last November became notable for a breach of what was agreed – the G20 declared itself against protectionism, only for the World Bank to count 73 instances of protectionism by G20 members since then. And that is not the final tally.

This time the G20 is seeking to bring institutional surveillance to that resolve. The draft declaration notes that world trade is falling for the first time in 25 years. And in order to sustain the benefits of globalisation and open markets, "we reaffirm the commitment made in Washington not to raise new barriers to investment or to trade in goods and services, including within existing WTO limits, not to impose new trade restrictions, and not to create new subsidies to exports."

The draft declaration says governments will "notify promptly governments and other relevant institutions of any measures which have the potential to cause direct or indirect trade distortions," and that governments "will not retreat into financial protectionism."

The leaders "call on the WTO, together with the IMF and other international bodies as appropriate, to report on our adherence to these undertakings on a quarterly basis." In effect the WTO and the IMF are appointed policemen on duty to report aberrations from these ideas, if not to act against them.

Certainly, the draft declaration is subject to change; a tougher agreement may well emerge when heads of government meet. But the indications are, through weeks of high-level official meetings capped by a G20 finance ministers' meeting in London last month, that the leaders will not agree very much that is more binding than this.

There is nothing here to say what the IMF might actually do once it identifies instances of protectionism. The World Bank's 73 have made little difference to the countries that produced them. For just about every country, the choice is clear between conference room embarrassment over protectionist measures and an answerability to people and enterprises in severe need of some form of protection.

The language again is sufficiently vague on the matter of regulation to mean almost nothing at all. The draft speaks of "effective regulation" and "a stronger supervisory and regulatory framework for the future", but what that really means is open to intense negotiations when the leaders meet Thursday. French President Nicholas Sarkozy has called for a global regulatory system, a proposal rejected outright by the U.S. and by Britain. And these two countries have not quite worked out just who will regulate banks and financial houses like the hedge funds, and with what powers of intervention.

Here again, as with protection, the draft speaks of "regulation or oversight". Critical to such a body will be at least powers of access; and there is no agreement in sight of any decision by banks to open their books to such inspection. And the record so far is not promising; in the face of the biggest banking crisis ever, and with trillions of dollars of taxpayer money paid into keeping banks going, there is no public disclosure just how bankrupt the banks may be, of how deep the pit is.

One provision in the draft agreement provides that "each of us commits to candid, even-handed and independent IMF surveillance of our economies and financial sectors, of the impact of our policies on others, and of risks facing the global economy." This provision seems certainly up for debate; for a start it will have to be a new look International Monetary Fund, with greater clout for developing countries, and perhaps more money from them as well.

The arrangement by which the IMF is run by a European and the World Bank by a U.S. citizen is certain to be dropped. But then too, there is little promise in sight that any IMF observations – and they could be little more than that as provisions now stand – could do anything to change policies that leaders may determine to be in national interest.

Heads of government can of course initiate and agree changes to the draft that may give it more punch. But the draft as it stands leaves leaders plenty of room for taking national decisions independent of international commitments. And few seem in a hurry to abandon that kind of right to choose. So, to the next G20, then. [Courtesy IPS]

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Candle light vigil held to mark the 90th anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre

Gurpreet Singh writes from Vancouver

AT least two progressive groups held a candle light vigil at the Surrey’s Holland Park past Sunday to mark the 90th anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre that shaped the freedom movement in Punjab, India.

The Fraser Valley Peace Council and the Taraksheel Sabha jointly organized the vigil that was attended by the people of the Indian and Pakistani origins.

This was the first time ever that the South Asians held such an event as the Sikh temples that organize Vaisakhi parades in Metro Vancouver every year have never commemorated this bloody part of the history.

The notorious Jallianawala Bagh massacre was orchestrated by the British forces in Amritsar on the auspicious occasion of Vaisakhi on April 13, 1919 and left 379 people dead.

The killings took place in a public park named Jallianwala Bagh. A crowd of supporters of the passive resistance movement had gathered at the park, defying the ban on a public meeting to oppose the arrests of leaders who had challenged a draconian law enacted by the foreign rulers.

A senior British military officer, Brigadier-General Reginald E.H. Dyer ordered his troops to fire on the civilians. The dead included people of all faiths - Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs - united in the common fight against their occupiers.

This episode turned even pro-British Punjabis, particularly Sikhs, against the foreign occupation. Ironically, the Sikh clergy at that time sided with the British while a Sikh revolutionary, Udham Singh, later avenged the butchery by assassinating the former British Governor of Punjab, Michael O’Dwyer. He described himself as Ram Muhammad Singh Azad and became a secular icon of the Indian history.

Even though India was divided on religious lines in 1947, the same year when it was freed, the horrific memories of the massacre continue to hound both the Indians and the Pakistanis, whose forefathers were together in the freedom struggle. Interestingly, none of the elected politicians of the Indian origin showed up at the secular vigil, while they participated in the religious Vaisakhi parades organized in Surrey and Vancouver a day before. There are three Indo Canadian MLAs, two MPs and two city councillors from Surrey.

The Fraser Valley Peace Council leader Ghulam Mujataba said that his grandfather was a witness to the massacre. A Pakistani himself, he said that the Jallianwala Bagh history has a lesson for all those who continue to resist imperialist wars across the world.

Likewise, the Pakistani poet, Capt. Suleman Mahtab recited a poem dedicated to the martyrs of the massacre. He recalled his emotional visit at the Jallianwala Bagh when he went to India.

The Taraksheel Sabha leader, Avtar Gill observed that the Indian state continue to be repressive in its response to the people’s movements. ``The freedom is confined to small elite as the poor and the minorities suffer in the independent India. We need to press the establishment to change the police act’’.

The Indo Canadian Workers’ Association leader, Surinder Sangha lamented that none of the Sikh temples ever took such an initiative which would have enlightened our people about the history. ``We need to make people aware of the secular unity that the freedom fighters had among themselves’’.

Among other prominent speakers were a former Student Federation of India leader, Hardev Singh Amritsar, the Shiromani Akali Dal leader, Harbans Singh Aujla, the Communist Party of Canada leader, Harjeet Daudhria and a young activist, Harjap Grewal – who represents No One is Illegal. Grewal warned that both the Canada and the US are thickly involved in illegal occupations of countries around the world.

Besides, the Co-op Radio host, Imtiaz Popat, the editor of the Punjab di Awaaz, Giani Harkirat Singh, a veteran Punjabi writer, Kesar Singh Neer and a progressive Punjabi poet, Nachattar Gill also spoke on the occasion.

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