Paul Weinberg writes from Toronto

CANADA and the United States are on different wavelengths when it comes to a shared and increasingly hardening of what had been a sleepy border within North America.

One University of Toronto political scientist doubts this will change anytime soon in the wake of how "paranoia" in the U.S. about its northern frontier has continued under the administration of Barack Obama.

"The U.S. approach to border security has been consistently unilateral," said Stephen Clarkson, the author of "Does North America Exist: Governing the Continent After NAFTA and 9/11" . "Canada and Mexico have the option of doing what the Americans want and then consulting about how they will do that," he told IPS.

"As for the continental perimeter, there is one in the sense that antiterrorism and visa regulations [for both countries] have largely been harmonised to U.S. standards. At the same time, the U.S. has reinforced its land borders. The result is that we have both a fortress North America and an internal U.S. wall," he said.

Some of this has been fuelled by the insecurity within the U.S. towards the traditionally undefended northern border in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington and the mistaken notion among some U.S. politicians, including the new U.S. Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano, that some of the airplane hijackers arrived via Canada.

She reiterated upon visiting Canada last week that she had been mistaken in her initial assertion about Canada but then urged her hosts to move on.

"What I regret is that Canada can't seem to get beyond one misstatement to what I'm trying to suggest," she said. "And what I am suggesting is to say we share security concerns, just as we share trade concerns, just as we share all kinds of other concerns," she told reporters.

While Canadians are worried about illegal guns and drugs coming into their country, the U.S. is preoccupied with terrorism and illegal immigration going south, as well as the presence of a large Muslim population in Canada, observed Clarkson.

At the same time, both Ottawa and Washington have maintained the posture that the insurgency in Afghanistan represents a real threat to the North American continent, he noted.

"Canada is one of the few countries along with the U.S. that defines the Afghan situation in terms of our national security," he said.

Nevertheless, the joint statement by Napolitano and Peter Van Loan, the Canadian public safety minister, that Canada and the U.S. will jointly assess security threats on their shared border is a major breakthrough and a departure from the unilateralism of George W. Bush, commented Reg Whittaker, political scientist at the University of Victoria and a security specialist.

"The U.S. would just make unilateral decisions about what they consider to be, who they consider to be threats, and what they consider being threats. So, it is perfectly appropriate that we have some kind of machinery in place to facilitate and create cooperation," he told IPS.

Greater sharing of perceived threats by Canadians and U.S. police and intelligence may eliminate the scenario where a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, was automatically "kidnapped" in a U.S. city by U.S. officials and sent to a prison in his country of birth for torture during the Bush administration, Whittaker said.

"Instead of having ad hoc kind of arrangements that are subject to abuse, to have something that is more institutionalised and recognises from the American point of view that Canada has something to contribute, here, and Canadians should be respected and not told what to do," he said.

Also, it appears that the Conservative government in Ottawa has abandoned its initial position - while the party was in opposition - of negotiating a joint immigration and refugee arrangement under a so-called North American security perimeter.

This represents a recognition by even a right-wing, supposedly more pro-U.S. administration in Ottawa that Canada as the smaller player in North America would invariably have to adopt U.S. laws and approaches in total if it went this route, added Whittaker.

"That is the problem with a security perimetre. One set of rules that are exactly the same [on] who gets into the country, and so on. Given the power relationship between Canada and the U.S. that means Canada gives up its autonomy to have its own policies. And there are all kinds of issues where Canada has really distinctive rules abut immigration. For example, positively encouraging francophone immigration [because of Quebec in the Canadian federation]," he said.

Nevertheless, despite the advance of a joint threat assessment, Brian Masse, the opposition Member of Parliament from the border city of Windsor, Ontario pointed to what he described as the "militarisation" of the Canada U.S. border. He expressed concern about the presence of U.S. gunboats, Black Hawk helicopters, drone planes, fences and spy towers on the U.S. side.

Masse is critical of a new feature in the Napolitano/Van Loan announcement that will allow U.S. and Canadian law enforcement personnel to ride in each others' vessels in the lakes and waterways along the shared border and enforce the other countries' laws. "It allows on the Canadian side Americans to arrest Canadians and also on the American side Canadians to arrest Americans," the Canadian politician told IPS.

He remarked on the introduction on the U.S. side of Coast Guard vessels carrying auto cannons that have the capacity to shoot 750 1,200 rounds per minute.

Masse remarked this follows an earlier and little discussed announcement that U.S. troops will be allowed with the permission of Ottawa to enter Canada in an emergency situation.

He also stated that the Canadian government missed the opportunity in the recent discussions with the homeland security secretary to push for a loosening of the Canada U.S. border.

"[The U.S. policy] is making our border like the Mexican border... I can't imagine a threat coming from Canada. I mean we all want to be more secure. Does that require Black Hawk helicopters [and] gun boats?" he asked.

Canada has not recovered from the negative impact that the 9/11 attacks have had on north-south trade within North America, commented Steven Globerman, who teaches business at Western Washington university in Bellingham, Washington and is the co-author of the recent book, "The Impact of 9/11 on Canada-US Trade".

While U.S. exports to Canada returned to a normal level by 2004, Canadian exports have between 2001 and 2007 declined by about 15 to 20 percent because of a hardened 9/11 U.S. border, Globerman told IPS.

Among the factors contributing to this trend has been the disruption of a formerly seamless border under the North American free trade agreement where parts produced within continental manufacturing operations such as auto and steel crossed back and forth without disruption.

Another manifestation of this has been the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative travel rules in the U.S. which obligate the carrying of valid documentation by anyone including Canadians crossing into the U.S. Many commentators have observed that because more Canadians carry passports than Americans, it is widely expected that U.S. travel to Canada will decline.

"All of these various phenomena [of disruption] contribute to Canadian goods costing more in the U.S. because it costs more to bring them across the border," Globerman said. "If you raise the price obviously you are going to reduce your sales, whether we are talking about goods that are sold to other producers in the U.S. or goods that are sold to retailers."  [Courtesy IPS]

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Jagmohan Singh’s pilgrimage to Canada

Gurpreet Singh writes from Vancouver

LAST month’s visit of Jagmohan Singh, the nephew of Bhagat Singh - the most revered martyr of India turned out to be his pilgrimage to this part of the world. Jagmohan Singh, who came to attend two major events in BC, does not only enjoy the virtue of being a son of Bhagat Singh’s sister, late Amar Kaur but also leads a research group dedicated to the ideology of his uncle.

The Indian Rationalist Society organized a seminar in Surrey on May 23, while the Lok Virsa Cultural Association organized a festival in Abbotsford a day later. Singh attended both the functions that were dedicated to Bhagat Singh’s ideology.

Though he had visited Vancouver almost 9 years ago, but his latest tour was more meaningful as it coincided with at least two historical dates, one being the day when the Komagata Maru ship arrived in Vancouver on May 23, 1914 only to be turned away after two months under the discriminatory and exclusionist Continuous Journey law of the then Canadian government at the behest of the British Empire that ruled India.

I was honoured to take him to a Vancouver downtown park where a plaque in the memory of the ship passengers is installed. This park is close to the sea where the ship came. Jagmohan Singh explained the connection between Bhagat Singh and the Komagata Maru episode, which had influenced the members of the Gadhar Party, including its leader Kartar Singh Sarabha, who had decided to go back to India and fight against the British occupation. The Gadhar Party leaders had realized that the systematic racial discrimination against them in US and Canada would only end with the demise of the foreign rule in their home country. He pointed out that Bhagat Singh had described this episode as an assault on the innovation of the Indian workers seeking employment outside their country in one of his essays.

He was disappointed to learn that the tugboat that was used to pull Komagata Maru ship is gone. It’s not in Vancouver anymore. The Komagata Maru Foundation had purchased it but was forced to sell it off as the community failed to help it financially.

Likewise, May 24 was another important day when Kartar Singh Sarabha was born in 1896. Bhagat Singh considered him as his role model. ``He used to carry his picture with him’’, Jagmohan Singh said in a live radio interview with me.

Besides, he was able to meet people, who had joined the birth centenary celebrations of Bhagat Singh. Among them was Sav Dhaliwal, the Burnaby city councilor, who was instrumental in issuing a proclamation on Bhagat Singh’s 100th birthday. Dhaliwal came to see him at the Surrey Seminar.

Jagmohan Singh also visited the Vancouver’s Transit Union office, where Bhagat Singh’s portrait is installed along side the poster of Che Guevara. This portrait was gifted by the to the office by a union member, Harbhajan Atwal. He stayed with Balbir Singh in Surrey, who had distributed free stickers carrying the pictures of Bhagat Singh during an event that was organized by a group of South Asian youth called Radical Desis in 2007.

In the meantime, he also had an opportunity to interact with Charlie Smith, a progressive editor of the Georgia Straight, a prominent weekly newspaper published from Vancouver. Charlie asked him range of questions about Bhagat Singh’s role in the freedom struggle, his philosophy and connection with the labour movements.

Another important part of his visit was his meeting with the Pakistani admirers of Bhagat Singh, who was born in an undivided India. The Pakistani members of the Frazer Valley Peace Council apprised him of the efforts being made in their country to keep his memory alive at his birthplace.

His visit not only enlightened my listeners, but me too. I must share with my readers whatever more I learnt from him about Bhagat Singh. He told me how he had escaped from home to join the revolutionaries. His parents wanted him to marry and settle down, but Bhagat Singh escaped by taking money from his parents on the pretext of getting his grandmother’s dress coloured for the day of wedding. He left a letter with the person who dyed dresses and clothes, from which his parents learnt about his plans.

The girl he was supposed to marry used to meet Bhagat Singh’s mother. She eventually got married to a landlord, but soon lost her husband. She had lamented after the hanging of Bhagat Singh that she would have preferred to be his widow instead of being a wife of somebody else.

As we all know that Bhagat Singh’s parents had tried to keep him busy by buying him buffaloes to run a dairy business, he used to affectionately call one of his animals as Maasi, mother’s sister. ``He used to say that after mother, only maasi can feed a child. This shows he loved animals too’’.

When baby sister was born in their family, Bhagat Singh had announced that we shouldn’t be sad like others. ``Just in case we don’t have enough money we can marry her with our limited means without making a show of wealth’’.

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Recession time can ignite hate crimes

Gurpreet Singh writes from Vancouver

EVEN as the South Asian immigrants are shocked with a series of suspected racial attacks in Australia, the Metro Vancouver also witnessed unrelated hate crimes targeting Indo Canadians.
In a single attack on June 5, six Punjabis were targeted at a tennis court in Langley. The police believe that the attack had an element of hate as the assailants hurled racial slurs at the victims. Four suspects were arrested and charged. While the victims have not come forward yet to tell their story, the Langley RCMP Inspector, Amrik Virk has repeatedly said that the suspects targeted their race during the violent attack.

Last week, another Punjabi, Dinesh Sharma claimed that a white man threatened to smash his head and shouted racial abuses at him at the Superstore in Vancouver. He was upset at Sharma’s presence in the express lane of the customers. ``He was complaining that I am carrying too much stuff while waiting in a wrong queue’’, Sharma said. These incidents have ignited a fear of hate crimes among the local South Asian community.

Though in both the instances many good white people extended help to the police and the victims, but taking the multiculturalism in Canada for granted would be a foolish idea. After all, Canada is going through bad times because of the economic downturn like other countries. Such circumstances create a fear of the unknown and outsiders because of lay offs and unemployment. The hate groups often take advantage of this kind of situation and exploit the emotions of the locals. The provocation behind the Superstore incident can be judged accordingly. Such propaganda works more effectively on the young people belonging to the impressionable age group. Those arrested in Langley are aged between 15 and 19. The police should try to find out whether they have any kind of association with racist groups.

With the election of Barak Obama, the first black President of US, the authorities across the border have warned that both his election and the current recession may actually lead to more hate crimes. The Canadians should also be vigilant against a similar threat instead of taking such incidents lightly as our country has a history of racism too. Not very long ago, skinheads murdered the Surrey Sikh Temple caretaker, Nirmal Singh Gill in 1998. A few years ago, a hate group had circulated a flyer in Surrey that warned against the increasing number of the immigrants in BC. If such incidents can happen in Surrey, where South Asians have a sizeable population than Canada needs to be cautious.

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