International League of Peoples' Struggle (ILPS) participating organizations in Canada
Statement
August 20, 2007

Statement Against the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America

As International League of Peoples' Struggle (ILPS) participating organizations in Canada, we stand militantly opposed to the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America and the whole host of policies, practices and institutions of imperialist globalization.  Imperialist globalization only strengthens the domination of the imperialist nations over oppressed nations and peoples and acts as a further barrier to peace, sovereignty and genuine development.  For all oppressed classes, especially the toiling masses of the working-class and peasant communities, imperialist globalization means increasing oppression and exploitation.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), being discussed today in Quebec by President Bush of the U.S., Prime Minister Harper of Canada and President Calderon of Mexico, will only heighten the exploitation and oppression of the working class people and peasants in all three countries.  This “partnership” seeks to extend the neo-liberal economic policies of liberalization, deregulation and privatization, as well as put into place an aggressive “security” framework that will increase the criminalization of dissent and the repression of movements for social and economic justice.

Indigenous people, their land and their resources are particularly targeted in these discussions.  In Canada, the grab for indigenous people’s land and resources through the colonial treaty process and outright police and military aggression is intensifying.  A major objective of the SPP is to facilitate the exploitation of oil resources in Canada and Mexico to create super profits for the major oil companies, mostly based in the U.S. and Canada.  These oil developments and their pipelines will only mean further destruction of indigenous lands and rights.     

The SPP continues the process of integrating Mexico into the continental economy as an oppressed nation, and it is workers, peasants and indigenous peoples in Mexico who face the heaviest burden of exploitation and oppression under NAFTA and the SPP.  This is already manifest in the development aggression of Plan Pueblo Panama and the increased militarization of Mexico under Plan Mexico.  In these plans, indigenous communities and especially the armed movements for national liberation are being targeted by the U.S.-backed Mexican military and police forces.

As Mexican workers migrate to escape economic hardship and state terrorism, they face further exploitation.  The SPP seeks to expand migrant workers programs designed to enable the exploitation of migrant workers as cheap labour in the North, while at the same time denying them their basic rights as workers as well as access to citizenship.

In Canada, the policies of imperialist globalization are undermining public services and social programs that working-class and marginalized communities rely on.  Public services like health care, education, childcare, education and transit are under attack with skyrocketing user fees and other forms of overt and covert privatization.  The SPP will only continue this process, as well as intensify broad-based racist attacks on indigenous peoples and people of colour and targeted attacks on organizations and movements fighting for economic and social justice, all under cover of the “war on terrorism” and  “homeland security.”

In the face of these intensified attacks, our people’s struggles against imperialism must also be strengthened.  Today we expose and oppose the SPP.  Tomorrow we continue the pressing task of organizing our communities in solidarity and struggle for national liberation, genuine democracy and social and economic justice.

No to the SPP!
No to imperialist globalization, war and plunder!
Down with U.S. imperialism!
Long live international solidarity!