CC board member Eric Unger sends open letter to his local MP Terry Duguid and Prime Minister Trudeau

Dear Friends in High Places (or should I say, People with Serious Influence)

People are often curious as to why, or how, I could be so deeply opposed to war. I’m not sure if I’ve ever asked them why they are so deeply attracted to it. Perhaps it’s because my point of view is in such an obvious minority that I’ve always felt on the defensive.

So now I’m turning the tables. I’m asking you both (and any of your colleagues with whom you care to share this note) to tell me: Why are you so utterly determined to have our country (once perceived by much of the world to be an international beacon of peace) armed to the teeth with the latest in military hardware? Why are you so totally okay with spending tens of millions of dollars just to research which military jets are most suitable for the types of violence in which you are willing to engage? Wouldn’t it make more sense . . . I’m asking you a serious question here . . . wouldn’t it make more sense to work towards peaceful coexistence than to prepare for mutual destruction?

It’s not impossible of course, but I suspect you have not seen Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ brief plea for a complete cessation of war. It seems that he and I are on the same page in this regard. It appears that he is, like me, attempting to use his influence to end war! And he’s a much smarter person than I am! I would like you to read Guterres’ words below and tell me where, and why, you think he’s nuts. Seriously, let me know!

Do you agree with his point of view, or do you not? If you do, then why would you want to waste the federal treasury’s diminishing resources on 88 custom-made-for-Canada military jets and negate EVERYTHING he is calling on world leaders to do – that is, end the sickness of war? If Canada subscribes to the ideals of the United Nations, if Canada truly thinks peace is better than war, if Canada has the balls to be a pioneer in leading the world towards real peace, than why not invest (heavily) in a Department of Peace instead of a Department of War? Why not, at least, give us the freedom of conscience to which the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms entitles us, and allow us to pursue Guterres’ hopes? Why not invest (heavily) in moving towards a cleaner and healthier physical, social, and intellectual environment?

I await your responses.

Respectfully,

Eric Unger
Winnipeg

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the world where humanity’s priorities should lie. This major attack on people’s security across the world shames and discredits global military expenditures and proves them an outrageous waste and loss of opportunities.

Consider what could be done worldwide with the current military spending of 1.92 trillion US$ each year. Here is a graphic illustration from the Global Day of Action on Military Spending – GDAMS- 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic must be addressed by supporting healthcare and other life-sustaining activities, not by spending on military equipment and personnel. The fact that military assets are being deployed during this crisis can be profoundly misleading: it doesn’t justify their bloated budgets, nor does it mean that they are solving this crisis. It shows quite the opposite: we need fewer soldiers, jets, tanks and aircraft carriers and more doctors, ambulances and hospitals.

Major reductions in military expenditures would free up resources not only to provide better healthcare and long term care, but also to tackle climate and humanitarian emergencies, especially in countries of the Global South, where Ebola, Cholera, Polio as well as Covid-19 are causing widespread suffering and death. Cutting military spending would also allow us to provide appropriate funding to institutions that work for human and common security, particularly the United Nations and its agencies.

A petition campaign, “Healthcare Not Warfare”, is underway in preparation for the next UN General Assembly meeting this fall. If you have not yet done so, please sign the petition at www.change.org/healthcarenotwarfare.

The CONSCIENCE CANADA 2020 Annual General Meeting that was to be held on April 18 at Danforth Mennonite Church in Toronto has been CANCELLED due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Other arrangements for holding our annual AGM are being considered. In due course information on a re-organized AGM will be communicated to CC members and posted here on our website. Please be assured that whatever we do will follow public health guidance on infection prevention and control of COVID-19.

Risk-informed decision-making for mass gatherings during COVID-19 global outbreak

CONSCIENCE CANADA 2020 Annual General Meeting

Saturday April 18, 2020, 2:00 p.m., Danforth Mennonite Church, 2174 Danforth Ave, Toronto

Agenda

1. Approval of the minutes of the 2019 AGM (available upon request)
2. Review of CC activities in 2019 and a look ahead (members’ participation invited)
3. Confirmation of board members standing for re-election:
4. Election of new board member(s)
5. Presentation and Approval of the 2019 financial statements (available upon request) 6. Appointment of auditors for 2020

BREAK

3:30 pm Film: A BOLD PEACE – Costa Rica’s path of demilitarization (60mins)

NOTE: This constitutes the official annual meeting notice required by the Conscience Canada by- laws. Please let us know if you want to receive a PDF copy of the by-laws by email.

Our latest newsletter (Spring 2020) is now out. Please have a read..

In May an international coalition organized by World BEYOND War will converge on Ottawa to say NO to CANSEC, Canada’s biggest arms bazaar.

Canadians have been protesting CANSEC for years. It’s time to bring international attention to Canada’s complicity in the global arms trade and endless wars. Activists, grassroots organizers, and experts from around the world will be sharing strategies and tactics for shutting down a weapons expo, divesting from war, and converting to a peaceful, green, & just future.

Register to join us this May for nonviolent activism, skills training, art-making, panel presentations, rallying, and more, culminating in the #NoWar2020 Conference on May 29-30

Te Ao Pritchard will share lessons learned from the successful campaign to shut down New Zealand’s weapons expo.

Siana Bangura from Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) UK will share her experience organizing against DSEI, one of the world’s largest arms fairs.

Susi Snyder, author of Don’t Bank on the Bomb, the only global report on the private financing of the nuclear weapons industry, will lead a divestment training to talk about the tools and tactics to cut off the flow of money to weapons companies.

Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK Co-Founder, will talk about why war is not green, and why we need to demilitarize to decarbonize, sharing expertise from her 40+ years of bold, creative activism.

Doug Hewitt-White will be helping to facilitate a discussion group on Divesting from the Military War Machine. We will talk about the practicality and efficacy of refusing to pay for war.

The week will kick off with a live show by comedian-activist Lee Camp on May 24, followed by a free screenprinting workshop by the SAW Art + Protest Initiative on May 26, leading up to the protests at CANSEC on May 27 and 28, and concluding with the #NoWar2020 Conference on the 29th and 30th. For the full schedule, including many more events, visit the website here.

World Beyond War is partnering with a network of organizations, including Conscience Canada, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. View the full list of sponsors and endorsers.

Join us in Ottawa as we protest Canada’s largest weapons expo, and call for the conversion to a peace-based economy that works for all of us.

Listen here to a discussion with Conscience Canada board members Doug Hewitt-White, Murray Lumley and Scott Albrecht.   Scott Neigh from the Talking Radical Radio Show interviews them about CC, the history of conscientious objection in Canada, and about their work to establish a right to conscientious objection to military taxation.

A Book Review by Mary Groh

FALTER by Bill McKibben (Holt and Co. 2019)

The metaphor of human life as a game functions aptly throughout this book. In Part 1, “The Size of the Board”, the author mentions widespread environmental problems we are increasingly familiar with: droughts, fires, pollution, floods, melting ice, rising seas, warming oceans, species extinction and more.

McKibben makes the accusation that “the most consequential lie in human history” was the banding together of Exxon, Chevron, Shell, Amoco and others to deny climate change. The effects of the burning of fossil fuels had been revealed by scientists and, although the oil magnates and company CEO’s recognized the evidence, they deliberately chose (in the 1980’s) to mount a disinformation campaign in the interests of their industry. Their efforts largely succeeded.

Part 2 “Leverage” shows how the novelist Ayn Rand pushed the ideology of libertarian-ism, and denigrated socialism in the minds of Americans, and most significantly, in the actions of their political leaders. The huge oil wealth of the Koch brothers funded efforts to influence political systems and keep the fossil fuel industry growing and unstoppable.

Another threat in the human game McKibben explores in Part 3. It is the unregulated development of AI. Experts in Silicon Valley and elsewhere seem addicted to pushing their technology ever further into the realm of human agency but without values added. Therapies that can rid a fetus of the gene for, say, cystic fibrosis he considers a human advance; but letting parents produce designer babies is not. One negative effect would be more inequality among people. As with unregulated greenhouse gas emissions, there could be runaway effects beyond human control.

In Part 4 the book proposes two ways to “help us keep global warming and technological mania within some limits, and keep the human race recognizable, even robust.” The author enthusiastically promotes solar panel technology, recounting his visits to remote African villages where solar power provides electricity to people in countries that cannot afford to connect them to the grid.

The second way discussed is of particular interest to peace activists: non-violent mass protests. These have the power to bring about change (think Gandhi, Martin Luther King movements). Earth Day 1970, when 20 million Americans joined in demonstrations, led eventually to Nixon having to sign significant environmental laws still in effect today. The protests against the Keystone pipeline (2011) reversed the leverage of the fossil fuel industry. The book is recent enough to include Greta Thunberg and the school strikes, (but not recent enough to refer to the Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrations).

As a war tax resister I was fascinated with the quote from Thoreau, the New Englander who refused to pay the poll tax. He wrote in 1849 as the Civil War was brewing, “If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure . . . [but] in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution.”

This book brings so much pertinent information together in just 244 pages in a readable and persuasive style. “The human game is a team sport.” McKibben makes the reader want to join the team of environmental and peace activists.

Some of us would remember exactly where we were on the day 50 years back when Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered so hideously. Very few “survive” being killed in the way that Martin Luther King has done. The civil rights movement and the struggle against racism are forever linked to his name, his words and his deeds. As we mark the 50th anniversary of his death it is of high value to have this collective reflection in order to look more deeply into what his legacy means, and may mean, in the 21 Century.

Even though his name may be most strongly linked to the fight against racial segregation, his opposition to war and encouragement of non-violence remain of great inspiration. . . . .

Read all of Ingeborg Breines’ opinion piece in the latest IPB newsletter

by Eric Unger

HAVE YOU watched the movie, Hacksaw Ridge? It’s worth a look, I think.

Having viewed this film about an American WWII conscientious objector I wondered if Canada had had a similar soldier who refused to kill yet served in war. Then while in the doctor’s waiting room the other day I came upon this short article here in Reader’s Digest about a Korean War veteran and CO.

This excerpt from the story really caught my eye:

After Pelletier was honourably discharged on August 13, 1953… He married Rosaline in the spring of 1964 and they settled in Sherbrooke, Quebec, and had four children: three sons and a daughter. When the kids were young, Pelletier brought them to Remembrance Day ceremonies and gave them mock parachute lessons in the basement, but he told them very little about the war. This dismayed their second oldest, Louis-Marie, who, as a child, was anxious for details of his father’s courageous exploits in Korea. One day, in a bid to find out more, he asked his dad which side had been victorious. “We wanted so much for him to tell us it was him—that he had won the war,” says Louis-Marie, laughing. “But he told us it was the bankers who’d really won. [emphasis mine] What a boring answer! Still, he wasn’t wrong.”