The PGA Bloc Ottawa Presents: NO SECURITY WITHOUT JUSTICE! NO PROSPERITY WITHOUT DIGNITY! A Week of Education and Action to Oppose the Security and Prosperity Partnership August 4th - August 12th

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PGA Bloc Ottawa Presents: NO SECURITY WITHOUT JUSTICE! NO PROSPERITY WITHOUT DIGNITY! A Week of Education and Action to Oppose the Security and

Prosperity Partnership August 4th - August 12th --- On August 20-21,

2007, President Bush and his "partners", including Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Prime Minister Harper of Canada, and the heads of 31 of the wealthiest corporations on the planet will meet behind closed doors in Montebello, Quebec to discuss their Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). To prepare for the mass mobilizations and direct confrontations planned for August 19th-21st, the PGA Bloc Ottawa is hosting a series of events in mid-August to confront SPP and it's corporate backers.

CONTENTS

(((A))) Direct Action Training: Saturday, August 4th (((B))) Picket and Action to Oppose the SPP: Saturday, August 11th (((C))) SPP Teach-in and Discussion: Sunday, August 12th (((D))) Info on the SPP (((E))) PGA Contact Info and Upcoming Meetings

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> (((A))) DIRECT ACTION TRAINING <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

The PGA Bloc Ottawa will host a Direct Action Training to help groups and individuals plan and prepare for the August 20-21 SPP summit. We'll focus on scenarios and skills that may be useful for the type of situation we'll face in Montebello on August 19th-21st. Everyone is welcome.

1:00pm-5:00pm Saturday, August 4th J.K. Wylie Boardroom, PSAC 233 Gilmour Street (btw Metcalfe and Elgin) Ottawa, ON FREE

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> (((B))) PICKET AND ACTION TO OPPOSE THE SPP <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

12:30pm Saturday, August 11th Rally at Confederation Square War Memorial (top of Elgin @ Wellington)

On Saturday, August 11th, the PGA Bloc Ottawa invites all groups and individuals opposed to the Security and Prosperity Partnership to join us in directly confronting one of the corporate backers who will directly benefit from the Montebello Summit.

The North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) was launched as part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) in June 2006. It is the only formal advisory board to the SPP and is made up of 30 corporate leaders from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico with ten advisors from each of the SPP signatory states. A September 13, 2006 story in Maclean's magazine describes NACC as a "cherrypicked group of executives who were whisked to Cancun in March by the leaders of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, and asked to come up with a plan for taking North American integration beyond NAFTA."

Harper appointed the Canadian membership of the NACC in June 2006: Dominic D'Alessandro (Manulife Financial); Paul Desmarais, Jr. (Power Corporation of Canada); David Ganong (Ganong Bros. Limited); Richard George (Suncor Energy Inc.); Hunter Harrison (CN); Linda Hasenfratz (Linamar Corporation); Michael Sabia (Bell Canada Enterprises); Jim Shepherd (Canfor Corporation); Annette Verschuren (The Home Depot); and Rick Waugh (Scotiabank).

For more information on the NACC and the corporate profiteers involved, visit http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=438

For more information about the picket and action, contact pgabloc@gmail.com or visit pga.roadnetwork.org

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> (((C))) WHAT IS THE SPP? TEACH-IN AND DISCUSSION <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

1:30pm Sunday, Aug 12, 2007 Jack Purcell Community Centre 320 Jack Purcell Lane off Elgin near Gilmour Ottawa, ON Canada Pay What You Can Wheelchair Accessible Child -friendly Contact: a_ottawa@mutualaid.org http://adg.roadnetwork.org/

What is the SPP? A talk by members of the PGA Bloc - Ottawa

On August 20-21, 2007, President Bush and his "partners", including Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Prime Minister Harper of Canada, will once again be meeting behind closed doors, this time at Chateau Montebello, to discuss their Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).

The "three amigos" will be meeting with senior executives from big business of the North American Competitiveness Council that control the war (Lockheed Martin), energy (Chevron, Suncor), telecommunications (BCE), railways (KCS, CN), media (Power Corp), postal services (FedEx, UPS), forestry (Canfor), banking (Bank of Nova Scotia) and insurance (Manulife) industries, to name a few.

You're notinvited.

This latest model, the SPP, can be summed up as "NAFTA-plus-Homeland-Security". It will secure additional prosperity" for those already benefiting both directly and indirectly from Bush and Harper's war agenda (be it war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Columbia or here at home against First Nations), at the expense of the insecurity and impoverishment of the rest of us. This model is reflected in the spread of Bush's Homeland Security agenda into Canada (e.g. no-fly lists on airplanes, "safe third country" deportation policies for migrants, etc.), and in forcing concessions on workers in Canada, US and Mexico in the name of "competitiveness".

All are welcome. Accessible! Child-friendly!

Contact a_ottawa@mutualaid.org for more information. http://adg.roadnetwork.org/

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> (((D))) INFO ON THE SECURITY AND PROSPERITY PARTNERSHIP <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

(with files from No One Is Illegal Vancouver (http://noii-van.resist.ca)

On August 20-21, 2007, President Bush and his "partners", including Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Prime Minister Harper of Canada, and the heads of 31 of the wealthiest corporations on the planet will meet behind closed doors in Montebello, Quebec to discuss their Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) was founded in March 2005, in Cancun, at a summit of the Heads of State of Canada, the US, and Mexico. Broken down, the SPP is NAFTA-plus-Homeland-Security model. The founding premise of the SPP is that an agenda of economic free trade and national security will result in human prosperity.

Yet we know that the so-called "prosperity" of previous free trade agreements such as NAFTA have only brought corporate prosperity, with increasing rates of poverty and displacement for the vast majority of people. For example, despite government rhetoric, the Economist Intelligence Unit (affiliated with The Economist) has reported that the implementation of NAFTA in Mexico has "failed to create even one formal job in net terms." We also know that the "War on Terror" and the beefed-up national security apparatus has exacerbated insecurity and brought terror on the lives of millions of people locally and globally through immigrant raids, border militarization, foreign troop occupations, and repression of civil liberties and resistance movements. A September 2006 report in The Independent found that the "War on Terror" has "directly killed a minimum of 62,006 people, created 4.5 million refugees, and cost the US more than the sum needed to pay off the debts of every poor nation on earth."

SPP is not an official treaty; it is not an official law; rather, it is being presented as a vague 'diaologue based on shared values'. Therefore it has been able to escape any public scrutiny and will never be debated in the House of Commons. There have been several meetings for the SPP, including a summit in March 2006 in Texas and a preparatory meeting in Ottawa in February 2007, all of which were held behind close doors. On August 21st 2007, the three Heads of State will meet for a third tri-national Summit to forward the SPP agreements in Montebello, Quebec. People in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Quebec City have already begun organizing to confront this Summit in Montebello, to confront the agenda of SPP and the agenda of George W Bush, Stephan Harper, and Felipe Calderon.

SPP is a direct continuation of the colonialist and capitalist politics that perpetuate and accelerate the carnage, pillage, and destruction of the planet. Laura Carlsen of the International Relations Centre Americas Program explains, "SPP has three fundamental objectives. The Bush administration wants to create more advantageous conditions for transnational corporations and remove remaining barriers to the flow of capital and crossborder production within the framework of NAFTA. It wants to secure access to natural resources, especially oil. And it wants to create a regional security plan based on "pushing its borders out" into a security perimeter that includes Mexico and Canada."

Under this framework of security and prosperity, the following initiatives are currently being recommended and/or being undertaken:

Integration of military and police training exercises, cooperation on law enforcement, and the expansion of The North American Aerospace

Defense Command (NORAD) into a into a multiservice joint naval and land Defense Command.

Expand temporary worker programs as a means of ensuring low wages and labour exploitation.

Adoption of coordinated border surveillance technologies with major contracts provided to military suppliers; coordination of no-fly lists; development of a North American Border Pass; and the use of

Biometrics. The Canadian Biometrics Group is predicting that the North American biometric "market" would rise to US $2.6-billion by 2006.

Integration of refugee policies. The Safe Third Country Agreement, implemented in December 2004 between the US and Canada, has resulted in at least a 40% decrease in refugee applications in Canada. Under the United States-Mexico "Voluntary Repatriation Program" more than 35,000 persons have already been deported.There is also a pilot project to share information on refugee and asylum claimants based on a comparison of fingerprint records.

Harmonization of health and environmental regulations to lower standards and development of a North American alternative to the Kyoto Protocol.

Beginning of the privatization of Mexico's nationalized oil sector; fivefold increase in tar sands production in Alberta; and full "development" of Canadian energy resources, already being actively opposed by the Lubicon, Dene, and other indigenous communities. NAFTA Superhighway, a corridor several hundred metres wide including rail lines, freeways and pipelines from Mexico to the Canadian border.

In Canada, the major lobby for SPP comes from the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), a CEO organization and Canada's 'premier business organization'. In January 2003, CCCE launched its North American Security and Prosperity Initiative with initiatives to increase investment and capital flows, integrate security agreements and military defence, and expedited means of resource (oil, natural gas, water, forest products) extraction. With the launch of SPP in 2005, the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) was created. Harper appointed the Canadian membership of the NACC in June 2006: Dominic D'Alessandro (Manulife Financial); Paul Desmarais, Jr. (Power Corporation of Canada); David Ganong (Ganong Bros. Limited); Richard George (Suncor Energy Inc.); Hunter Harrison (CN); Linda Hasenfratz (Linamar Corporation); Michael Sabia (Bell Canada Enterprises); Jim Shepherd (Canfor Corporation); Annette Verschuren (The Home Depot); and Rick Waugh (Scotiabank).

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><> (((D))) CONTACT INFO <><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

To get in touch with the PGA Bloc Ottawa, contact:

pgabloc@gmail.com pga.roadnetwork.org

The next PGA Bloc Ottawa Planning Meeting will be at:

6:30pm Thursday, August 2nd Room 125, Simard Hall University of Ottawa Ottawa, ON map link: http://www.uottawa.ca/map/