You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'CA News' category.
Canada’s governor general, a largely ceremonial position, could decide the fate of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s embattled government.
BY ROB GILLIES
TORONTO — Canada’s governor general cut short a European trip Tuesday to deal with an unprecedented political crisis that could force the second national election in two months or see an opposition coalition take power.
Michaelle Jean, who is the representative of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II as head of state, holds a mostly ceremonial position. But it will be her decision which path to take if the opposition votes to oust Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.
Constitutional experts speculated Jean would probably allow the opposition to form a government because parliamentary elections were just held Oct. 14.
The Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois, which together control a majority in Parliament, signed a pact Monday agreeing to vote to oust Harper’s minority government next week and setting the structure for their proposed government.
By Agence France-Presse
UN soldiers patrol in Haiti. AFP PHOTO
MONTREAL (AFP) – A Canadian humanitarian aid worker pleaded guilty on Monday to sexual assault on young orphans in Haiti in 2006 and 2007, and was sentenced to three years in jail.
Armand Huard, 64, admitted culpability on 10 counts of sexually touching eight victims aged 13 to 16 years old at the time of the incidents.
He was arrested in February along with Denis Rochefort, 59, who was convicted on Friday of similar charges. Rochefort was sentenced to two years in jail. “It’s a triumph of our legal system,” prosecutor Carmen Rioux told reporters.
“It’s in accordance with Canadian jurisprudence that Mr. Huard, who was in a situation of trust or authority over these children and abused them, would face punishment.”
The pair, who had worked for years in Cayes on the southwest side of the Caribbean island, were charged under a provision of the criminal code that allows Canadians to be prosecuted in Canada for child sex crimes in other countries.
Police in both countries and the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (Minustah) collaborated in an international investigation kicked off in early 2007 into their crimes.
Source: WeHaitians
The St Kitts-based headquarters of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB). (Photo by Erasmus Williams)
BASSETERRE, St Kitts (CUOPM): An agreement aimed at improving debt management in the countries making up the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) has been signed.
The agreement was signed Thursday between the government of Canada, acting through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB).
The ECCB said that CIDA, represented by Minister Counsellor Douglas Williams, CIDA Head of Aid for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, and Sir K Dwight Venner, Governor of the ECCB, signed the Contribution Agreement of seven million two hundred thousand Canadian dollars (CAD$7,200,000).
Accordingly, the Canada-Eastern Caribbean Debt Advisory Service will help to establish appropriate institutional arrangements for effective debt management at the national level to aggressively manage and adjust debt portfolios; increase awareness and understanding of the implications of debt on growth and development; establish consistent standards for debt management among ECCB member states; and ensure up-to-date statistics and data on national debt, including consistent application of the Debt Recording and Management System developed by the Commonwealth Secretariat.
An important component of the programme involves the dissemination of best practices and lessons learnt to the wider CARICOM region.
By Oscar Ramjeet
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad: The Caribbean and Canada have been enjoying excellent trade relations for generations and a forum is now being held in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Canadian trade commissioner’s visit to the Caribbean.
The forum entitled “The CARICOM-Canada Business Forum: New Directions for Bilateral Trade and Investment Linkages” will be held on November 17 and 18 in Port of Spain, Trinidad.
The Trinidad Express reported that the forum will be held under the auspices of the Ministry of Trade; however, it is being organised by the Caribbean Association of Industry and Commerce (CAIC) in conjunction with the Canadian High Commission, Caribbean Export Development Agency (CIDA), and the Caribbean regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM).
The sectors identified as areas of focus for the forum include energy, mining and environmental services, creative industries (music, animation and design and fashion) and building products and services.
Some leading Canadian industries want the federal government to help tide them over until the economy improves.
Forty-three groups signed a letter sent to Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Monday asking for help, including lines of credit and loan guarantees, so they could avoid more manufacturing plant closings and layoffs.
The letter says the economy will bounce back, “but in the meantime, Canadian businesses need to raise additional credit to maintain operations.”
The groups also want tax cuts, changes in regulations and more help from two federal agencies, the Business Development Bank and Export Development Canada.
The federal government recently allocated the export agency an extra $2 billion. But media reports said the government also recently turned down an appeal for more money from the auto-parts companies.
The letter to Harper was signed by the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters and the Forest Products Association of Canada, among others.
Source: Cbc.Ca
PARIS, Haiti – French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner expressed his “deep emotion” and promised aid after a school in a Haitian shantytown collapsed Friday leaving some 50 people dead.
Kouchner said in a statement: “At the request of the Haitian authorities, France is preparing to send as soon as possible a civil security team to help the Haitian authorities in rescuing the victims who are still buried.”
About 50 schoolchildren and teachers were killed when the grade school packed with hundreds of students collapsed during classes Friday, a government official said.
The three-story La Promesse (The Promise) school in Petion-ville, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, caved in a heap of cement slabs and twisted steel rods at about 10 a.m. Friday, trapping scores inside.
“We have counted about 50 dead for the moment, and around 85 injured,” said Nadia Lochard of the civil protection bureau.
“But there are still numerous children stuck in the rubble. We have signs that they are still alive and we are organizing help to try to save them,” she said.
Source: Canada.Com
By Kevin Skerett and Yves Engler, ZNet
Before antiwar Americans place your bets on Canada or the United Nations, you should know what they are up to in Haiti….
Canadians of conscience who pay attention to Haiti continue to be ashamed of what is being done in our name.
In a January 15 interview with Haiti’s Radio Solidarité, Canada’s ambassador to Haiti, Claude Boucher praised the UN occupation forces (identified by the French acronym MINUSTAH), urging them to “increase their operations as they did last December.”
Boucher’s reference to operations “last December” is an unmistakable reference to the December 22 MINUSTAH assault on the slum neighbourhood of Cité Soleil.
Marketed by its architects as an action against “armed gangs” blamed for a spate of recent kidnappings, 400 troops, backed by helicopters, entered a densely populated residential area at 4:30 a.m. Eyewitnesses and victims of the attack claim MINUSTAH helicopters fired on residents throughout the operation. The cardboard and corrugated tin wall houses were no match for the troops’ heavy weaponry and the raid left scores of civilians dead and wounded, including women and children.
Dubbed the “Christmas Massacre” by neighbourhood residents a Reuters photo revealed a row of dead bodies and two distraught women carrying a wounded young boy. Agence France Presse indicated that at least 12 people were killed and “several dozen” wounded, a casualty total over 40. A Haitian human rights organization, known by the acronym AUMOHD, reported 20 killed with an initial set of victims’ names.
The intention of the links and extracts to follow is to show the spread of the U.S. military’s intention to build on the Human Terrain System in penetrating local cultures and intervening in local societies across the planet. Of course anthropology is singled out for “special mention,” now that in the minds of the state and military “we” have reverted to being a tool of imperialism (not serving imperialism is routinely called “retreating from the world” by some).
Perhaps given the silence of so many, perhaps most anthropologists, conducting their business as usual, buried in their niche projects, we never stopped being such a tool, whether willingly or unwittingly. When debates finally do occur, in limited quarters, almost inevitably the centre of attention moves toward the question of whether Human Terrain Teams “save lives” or are used for “targeting”. If the objective is to save lives, then mine is by very far the best plan: withdraw. The fact that the rationale, ideology and worldview behind these various foreign occupations and counterinsurgency campaigns are not called into question, betrays the extent to which even the semi-critical anthropologists have bought into the dominant imperialist logic of their own society, and take such domination as natural, unquestionable fact. The critical skills they use to “peel the onion” of foreign cultures are never applied to their own; there is little doubt who “the bad guys” are, but there is extra special effort in sweetly seeking nuances in the decisions of Americans to enlist voluntarily, and of course there is the occasional HTS member who is noted to be “a hell of a nice guy.”
By Iain Hunter
Stephen Joseph Harper, 22nd Prime Minister of Canada
How many times have we heard the question: “What does Quebec want?”
Since last week’s election, we might ask as well: “How is it going to get it?”
It wasn’t long before election-watchers crunched the numbers the morning after and came to the conclusion that, hey, Quebec doesn’t matter any more.
By plumping for the Bloc Québécois, the voters in that province seemed to be assuming that another minority government would be elected and that it would be weak enough to need Bloc support to survive, and have to pay for it.
Well, it turns out that the Conservatives can survive very well without Bloc support. The party can’t make a difference even in alliance with either the Liberals or the New Democrats: It will take the combined will of all three opposition parties in the Commons to force another election — should any of them be inclined to do so any time soon.
Stephen Harper is better with the arithmetic of this minority parliament than Joe Clark was with the one he had: He can afford to govern as if he has a majority, until he gets tired of it all again and pulls the plug.
On February 3 the UN occupation force carried out another slaughter in Cité Soleil, killing several persons including two little girls: Alexandra and Stephanie Lubin. Their parents were both wounded, the mother is hospitalized. [photo and caption credit] Haiti Progress
UNITED NATIONS –– The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday renewed for one year the mandate
of the U.N. mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and urged it to continue helping the Caribbean country’s police ensure security.
The 15-member council unanimously adopted Resolution 1840 extending MINUSTAH’s mandate, which expires Wednesday, until October 15, 2009. The text also welcomed the force’s reconfiguration decided in October 2007 to beef up its police component, saying MINUSTAH “will continue to consist of a military component of up to 7,060 troops of all ranks and a police component of a total of 2,091.”
Source: ChinaPost.Com.Tw
