Trudeau’s Bombing Carries on Canada’s 25-Year War Against Iraq

January 20, 2016

By Matthew Behrens

For the past quarter century, the Iraqi people have served as a convenient geopolitical punching bag, used to justify unfounded racist fears and massive military budgets. The callousness with which successive Canadian governments have treated Iraqi lives as less than human is reprehensible and – rhetoric aside – Justin Trudeau is proving no different, waging an intensifying air war against that country with 47 separate air strikes since he won the election last October. 

Canada has been dropping 500-pound bombs on the Iraqi people since November, 2014, and yet there has been little public dissent beyond quibbles over mission timelines and objectives. And while Trudeau defenders claim it’s not that easy to issue an order to ground Canada’s warplanes, the military has been very clear, indicating at a December 17 press conference: “We’ll do that when the Canadian government directs us to do so.” 

But Canada’s “bad-ass” War Minister Harjit Sajjan, who was directed “to do so” in his ministerial mandate letter over two months ago, is either incompetent or just plain cowardly in refusing to issue a grounding order to his brothers-in-arms. It’s not as if Canada’s bombing allies are concerned. The day after Trudeau was elected, he immediately called the White House and then told reporters Obama “understands the commitments I’ve made about ending the combat mission.” Trudeau also spoke with NATO officials during his first overseas trips in November and met with no resistance, while later that month a prime ministerial adviser told CBC there was “absolutely no pressure for Canada to continue its contribution to the bombing mission."

On December 6, Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion told Canadians that bringing an end to the bombing would be “a matter of weeks, not months.” Meanwhile, Canadian bombers dropped their load over the Iraqi people on Christmas and New Year’s, and over one-and-a half months later, the bombing continues.

            While the Liberals may seem in disarray, it’s more likely that they are simply being dishonest: they clearly want to stay in the fight because of the bizarre belief that, by bombing people, they have a right to be “at the table” where discussions about the future of the region will eventually be carried out. That also translates into being part of the marketplace for fellow bombing countries to purchase new weapons systems through the Canadian Commercial Corporation, the global death merchant that brokered the $15-billion armoured brigade vehicle deal with the beheading regime of Saudi Arabia.

A Laboratory for Warfare

Iraq has long been a laboratory for modern warfare, in which weapons merchants try out their destructive products against real people and real buildings courtesy of a mutually-beneficial arrangement with agencies like Canada’s own War Department. That symbiosis also plays out in efforts to push weapons systems on potential buyers. As the Ottawa Citizen reported last week, Canada rents out its soldiers to play the role of catwalk models in corporate sales pitches of Canadian weaponry. Between 2012 and 2014, such Canadian Forces demonstrations were used to promote armoured brigade vehicles produced by London, Ontario’s General Dynamics Land Systems to the regimes in Kuwait (which was not at the time on the registry of countries eligible to receive Canadian war materiel) and the UAE (which for 17 months has illegally detained and tortured Canadian citizen Salim Alaradi with barely a whimper of concern from Ottawa). 

Hence, continued Canadian bombing is as much an economic as a political investment for the Trudeau Liberals. What Dion, Sajjan and Trudeau have failed to acknowledge, however, is that every time their CF-18 bombers take to the air, people are killed by these bombing sorties, both civilians or conscripted fighters in Iraq. 

Clearly, Canadian officials do not care about this human cost. That’s not surprising, given this country’s historic, ongoing, profitable role in destroying the Iraqi nation, killing well over 2 million people, and banishing a number of generations to intense poverty, environmental degradation, daily violence from the air and on the ground, and depleted-uranium weapons-induced cancer.

            That stunning disregard for human life was illustrated perfectly by Canadian attempts to cover up the CF-18 slaughter of some 30 Iraqi civilians in January, 2015, an air strike that only came to light 8 months later when the Globe and Mail reported on documents released not by Ottawa but by the Pentagon. They indicated that “[t]he Canadian military made it clear to the United States shortly after the alleged incident that it felt no obligation under the Geneva Conventions to probe what happened, the Pentagon records show. ‘It should be noted that Canadian Joint Operations Command [legal advisers] opinion is that, under the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) there are no obligations for the Canadian Armed Forces to conduct an investigation’”.

            The War Department’s meticulously compiled, anodyne datebook of terror strikes against Iraq, Operation Impact, proudly touts that since it began, the Air Force has flown some 2,017 “sorties”, while “delivering some 20,522,000 pounds of fuel to coalition aircraft.” There are no human casualties listed whatsoever. That work is left to people such as the tireless researchers at airwars.org, who continue trying to piece together bits of information to show the true tally of the bombing campaign’s victims (estimates of up to 2,400 civilians killed, and over 35,000 bombs and missiles dropped).

            What’s remarkable is that anything is left standing after 25 years of almost constant warfare and devastating, Canadian-enforced economic sanctions that the UN’s former Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, Denis Halliday, called genocidal. While those who committed war crimes by deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure in Iraq do book tours and appear as talk show guests, people who resisted the sanctions by providing food and medicine were criminalized. Among the most glaring cases are those of Dr. Rafil Dhafir, a Syracuse oncologist, still behind bars as part of a 22-year sentence for a “crime of compassion” (sending humanitarian aid and medical supplies to the Iraqi people), and Dr. Shakir Hamoodi (jailed for three years because he sent money to his own and 14 other impoverished families in Iraq).  

           

Remembering 1991

            While Saddam Hussein was certainly a loathsome dictator, he was not loathsome enough to prevent arms dealers from around the globe supplying him with their deadly wares. And when it appeared the fall of the Soviet Union would leave the weapons industry in a shambles, Hussein’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait was greeted with jubilation in the offices of the war industry. A new enemy was proclaimed, Hussein was suddenly Hitler, and he had to be stopped. Ratcheting up war fever was assisted by the blood-stained Hill & Knowlton PR group (which created the myth of Kuwaiti babies being ripped from incubators). Hill & Knowlton’s Canadian arm was then run by David MacNaughton (appointed this week to be Trudeau’s ambassador to the U.S.).

            While the Mulroney government was quick to utter self-righteous pieties about illegal occupations of sovereign territories, the Conservative government of the day did the exact same thing that summer by sending in 2,600 Canadian troops to occupy sovereign Mohawk land during the Oka crisis. Their armoured vehicles, helicopters, aerial surveillance equipment, miles of barbed wire, and countless other means of firepower served to enforce the same kind of sanctions the Iraqi people were about to face, cutting off power and trying to deny the entry of food, water, medicines, and clothing to the Indigenous resisters behind the wire. The military bolstered an additional 4,000 paramilitary SQ members, numbers that dwarfed the initial commitment of 900 Canadian troops sent to take on Hussein.

In a “post-Cold War” world, Canada’s military and its war industries welcomed a new enemy, and while Indigenous resistance has always provided a major rasion d’etre for Canadian Forces and related state security agencies (witness the massive, barely-reported Gustafson Lake crisis of 1995), having an overseas target proved invaluable. 

            Indigenous lands were the first testing ground for weapons systems used against the Iraqi people, from fighter bombers who dropped 1000-pound “dummy” bombs over the Innu territory of Nitissinan to cruise missiles tested on Cree Territory. Canadian universities helped with the more horrific forms of firepower to be employed. For example, fuel air explosives, known as a “poor man’s atom bomb,” invert gravity and are designed to suck people out of air raid shelters; they were researched at McGill University, which continues to be a major war research contributor. Canada’s chemical weapons testing field at Suffolk, Alberta, had been used by a Belgian company to experiment with long-range artillery shells that were  sold to the Iraqis during the 1980s.

            From the moment Kuwait was invaded, Canada was eager for war, taking every conceivable step to prevent a negotiated solution while lobbying UN Security Council members to authorize force. Then Foreign Affairs Minister Joe Clark said Parliament need not be recalled if the need to go to war was imminent. And while the narrative of sanctions as a tool to force Hussein out of Kuwait was trumpeted by the U.S.-led coalition, the Toronto Star reported that “when Canada was committed to no more than enforcing a trade embargo against Iraq, Ottawa was calmly setting aside funds for a full-blown war.” Some $500 million in federal cuts to social programs were initiated to help pay for the war, and the government resurrected legislation allowing it to control wartime production, with General Motors in London (the predecessor to General Dynamics Land Systems) announcing it could switch from civilian work to military production of armoured personnel carriers at a moment’s notice.

            Clark also distinguished himself by naming as “counterproductive” any pledges that Allied forces would not use nuclear weapons against Iraq. On October 26, 1990, he declared Canada would go to war whether the UN authorized it or not.  In November, the government ordered 800 body bags (with a weak-kneed NDP only questioning the high number of the bags). With the outbreak of war, General John de Chastelein cheerily declared, “We are now at war and the distinction between whether our roles are offensive or defensive is immaterial.”

CF-18s Deadly, Destructive

            Canadian bombers began their runs over Iraq on January 20, 1991, with General Gerard Theriault reminding Toronto Star readers “the destructive ability of one CF-18 [is] as great as an attack by hundreds of bombers during World War II.” After the equivalent of one and a half Hiroshima bombs was dropped on Baghdad the first night of the war, the NDP’s John Brewin stood and declared: “The first feeling is one of concern for the safety of the pilots and sympathy for them. We admire the courage they will need in a very difficult assignment.” Keeping in mind the Iraqis had little anti-aircraft capacity and half the country’s population was under the age of 15, Brewin’s remarks were hardly a voice of principled opposition.

            Meanwhile, Joe Clark proclaimed, “Some wars can be a point of principle; this is one of those wars.” He insisted that the Geneva Convention protocols to which Canada was a signatory (concerning “excessive loss of civilian life”) were not being violated. Clark then fumbled his way through another statement, the like of which he was quite famous for, when he declared: “If there is one priority, one lesson, which the world must learn from this war, is that an unrestricted arms trade in the region is no longer acceptable and constitutes a threat to all members of the United Nations.” Fine words, perhaps, but not matched by the actions of a government that would very shortly change the Criminal Code at the behest of arms manufacturers Diemaco (Colt Canada now) and General Motors to allow for the import and possession of automatic weapons (crucial to the signing of the first Saudi armoured brigade vehicles contract in 1991).

            One of the strongest NDP stands during the slaughter of the Iraqi people urged people across the land to send Valentines messages to the troops. Meanwhile, Ontario NDP leader Bob Rae, despite closing hospital beds due to budget cuts, opened several up for troop casualties, while his government discussed security measures to deal with “terrorist” threats. Needless to day, anti-Arab sentiment and violence ran high (as documented in Zuhair Kashmeri’s book, The Gulf Within: Canadian Arabs, Racism, & The Gulf War).

            The horrific war crimes against the Iraqis continued directly for a good three months, followed by a 12-year-long daily grind of aerial warfare termed enforcement of no-fly zones, and sanctions that killed over 1 million people (leading to Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement about the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children: “we think the price is worth it”). Then came the 2003 escalation of the war: a bloody invasion and occupation with major Canadian participation that continues in various forms to this day.

Canada’s Victims of the Gulf War

As much as Canada has refused to acknowledge the many victims of its foreign and military policy of the past 25 years – rendering the Iraqi people invisible unless we need them for photo-ops – they have equally refused to recognize the humanity of Gulf War 1 veterans who have returned to die slowly, painfully, and largely in silence. Canada does not keep statistics on Gulf War Syndrome (a horrific condition marked by exposure to depleted uranium, a whole slew of neurotoxic and biological warfare chemicals, and an over-the-top vaccination regime that followed no proper protocols). Among those vets suffering is former navy Lieutenant Louise Richard, who recalls being in touch with at least 400 veterans suffering symptoms similar to hers, a number of whom have since died. 

A nurse and former triathlete who entered the war in top form, she returned a completely different person, as she testified in 2013: “The Gulf War veterans and modern combat vets as a whole have been made to feel like toxic waste that has been disposed of and dumped…We are released from DND undiagnosed, misdiagnosed, or not diagnosed at all. We're left untreated. We're left on our own to find our own doctors, civilian doctors, specialists, therapists, psychiatrists. Canadian vets have been totally abandoned. Our symptoms, illnesses, and concerns have been minimized, belittled, ignored —stress. As for the doctors and specialists we do find who are willing to take us on, VAC [Veterans Affairs Canada] has the nerve to challenge their diagnoses, their treatments, and their credentials. Veterans Affairs dictates to us how many treatments, and the distance we can travel on our claims. Policy always overrules the needs of the ill veteran.”

Just as the seeds of violence Canada planted with the 1991 slaughter of Iraqis continue to yield horrific crops, so veterans like Louise Richard continue to suffer from a war-produced chemical brew that will occupy their own bodies in perpetuity. She is not allowed to give blood, and she shocked committee members when she challenged them thusly:

“This is in our blood supply. Depleted uranium, as we know, goes all over the body, to the organs. Does anyone here want an organ of mine if you're in a car crash tomorrow?”

Stunned MPs said no, but then proceeded on to other business.

Next steps for Canada

As for what Canada should do next, there are no easy answers, but there is a clear conclusion: the strategy of military engagement has time and again proven itself a deadly failure that inevitably sows the seeds of next year’s and next decade’s brutalities (just as militarist adventurism, support for dictatorships like those of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and proxy wars of the past 40 years have left us at the current impasse).  The only way to end the spiral of violence is to stop adding to it. It would not be a crime for Canada to step back, take a pause, examine how we can end our own contributions to the spiral of violence, and proceed from there. 

Canadian policymakers would also do well to read the expert writings of Andrew Cockburn, who points out in Harper’s Magazine that the ever-shifting allegiances in the region essentially have “Western” powers cozying up with Al-Qaeda front groups as the preferred alternative to ISIS. Al-Qaeda? You remember them, don't you? Aren't they supposed to be bad guys that we created and funded in Afghanistan during the 1980s who had something to do with that 9/11 thing? Canadians should also be aware that news of “progress” against ISIS is generally poppycock; indeed, some 50 high-level Central Command intelligence analysts wrote a letter of protest last year, concerned that their intelligence was being manipulated to transform ISIS strength into ISIS defeats, making Obama and company look like they were in charge. 

Canada is also a less-than-honest player in the region given its utter silence on the brutal Turkish military crackdown on Kurds,  surrounding and starving whole communities in the southeast of the country, cutting off power and denying sustenance.  On the one hand, the Kurds are portrayed as heroic fighters against ISIS, but the minute they talk about self-determination, they are labelled terrorists by the Turks and Canadians (Canada has labeled the Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK a terrorist entity.) And yet, as the hardly radical Wall Street Journal points out, “The PKK and its Syrian affiliate have emerged as Washington’s most effective battlefield partners” against ISIS. 

Canada should also come clean about its role in recruitment and facilitation of travel for young people to join ISIS. In a story that has disappeared from any discussion, Turkish authorities last spring arrested an apparent asset of Canadian spy service CSIS, who was nabbed escorting young women across the border into Syria to join ISIS.

As the Trudeau government fidgets about its next steps, calls for an end to the bombing seem too narrow, and provide Trudeau with the cover he needs to wage the war in a different fashion (something he has clearly indicated he wishes to do).  These narrow calls fail to ask how, exactly, Canada (along with the rest of NATO) can contribute anything positive to the region after applying so much direct and indirect violence. The calls could be stronger if they demanded that Trudeau must also include an end to any military “assistance” in the air (one proposal being considered is keeping refueling and reconnaissance aircraft in the area, making Canadians simply bombers by proxy. Indeed, Canada’s War Dept. proudly says these aircraft “fuel the fight.”). He should also cancel the current and proposed expanded role for Canadian Forces on the ground. The idea that the armed forces of the Canadian state have anything to offer in this situation (apart from their experience in repressing indigenous communities and their design of hierarchical institutions in which violence against women is at epidemic levels) is completely without foundation. As in Afghanistan, a Canadian approach based on militarism leave behind a toxic legacy of hatreds, trauma and violence.

Perhaps a period of non-intervening reflection and consultation with grassroots groups on the ground, or massive investments in food security, clean water, and reparations for all the misery we have caused would be a far better choice. An end to the production and export of Canadian weapons would help too. Working to stop the flow of arms into the region from Russia, the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Turkey would be a step forward. Investments in groups that work for reconciliation and the conditions needed for true justice on the ground would be a bonus. There are groups in the region who have been doing this work on a small-scale level for years, such as Muslim Peacemaker Teams along with numerous women’s groups who, in the heart of ISIS territory, have organized protests and won demands. But in classic colonial fashion, Canada refuses to listen to the voices on the ground, seeing our role as a “protector” and wise parent. As German politician Jürgen Todenhöfer wrote last November after spending 10 days embedded with ISIS, “we have to finally start treating the Muslim world as true partners, and not as a cheap petrol station we can raid when we feel like it.”

Ultimately, as we focus on how to end the Canadian bombing of Iraq, we need to take into consideration the broader picture, the lengthy history, the significant amount of blood on our hands, and what we can do to prevent Canadian corporations and political careers from profiting off the lives of people halfway around the world from us.

     

Cozy Canada-Saudi Relationship Guarantees Blockbuster Weapons Sales

                                            Justin Trudeau calls this a jeep.

By Matthew Behrens

            The day after his October election, a tired Justin Trudeau rallied delirious Liberal troops in Ottawa with a promise that the decade of Harper-era cynicism was over, proclaiming, “Many of you have worried that Canada has lost its compassionate and constructive voice in the world over the past 10 years. Well, I have a simple message for you on behalf of 35 million Canadians. We’re back.”

            Now that the cheering has died down, Trudeau’s rhetoric is facing its first major road test as his government refuses to tear up the largest military contract in Canadian history, a $15 billion blockbuster signed by the Conservatives in 2014 to supply Saudi Arabia with weaponized armoured brigade vehicles. The Saudi beheading of 47 people to start 2016 has rocketed what was for a short time a thorny federal election debate topic back into the spotlight, raising many questions about the secret contract undertaken by London, Ontario’s General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS).

            While the Toronto Star last week uncovered a foreign policy briefing book advising the new PM to keep Saudi Arabia as an all-weather friend that would “serve Canadian commercial and possibly security interests,” Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion insisted to CBC that “what is done is done,” and that Ottawa cannot interfere with what he calls a “private-company contract.”

            “That’s just insulting to anyone who knows the facts,” says the Rideau Institute’s Peggy Mason, a former Canadian Disarmament Ambassador to the UN.  “First off, the deal is between a Crown corporation, Canadian Commercial Corporation, and the Saudi Royal Family. Secondly, whatever type of contract it is, that in no way absolves the government of its duty to uphold Canadian export control policy.”

            That policy, as the Global Affairs Canada website explains, “strives to ensure that Canadian military exports are not prejudicial to peace, security or stability in any region of the world or within any country.” They're also designed to control exports to countries “whose governments have a persistent record of serious violations of the human rights of their citizens, unless it can be determined that there is no reasonable risk that the goods might be used against the civilian population.”

But the supply of over 2,000 Canadian-built armoured vehicles to the Saudi regime – a cosy relationship that dates back to 1990 – has not only bolstered that country’s National Guard, whose job is to control the domestic population. It also appears to have facilitated the 2011 Saudi intervention in Bahrain to put down that nation’s pro-democracy Arab Spring protests. Refusal to cancel the contract also sends a supportive message that green lights Saudi military actions in Yemen, which human rights groups have condemned as war crimes.

            While the Liberals have attempted to downplay the ferocity of the military equipment – Trudeau famously called them jeeps, earning a stiff rebuke from Gilles Duceppe during the French-language leaders’ debate – the Globe and Mail reports that a Belgium supplier will be outfitting the armoured vehicles with a 105 mm cannon described as a “high-pressure gun with an advanced autoloader to deliver high lethality at very light weight.”

            The longstanding Canada-Saudi relationship has not only resulted in a windfall for London’s GDLS; it's also led to significant legal changes that have bolstered Canada’s weapons export industry. Indeed, following the first Gulf War against Iraq in 1991, Canada ignored calls for regional disarmament, instead making Criminal Code changes at the behest of two weapons dealers, Kitchener’s Diemaco (now Colt Canada) and GDLS’s predecessor, General Motors Diesel Division. These allowed the companies to import and possess automatic weapons (which were attached to the first Canadian batch of Saudi-bound armoured vehicles) and granted permission for their production and export as well.

            At the time, the opposition Liberals were on a different track, even presenting a 1993 paper – Defence Conversion, A Liberal Priority – which sought to "encourage Canadian defence companies to adjust and move away from a dependence on military production and export." But once the Liberals regained power later that year, Canadian weapons sales continued their meteoric 1990s rise to a host of human rights violators, including Indonesia, Algeria, Colombia, and Egypt.

            Because the new contract is secret, it is unclear what legal and economic ramifications would ensue if it were cancelled. Ken Epps of Project Ploughshares, the Waterloo-based research and policy organization that has worked tirelessly to expose the deal, says that the Saudis “often write into their contracts that no information about it will be made public,” which is why GDLS appeared caught off guard when then Industry Minister Ed Fast publicly announced the deal.

            Epps says liability remains an open question; if there were a break in the contract, the Canadian Commercial Corporation, the globetrotting federal agency that acts as a broker for Canadian military firms, could be held liable by both the Saudis and GDLS. Also unclear is whether, when the Conservatives announced that they had won over several competitors, the final decision was strictly economic, or those other potential suppliers had raised human rights concerns regarding the end-use of the vehicles.

            The latter consideration is a compelling one given that Canada is the only NATO member not to have signed on to the 2014 Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which lists among controlled items of concern armoured combat vehicles. Stephane Dion’s shrugging comment that if Canada cancelled the contract, other countries would be lining up to fulfill it, rings hollow. “If Canada were to join the treaty and deny the vehicles to the Saudis, there are mechanisms within the treaty that could then put pressure on other potential suppliers not to step in,” Epps explains. “The intention of the arms trade treaty was to get at the argument that if we don't supply this stuff, someone else will.”

            The ATT would provide additional heft to Canada’s broadly interpreted export guidelines (which allowed 2013 weapons sales to Egypt, Israel, Libya, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, the UAE, and Algeria). It would also strengthen the efforts of those groups seeking to take legal action to prevent weapons exports. Dion has not mentioned it, but his ministerial mandate letter clearly directs him to have Canada sign on.

            Given the latest round of global outrage over Saudi behavior at home and in Yemen, a Canadian reconsideration could in fact change the regional picture significantly. Indeed, major weapons-exporting countries like Germany and Sweden have in the last few weeks either suspended or deferred weapons sales to the Saudis, while Belgium has refused the latest Saudi request for weapons (though it can justify its production of the 105 mm cannons for the armoured vehicles because those are not going directly to Saudi Arabia, but rather to Canada). Any NATO member with the capacity to produce the armoured vehicles would likely face considerable domestic resistance to bidding on a cancelled Canadian contract.

            The Liberals are not likely to face Parliamentary heat over the deal, given the Conservatives signed it and the NDP is reticent about provoking a rift with the union whose workers currently produce the vehicles (the party’s foreign affairs critic, Helene Laverdière, did email a statement that “We categorically must do better going forward” by, for example, signing the ATT). Last fall, a London Unifor representative reportedly called on NDP leader Tom Mulcair to keep the issue under wraps, but the topic has been discussed at a number of recent London Labour Council meetings, where human rights concerns are pitted against thousands of good-paying jobs and GDLS donations to local charities.

            It sounds like a scenario out of G.B. Shaw’s famous anti-war play Major Barbara, which decried the kind of system that forced workers to choose between going hungry and building weapons used against their overseas comrades.

            London trade unionist and peace activist David Heap is particularly attuned to the complexity of the issue.

            “It’s important not to single out workers at a particular plant for economic decisions that involve all of us, because we are all responsible,” says Heap, who was involved in a 1980s campaign to convert the cruise missile producing Litton Systems in Rexdale to civilian use. “What we need is a collective effort to create a green peaceful economy where good jobs in our communities do not depend on developing and building machinery used to make war."

            Heap notes that before GDLS got on board the Saudi weapons assembly line, the London plant built locomotives, and that for a federal government pursuing green alternatives, a massive investment in railway infrastructure could keep those good jobs in London.

            “In terms of job creation, military manufacturing is the least efficient kind of investment possible,” he says.

            But for now, the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC) has no plans to stop its global tour seeking out new markets for Canadian weaponsmakers. Last year, it was active in 57 countries while attending the world’s largest weapons fairs, with plans to host international delegations at the CANSEC weapons bazaar in Ottawa at the end of May.

At press time, the CCC had yet to return repeated email requests for answers to a series of questions that raised what human rights standards were used in brokering weapons deals with dictatorships, how the Saudi deal squares with current export control guidelines, what conditions would lead CCC to cancel a contract, and whether, given a major, jobs-producing, cash-on-the-barrelhead deal, CCC would act to provide weapons to another mass execution group in the region, ISIS.



Canadian Weapons Exports to Saudi Arabia, 1991-2014

 1990: 525 Piranha Armoured Personnel Carriers, including LAV-AT tank destroyer

1991: Bill C-6 Changes the Criminal Code to allow General Motors Diesel Division to attach automatic weapons to its Piranha exports

1994-2001:  987 Piranha APCs

2000-2004: 130 Piranha APCs

2006-2009: 132 Piranha APCs

2011-2014:  879 Piranha APCs

2014: Unknown number of armoured brigade vehicles for 14 years

May 2015: The Globe and Mail reported, “Asked if it believes the Saudis used made-in-Canada LAVs when they went into Bahrain, the Canadian government doesn’t deny this happened.”

sources: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Project Ploughshares

Mohawk Chief: “All I Can Do is Pray Things Change for My People”

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(An edited version of this story appears in this week's NOW Magazine)

The Trudeau government has said it will consult with First Nations, but will it respect the duty to receive "free, prior, and informed consent" from indigenous communities?

Mohawk Chief Clinton Phillips in front of the St. Lawrence Seaway (credit: Mohawk Council of Kahnawake)

By Matthew Behrens

As the city of Montreal prepared to open the floodgates on 8-billion litres of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence River, Kahnawake Mohawk Chief Clinton Phillips received a phone call from the person who ultimately approved the massive dump.

            It was newly minted Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, about to board a plane for the Paris climate conference pre-talk sessions. She spent 30 minutes discussing a scientific report that recommended a controlled sewage release as the least damaging of numerous lose-lose options.

            “She has invited me to participate in what is dubbed a post-mortem committee — their language, not mine – to ensure this doesn't happen again,” Phillips says, noting he appreciated that McKenna’s rock-and-a-hard-place decision was the predetermined product of years of municipal, provincial, and federal failure to fix what was identified two decades ago as a serious infrastructure challenge, one facing many other urban centres (including Toronto).

Phillips, who has served in office for over six years, was nonetheless taken aback to hear her voice. “I don't recall ever hearing at our table that a [federal] minister had called any one of us,” he says. “Even the former Minister of Indian Affairs never called us.”

Nation to Nation Relationship

Although not widely publicized, McKenna’s call could be a small but important symbol of how the Trudeau government will live up to one of its biggest commitments as it strains to be all things to all people. That challenge – the duty to meaningfully consult with Indigenous peoples – was outlined last week in the ministerial mandate letter received by Toronto MP Carolyn Bennett, the new Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs.

            “No relationship is more important to me and to Canada than the one with Indigenous peoples,” wrote Trudeau. “It is time for a renewed, nation-to-nation relationship with Indigenous peoples, based on recognition of rights, respect, co-operation and partnership.”

            If Bennett requires a template of how not to begin such a relationship, she need look no further than the mishandling of the St. Lawrence sewage crisis. 

 Zero Consultation

Indeed, the Mohawk community of Kahnawake lies just across the river from Montreal. “From my reserve to downtown Montreal, without traffic, will take me seven minutes to drive,” Phillips says, yet civic officials aware of such proximity did not think to involve his people in any discussions about the impending flush of sewage into a waterway that “is like blood that flows through our veins. Quebec is fully aware that there is a duty to consult First Nations. To learn about this at the 11^th hour,” he says, and through the media no less, was insulting. “Temporary measures were put in place in 1997. So, we're in 2015. How bloody long do they think temporary means? So much time had gone by that different viable options that would have been achievable were not being discussed.”

             While members of the community protested, from launching a flotilla to blocking the Mercier Bridge, Kahnawake leaders who hadn’t been consulted all those years were finally able to attend two Montreal meetings held mere days before the dump. “As a First Nations leader, it’s unacceptable that the government is saying a couple of two-hour meetings constitutes meaningful consultation,” says a frustrated Phillips. “Meantime, I was being inundated with calls and emails from citizens of Montreal begging with me, pleading, ‘don't let this happen, block a bridge, do this, do that.’ But I’m thinking, ‘it’s your government, why don't you do something? You don't need us to always put our people on the line and then be hit by C-51 charges.’”

            For members of the Kahnawake community, the dump, which began November 11, was just the latest in a lengthy series of blows the Mohawk people have been subjected to for centuries. “My people have still not recovered since the Seaway system was put right through the heart of our reserve, denying us access from what we call our river,” Phillips says.  “This hurts like you wouldn't believe. Kahnawake means by the rapids, and we're not by the rapids anymore because there’s a sewer system that goes right through the heart of our reserve called the St. Lawrence Seaway.”

Threats to Indigenous People and Lands

            In addition to dealing with the post-dump environmental impacts, the community is also facing challenges in the form of Enbridge and TransCanada pipeline projects. In this respect, the Mohawks are not unlike many indigenous communities across the country dealing with threats to their lands and water posed by lax pollution standards that may be exacerbated with passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, mining, deforestation, fracking, and ongoing tarsands development.

           It is here that Carolyn Bennett will face her biggest challenge, for while her mandate includes ensuring enhanced “consultation, engagement and participatory capacity of Indigenous groups in reviewing and monitoring major resource development projects,” how much power will that ultimately leave First Nations, Inuit and Metis communities whose livelihood and beliefs may prove incompatible with the bottom lines of multinational corporations? Notably, Bennett’s mandate carefully avoids one of the most critical phrases in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the “free, prior and informed consent” that is required of state parties “before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.” While Trudeau seeks to implement the Declaration, the Harper government refused to support it, fearing this phrase could be used to justify the veto of major energy projects.

            McKenna’s phone call may be viewed as a small but hopeful first step in the right direction. But will a government that is friendly to the resource extraction and oil industries go beyond symbolic lip service to fully respect a consultative process that mandates “free, prior and informed consent”?

 “First Nations across this country and the US have been promised every single thing under the sun, and unfortunately, it has never happened,” Phillips sighs. “You look at any infrastructure in this country, it always goes right through the heart of indigenous territory. Is that just another way to annoy us or assimilate us or just get rid of us — genocide? It certainly doesn't make life easier for us.

 “Whether it be Mulcair, Harper or Trudeau in power, at the end of the day it's still the Government of Canada and they still follow the Indian Act. For us, it's the same monster, just different people, and based on history, all I can do is pray that things change for our people.”

A Question of Torture for Canada’s New War Minister

An edited version of this story appears in NOW Magazine's Nov. 12 issue

By Matthew Behrens

            Rideau Hall’s glorious fall foliage produced the perfect backdrop for a series of memorable photo-ops during the Trudeau government’s swearing-in ceremony, from the most diverse cabinet in Canadian history to the large crowds who waited patiently for selfies with the photogenic PM.

            Yet one of the most posted photos of the day did not come from the colourful festivities marking what seemed a refreshing changeover to a government marked by openness and transparency. Rather, it was an old handout of a camouflaged Sikh man packing serious heat in Afghanistan, Harjit Sajjan, who had just been named Canada’s new Minister of National Defence. 

            While the social media universe immediately featured a disturbing round of racist comments – including the conclusion that the bearded man could not be trusted because he must be a Muslim – most press coverage was far more salutary, from Foreign Policy’s gushing “Canada’s New Defense Minister Made His Own Gas Mask to Work With His Beard” to the National Observer’s “You don't know how badass Trudeau’s Defence Minister really is”. 

An Intelligence Asset Complicit in Torture?

Sajjan, in stark contrast to such milquetoast predecessors as Jason Kenney and Peter McKay, was hailed as “some kind of next-level Spy vs Spy war hero” who’d done three tours in Afghanistan and was praised by his superiors as “the best single Canadian intelligence asset in [the Afghan war] theater.” 

            Despite all the puff pieces, Sajjan’s presence in his new job may open a can of worms that former PM Harper thought was pretty much sealed shut when he prorogued Parliament in 2009 to avoid stinging questions about Canadian complicity in the torture of Afghan detainees. Sajjan’s tours as a key Canadian asset and liaison with torture-tainted Afghan authorities dovetailed with an era when significant human rights concerns had been quietly raised by Canada’s foreign affairs representatives, including a 2005 Canadian report that noted Afghanistan’s “military, intelligence and police forces have been involved in arbitrary arrests, kidnapping, extortion, torture and extrajudicial killing of criminal suspects.”

In 2006, as Harper’s Conservatives took over direction of a war begun by the Liberals, Graeme Smith’s remarkable Globe and Mail investigative reporting and the courage of Canadian whistleblower diplomat Richard Colvin brought to light a side of the Afghanistan occupation that most Canadians could not square with their traditional perceptions of the military. Terms like “war crimes” were openly used to describe Canadian transfers of detainees to the torture-stained Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS), and the Harper government faced potential contempt of Parliament proceedings over its refusal to release thousands of documents related to the scandal.

            Colvin, who had served 17 months on the ground in Afghanistan, testified seven years ago this month that Afghans transferred from Canadian Forces to the NDS commonly faced “beating, whipping with power cables, and the use of electricity. Also common was sleep deprivation, use of temperature extremes, use of knives and open flames, and sexual abuse—that is, rape. Torture might be limited to the first days or it could go on for months. According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured. For interrogators in Kandahar, it was standard operating procedure.”  

"We handed over for torture a lot of innocent people"

            Colvin pointed out that many detainees had nothing to do with the Taliban: “many were just local people: farmers, truck drivers, tailors, peasants, random human beings in the wrong place at the wrong time, young men in their fields and villages who were completely innocent but were nevertheless rounded up. In other words, we detained and handed over for severe torture a lot of innocent people.”

            Colvin’s words were echoed by Canadian translator Ahmadshah Malgarai, a cultural and language advisor who, with secret clearance and commendations to his name, bravely told the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan in April, 2010: “There was no one in the Canadian military with a uniform who was involved in any way, at any level, with the detainee transfers who did not know what was going on and what the NDS does to their detainees.”

            While ongoing inquiries into the detainee scandal and the role of key Canadian decision makers were effectively shut down with the 2011 election of a Harper majority, the issue was raised again last week when the Military Police Complaints Commission announced it would investigate a new case in which Canadian soldiers allegedly abused and “terrorized” Afghan detainees at their Kandahar base. This inquiry follows on the little-publicized release of a new report authored by researcher Omar Sabry for the Rideau Institute and Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which called for a “transparent and impartial judicial Commission of Inquiry into the actions of Canadian officials, including Ministers of the Crown, relating to Afghan detainees.” 

Strong Need for Public Inquiry

            Peggy Mason, a former Canadian Disarmament Ambassador to the UN and now head of the Rideau Institute, feels strongly that the transfer to torture issue is “unfinished business of the most serious kind – accountability of Canadian officials for alleged serious breaches of international and national law – the only appropriate remedy for which is a public inquiry.  What better way is there for this government to demonstrate its commitment to transparency and accountability than to call such an inquiry?”

            But considering whether to hold such an inquiry is a decision from which Sajjan may have to recuse himself. Indeed, Sajjan could very well be compelled to answer some very difficult questions. As a high-level intelligence officer who appears to have taken an active role in combat operations, it seems implausible that Sajjan was not familiar with the torture rampant throughout Afghan detention system. Indeed, as Canadian Press reported last week, in 2006, Sajjan became the Canadian “intelligence liaison” to Kandahar governor Asadullah Khalid. According to Colvin’s Parliamentary testimony, Khalid “was known to us very early on, in May and June 2006, as an unusually bad actor on human rights issues. He was known to have had a dungeon in Ghazni, his previous province, where he used to detain people for money, and some of them disappeared. He was known to be running a narcotics operation. He had a criminal gang. He had people killed who got in his way. And then in Kandahar we found out that he had indeed set up a similar dungeon under his guest house. He acknowledged this. When asked, he had sort of justifications for it, but he was known to personally torture people in that dungeon.” (Khalid went on to become Afghanistan’s national intelligence chief). 

Sajjan is also credited with the intelligence gathered for operations that led to the “kill or capture” of some 1,500 alleged Taliban members, a military claim that must be measured against the commonplace reference to any detainees as potential Taliban, as opposed to the broader categories of detainees translator Malgarai referenced in his testimony: “They went from 10 years old to 90 years old. With all due respect, I would ask retired General Hillier to tell me and explain to me how a 90-year-old man.... He was a 90-year-old man. He couldn't even walk without help. His hands were tied. His foot was shackled. He was blindfolded. Sometimes, when he couldn't walk fast enough, they pushed him. He fell many times, and he had injuries on his body. Could he please explain to me how this 90-year-old man, who couldn't even walk, who needed help when you tried to pick him up, could be a fighter?” 

Big Questions

When NOW attempted to reach Sajjan for comment, DND media relations explained that he was being briefed on files and was very busy. When informed that the questions for Minister Sajjan did not involve new files but, rather, spoke to his own experience in Afghanistan, the media office requested a set of emailed questions. At press time, NOW still had not heard responses to a number of queries arising from a reasonable set of assumptions about his role on the ground and connections to key players. Among them: given the widespread and well-known use of torture by the NDS in Afghanistan by the time of Major Sajjan's first tour of duty in 2006, did he undertake precautionary measures to ensure that he was not passing on to his superiors information gleaned from torture (especially given his liaison role with Governor Khalid); alternatively, was such information caveated to the effect that its source may have been the fruits of torture?

            In addition, as someone identified as Canada's top intelligence asset in Afghanistan, was Minister Sajjan aware of the transfers of detainees to the NDS and the documentation of torture then publicly available? If so, how did this colour his relationship with Khalid and the NDS? Equally compelling, in the small, circular world of intelligence operations, was information gleaned from NDS torture of detainees used in the Canadian round-up individuals who, upon detention, were transferred to the hands of NDS torturers? Ultimately, given his likely awareness of torture in Afghanistan, did Sajjan refuse to take part in any operational activity that may have led to the transfer of detainees to torture?

            When the Harper government closed the case in 2011, Liberal MP Stéphane Dion (now Trudeau’s Foreign Affairs Minister) told the CBC “the likelihood is very high” that Afghan detainees were abused while in the custody, adding, "I don't think Canadians will accept that it's over.”

With Liberal promises of transparency and accountability, one of the most celebrated of Trudeau’s ministerial announcements may soon be facing a real test of public accountability.

Remembering Bernice Katz/Deborah Cass, and the Theatre of Resistance

THE ESPERANZA FUND...

The following story is about my mother, whom many of you met at demonstrations and public events through the years across the U.S. and Canada. Many of you may have seen her perform on stage and TV, or heard her over the radio. A special memorial fund in her name was established by Homes not Bombs to aid the families of Canada's secret trial detainees and other political prisoners and, sadly, it is still needed 13 years later. (See bottom for more details).

(NOTE: 13 years later, we are still raising funds for those affected by the secret  trial process, as well as those behind bars because of Canada's ongoing history of racist colonialism)

In Honour of My Mother
Bernice Katz/Deborah Cass Behrens

May 31, 1930 -- July 20, 2004


By Matthew Behrens

On my mother's cause-of-death certificate, the doctor wrote "Failure to Thrive." This medical term took me aback, for anyone who met my mother would find the term inconsistent with the woman who, despite a lifetime of barriers, managed in her own way to flower, to shine, to thrive.

Indeed, anyone who sat in the light of my mother's all-embracing love would find it difficult to believe she combated a lifetime of physical, social and psychological obstacles which could easily have left her to wallow in bitterness and anger.

Those barriers included being run over by a car as a child, fighting bulimia all her life, suffering thousands of debilitating tiny mini-strokes and Parkinson's, encephalitis, coronary heart disease, dementia and a host of other ailments. She also faced the systemic barriers of sexism and anti-Semitism. Yet despite all this, my mother managed to find a way to express herself, her ideas, and her ideals in a manner which was passionate, loving, and kind.

She DID thrive, as a student, as an actor, as a partner, parent and grandparent, as an advocate for social justice, and as a special kind of mentor to young people in the arts and in grass roots politics.

If she knew I were saying this, she would stop me in my tracks and say, "Oh, stop your bullshitting," hoping to shift attention away from herself, preferring to redirect any spotlight to those around her.

Indeed, to her dying breath, my mother was a truly radical democrat. After the doctors and nurses explained the process of dying -- a cold would start from her feet and hands as the warmth and blood centred on essential organs -- my mother continued to defy them. All night long before she passed on, those areas which had once been cold were warm again.

Her heart, always about sharing, insisted that the "non-essential" parts continue to receive their share of her precious blood. This amazing ticker, condemned two years ago after a major coronary attack, was the organ which continued to work right until the last moment, pumping at an almost desperate pace, screaming out that there were still things to do, people to embrace, faces to caress, politicians to scream at, and a genuine kindness to be shared.

To her last conscious moments, she was apologizing to those who were caring for her -- her wonderful personal support workers, nurses, her family. It all seemed so silly to her, this attention, as she lay at home in her bed receiving palliative care, saying she could get her own water although she could not walk, much less hold a glass.



Antigone
The years leading to my mother's passing were not pretty ones. They were stressful for her, for my father, for our family. We were grateful as always for her laughter, her outrage, her hugs and kisses. But as time wore on, something was missing. Her quality of life had reached an all-time low, and the pain which she only rarely complained about clearly consumed her.

Going through such a process with a loved one cannot help but force us to examine the way in which we treat the elderly and those who have no quality of life. When I think of my mother's pain, and the fact that her life literally became one of lying on a couch or in bed all day, usually lost in a confused sleep and losing interest in food, I think of the practice of putting horses who break a leg out of their misery. That process is legal. Yet people like my mother, or terminal cancer patients, are not given that option of a quick, compassionate way out, even if they and their family have given informed consent.

Indeed, in a culture which rewards people for killing (look at those U.S. generals in Iraq), we prosecute those who, in an act of mercy and compassion, enter into an arrangement with someone who is terminally ill but in full command of their senses, to help ease them out of their suffering.

Euthanasia is a concept which my mother fully supported, and I look forward to the day that the terminally ill, their families, and friends will not be forced to endure weeks, months, and years of watching a loved one slowly, painfully waste away.

My wonderful Aunt Jean (known to her nephews as Auntie "Shtink") spoke to me a few moments after my mother passed away. "Now is a time to celebrate her life," she said. And while words are almost impossible to describe the magical person who was my mother, I hope what's written below can give a small sense of the passionate, loving soul who inhabited that frail, pixie-like body.

  
 Lil Abner
********

Deborah Cass Behrens (nee Bernice Katz) was born on the street. Literally. On May 31, 1930, her mother, Helena Katz, squeezed out her first daughter on the poverty-stricken streets of Transcona, Manitoba. The street remained a place for which my mother would have an affinity the rest of her life, whether engaging the homeless on the streets of Toronto, marching for someone else's rights, or travelling the length of North America to "bring theatre to the people."

Her parents were Russian immigrants from a generation which firmly believed, inspired by the events of 1917, that a revolution might sweep the world, eliminating poverty, hatred, discrimination, and the gross inequities which force so many to live in misery for the benefit of a smug few.

Her father, Abe Katz, was forced to go underground following the Winnipeg General Strike. Her mother, Helena Katz, joined Abe in supporting the Communist cause of the 1930s, about the only place you could go if you wanted to agitate for peace, civil rights, equality, and the social programs we take for granted today: unemployment insurance, health care, workplace safety, and so many others.

Though never party members, they did take a quirky assignment from a CP overwhelmed with people wanting to help and not sure what to do with all these newcomers. Hence, my grandparents took on the serious task of infiltrating the Shriners. A picture of these two proud Yiddish immigrants in Shriner outfits is a testament to their delicate work for the cause! The slight grins on both of their faces informs us that this was one of the more entertaining of their many tasks.

When my mother told us such stories while I was growing up, it seemed still possible to believe in the purity of social struggle, in the ideals of universal equality and solidarity, in the idea that you could fight for these things all the while there was laughter, joy, dancing, and singing, for if the revolution were to create paradise on earth, it had to be the kind fought with love in our hearts, not the kind that would replace one kind of hatred and oppression with another.

It was a passion my mother carried to her final breath, despite her disappointments at the silliness which often divides us on the left of the political spectrum. "Why can't we all just get together?" she would plead. She rejected labels, refusing to identify as a Jew or a communist, insisting that she was first and foremost a Human Being.

At the height of the Depression, her parents established an institution which stands to this day in downtown Windsor: the Canada Salvage store, a place where you can buy almost anything at a decent price, started originally as a place to reclaim the castoffs and remnants of an economic system which produces far too much "crap," as my mother would proclaim.

My mother grew up in a thriving, progressive community along with her older brother Buddy and younger sister Jean. These past few weeks, as Jean sat by her sister's bedside, she would ask my mother to recall the events of the 30s and 40s, when members of the community (Chaverim, or comrades) would join May Day Parades, raise funds for Spanish and later Russian War relief, and gather in a women's reading circle who would meet at their house, arguing politics and screaming in laughter.
 
Wedding Day, 1961, with Bunny and a drunken justice of the peace

It was a time where good and evil were pretty clearly defined, and it was clear to a Canada suffering through Depression that capitalism was an evil (recognized as such even by the CCF, the forerunner to an NDP that avoids using the C word these days). Songs like the "Internationale" and "Which Side Are You On?" weren't lefty nostalgia pieces, but raw, edgy evocations of the struggle necessary to birth a new world.

The raised fist which was one of my mother's personal trademarks was a real, heart-felt symbol of international class solidarity, not an empty display of machismo. It was to the 30s and 40s what the peace sign was to the 60s and 70s--a meaningful symbol not yet bought off to advertise sneakers or sports cars.

Terms like "the people," "the workers," and " the revolution" had not yet been debased by endless debates in the academy, and to the end words like these always brought a gasp of delight and an "Achhhh!" from my mother. Anyone doubting the extent to which such terms were a part of the atmosphere should view Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times," one of my mom's favourite flicks.

And while some members of her generation no doubt looked back with ambivalence surrounding a lot of issues, rhetoric, and actions, no one could doubt their sincerity.

And sincere they were in this wonderfully anarchistic, Yiddish milieu, where so many wore their hearts on their sleeves and their hopes on their brows. After all, they had nothing to lose and a world to win! So committed to the cause were my grandparents that Abe placed red dye, the colour representing communism, into the still-wet concrete when a sidewalk was poured in front of their Windsor house on Lewis Avenue. To this day, a red walkway leads to that house as if it were a welcome to all who shared those ideals of global solidarity.

In the progressive movement of Windsor, ideals were not simply the focus of Saturday evening debates, they were things which needed to be tested, challenged, and put into practice. Among the "Chaverim" in Windsor was a factory owner who, when his workers went on strike, was told by Abe Katz to settle the dispute with dignity and justice, else he would never talk to him again. Such was the power of that circle that those words had their effect, and the strike was won.

As part of the social movements of the 1930s, progressive summer camps were established throughout North America. Among them was one that my mother's parents had a hand in starting: Camp Naivelt (Camp New World), nestled on the banks of the Credit River just west of Brampton. There the children, getting a real break from the sweltering urban environment, spent the summer learning radical songs, swimming, performing dramatic skits, attending endless meetings about everything under the sun.

They carried the flags left over from May Day parades throughout the summer, and were indoctrinated into the CP dogma of the day. My mother thrived here (I have a picture of her dancing under a huge banner which reads in Yiddish, "Tribute to Heroes and Martyrs.") She eventually became drama director for the camp, also attended by her older brother Buddy and younger sister Jean, whom she lovingly called Shtink ("little stinker").

The land for the Camp was bought by a holding company that did not have a Jewish-sounding name, as this was an era in which signs which read "No Jews or Dogs Allowed" were commonplace. It was not the last time my mother would face the systemic anti-Semitism which was so finely woven into the Maple Leaf.

The songs of Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers, among others, she heard at home and at Camp Naivelt. She sat on Robeson's knee when he stayed at their Windsor house. She sang along with Pete Seeger during his many trips to Naivelt.

Not everyone maintained this passion. Some would remain proud of their association with the camp while others, embittered, would likely prefer to hide their past in the red-baiting 50s and 60s. Following WWII, the RCMP often parked cars outside the entrance to Naivelt, photographing people and taking down license plate numbers of people who went in.

For my mother, politics was not the only the engine which ignited her passions; rather, it was something she had absorbed by osmosis, which informed her every breath, and opened her mind to the many wonders she would discover in theatre school. Indeed, much as the term "the workers" brought her to a reverent, sincere sigh, so too would names like Garcia Lorca, Bertolt Brecht, Jean Anouilh, and William Shakespeare, all of whom produced works which my mother would call "extremely relevant!"



My mother's interest in the theatre developed early. Run over by a car at an early age -- her rib cage was crushed when her distraught father picked her up following the accident -- my mom took dance lessons as part of her physical rehabilitation, through which she developed a passion for the theatre. It was a time of great flowering in the theatre, long before megamusical shlock dominated the stages. Serious drama that could inspire people to change the world was on many people's minds, and organizations such as the left-wing Group Theatre in New York were an inspiration to her.

It was in this milieu that my mother went to the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, where she was exposed to much of the then underground flowering cultural scene, discussions about sexuality, poetry, and radical critiques of the massive glob of conformity being imposed on 1950s America.

Ever the rebel, my mother posted on the Goodman call board a protest against the strait-laced approach of some of the older teachers to the development of stage characterization. Insisting that certain characters should be fully rounded, her message read: "Kings and Queens are People Too. They eat, sleep, and go to the toilet."


1980s head shot

My mother worked a lot after she graduated from Goodman, sparking controversy in early 1950s Toronto when she was picked to play the lead role in Eugene O'Neil's Anna Christie. It was unheard of for a Jew to play such a role. Eventually, my mother had to change her name from Bernice Katz to the more "acceptable" Deborah Cass.

She went on to do much early CBC television and radio drama, and played everywhere from the Crest and Jupiter Theatres in Toronto to the Stratford Festival and, for five years, toured North America with the Canadian Players, a group of classically trained actors who, during the off season at Stratford, took their shows to communities large and small across the continent.

When the tour bus lurched into the American South, members of the tour kept out a special watch for my mother, the tiniest of the crew yet the one most likely to raise a stink over the racist segregation then being fought by the early Civil Rights Movement.

Despite being cooped up on an old bus with baggage, props and costumes, she loved those years on the road, greeting people after the shows, and entertaining audiences with a variety of roles that almost 50 years on are still remembered by those who saw her, perhaps as Ariel, flying about the stage in "The Tempest," whose enchanting singing of the "Jewish Shepherd's Song" brought an exotic sound to some very WASP communities, or as Aase in "Peer Gynt," or the Nurse in "Romeo and Juliet."

To read the reviews in those days is to learn about someone who, no matter how insignificant the role, made a huge impression on the stage, not for the sake of her ego, but for the sake of the play, to bring to full fruition the humanity of a character. A petite woman, she was often described as pixie-like, with an infectious laugh and a commanding dramatic and comic presence. In many respects, she was both the loopy sister Martha Brewster in "Arsenic and Old Lace" and the Greek tragedian "Antigone," roles she truly cherished.

Like another petite figure who was a volcanic source of passion, Judy Garland, my mother was someone who became a character, an emotion, an idea, 150%. To watch her from behind was to read perfectly her emotional state. She was always in the moment. She knew how to embrace an audience or an individual, to listen to anyone's concerns, no matter how petty, and how to make someone feel like a worthwhile person.

Also like Garland, my mother was also forced by an image-conscious society and profession to take diet pills to stay razor-thin, and developed bulimia which would haunt her much of her adult life. In those days eating disorders were not openly discussed, unfortunately, and the toll it took on her frame and long-term health is no doubt incalculable.

On tour she met my father, Bunny Behrens, and spent almost 50 years with him, raising 3 children. My parents helped found the Neptune Theatre in Halifax, and my mother played a range of roles in plays such as "The Fantasticks," "Romanoff and Juliet" (where she played the show stopping role of Evdokia), and the title role in "Antigone," the Jean Anouilh adaptation which fed my mother's anti-fascist soul.

But ominous headlines appeared in Canadian newspapers in 1963: a star of Canadian theatre had been struck by a mystery illness which had paralyzed one side, given her double vision, and forced her off the stage for a time. Encephalitis took a bite out of her, from which she never fully recovered.

My mother made a huge sacrifice in giving up her career at that time to raise her three boys. While we were growing up, she wasted no time in ensuring we knew right from wrong, in making sure we knew what Vietnam, Birmingham, and American Indian Movement meant. And to this day, the concept of eating table grapes is still very new, given that we grew up with the decades-long grape boycott called by the United Farm Workers.

Like the late Harold Kendall of Toronto, after whom the Harolds are named, my mother remained a vocal audience member -- there with you when things went well, laughing her huge, body-consuming laugh, inhaling quite audibly without a touch of pretense during a moving moment, cursing at bad performances, walking out on execrable ones.

She eventually returned to acting in the 1980s, appearing on stage, and in numerous CBC TV shows. One of her first roles back on the stage was in "The Trojan Women" at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, which had been founded in the 1950s by blacklisted actors including the theatre's namesake, who would win fame as Grandpa Walton.

 
You Can't Take it With You, 1984, National Arts Centre, with Bunny Behrens, Shirley Douglas

But the devastating effects of years of mini-strokes which she never felt had eaten away at her balance and her memory, forcing her to retire. It was a painful period for her, as one of her primary passions had been taken away from her by a cruel twist of fate.

Although no longer acting, she spent countless hours marching the streets in the U.S. and in Canada. The chant of "No Pasaran" (They Shall Not Pass!) which had been the slogan of the Spanish Civil War she chanted again as she worked to end the U.S. terrorist war against Nicaragua.

She was always glued to the radio --growing up, you always knew when the news was on, because screams of "Fucker!" "Jesus!" and "Shit! would fill the air as the news of the war in Vietnam, Watergate, and other events were reported on by her beloved National Public Radio and Pacifica Radio.

One of her favourite days was the Gay Pride parade, and she was a fixture at Church/Wellesley, the heart of Toronto's lesbian and gay community, greeted by name by hundreds of people whose names she could never remember. But she was always there with a kiss on the cheek, a loving caress, and a big smile.

Her last demo on her feet was in December, 1998, at the American consulate in Toronto as the U.S. launched deadly cruise missile attacks on Iraq to distract attention from Bill Clinton's enormous libido. Shortly after that, a fall sent her to an extended hospital stay, where we kept her going by playing Pete Seeger songs, reading her the writings of Paul Robeson, and getting food into her otherwise reluctant mouth with each "Achhh!"

By the spring of 1999, about the same time as the U.S./Canadian bombing of the Balkans, my mother began to enter a serious decline. No longer able to stand on her own, we wheeled her to Toronto's St. Paul's Anglican Church, where three individuals were attempting to remove the sword from the cross on a local monument. Surrounded by riot police monitoring this Good Friday demonstration, my mother was in her element, greeting familiar faces and exalting in the presence of resisters to war and injustice.

My mother's final years were spent in Niagara, close to the Shaw Festival where my father continues to work. She kept abreast of current events as much as she could, though her focus was beginning to go. She raised her fist in support of the anti-war demos last year, and she remained concerned about the plight of Canada's secret trial detainees, whose plight has similar overtones to those of the Rosenbergs, for whom my mother marched in the early 1950s.

I told my mom that many Muslims were fervently praying for her from behind the prison walls of Canada's war on democracy. She delighted in this, and asked about the detainees and their children, whose pictures I showed her. While she could barely remember most things on a day-to-day basis, this was one issue which she never forgot.

Bunny and Debbie, June, 1988, at Toronto rally before march to place citizens' arrest on Reagan, Thatcher and other war criminals  

From his solitary confinement cell at Metro West Detention Centre, where he has spent almost three full years, Syrian refugee Hassan Almrei asked me to tell my mom to hold on so that she could see the day Hassan would be free.

But my mother simply could not stand it any longer. The last few weeks, her family gathered around her as she spent her final days here. She had been so desperately tired these past few years, often saying she had had enough, yet that part of her which was the hopeful, nurturing soul kept her going. She wanted to see how things were going to turn out, and hoped perhaps to go out on a high note.

I reported to her when the terrorist and former President Ronald Reagan had finally succumbed, and she raised her fist in the air and exclaimed, "That man was a SHIT!"

As she entered her final stage of palliative care, we lit candles in her room, and played a wide variety of music which she had loved throughout her life. Broadway shows like "The Fantasticks" and "Finian's Rainbow," the Sibelius Symphony #2, a wonderful piece that evokes a revolutionary journey and eventual triumph, and her beloved Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson.

We took calls from loved ones all over, placing the phone to her ear. She was often half-asleep for these calls, but she would smile or weakly say that she loved them.

On July 15, my mother had an incredibly painful day. I tried to console her with the news that my two brothers, Adam and Mark, would be there soon. "They'd better hurry up," she gasped, writhing in pain. We'd been informed by the doctor and nurses that such patients often hold on until the family arrives, and then let go.

As it was, she did hang on until all her sons had arrived, but then continued going on after that, defying each medical prediction about how much longer she had. It was an exhausting, round-the-clock vigil, hoping she would feel no more pain, hoping she would go to sleep peacefully, her family administering her half hour doses of morphine and swabbing her dry mouth.

It was a surreal time, and we spent much of it telling stories, some sad, others hysterically funny, in the presence of my mother, then in a coma. She occasionally made a slight movement in her facial muscles or raised an eyebrow, as if to acknowledge the silliness that was going on, or perhaps to say this whole scene was truly bizarre.

The last night my mother was fully conscious, her sister Jean and I played Pete Seeger's historic 1963 Carnegie Hall concert CD. My mom's eyes, closed for much of the past year, suddenly opened wide, as she stared at the ceiling and breathed in the sounds. She was there, enveloped in the music, celebrating as much as she could in that frail body. Her sister and I sang We Shall Overcome over her bed through a veil of hot tears.

Each day, we were told, should have been her last, given that she'd not eaten in over a month and that someone in her condition could not last more than a day or two without water. But still she kept going, confounding the doctors. Was there a significant date she may have been waiting for? I joked in her ear that she was probably just waiting for July 19, the 25th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution in NIcaragua that was so dear to her heart. And so she did wait, and I was able to wish her a happy anniversary that morning.

My mom was still with us, in a coma, on the 19th, passing away on the morning of July 20 at 10:45 am, just aftrer we placed an hysterical Mother Goose and Grimm cartoon on her pillow. We laughed that morning, and we cried too. And we joined hands around her bedside to say goodbye.

As I reflected back on her last days and nights, I recalled a Pete Seeger song that made my mother stir, even in a coma. It is the song of the 15th brigade, a tribute to those who fought against the fascists in Spain. I had spoken to her about the lyrics, and how it was like she was fighting a form of fascism in the ailments which afflicted her.

"Yes," she had said. "There's fascists in my body."

The final verse of the passionate song goes like this:

 "Spain, 1937
Long live the 15th brigade...
We fought against the mercenaries and the fascists;
it was our only desire to defeat fascism.
But on the Jarama Front
we had no tanks, no cannon, no airplanes.
Now we are leaving Spain
but we'll keep on fighting on other fronts."
 It made me think of the battles my mother had been waging and how, at age 74, she had had enough of the fascism ravaging her body. Like those who had to make a strategic retreat in Spain, my mother had to make a similar retreat from this mortal form.

 Niagara, 2004
Long live the loving spirit of my mother
She fought the fascists all her life
She shared her art and her passions and her unconditional love
But she could not conquer the fascist diseases which wracked her tiny frame
She is leaving this mortal world for now
But she'll keep on fighting on other fronts.


And so she will go on.

Although she passed away in Niagara, her body was taken to Milton for cremation. Milton is just a stone's throw from where the still-alive Camp Naivelt carries on. Perhaps a few of her ashes will drift over this place of happy memories and lifelong hopes and dreams.

Later in the afternoon, a sun shower gently passed over her house. Sensing that she was here as a kindly spirit, we three sons went out looking for a rainbow.

 *******************

 In honour of my mother, Homes not Bombs set up up a memorial fund named after one of her favourite readings, printed below. The aim of the The Bernice Katz/Deborah Cass Behrens "Esperanza Fund" is to meet the significant needs of the families of Canada's secret trial detainees, who, as a result of Canada's anti-democratic (some may say leaning toward fascist) refugee, immigration, and "security" policies, face poverty and lack access to the kinds of summer camps, educational and cultural programs my mother enjoyed as a result of another generation's struggle. My mother recognized that we are not placed on this earth merely to survive; that life should be a celebration of laughter, of theatre and dance and song, of play, of freedom from fear.

 To contribute, write a cheque to Homes not Bombs and mail it to PO Box 2121, 57 Foster Street, Perth, ON K7H 1R0. (Note on your cheque in the memo space this is for the Esperanza Fund.) You can also send an email money transfer to tasc@web.ca

 Esperanza
 "There will come a time, I know
When People will take delight in one another
When each will be a star to the other
And when each will listen to their neighbour as to music.
The free people will walk upon the earth
People great in their freedom.
They will walk with open hearts
And the heart of each will be pure of envy and greed
And therefore all of humanity will be without malice
And there will be nothing to divorce the heart from reason.
Then life will be one great service to humanity!
Our figure will be raised to lofty heights
For to free people all things are attainable.
Then we shall live in truth and freedom and beauty
And those will be accounted the best who will the more widely embrace the world with their hearts
And whose love of it will be the profoundest;
Those will be the best who will be the freest
For in them is the greatest beauty
Then life will be great
And the people will be great who live that life."
 From "Mother," by Maxim Gorky

Celebrating our parents' artistic and social justice legacy, Canadian theatre history exhibit, Perth, Ontario, 2013, with portraits of Debbie and Bunny as done by Gordon Pinsent overlooking us.