Controversy in Delta

Here where I live in Delta, British Columbia, substantial controversy rages around the local hospice. One member of the Take Back Delta Hospice Discussion group on Facebook received a deeply troubling message containing startling misinformation implying that the simple requirement for the hospice to respect patient choice is actually compulsion on the hospice to impose upon its patients. This got sent sent to this organization's members all across Canada:

.

I simply had to clear a few things up with this Mr. Gunnarson by writing him as follows:

Dear Mr. Gunnarson,

I must respectfully urge you to withdraw the letter apparently circulated by you to your members urging nonresidents of Delta to interfere in a local Delta community issue that is unequivocally none of their business by taking out memberships in the Delta Hospice Society. Please remind your members who do not reside in Delta that, unless they intend to relocate to Delta within coming months, taking membership in this local community society is completely inappropriate.

The Delta Hospice Society is a strongly supported and much loved local community society that provides hospice services to residents who are already dying, to ease and give comfort at the end of life in the manner the dying may, by their own self-initiated choice, desire. A little over ten years ago, Delta residents from all walks of life and faith persuasions gave their enthusiastic financial support to build the Irene Thomas Hospice and the Harold & Veronica Savage Centre for Supportive Care. Membership in the Delta Hospice Society was and long remained very small, with supportive Delta residents leaving the business of the society to those few members and their elected Board of Directors. This is typical of most such service societies, the actual membership is far smaller than the supportive community within which they serve. Whether holding membership or not, residents of Delta most certainly regard the Delta Hospice Society as their community society.

Unfortunately, being a small community society with a limited membership, the Delta Hospice Society was readily susceptible to membership manipulation. In 2019, a hostile element stacked the society membership with people who supported its agenda, including people resident outside of the Delta community and, to the dismay of long standing members and the community as whole, ousted the existing Board of Directors and replaced it with their own Board of Director at the society’s 2019 Annual General Meeting last November. This new Board of Directors continued to stack society membership with residents remote from Delta for whom the operations of the society are completely none of their business, even going so far as to recruit in the United States of America. Delta residents who truly cared about the society they considered to be their own found this turn of events alarming and started taking out their own society memberships only to find that their membership applications were refused and returned to them while the applications of outsiders were being accepted.

The new Board of Directors then developed a plan to completely change the Constitution and Bylaws of the Delta Hospice Society and transform it from a secular community society into a parochial self-defined “Christian” (quotation marks for so-called because there are deeply faithful Christian residents of Delta who cannot recognize their actions as truly Christian) society. They planned a Special General meeting to authorize this change for last spring.

Needless to say Delta residents, out of our love for our community society as it had existed for so many years, quickly grew alarmed, initiated a campaign to take back the Delta Hospice Society by bringing the many resident supporters of and donors to society into membership, and took the matter of the refused memberships to the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The court ruled to require all membership applications be accepted, to require membership lists be made available to the complainants, and to cancel the scheduled Special General Meeting. The new Board of Directors sought to appeal this ruling and the court ordered membership lists and applications sealed pending that appeal while keeping the cancellation on the Special Genela Meeting. The board's eventual appeal to the Appeal Court of British Columbia failed and the board was then required to accept the many resident membership applications. The board then sought a stay on the ruling while it attempted to take tho matter to the Supreme Court of Canada but the appeal court, recognizing that the Supreme Court of Canada would very likely decline to hear their case, refused the stay.

Now, under court order, the Board of Directors of the Delta Hospice Society is finally accepting the many local resident membernship applications. It would appear that this boardt is also upping its campaign to recruit outsiders to counter local residents, as evidenced by your letter. This matter is not the business of any nonresident of Delta. Please leave Delta residents to care for their community society without your interference.

Thank you for your attention,

Petition Re NAFTA and ISDS

I have prepared a petition in response to the opportunity to seek removal of ISDS from NAFTA given by the intention of the new President of the United States to open NAFTA for renegotiation.  The text of the petition follows.  Unlike the actual petition which cannot contain hyperlinks, this copy contains links to various related articles about ISDS.  The petition itself is on Change.org; do not attempt to sign it here.

Petition Re NAFTA and ISDS

To:  Prime Minister, The Right Honourable Justin P. J. Trudeau,

Minister of International Trade, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne,

The Parliament of Canada, and

the rest of the Government of Canada

Whereas The new President of the United States of America has stated his intention to open the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) for complete renegotiation; and

Whereas Negotiations for NAFTA and for other so-called free trade agreements have been and continue to be conducted in secret by government trade negotiators with the exception that representatives of international corporations with interest in the effects of international trade are permitted access to these negotiators and to contribute to treaty development while:

• wholly domestic Canadian businesses with an interest in how international trade may affect their own local business operations,
• organizations concerned about environmental issues and how international trade may impact the Canadian and worldwide environment,
• labour organizations with concerns about how international trade may affect working Canadians,
• Canadian agricultural organizations with concerns about Canadians’ capacity to feed ourselves while also trading internationally,
• organizations attentive to health and safety issues and concerned with the effect of international trade on those issues, and
• others with interest in the effect of international trade on Canadian society

          are all prohibited the same access to Canada’s government trade negotiators; and

Whereas NAFTA contains provision for Investor/State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) through the International Centre for Settlement of Investor Disputes (ICSID); and

Whereas ISDS permits international corporations to sue Canada by tribunal outside of any national judiciary to overturn new law enacted out of our sovereign right to govern ourselves; and

Whereas ISDS suits get decided in secret trials without recourse to appeal, utter anathema to a free and democratic society, never open and public; and

Whereas The evil of ISDS lies in its capacity to defeat the sovereign right of nations, Canada included, to govern themselves by granting international corporations with investments in Canadian business the right to sue Canadian federal, provincial, and local governments in these SECRET TRIALS outside of the Canadian judicial system if new environmental, labour, health and safety, business practice, etc. law impinges on their investment; and

Whereas These secret ISDS trials exist in one direction only – international corporations may sue nations, Canada included, but nations may not sue international corporations – ISDS raises international corporations from their proper status as subjects of nations and welcome guests within Canada to superiors of nations; and

Whereas Decisions by ISDS tribunals are based solely on the impact new Canadian law may have upon a complainant corporation’s investment, with all other factors (environmental, labour, health and safety, business practice regulation, etc.) government must consider when drafting law, regarded as irrelevant to each case; and

Whereas Decisions by ISDS tribunals are based upon neither existing statutes of any kind nor active precedents, implying that Canadian governments cannot know, when preparing new law, if our actions may be subject to attack under ISDS and, thus, may feel need to clear any new law with international corporate boards of directors if Canada wishes to preclude attack by ISDS suits; and

Whereas The above four conditions transform international corporations from subjects of nations or welcome guests within Canada to, in effect, non-territorial kingdoms and reinforces the current dangerous trend corrupting Capitalism toward Capital Feudalism by which:

• Capital replaces land as the feu;
• International banking replaces the Church as the external power;
• Non-territorial international corporations replace kingdoms as the fundamental holders of the feu;
• Corporate CEOs replace kings as the authorities by which the feu gets distributed and to whom loyal attachment must return;
• Major corporate internal divisions and subsidiaries replace baronies, earldoms, dukedoms, counties, etc. as subordinate holders of the feu;
• Corporate vice presidents, very senior managers, and subsidiary CEOs replace the various Lords of the Realm;
• Corporate managers and highly skilled technical professionals replace knights;
• Contractors replace the freeman peasantry; and
• Ordinary common working people are reduced to the new serfs;

All while the role of sovereign nations and democratic decision making diminishes into insignificance, reducing Canada and participating nations to resource and labour colonies of international corporations; and

Whereas As a consequence of our participation in NAFTA, Canada is already the developed nation most frequently attacked with ISDS suits, with one immediately a recent case in point, an ISDS judgment against the province of Ontario; and

Whereas NAFTA is widely considered to be a template and precedent for many other so-called free trade agreements in which Canada currently participates or are under negotiation with Canada’s participation;

Therefore We the undersigned Canadians, prepared, “O Canada, We stand on guard for thee,” do petition you to:

Require that The sovereignty-deleting Investor/State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) through the International Centre for Settlement of Investor Disputes (ICSID) provision be wholly removed from a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA);

Require that In place of ISDS, a renegotiated NAFTA provide that Canadian operations of international corporations which find themselves at issue with our governments at any level should bring the matter to an open and public Canadian court within the Canadian judicial system for decision under Canadian law in the same way as wholly domestic Canadian corporations and Canadian citizens must do;

Require that Alternatively, in place of ISDS, a renegotiated NAFTA provide that, if an issue exceeds the competence of Canadian courts, an international corporation should openly and publicly request its home nation government (by home nation, we do not mean that nation within which an international corporation is chartered or locates its corporate head office; we mean that nation in which the plurality of the corporation's equity capital ownership resides) to pursue the matter in an open and public international court on a sovereign nation versus sovereign nation basis that clearly holds international corporations as subjects of sovereign nations and not as equals with, nor as masters of, sovereign nations;

Require that In line with this government’s commitment to be fully open to Canadians, the renegotiation occur openly for public scrutiny; and

Require that Representatives of:

• wholly domestic Canadian businesses with an interest in how international trade may affect their own local business operations,
• organizations concerned about environmental issues and how international trade may impact the Canadian and worldwide environment,
• labour organizations with concerns about how international trade may affect working Canadians,
• Canadian agricultural organizations with concerns about Canadians’ capacity to feed ourselves while also trading internationally,
• organizations attentive to health and safety issues and concerned with the effect of international trade on those issues, and
• others with interest in the effect of international trade on Canadian society

have the same access and opportunity to contribute to a renegotiated NAFTA as do representatives of international corporations.

Therefore also We Canadians who love our sovereign, “True north, strong and free,” do petition you to:

Commit to Seek to remove ISDS from all other so-called free trade agreements to which Canada is party, as those agreements come up for renewal,

Refuse to Sign or ratify so-called free trade agreements currently under negotiation as long as they contain ISDS,

Refuse to Participate in any new so-called free trade negotiations if parties to those negotiations intend to include ISDS.

Thank you for your attention.