Canada Should Be the Envy of the World (David Suzuki Foundation)

Canada is not an economic basket case In 1987, Canada was caught up in a debate over a free trade agreement with the United States. Economist John Crispo, an outspoken FTA supporter, warned that failing to ratify it would make Canada an “economic basket case.” In 1988, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney called an election to get a mandate to sign onto the agreement. The Liberals and NDP opposed it, but the Conservatives won a majority with 40 per cent of the vote. The U.S. and Canada ratified the FTA later that year. A subsequent 1994 free trade agreement included Mexico. In early 1988, before the election, I met eminent economist Kenneth Boulding at a meeting in the U.S. With Crispo’s words still bugging me, I asked about Canada becoming an economic basket case if we didn’t sign on and for his opinion of the FTA.

Canada is a nation rich in resources and skilled and educated people with a diversity of backgrounds and ideas and should be the envy of the world.

Boulding answered, “If you want to know how well off you are, imagine that you go to bed and wake up the next morning to find the whole world has disappeared except for Canada and an ocean around it. Would you lack for food? Not when you are one of the bread baskets, not basket cases, of the world. Would you lack for resources — minerals, energy, lumber, fish? Would you lack an educated workforce capable of making everything from clothing to refrigerators and cars?” That thought exercise reminds us of our true wealth. Canada is a nation rich in resources and skilled and educated people with a diversity of backgrounds and ideas and should be the envy of the world. But globalization renders us vulnerable to the consequences of war, hostilities and shifts in priorities and makes us poor — even though its initial justification was to reduce the kinds of conflicts the world had just endured in two global wars. I later heard Larry King interview Mulroney on CNN. King chided him for the economic slump Canada was experiencing. Mulroney replied that it wasn’t his fault, that he couldn’t control the global economy. So why do we embrace the global economy? The prime minister’s job is to protect people in Canada and our economy, not hand over control to global forces.

We need global alliances, now more than ever, but we must also become more self-reliant.

Donald Trump’s election and subsequent actions reveal how vulnerable we are to the vagaries of an unruly leader who couldn’t care less for the wellbeing of people or the state of the planet. His administration during its first term negotiated the most recent North American free trade pact, the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement. Now he’s tearing that up, recklessly imposing tariffs, then backing off and re-imposing them — sending stock markets spinning and creating economic hardship beyond U.S. borders. We need global alliances, now more than ever, but we must also become more self-reliant. We need to reduce barriers to interprovincial trade and create an integrated renewable energy grid. Our governments must prioritize Indigenous rights, title and governance. We need to make sure our communities are resilient in the face of a warming climate, and we must protect our natural wealth, especially water. Any trade agreements we join must prioritize human and environmental rights. The billionaires and oligarchs who benefit most from global trade don’t care about countries or borders; those get in their way as much as regulations and public institutions. Their consumer-capitalist economic system facilitates and relies on global trade — in part to exploit low-cost labour and lax environmental and human rights standards.

We need to learn from it and come together to protect what we have while continuing to strive for better.

Current trade also exacerbates the climate crisis. About 40 per cent of global shipping is to transport coal, oil and gas. As Forbes reports, “Shipping emits over 1 billion tons of carbon a year, making it the sixth-largest emitter in the world after China, U.S., India, Russia and Japan” — and that’s increasing rapidly. Curtailing fossil fuel use would substantially reduce emissions from burning the fuels and from shipping, a win-win for the climate. But it would cut into enormous industry profits and, according to current economic thinking, profits are a higher priority than health and survival. What’s happening in the U.S. shows how quickly things can fall apart — rules and institutions, checks and balances, international agreements, governing processes that people have long taken for granted. We need to learn from it and come together to protect what we have while continuing to strive for better.

By David Suzuki, with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor and Writer Ian Hanington

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Jean Baird's Annual report on Al Purdy A-frame writer-in-residence

 From Jean Baird's email report:

March 11, 2025 ANNUAL REPORT & FOUNDATION UPDATE Dear A-framers: What if Canadians started buying Canadian books with the same gusto that they are buying Canadian alcohol? This isn't my idea, but it sure is worth repeating and thinking about. We see the Arts under siege in the United States of America. In a recent Special to the Globe and Mail, Gil Garratt, artistic  director of the Blyth Festival writes: "Canadians are booing the American anthem at rinks; bars and restaurants are changing their taps and wine menus; stores are ripping American products from shelves; politicians are plotting the pinch points of import and export. “Buy Canadian!” we holler. And  in our stores, we see neat labels – “Made in Canada,” “Product of Canada,” “Canadian Made” – to make it easier to stand in the  aisle and make a sober choice. "But what about in our culture? I mean, you wanna talk about trade deficits? "In 2022, Hill Strategies pegged the U.S.-Canada cultural trade deficit at around $7.3-billion in favour of the United States, a gap that has existed for decades. As a culture worker for the past 30 years, I have watched a relentless flood of American culture spill into Canada. And make no mistake. Culture is one of America’s most lucrative exports." In difficult times we need the arts more than ever. The 2024 Annual Report is now up. You can read it at this link, and see what is happing with the Foundation project: https://www.alpurdy.ca/a-frame-annual-reports/           As well as providing the A-frame with a new foundation and basement, thereby doubling our space and our residency season, the project has resulted in a new driveway and we were also able to remove the remnants of the old garage that burnt down many years ago. Here's Al examining the remains For the basement to be usable it needs to be finished. We have a wonderful opportunity from a highly skilled contractor. He has offered to arrive in April to do the work in-kind, we only need to pay for materials. It would be so exciting to get the basement finished before the residency program opens in May. Please help us get that basement finished. https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/al-purdy-a-frame-association/

Copyright © 2025 Al Purdy A-frame Association, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you have supported the Al Purdy A-frame Association. Our mailing address is: Al Purdy A-frame Association 401--4542 West 10th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2J1 Canada Add us to your address book

The Heart Of An Exile: Katherine L. Gordon

I consider Katherine L. Gordon a kindred spirit poet. A spiritual poet who also remains active in our confusing political realm. 

This little town holds

a fragile charm

where my elsewhere birthed spirit

learns to survive.

My sustaining friends candle it into home

though shadows shimmer in contained corners.

The land of ancestors buried is hard-won

sacred soil calls out to my waiting bones …

I am forbidden to answer,

grieve for my moment to come

when alien soil covers restless remains

and spirit hovers between

the world that barely embraces me

and the pulsating claim of blood and ligament,

heart, spirit and tribal ties

that scream for my absorption

back into fiery particles that stoked my entity.

Wine cannot placate, bread and other fields

          seldom satisfies,

a communion I must re-learn. 

After Midnight: Selected Poems by Katherine L. Gordon 

Chinese translation by Anna Yin

2024 Sureway Press

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'verboten' 2025 Oscar winning doc

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The film that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary last week still has no Canadian—or North American– distributor.

No Other Land got rave reviews. It is about the ongoing destruction of Palestinians’ villages in the Masafer Yatta area of the South Hebron Hills— in the Occupied West Bank. The film shows Israel’s soldiers and Jewish settlers destroying Palestinians’ homes, their livestock, tearing down the school and poisoning their water wells. In an unlikely friendship between two young men, Yuval, an Israeli Jew and Basel – a Palestinian lawyer – the men decide to document Israel’s violent land grab of Palestinian land. No Other Land has attracted international media interviews with the Israeli and Palestinian co-filmmakers.

Not everyone agrees that No Other Land is a great film. Israel’s diehard supporters refuse to acknowledge Israel’s genocide– the deliberate murders of more than 48,405 mainly women, children and the elderly in Gaza over the last 18 months. More than 111,835 Palestinians have been seriously injured. More than 35,055 children have lost one or both parents. Israeli politicians were infuriated by No Other Land. Israel’s Minister of Culture Miki Zohar – a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party – called the win “a sad moment for the world of cinema… slandering Israel on the global stage.”

Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham holding the Best Documentary Award for their film ‘No Other Land’ at the Berlinale film festival, February 24, 2024 (Ali Ghandtschi/Berlinale 2024)

In his acceptance speech, No Other Land’s Palestinian co-director Basel Adra condemned Israel’s “ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people”; his Israeli co-director Yuval Abraham demanded an end to Israel’s “unequal” treatment of Palestinians. Here’s a trailer for the film.

Despite winning an Oscar, No Other Land still has no US or Canadian distributor. We all can guess why that is. Do you suppose the film being labelled “antisemitic” is part of the reason no one wants to take it on? Does the film offend Jews – or does it offend those who support Israel’s power to drive Palestinians off their land, or kill them directly. Let’s look at a brief history of “controversial” films that are about Palestinians.

In 2013, 5 Broken Cameras was nominated for Best Documentary Features at the 85^th Academy Awards. Its co-directors –Palestinian olive farmer and videographer Emad Burnat and Israeli Guy Davidi faced months of limited distribution prior to Kino Lorber taking over their film’s North American distribution. To add insult to injury, police at Los Angeles airport grabbed and detained Palestinian filmmaker Burnat, his wife Soraya and 8-year old son Gibreel– the “star” of Five Broken Cameras — when the family landed to attend the Oscars.

Burnat texted filmmaker Michael Moore to call for help. As Burnat wrote, “Can you help- they will send us back”. Moore got a lawyer to spring the family from detention. Burnat told Moore over the phone,

“ [Immigration and Customs] would not believe him when he told them he was an Oscar-nominated director on his way to this Sunday’s Oscars and to the events in LA leading up to the ceremony. He is also a Palestinian. And an olive farmer. Apparently that was too much for Homeland Security to wrap its head around.”

The police gave Burnat a window of less than 24 hours to remain in the US,to attend the Oscars and then leave the country. Remember, this was not under Trump 1 or Trump 2, but under the Obama presidency.

In 2012, there was The Gatekeepers, an Israeli-made film, about the lives and opinions of the six Jewish directors of Israel’s Shin Bet – Israel’s Security Agency (ISA). The film was nominated for an Academy Award, but didn’t win. Still Sony Pictures Classics distributed the film widely in the US, and Cinephil distributed it internationally.

Jump ahead to 2023

Zone of Interest won an Oscar for Best Feature Film in 2023. There was enthusiastic support for the film itself. It was, after all, about the Holocaust. But there was tremendous anger and antipathy by those who support Israel’s current genocide, after British Jewish director Jonathan Glazer gave his acceptance speech. Surrounded by several other men who helped create Zone of Interest, he noted,

“Right now we stand here as men who refute our Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people… all the victims of this dehumanisation. How do we resist?”

In Zone, Auschwitz arguably served as a stand-in for Gaza. Seven months after Israel began its genocidal war against Palestinians, Israel had killed more than 28,000, buried more than 10,000 Palestinian—mainly women and children — in the rubble of tens of housands of buildings that Israel bombed.

It has played in movie theatres around the world and streams on various platforms.

In 2024, Israelism, the documentary film in which two young American Jews question the way Israel treats Palestinians was able to land a US distributor, Watermelon Pictures. Watermelon, a new film production and distribution company, was founded to “showcase who have been poorly represented and dehumanized in mainstream media.” Israelism had been released the previous year, and the filmmakers managed to have hundreds of showings at universities and colleges in the US, plus online streaming. The pro-Israel Jews such as David Suissa at the right-wing Jewish Journal wrote,

“The film features a few carefully selected young American Jews complaining that their Jewish upbringing advocated for Israel but withheld any advocacy for Palestinians. To hear them, you’d think there was a total blackout in Jewish America on discussing the plight of the Palestinians, which is quite the opposite. … the movie wants us to believe that Zionist advocacy was so one-sided and all-consuming it created a generation of young Jews who, feeling duped, have turned against their own.”

We know that in the “official” Jewish world there is indeed a near-total blackout on representing and advocating for the Palestinian cause. Even in the world of film distribution, it took months for Israelism to get a distributor for theatrical and digital release.

The terror story of today – as whipped up by the pro-Israel lobby – is about the BBC’s latest censuring of its own documentary “Gaza: How to survive a war zone.” The film (co-produced with an outside film company) features four young teens in Gaza, in a “vivid and unflinching view of life in a war zone”, from Dec. 2024 to the “ceasefire” a month ago. The film’s narrator, Abdulla age 13, speaks good English. The BBC was frantic when it discovered Abdullah was the son of Hamas’ deputy minister of agriculture! Horror of horrors – the BBC chair actually noted the mistake was a “dagger to the heart” of the BBC’s impartiality. Seriously? BBC’s corporate leadership grovelled and apologized to a Parliamentary committee meeting for “failing to do its due diligence” on how the BBC creating a doc about life in Gaza– with no reference to Hamas.

For a very nice 6 minute message to the BBC by Abdulla, watch this.

The BBC executives’ top concern is making sure their “brand” is respected and seen as “trustworthy.” I suppose that means what four young teens have seen, have endured, have barely survived may be unreliable or at worst a pack of lies. Does anyone honestly believe that what Gaza’s children have endured is not tantamount to a form of torture, ethnic cleansing, severe trauma and worse? Well the BBC has deep-sixed the film.

We are on a teeter-totter in Canada (and the US) when it comes to being able to see films about the Palestinians’ reality – in Gaza or the West Bank. Certain films win awards, even Oscars – but when a film about the genocide cannot be shown in a theatre or streamed on TV there is no doubt that the pro-Israel lobby is still hard at work.

At the top: still from No Other Land, the two co-directors Basel (left) and Yuval. (credit: Antipode Films)

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© 2025 Judy Haiven
Halifax, NS 

Feast for the Soul (from today's email)

 

Hello Chris, March is here! Though the official Feast may be over, your quest for peace and spiritual  evolution probably goes on. Ours does too.  That's why the Feast's faculty has volunteered to offer meditation gatherings  through the spring! And you are invited! View the free opportunities to meditate together, here.  View the Feast's Free Meditation Opportunities Here It might be an understatement to say collectively we've all been going  through a lot these days. Still and again there are big changes, inside and out. And though I imagine you prefer the happy, peaceful days,  there is some value in weatheringthe storms and the dark days. Without  them, we might not have opportunitiesto be brave and to beef up our resilience  and our spiritual practice.  You've probably heard the saying, "No mud, no lotus." It refers to the  lotus seed's journey from the darkness of the muddy bottom of a pond  toward its blossoming in the light. One's personal desire for spiritual awakening is much like a seed of a  beautiful lotus blossom. The seed of the lotus has all the intelligence  and evolutionary drive needed to blossom beautifully. The same is true  for the seed of your desire for spiritual growth. The lotus seed's tendril grows out of the mud and makes its way through  the darkness toward the light, finally breaking through to the surface. It  floats there and opens its blossom to the sun.  Even when its roots are in the dirtiest waters, the lotus produces  the most beautiful flowers each morning.  This can be analogous to the human condition and one's spiritual journey.  You could even view personal challenges and suffering as essential nutrients  for your growth.  No matter how difficult your life is or has been, what is going on in the  world, what mistakes you may have made, what someone has done to  you, or what you have done to them, you, too, have the ability to rise  above even the most challenging circumstances, trust your movement  toward the light, and bloom in perfection. There is a possibility to come  out of difficulty with grace and ease. As the late great poet John O'Donohue wrote in his poem,  "For a New Beginning",  Though your destination is not yet clear You can trust the promise of this opening; Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning That is at one with your life’s desire. Awaken your spirit to adventure; Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; Soon you will be home in a new rhythm, For your soul senses the world that awaits you. Each and every day, each and every moment, begin again, and trust the  journey of your heart and your commitment to peace.  Thank you for creating more peace on this beautiful planet! Sarah, Sue, Suzi and all of us at the Feast www.FeastfortheSoul.org P.S. Join me, Sarah, Sunday for a guided meditation. On Monday  there are two to choose from, and there are more all through  March!  See the event calendar, here.  P.P.S. Check out the recorded Feast meditations on You Tube here P.P.S. Here's a link to a short film featuring the insights on the  mud and lotus from the late spiritual teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh. Watch it here.

Feast for the Soul | 5142 Hollister Ave. #110 | SANTA BARBARA, CA 93111 US