Fredericton Peace Coalition

In mid December, Robert Fowler, a career Canadian diplomat who is currently the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy to Niger, and his aide Louis Guay, an official at Foreign Affairs, were abducted in Niger. They were kidnapped not long after visiting a mine operated by Montréal-based SEMAFO (Société d’exploitation minière-Afrique de l’Ouest). The president and CEO of SEMAFO, Benoit La Salle, told the National Post: “Louis [Guay] called me and said he was going down there on a UN mission and that he heard the mine was a Canadian success and he wanted to report this back to Canada.”

At this point there are few other confirmed details regarding the kidnapping. Agence France Presse reported that the federal government, Niger and the UN have all become extremely secretive about the kidnapping. The UN initially denied that Fowler was on an official trip, but then a spokesperson contradicted this earlier statement, admitting that in fact he was on official business.

This event raises some questions about relations between Ottawa and Canadian resource corporations operating abroad. Is it common for diplomats to visit Canadian operated mines in foreign countries? Why was a UN envoy, sent to a country to deal with a conflict largely over natural resources, visiting a Canadian operated mine? Was the visit a message to Niger’s government? The rebels? The UN?

Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper’s government publicly supported Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza and voted alone at the UN Human Rights Committee in defense of Israel’s actions three weeks ago. Now Canada has taken over Israeli diplomacy. Literally.

In solidarity with Gaza, Venezuela expelled Israel’s ambassador at the start of the bombardment and then broke off all diplomatic relations two weeks later. Israel need not worry since Ottawa plans to help out. On 29 January, The Jerusalem Post reported that “Israel’s interests in Caracas will now be represented by the Canadian Embassy.” This means Canada is officially Israel, at least in Venezuela.

When Lockheed Martin, the world’s leading weapons/arms dealer and maker of MKVs (multiple kill vehicles), attempted to recruit students at the University of New Brunswick, on what is still considered by many as hallowed halls of learning, students took action.

On February 12, 2009, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration again passed a motion calling on the Government of Canada to immediately stop the deportation of all U.S. Iraq War resisters and their immediate family members. The motion was moved by NDP Immigration Critic Olivia Chow and supported by all opposition party members in the Committee.

Afghanistan is facing one of its worst food shortages in years as winter approaches, with prices of the staple wheat rising 60 percent in the first half of the year after Pakistan slapped export bans, a poor harvest and drought.

“Change” Afghans Should Look Upon with Skepticism

The family of this girl says the rapists belong to former armed militias and they are also supported by an MP representing Sar-e-Pul in the Parliament.

The number of cancer cases in Fort Chipewyan is higher than expected, according to a report from Alberta Health Services released Friday. Fifty-one cancers in 47 people were found in the remote community, 300km north of Fort McMurray, between 1995 and 2006, a dozen more than the 39 cancers that were expected, and the incidences of some cancers warrant more followup, the report said.

The top UN official for humanitarian affairs is traveling through the war-ravaged eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo today, where nearly 900 people have been killed and unknown numbers of women raped since the beginning of the year.

With five Iraq War resisters—Chris Teske, Cliff Cornell, Kimberly Rivera, Patrick Hart and Dean Walcott, most of them combat veterans—facing deportation before the end of this month, we write to respectfully urge you to take action on behalf of the 64 per cent majority of Canadians who agree to give these U.S. soldiers, their immediate families and all Iraq War resisters who are here, the opportunity to remain in Canada as permanent residents.