Opponents of Prime Minister Stephen Harper are finding that, in one commentator’s words, “Questions of Harper’s ethics, accountability, secrecy and contempt for democracy have not stuck.”

Questions about secrecy, however, should stick. Harper’s secret ongoing negotiations for “deep integration” with the U.S. could diminish the features of Canadian independence which have brought Canada world-envied standards of living, including medicare for all.

Public attention before May 2 regarding the contents of the forthcoming agreement between Harper and President Barack Obama could motivate many voters to go to the polls to preserve Canadian independence.

Loss of Canadian independence between the eras of Jean Chrétien and Harper has meant moving from no involvement in George W. Bush’s Iraq atrocities to military engagement in the quagmire of Afghanistan. It has meant less resistance to the demands for military procurement of unneeded U.S. weapons.

Harper and his fellow Conservatives intend to sign on to a $29 billion boondoggle purchase of the F-35 fighter aircraft. The Pentagon’s F-35 contract with Lockheed-Martin is racked with huge cost overruns, delays and technical troubles. Maybe the Washington war machine wants Canada to help salvage that procurement mess for a still unfinished aircraft having no Canadian defence rationale.

The early tangle of “deep integration” within the framework of a North American security perimeter agreement being readied secretly without public participation for signing by Ottawa and Washington later this year is just beginning.

The post-9/11 corporate government U.S. response has been driven by the business opportunities inherent in massive over expenditures. Both Bush and Obama in varying degrees have sanctioned the abridgement of civil liberties, unlawful surveillance and the transgressions of international law involved in the grotesque overreactions that are the Iraq and Afghan wars.

Once the U.S. government’s national security scaffolding surrounds Canada, many policy matters will become “national security” priorities. Canadian energy, water, the Canadian Arctic, anti-monopoly enforcement, and Canadian foreign investment policies could be subsumed under “national security” imperatives.

These imperatives are increasingly defined and pursued by giant corporations and ideologues running the corporate government in Washington. The executive appointments, lobbyists, campaign-finance cash, and mass media propaganda are what president Dwight Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address 50 years ago and presciently named “the military-industrial complex.”

Importing this national security state apparatus and mindset not only erodes the exercise of fundamental freedom of speech and dissent, but destroys Canada’s historic peacekeeping role in the world — now at its lowest ebb ever.

“Deep integration” with the American brand of warmongering corporatism will wreak havoc with federal budget allocations at a time when most Canadian households are less well off economically, adjusted for inflation, than 20 years ago, in spite of overall GDP growth. In Canada, too, the rich are getting richer from GDP gains at the expense of the rest of the Canadian people.

This election presents an opportunity for citizens to question and demand truthful responses from their incumbent government about serious risks to Canadian independence. What is Harper, who has an authoritarian bent, offering in his secret deliberations with the U.S. government?

I came to love and admire Canada as a schoolboy camping in the Ontario lake country. In 1993 I co-authored a best-selling book, Canada Firsts, to demonstrate what Canadian independence has given to its people — the first North American credit unions, universal health-care systems, the first anti-smoking campaigns and scores of other civilized “firsts.”

Progressives in the U.S. often point to Canadian practices as models. Most recently, your more prudent banking regulations avoided a disastrous Wall Street-style collapse. Canadian independence — however frayed it has become under absentee corporate ownership and other squeezes from its giant neighbour to the south — has always mattered to the world.

“Deep integration” and all it involves for your people needs to become a major election issue before a lengthy period of unilateral government solidifies.

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Canadian independence starts with a commitment by your political leaders, embodying the Canadian consensus and its comprehensively unique Canadian social contract. The Canadian notion of sovereignty and of self-government must not be undermined by global corporations through their Washington consensus for your sake — and ours.

Ralph Naderis a lawyer, consumer advocate and author. He was named by The Atlantic as one of the 100 most influential figures in American history.

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