Ottawa plays ostrich over $15-billion Saudi arms deal
In early 2016, the newly elected Liberal government in Ottawa committed to a weapons deal with Saudi Arabia that was negotiated by the Harper government in 2014.
The deal, worth $15 billion, makes Canada a significant weapons dealer in the Middle East. When the Liberals announced that they’d be honouring the deal – despite the plethora of damning evidence against Saudi Arabia’s human-rights record – they became mired in controversy and the dust that had settled in 2014 was disturbed once again.
When I learned about the issue in 2017, I contacted local MPs to see what they were doing about it. I was disappointed.
The Liberal government has not been honest about its stance on the arms deal, and about the state of the deal itself. First, the Liberals said they couldn’t reverse the deal. Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion stood in the House of Commons and in the Senate to defend his party’s decision to sign off on the deal. He said to the Senate: “The government doesn’t approve this contract. The government simply refuses to terminate a contract that has already been approved by the former government.”
Then, on April 12, a Global Affairs memo was released that showed that the Harper government had only approved a few export permits, and that Dion had secretly approved the rest after the Liberals assumed power. Dion subsequently admitted to approving the permits.
Dion often cited fear of economic backlash as the main reason for continuing with the weapons deal. However, countries such as Britain, Germany and Sweden have tightened or completely halted their weapons exports to the dictatorship in recent years (citing human-rights abuses as their main concern). And those countries have said that they faced few economic consequences. It would seem that the Liberals have upheld this deal simply because it’s easy money.
Amnesty International’s summary of Saudi Arabia for 2016-17 condemns the kingdom for stifling and criminalizing freedom of expression, of association and of assembly; for subjugating women; for mass executions of political dissidents; and for war crimes in Yemen.
Saudi Arabia’s horrendous human-rights record should be no mystery to any politician worth his weight, let alone to any politician who has given any thought to this weapons deal.
The weapons will no doubt be used to perpetuate terror and instability in the Middle East. They will be used to suppress Saudi citizens, as well as the citizens of Yemen and neighbouring countries. The Globe and Mail has obtained verified video evidence from 2015 and from 2017 that shows the Saudi National Guard rolling through streets and shooting civilians with LAVs much like the ones we’ll be sending them shortly. This evidence, combined with the report from Amnesty International, should be reason enough to cancel the deal immediately.
Despite all of this, when I contacted two Nova Scotian Liberal MPs in February 2017 — Andy Fillmore of Halifax and Mark Eyking of Sydney-Victoria — both were ignorant on the topic. Each had the same generic response ready for me: that it looks bad for Canada if we go back on the deal.
Fillmore, who was parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Democratic Institutions, told me over the phone that we could still reverse the deal, given enough evidence against Saudi Arabia. He
claimed to be unaware of the footage of the Saudi National Guard firing on its citizens with LAVs. Mr. Fillmore told me that he would speak to the International Affairs Minister and would get back to me by the end of February 2017. I have heard nothing from him since.
It is inappropriate that Mr. Fillmore was unaware of the human rights violations perpetrated by the country that will be receiving $15 billion of our own weapons. One need not look further than the Amnesty International report to see that Saudi Arabia is not a democracy. Rather, any movements toward democracy in Saudi Arabia are met with brutal force by the ruling class. Free thinkers, such as Raif Badawi, are routinely imprisoned, tortured and murdered. Recently, Badawi’s wife, who fled to Quebec following her husband’s imprisonment, has lobbied the Trudeau government to use this trade as a bargaining chip for his release — to no avail. Does anybody honestly believe that the Saudis will not give up one person to preserve a weapons deal worth $15 billion?
Eyking, who was chair of the Standing Committee on International Trade, told me in a phone call that it’s hard to know who is “on our team” in the Middle East, and implied that any country could use its weapons for nefarious purposes.
He implied that this was a done deal, but he seemed uncertain about anything on the matter. It seemed that I was informing him of the details, which is alarming, given Mr. Eyking’s position. As Mr. Fillmore did, Mr. Eyking told me he would speak to the Foreign Affairs Minister and would get back to be by the end of February 2017. Still nothing.
Our Liberal government has been dishonest and ignorant with respect to this trade deal. The Foreign Affairs minister misled Canadians about his government’s role in the deal, and the MPs I contacted were either ignorant or ineffective. Neither one has contacted me since we spoke last February.
But this is not a done deal. As far as we know, we have not shipped a single LAV to Saudi Arabia. And with enough of a public outcry, we can hold our government accountable and prevent our weapons from reaching the hands of the autocratic state of Saudi Arabia. I urge everyone to write your MP and make your position known.
Mason Maxwell is a senior student in mathematics at Dalhousie University.
Published 6 Jan 2018 in The Chronicle Herald here:http://old.thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/1534386-opinion-ottawa-plays-ostrich-over-15-billion-saudi-arms-deal?qwe=1536710420255
The merits of taxing meat
Meat has been taking a lot of flak lately. Veganism and vegetarianism are more popular than ever. People are more aware and more concerned about meat’s adverse effects on the environment, on our health, and on the ethical treatment of animals. Governments occasionally impose what is known as a “sin tax” on undesirable or harmful goods. Has the time come to impose a sin tax on meat?
The motivation for a sin tax on some meats – red meats and processed meats – is threefold: Those meats are far more harmful to the environment than other foods; they have significant adverse health effects; and a tax on those meats could generate revenue and decrease consumption. Therefore, it makes sense for a sin tax to be imposed on red meats and processed meats.
According to an Oxford University research group led by economist Max Roser, livestock occupy 77 per cent of the world’s agricultural land while only supplying 17 per cent of our calories. Furthermore, livestock provide just 33 per cent of our dietary protein, and plants provide the rest. This means we’re trading calories and protein for the luxury of meat in our diets.
In 2009 Statistics Canada reported that Canadians ate roughly 60kg of red meat – equivalent to about 1000 hamburgers or about 200 steaks. Roser’s data show that it would not be feasible for the world to adopt Canada’s current meat-heavy diet, given the Earth’s habitable land area. These facts present issues in solving world hunger given our current inefficient consumption.
The data by Roser’s group also show that beef is food’s chief threat to sustainability. Beef requires just over one square-metre of land for every gram of protein yielded, while other animal products such as pork (0.13 m2/g), poultry (0.08 m2/g), and eggs (0.05 m2/g) require far less land per gram of protein. Plant foods such as fresh produce (0.1 m2/g), wheat (0.04 m2/g), rice (0.02 m2/g), and legumes (0.01 m2/g) require even less land on average.
Mass deforestation (for example, of the Amazon rainforest) is now necessary to grow the soy, corn, and grain crops to feed livestock. But feeding livestock to produce meat is a highly inefficient process. The ecological efficiency rule of thumb for animals is that the food chain is only 10-per-cent efficient. This means every 10kg of feed produces roughly 1kg of meat. It makes sense for us to cut out the intermediary and just eat the plants, or at least decrease the amount of meat in our diets for the sake of efficiency.
Perhaps equally convincing are the harmful effects of red and processed meats on our health. In a 2015 report by the World Health Organization, red meats were classified as Class 2A carcinogens, meaning they’re likely causes of cancer in humans. Processed meats were listed as Class 1 carcinogens – lumped in with tobacco and asbestos– meaning they’re known to cause cancer.
The report garnered a significant backlash from industry and government, since many were upset that meat was compared to tobacco. However, the WHO’s classifications were determined by the availability of scientific evidence for carcinogenic properties, not the degree of severity of meat’s unhealthiness. The link between these meats and cancer in humans is now well-established.
Despite all this, some still oppose a meat tax. Sylvain Charlebois, dean of management and scholar in food policy and distribution at Dalhousie University, recently argued that a meat sin tax is immoral, unhelpful, and regressive. Prof. Charlebois’s perspective, though, seems at odds with the public interest given the multitude of problems with animal agriculture.
On the contrary, several studies on a similar sugar sin tax on soft drinks have shown that it leads to a decrease in consumption of those products. One study published in the Journal of Public Economics demonstrated that a sugar sin tax moderately decreased soft-drink consumption. If this were true for meat, even if consumers substituted with other animal-based alternatives we’d likely see improvements in sustainability and health.
Another study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that 43 per cent of a sugar tax was passed on to consumers. This means that producers like Coca-Cola aren’t absorbing the tax to maintain demand for their drinks. If the same were true of a meat tax, it should drive the price of meat up and the demand down.
Studies examining how meat consumption responds to price changes are few. In a book called Managerial Economics published in 2002, beef demand was found to be elastic – meaning consumers respond by buying less meat when the price rises. This makes sense, since meat is a luxury. It’s not addictive like cigarettes and alcohol, so tax on it should be more effective in reducing consumption than the classical sin taxes on those other products.
It also shouldn’t be regressive – it shouldn’t disproportionately affect the poor. Despite Charlebois’s appeal to food’s necessity for life, meat, in the quantity currently consumed in Canada, isn’t necessary for life. Many affordable alternatives exist, and societies that eat less meat tend to be healthier.
The ethics of a meat sin tax are polarizing. Some argue that it is immoral to tax food since it’s necessary for life and because it’s ingrained in our culture and traditions. However, when meat has such demonstrated harmful impacts on health and the environment, the government has the right and the responsibility to affect meat consumption. The meat tax could be revenue-neutral: revenue could be used to offset healthcare costs, to fund green infrastructure, and to support educational nutrition programs, for example.
Instead of calling it a “tax” on meat, we could rephrase it as a “lifting” of the massive government subsidies on agriculture in Canada. In 2011, the Canadian government gave $7 billion in subsidies to agriculture, mostly for meat and dairy. Lifting this subsidy would compel the meat industry to either become more efficient or reduce production and raise prices.
The onus is on researchers and governments to give more consideration to raising the price of meat. Vegans and carnivores alike are all too aware of the limitations of and burdens on our healthcare system. Simply blaming consumers for poor dietary choices is unwise given the social determinants of health. Governments have a responsibility to utilize all policy levers to improve population health but with an eye on sound economic policy.
An aging population, the rising incidence of chronic disease, and the advent of climate change compel us to look for novel ways to tackle our civilization’s biggest issues. Let’s shine a light on the merits of a meat tax.
Mason Maxwell is a student in Mathematics at Dalhousie University.
Published 13 Feb 2018 in iPolitics at https://ipolitics.ca/2018/02/13/merits-taxing-meat/
No Such Joy 