From: FrontLine Security via KEYC-TV
By Edward R. Myers
OTTAWA, Dec. 8. 2014 /CNW/ – Canadians are often indignant when our American counterparts show us up. From hockey games to who is going to provide continental missile defense for us all, the debates about sleeping next to the elephant never go out of vogue.
Roy Rempel, author of the provocative work on Canadian foreign policy, Dreamland, argued that Canada’s domestically driven foreign policy has lost sight of the national interest. As a consequence, “Canada’s policy options are narrowing, national sovereignty is eroding, and the country risks evolving into a protectorate of the United States”. Canada’s national sovereignty is again threatened nearly 10 years after Dreamland.
Last week, the Hamilton Spectator reported that the State of New York is suing a Six Nations cigarette manufacturer, Grand River Enterprises (GRE), for $350 million for illegally selling contraband cigarettes across the state. Chock one up for the Americans. U.S. regulators, government fiscal managers and law enforcement agencies scored a major win in the contraband tobacco wars by suing GRE directly as the Canadian government seems unwilling to acknowledge its complicity in the often illegal flooding of the American market by a Canadian company that has run into law suits from many states in the Union.
This was permitted when GRE, a native-owned, Canadian reserve-based company obtained a Canadian federal license in 1996 to manufacture tobacco products as part of a plea bargain after legal action. The license was granted on the provision that GRE fully meet its excise taxation obligations with the Canadian government and has since been allowed to operate free of legal constraint. This license opened a window for them to freely import and buy Canadian tobacco and export the finished product – where it went was none of the government’s concern.
