WATER
Kralik: I would like to ask you about the water, our natural resources in water. What is it to be used for? How is it to be transported?
Kealey: Think of money. If you had your choice, if you could pull a genie out of a bottle and the genie could grant three wishes, what would your three wishes be? Remember your goal is to make the most money possible?
Kralik: I should really have to think a lot about that, but...
Kealey: I would say: 'Number one, give me control over the sun. Number two, give me control over the air. Number three, give me control over water.' Now, leaving our little genie aside, we know we cannot control the sun, nor can we control the air, BUT WE CAN CONTROL WATER. On the scale of things that are required for human life, it is the most important element that can be controlled.
Kralik: What do you mean when you say 'control'?
Kealey: OK. In GATT, General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs, it says that free-flowing water is not a 'good'. The key wording is 'free-flowing'. If you construct a dam it is no longer free-flowing and therefore it becomes private property, owned by somebody, capable of being sold to others, or mortgaged.
Kralik: If it is dammed?
Kealey: If it is dammed. Any time the free-flowing water has been obstructed. Of course in GATT, there is much talk about bottled water.
Kralik: It's a side trick?
Kealey: It's a side trick. The biggest scam ever to be pulled on the entire world is Free Trade and I'll tell you why.
There is a lady in Ottawa by the name of Shelley Ann Clark. She was the executive secretary to the third highest negotiator during the Free Trade deal. His name was Germain Denis. His two visible superiors were Gordon Ritchie and Simon Riesman. Before he became Free Trade negotiator, Simon Reisman had a difficult job. He was the director of a project called the Grand Canal, which is to be built from James Bay.
In 1985-86, my offices were in Hull in the commercial part of Place du Portage, the government complex which houses the Supply and Services Offices. One day I was visited by a man named Art Bailey. Bailey was a former Assistant Deputy Minister of Supply and Services and had been following the development of my project, the Micot Building. I had raised a hundred and sixty million bucks to build this high tech centre in Hull. We had bought the land and were just about ready to start construction when Art Bailey walked into my office. 'Mr. Kealey,' he said, 'you've done a fantastic job of marketing this Micot Building. Nobody would ever have believed that anyone could raise a hundred and sixty million dollars to build a building in Hull - this is totally out of sync with anything that anybody believed.'So he said,'we think you're the best marketing man in Canada and that you should come and join our team and become the Marketing Manager for the Grand Canal.'
I said, 'What the hell's the Grand Canal? I don't know what you're talking about.' So he gave me a document - a twenty to twenty-five page document which I read. This is what I read: James Bay is five hundred miles north to south, is a hundred and twenty miles across at the mouth, salt water on the average thirty-five to forty-five feet deep. If a dam were to be constructed at the mouth of James Bay and Hudson's Bay and a second one, one third down, and a third, a third down again - therefore three dams - it would allow over a period of ten years for water to flow from the fresh water rivers and would push the salt water back beyond the dams and create the largest fresh water reservoir known to man. So much so that a canal could be built leading out of the south-east corner of James Bay, south over the mountain ranges with dykes and locks and whatever you need to lift water for eight hundred miles, then at Rouen-Noranda in northern Québec, nature's gravity would take over and the water would start going down the other side of the mountain range, into Ontario, the Ottawa River and the French River systems, past Kirkland Lake and eventually it would end up in Georgian Bay. The amount of water that would be brought back - fresh water from that Canal - could double the flow of water that now enters the Great Lakes. Of course, if you can double the water entering the Great Lakes, you can take half of the total water out without changing anything in the Great Lake System.
The water would be removed in two places: at the base of Lake Michigan - they don't need it this year, this year they have enough water - they would open up the sluices and move water down to the Mississippi Delta, almost all the way to Mexico, into the Gulf of Mexico; the second outlet would be from Lake Superior, moving water across Manitoba, into Saskatchewan, then down into the United States to bring water to the Mid West and South West of the United States. We must understand, of course, that since we are living in a period of global warming, the bread basket of North America, which is situated in one place now, moves further north as it gets warmer, making the bottom part arid. So water is absolutely critical to enlarge the bread basket of North America as the earth gets warmer.
There is another dimension: if Canadian waters, presently flowing into and towards the Arctic and the North of Canada, are diverted and artificially made to flow in a southerly direction (for instance diverted towards the United States for water use), then the Northern cold climate temperatures will move in a southerly direction and the Canadian terrain will become colder and more frigid; the balance of the Canadian climate will be reduced in temperature, which will cause a massive environmental shift in Canada, all to Canada's detriment.
This theory can be supported by simple physics and hydrology. The waters flowing north are of a warmer temperature and have a warm front pushing against the Arctic North temperatures; if removed, the Arctic North will move South. It doesn't matter whether this occurs in summer or the winter seasons. If the rivers and waters are diverted to flow southerly then one will require more fuel to heat our homes and buildings; however, Canadians will only have what is available after the US has its needs supplied under the NAFTA Agreement, etc.
The two transnationals who were pushing this plan were R.J. R. Nabisco (the biggest agribusiness in the United States), led by a Mr. Johnson out of Winnipeg - there's been a film made of him recently called Barbarians at the Gate and it shows how he tried to take over the company with junk bonds and whatever; and the other one was Archer Daniels Midland, who cans and boxes or packages all of the agribusiness that comes in from R.J.R. Nabisco and distributes it throughout the world. It is interesting, of course, that Mr. Johnson was Mulroney's sponsor, bringing him on tours throughout the U.S. and that Archer Midland Daniels has just hired Mulroney as a director.
I travelled across Western Canada and there have been public demonstrations recently in B.C., Alberta, and Saskatchewan over the building of dams and Kemano in B.C., Old Man River in Alberta and Alimeda in Rafferty dams in Saskatchewan. People ask why are they building dams where there is no water. Once you understand the relationship of the Grand Canal to the entire area you then know where the water will be coming from.
Kralik: Do you see any possible ecological disasters as a result of this?
Kealey: Of course. Some natives believe the sheer weight of the water behind the dams will cause the axis of the earth to shift and if you build a dam you change the chemistry of the earth. You cannot flood the areas that we are talking about without changing the configuration of the soil and landscape. But transnationals don't think in those terms: they think in terms of money. In 1985-6 it was stated that the project would cost two hundred billion dollars (US). It was also stated that the money was available. American Express wants to be the banker and do you think that it is by coincidence that American Express was allowed, by Order of Council, to become a Bank in Canada, with Brian Mulroney breaking fourteen banking regulations just to allow them to achieve this status?
As well, Alcan Aluminum needs dams for their mines and Barrick for their gold-owning concerns. Mulroney also signed Orders in Council breaking the law that made it illegal for foreigners to own more than fifty percent of a mine in Canada. Now foreigners can own mines outright in Canada: there are no restrictions.
None of these changes in the rules were made through Parliament but by a stroke of Brian Mulroney's pen. Most people in Canada live with the illusion that laws are written by parliament but most regulations are changed by politicians in power. For every law that passes through Parliament, there are three thousand laws that are changed unilaterally behind the scenes.
In any case, Simon Riesman put forward a plan to have us put aside our 'old concepts' and to start thinking 'boldly about the future'. By that he meant nothing less than giving up Canada: we need to have a new political reality, he argued, and therefore Free Trade and water diversion go hand in hand. We also know, he sun-nised, that if the US asked us for either water or free trade, Canadians would rebel: so let us make it appear that Canada is doing the asking. Mulroney was bought with the Bankers'money and he did the asking, publicly stating the opposite of what he had always contended: that he didn't believe in Free Trade, etc.
