As non-Filipinos in solidarity with the Filipino struggle against imperialism, we stand against Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy.
Prioritizing profits over people:
Canada’s government invests millions into military, surveillance, and weapons manufacturing abroad, building profits for the ruling class instead of addressing the crisis in housing, food and public services at home. In the last 10 months we’ve seen the complicity of our government in the production of weapons components that perpetrate the ongoing genocide of occupied Palestine.
The Indo-Pacific Strategy interferes with the autonomy and sovereignty of the Filipino people. Over the next 50 years, Canada’s plans will exacerbate the issues of the labour export policy, foreign military presence and surveillance, environmental destruction, and oppression of the working class, peasants, and Indigenous peoples of the Philippines.
Deceptive objectives:
The Strategy outlines five interconnected strategic objectives: promote peace, resilience, and security; expanding trade, investment and supply chain resilience; invest in and connect people; build a sustainable and green future; and Canada as an active and engaged partner to the Indo-Pacific.
Each one of these goals uses deceptive language to describe a policy aimed as military and geopolitical maneuvering, maintenance of unequal and exploitative economic relations, and propaganda for Western states.
Peace and security for whom?
Military presence consistently results in violence, harassment, and sexual assault of the everyday already vulnerable people, as such with the example of Jennifer Laude who was murdered by a U.S. marine. Expansion of trade and supply chain resilience means ensuring people in rich countries can continue to have access to large quantities of cheap goods produced by poor countries. Investment and connection of people has meant labour export to provide cheap migrant labour in the West.
Sustainable and green futures seem very distant from ensuring opportunities for Canadian mining and logging companies in places like the Philippines or West Papua. Canada being “active and engaged” means ensuring local elites like Marcos Jr. continue to deliver economically to Western companies while repressing domestic movements for political change.