I recently joined the Facebook group of CANZUK International (https://www.canzukinternational.com/), the group that purportedly is striving for closer relations between, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Of course, these countries have a lot in common, a shared history, similar cultures, common legal traditions and exactly the same head of state. It is only logical that these countries, with so much in common, should be involved in the closest possible cooperation.
In our current age of globalisation, I would see an even closer relationship than that envisioned by CANZUK International to be desirable. We are so close as countries that we should band together to be a single country. It is impossible for nations to become closer than Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. If the people of our four democratic nations are to be heard on the increasingly important world stage then we must unite together and combine our compatible institutions as a matter of existential necessity.
However, one thing about CANZUK International that is concerning is one of the aspects of its mission statement (https://www.canzukinternational.com/our-mission). The bullet points are good, what reasonable person could possibly object to principles such as Freedom of Movement, Free Trade, Foreign Policy Co-operation, Constitutional Affairs, and Civil Liberties. The glaring issue of concern relates to freedom of movement, which CANZUK International makes a conditional right. Of course a conditional right is not a right of any worth as it can be removed at the whim of the powerful.
The CANZUK International mission statement states:
“Although freedom of movement exists for citizens of these countries, there is an exclusion provision for those deemed to be a threat to the national interest.”
What on Earth is the ‘national interest’, and who decides what this nebulous term means. This is a glaring hole and a weakness in CANZUK International’s plan of action. How can anyone get behind the idea of a conditional ‘freedom’? For instance, if people from all the CANZUK members got together to create united parties that would contest elections across the CANZUK area, then they could be deemed to be operating against what some my regard as the ‘national interest’. They could be against the interests of an privileged and empowered elite group that regarded itself capable of defining the ‘national interest’. That elite group would then assume it had licence to disrupt the activities of those parties and restrict the movement of its members and therefore its ability to organise.
With that one restriction, external international bodies such as the World Economic Forum or other privately organised international regimes have the ability to subvert the democracy of a united CANZUK state and the ability of its people to articulate its wishes on the international stage. This is significant because a CANZUK Parliament should be founded on democratic principles and the united will of the people.
cjknowles1972 