Céline Hervieux-Payette

The Hon. Céline Hervieux-Payette
Senator for Bedford, Quebec
Incumbent
Assumed office March 21, 1995
Appointed by	Jean Chrétien
Preceded by	Paul David
Member of the Canadian Parliament for Mercier
In office 1979–1984
Preceded by	Prosper Boulanger
Succeeded by	Carole Jacques
Personal details
Born	(1941-04-22) April 22, 1941 L'Assomption, Quebec
Political party	Liberal
Cabinet	Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport) (1983-1984) Minister of State (Youth) (1984)
Portfolio	Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General of Canada (1980-1982) Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (2007-2008)

Céline Hervieux-Payette, PC (born April 22, 1941, L'Assomption, Quebec) is the former Leader of the Opposition in the Canadian Senate, and the first woman ever to hold this position.

In the 1970s, Hervieux-Payette served as a political aide to the Quebec government of Premier Robert Bourassa. She also served as an administrator, as president and commissioner of the Le Gardeur School Board, and director of public relations for Steinberg Inc., a Quebec grocery and department store business.

Hervieux-Payette was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the 1979 election as the Liberal Member of Parliament for Mercier. She was re-elected in the 1980 election, and became parliamentary secretary to the Solicitor General of Canada. In 1983, she was appointed by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to the Canadian Cabinet as Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport). She then served as Minister of State (Youth) from January to June 1984.

She was not appointed to the Cabinet of John Turner who succeeded Trudeau as Liberal leader and prime minister in June 1984. She stood as a candidate in the 1984 election, but was defeated.

She returned to the private sector and served as vice-president, business ventures at the SNC Group, an engineering and manufacturing firm, from 1985 to 1989. From 1991 to 1995, she was Vice-President, Regulatory and Legal Affairs for Fonorola Inc., a telecommunications firm. She has been counsellor for Fasken Martineau DuMoulin since 1995.

Hervieux-Payette attempted to re-enter the House of Commons in the 1988 and 1993 elections but was defeated in both attempts. In 1995, she returned to Parliament when she was appointed to the Canadian Senate by Jean Chrétien. She is expected to remain in the Senate until she reaches the mandatory retirement age of 75 in 2016.

As a Senator, Hervieux-Payette has been an outspoken advocate; for example, on May 3, 2006, she asked the Bank of Canada's Governor David A. Dodge how he could sleep at night when he is contemplating raising national interest rates that would increase borrowing costs for the Quebec government.

On 18 January 2007, Hervieux-Payette was appointed Leader of the Opposition in the Senate by Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, whom she had supported during the leadership race. She also became Quebec lieutenant for Stéphane Dion in October 2007.

On November 3, 2008 she was succeeded as Leader of the Opposition by Jim Cowan.

Model Parliament for North America - Regionalism

The Honourable Liberal Senator, Céline Hervieux-Payette is the self-styled "GODMOTHER" of the Model Parliament for North America.[1]

In a document reporting the launch of the Model Parliament for North America in the Senate Chamber of Canada[2] under her auspices in 2005, the Senator is quoted as having this to say:

"As the 'godmother' of this first inter-parliamentary simulation on North American integration, I am delighted to welcome you to the Senate of Canada."[1]

The world or nation states, inherited from the treaties of Westphalia of 1648, seems to be fading in the West. First economic, then financial and now political integration of the countries of Europe gives a strong signal that a new style of regional governance is the way of the future."

The Model Parliament for North America is a project of the North American Forum on Integration (NAFI)[3], the self-appointed planning commission for a continental parliament intended to replace the Parliament of Canada, the Congress of the USA and that of Mexico. Canada, the USA and Mexico are to be merged into an EU-style union under a new, EU-style parliament, eventually linking up with South American Union (UNASUR) signed on 23 May 2008[4], to form an hemispheric union.

Integration is being accomplished via the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP)[5] entered into by former Prime Minister of Canada, Paul Martin, with former U.S. President George Bush and former President of Mexico, Vicente Fox, in March 2005.[6]

However, the SPP is originally a private "initiative" of the multinational corporations forming the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), who launched the idea in 2003.[7] The SPP has been more fully elaborated in a so-called report of an "independent task force" of the CCCE entitled "Building A North American Community"[8][9], the blueprint for an increasingly united continent. The Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE)[10] is a self-appointed private board of multinational corporations supported by the private, US-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)[11], a sister organization[12] of Chatham House[13] in London, England, the latter otherwise known as the Royal Institute for International Affairs, and of which Queen Elizabeth the IInd is the patron.[14] Critics observe that the CFR has controlled US foreign policy for decades, notably by fielding only CFR members into top federal and state posts, both elected and appointed, in the USA, including the office of the President.[15]

As for "North American Union" -- as the merger of North America is commonly called -- Allan Gotlieb, former Canadian Ambassador to the USA declared on video that the events of September 11th, 2001 at the World Trade Center in New York City, were the "provocative agent" for the design of this EU-style "community"[16]. Both critics and proponents of the European Union system have likened it to the "new European Soviet" (Gorbachev)[17] and to "the old Soviet model in western guise" (Vladimir Bukovsky)[18]. CBS reports that "The "New European Soviet": the European Union is rapidly descending into totalitarianism. Under NAFTA and the proposed FTAA, U.S. policymakers have adopted the same socialist EU program" [17]

The Model Parliament for North America, which American activist, Charlotte Iserbyt has called "The North American Soviet Union"[19], has convened annually since 2005, alternating its meeting place among the three North American countries. The Model Parliament draws upon university students from Canada, the USA and Mexico to enact the roles of "legislators", each representing a different state or province of a united North America. As Iserbyt elsewhere notes, "Regionalism is Communism".[20]

It is therefore important to note that the Model Parliament for North America, as conducted from the outset, envisions not a meeting of the federal Parliament of Canada with the federal Congress of the USA and with that of Mexico, but a meeting of the dismantled provinces of Canada with the dismantled states of the USA and Mexico under a new continental parliament.[21] This clearly anticipates termination of the Canadian Constitution and Parliament, abolition of the constitutions and respective congresses of the USA and Mexico, and the re-federation of the Canadian Provinces with the American and Mexican states under a new single EU-style parliament for the North American continent.

The joint questions of the constitutionality of the Model Parliament for North America, the future continental parliament, and the merger of Canada into the USA and Mexico, to eliminate the Constitution of Canada, have yet to come before the Courts of Canada. However, an excerpt from s. 31 of the Constitution Act, 1867 of Canada (previously titled the British North America Act, 1867)[22], suggests some scope for the type of court action that might be expected:

"Disqualification of Senators

31. The Place of a Senator shall become vacant in any of the following Cases:

(2) If he takes an Oath or makes a Declaration or Acknowledgment of Allegiance, Obedience, or Adherence to a Foreign Power, or does an Act whereby he becomes a Subject or Citizen, or entitled to the Rights or Privileges of a Subject or Citizen, of a Foreign Power"

Controversy

Hervieux-Payette caused a stir in March 2006 when she responded to an American couple's letter to all Canadian Senators protesting the annual seal hunt in Newfoundland. The American, Anne McLellan told CTV that their family cancelled plans to vacation in Canada, describing the seal hunt as "appalling". (McLellan, is not to be confused with the former Liberal cabinet minister.)

In her responding letter, Hervieux-Payette wrote that what she finds horrible is "the daily massacre of innocent people in Iraq, the execution of prisoners - mainly blacks - in American prisons, the massive sale of handguns to Americans, and the destabilization of the entire world by the American government's aggressive foreign policy, etc."

She later clarified her remarks, arguing that Americans should worry about their own country's behaviour before pointing fingers at other nations. Opposition Leader Bill Graham later issued a statement saying that the letter "reflect her personal opinions and not those of the Liberal Party of Canada."

On April 23, 2009, Hervieux-Payette unveiled the Universal Declaration on the Ethical Harvest of Seals, seeking support from countries, NGO's and scientists to establish universal standards on seal harvest.

References

[1] http://www.fina-nafi.org/eng/triumvirat/documents/Programme-FINAL-Anglais_000.pdf [Welcome from the Honourable Céline Hervieux-Payette, PC] (backup at http://en.calameo.com/books/00011179021d684c722e6) [2] http://www.fina-nafi.org/eng/triumvirat/default.asp?langue=eng&menu=triumvirat [3] http://www.fina-nafi.org/ [NAFINA - North American Forum on Integration] [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_South_American_Nations [5] http://www.spp.gov - Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) [Archive of the original SPP.GOV site, backed up on 18 September 2010, is available for download at a choice of two url's: [i] http://www.mediafire.com/?qf8ax2bj8ayh8ry -and- [ii] http://www.mediafire.com/file/qf8ax2bj8ayh8ry/SPP-archive-site.zip (Unzipped, the folder is about 19MB.) The "Government of Canada" SPP site is here: English: http://www.spp-psp.gc.ca/eic/site/spp-psp.nsf/eng/home Main entry: http://www.spp-psp.gc.ca/] [6] http://www.spp-psp.gc.ca/eic/site/spp-psp.nsf/eng/h_00003.html [7] http://www.ceocouncil.ca/en/north/north.php [North American Security and Prosperity Initiative (NASPI) January, 2003] [8] http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/NorthAmerica_TF_final.pdf [9] http://www.ceocouncil.ca/en/ [CCCE] [11] http://www.cfr.org/publication/8102/building_a_north_american_community.html [12] http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/about/history/ CFR, sister institute [13] http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/ Chatham House [14] http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/about/council/ (Patron, EII) [15] http://www.prolognet.qc.ca/clyde/cfr.html [16] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oph_HsDVw8w "provocative agent" [17] http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JZS/is_18_20/ai_n25095870/ "When former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev visited Britain in 2000, he accurately described the European Union as "the new European Soviet." Original url: http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/world-mainmenu-26/europe-mainmenu-35/4826-the-qnew-european-sovietq [18] http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/may/09052211.html [19] http://www.newswithviews.com/iserbyt/iserbyt36.htm "The North American Soviet Union" [20] http://www.newswithviews.com/iserbyt/iserbyt13.htm "Regionalism is Communism" [21] http://www.fina-nafi.org/eng/triumvirat/medias.asp?langue=eng&menu=triumvirat [22] http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/const/const1867.html -and- http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/const/index.html

External links

• The Senator Hervieux-Payette's website
• Political biography from the Library of Parliament
• Liberal Senate Forum
• Senator fires back at U.S. family upset with seal hunt