Canada's Uranus-Sun in Cancer in T-Square Lock Down within the Uranus-Pluto Square Series - Part Two

I’ve written about the importance of the upcoming Uranus in Aries – Pluto in Capricorn square series in relation to Canada's corporate chart, as well as this June's Venus Transit in Gemini falling exactly on Canada’s Venus placement:

From March 8, 2012: Canada's Uranus-Sun in Cancer in T-Square Lock Down within the Uranus-Pluto Square Series

Transiting Uranus and Pluto acting intensively on the Uranus-Sun in Cancer in Canada's astrological chart are forging deep, fractious changes in this country while the astrological transits are used by those in positions of power to continue toward a vision that I do not wish to see become a reality in this country. The agenda of the current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, and his government, merged within broader global agenda, lead in a direction that, despite the government's claimed majority, most Canadians do not wish to follow.

Harper-Style Restructuring and Global Governance

In October, 2011, Conservative agriculture minister Gerry Ritz introduced a bill that would strip the Canadian Wheat Board of much of its power, making it a voluntary institution for farmers. Though the bill was challenged in court as illegal, it was passed in December, 2011.

The Canadian Wheat Board was established by Canadian Parliament in 1935 to help offset the devastation of Canada’s farmers by the Great Depression. Since then, the Wheat Board has marketed and sold all the wheat and barley in Canada for Canadian farmers, providing a stable and guaranteed price from year-to-year.

Harper sold the bill as an increase in individual choice for farmers, who can now choose to market and sell their own grain rather than going through the Wheat Board, and it's true that some farmers welcome this - at this point.

In effect, though, what Harper and his government have done is bust the union. Without the collective power the Wheat Board had on the global market with the pool of Canadian wheat and barley, it will likely not be able to secure the same level of prices. The Harper Conservatives’ hog-tying of the Wheat Board at this time leaves both the Board and individual farmers open to the wild fluctuations of price within the global grain market.

Canada’s grain industry has just been served up on a silver platter to multi-national agribusiness.

The global grain market is currently destabilized. From August 8, 2010: Ceres Direct in Sagittarius on Its Way to Pluto in Capricorn and Benefitting Financially From the Starvation of the People After the U.S. mortgage collapse in 2008, investors were looking for a place to move their money. What they found was the relatively stable grain market, and soon grain prices were on the roller coaster that is the derivatives market. Investors were betting on the rise in the price of grain, and as speculation grew, prices rose. As the price of basic grain staples skyrocketed worldwide, people could no longer afford food and began to starve and riot.

Coincidentally, flooding of the world breadbaskets over the past three years, including in the Canadian prairie provinces two years running, has ensured dips in supply (or at least the appearance of dips in supply) in order to further push grain prices up. This year, it will likely be drought creating grain shortages after Canada experienced a surreal winter of record-breaking high temperatures and little snowfall.


- Flooding of farmland near Estevan, Saskatchewan in the spring of 2011 (Photo used with permission) -

For the short-sighted, a single farmer selling his wheat for the inflated prices created by a speculation bubble sounds great - for a year or two. But without the stabilized prices and collective power provided by the Wheat Board, that same farmer will have no protection from the “free” market once prices take a nose dive.

As we are now officially entering a Uranus in Aries square series to Pluto that we last experienced during the Great Depression - complete with wildly destabilized and deregulated markets - now is probably the worst time to reduce the stabilizing clout of the Canadian Wheat Board. Well, it’s the worst time for the country and its farmers. It’s a great time for agribusiness corporations who now find the Canadian grain industry ripe for the plucking and for the manipulating.

Swiss-based commodities trader Glencore PLC and U.S.-based agribusiness corporation Cargill have already been sniffing around Canadian grain handler Viterra in potential takeover position. This follows the hostile takeover bid of the Saskatchewan Potash Corporation (used to make fertilizer) by English-Australian mining corporation BHP Billiton. That takeover bid was blocked by the Feds, though Saskatchewan Liberal MP Ralph Goodale recently called the Harper government negligent for not fulfilling a promise to clarify foreign investment rules after that potash battle. From November 13, 2010: Ceres and Pluto in the Headlines: You Only Want Me For My Potash

Cooperation has always been a major aspect of the survival and success of independent farmers. Now, Harper and his government have set up individual farmers, many blinded by the dollar signs of an inflated, derivatives-fuelled grain market, against huge multi-national corporations. Guess whose interests prevail over the long run in that set-up?

But these prices are going to last forever, right? Just like the housing bubble.

The Canadian housing industry is currently experiencing inflationary real estate prices with most Canadians in urban centres paying more than 50% of their incomes to maintain their mortgages and related costs. Interest rates are being kept unnaturally low to entice new buyers with rates that will often increase after three to five years (sound familiar?). As was the case in the U.S. housing market, which was intentionally set up to collapse and pay off in hedge fund insurance policies, inflated Canadian mortgages are also now being hedged to the teeth.

The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, a Canadian Crown corporation, is currently hedging $541 billion in mortgages, nearing its ceiling of $600 billion. This ceiling was only recently raised from $450 billion in 2008 in response to the mortgage crisis and economic collapses worldwide. The Canadian banks handing out loans for mortgages have now moved en masse to buy CMHC insurance so they can then bundle and sell the mortgages to investors – a practise that was common in the United States in the lead-up to the housing collapse but relatively rare in Canada up to this point.

The Harper Conservatives have floated the idea that, with the release of its upcoming budget March 29, Canadians should get ready for sweeping, transformative changes. We all know what “sweeping, transformative changes” the Global Governor set bring, particularly the neo-conservative branch.

The upcoming budget is being likened to a Brian Mulroney-style vision. Mulroney is the ex-Progressive Conservative Prime Minister who signed the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, one of the first steps in carving up the country, its resources, and its people in offering to One World Government.

Canadians can expect the slash-and-burn erosion of social programs, which has up until now been kept somewhat in check via minority governments, to move into high gear with this budget. From erosion, we move to grand-scale, undemocratic, semi-legal dismantling, as has been seen with the Canadian Wheat Board.

The two-tiered health care system Harper has ushered in will be cemented into place with more privatized care creating one system for the rich and one (underfunded) system for the not-so-rich.

Remaining protection of national industries will be gradually dismantled, opening Canada to more foreign ownership. Resources will be divvied up to the highest international bidder with no view of conservation or stewardship, and water will probably now officially be put on the table.

And of course, the war machine will roll on, mostly unhindered.

Already, Harper is angering the provinces by making unilateral decisions that affect them without consultation. His "tough on crime" bill has dumped billions of dollars in extra costs on the provinces with, of course, little focus on addressing the actual roots and cycles of criminal behaviour.

Harper is also currently working to raise the age of retirement from 65 to 67 to reduce costs - but don't worry, Baby Boomers! This doesn't take effect until 2020 when most of you will be safely on the Old Age Security rolls, so you can keep voting for old Steve. The passing of bucks to the younger generations continues.

The conditions stemming from the orchestrated economic collapses worldwide will be used to implement the vision.

This has been the trajectory for decades, though Bilderberg-approved Harper was unable to fully bring about his part of the Grand Vision within the minority governments he won in 2006 and 2008, and it has been simmering, simmering, biding its time. Now, Harper gets to work the Uranus-Pluto squares to push full speed ahead in choreographed lock-step with the plans being unfurled worldwide. The majority government Harper and his Conservatives won in May, 2011 ensures that Harper is now free to do exactly as he sees fit. The inconvenience of Parliament and the democratic process can officially be shaken off his pant leg, and he can implement the Grand Vision like a good middle manager of the Global Government would.

The hatred and contempt Harper holds for both the Canadian people and Canadian institutions, apparent throughout his stymied run as leader of minority governments, can now come out full force. This is a man used to making unilateral decisions, following the buck, following the global leaders. The will of the people is a quaint concept to “leaders” like him.

Oh, but about that majority.

The Harper Conservatives have one little problem on their hands, one little hitch.

It seems that their majority win is suspect. A scandal is a-brewing. There are calls coming from all corners of Canada for an independent inquiry into the possibility of election fraud.

Tens of thousands of complaints have come in to Elections Canada related to robocalls – automated telephone calls – made on behalf of the Conservative party around the time of last May’s election. The calls gave voters misleading information, telling them their polling stations had been changed.

The Conservatives have pleaded ignorance. Ex-Reform Party leader Preston Manning has spoken out publicly in indignance, too, about this type of fraud - which leads to an interesting connection. Preston Manning was once leader of the uber right-wing Reform Party, which morphed into the uber right-wing Canadian Alliance. Harper became leader of the Canadian Alliance in 2002, forming the Official Opposition in Canadian Parliament. The Canadian Alliance and the slightly more right-of-centre Progressive Conservative parties then merged, and that merger spawned the current Conservative Party, of which Harper is now leader.

On March 5, as Mercury and Uranus formed the initial conjunction in Aries that will be repeated March 18 and April 22, one of Canada’s national newspapers, The Globe and Mail, published a letter from John Fryer, adjunct professor at the University of Victoria’s School of Public Administration, talking about a campaign school he attended in 2010 at the (Preston Manning-founded) Manning Centre for Building Democracy:

“Intrigued, I signed up for the three-day event. Topics covered included voter identification. Discussion ensued about suppression techniques. Instructors explained voter suppression tactics were borrowed from those used by the U.S. Republican Party. Many kinds of suppression calls were canvassed. Another instructor gave detailed explanations of how robocalls worked, techniques for recording messages, plus costs… He distributed his business card upon request.

Instructors made it clear that robocalling and voter suppression were an acceptable and normal part of winning election campaigns.”

During the cardinal Grand Cross of June 2011, Brigette DePape, a young woman participating in the Canadian Senate Page Program, held up a sign during the throne speech that read, “Stop Harper!” In a later interview with CTV, DePape said, "Harper's agenda is disastrous for this country and for my generation."

DePape spoke for the majority of Canadians with this action.

Canada is set up under a form of democracy that is not truly representative of the people's political will. This form of democracy is referred to as “first past the post,” meaning whatever candidate wins the most votes in a riding wins that seat in Parliament. If the Conservatives win 40 percent of votes in a riding, the New Democrats win 35 percent, the Liberals win 20 percent, and the Green Party wins 5 percent, the winner takes all, and it is a Conservative seat, despite the fact that only a minority of people voted Conservative.

A truer form of democracy, proportional representation, uses the total percentages of popular vote to determine the make-up of seats within Canadian Parliament. If you win 40% of the popular vote, you receive 40% of the seats in Parliament.

Considering the merger of the ultra right-wing Canadian Alliance with the generally more moderate Progressive Conservatives, my guess is that even some conservative-minded people within that party do not support the current Harper agenda. What this man, what this government, what all the lock-step governments worldwide are steamrolling ahead with is disastrous. It’s happening at both warp-speed (Uranus in Aries), before Canadians can really get their minds wrapped around what is going on, and also as a slow motion train wreck unfolding before our eyes (Pluto in Capricorn).

And again, the awareness and sustained action of the people who oppose these agenda is required and will be required acutely throughout the Uranus-Pluto square series.