Editor’s note: This transcription of a The Canada Files’ Speaker Series episode is a one-off, originally posted on her Patreon. We hope you enjoy reading it!

Interview done by: Camila Escalante, host of TCF’s Speaker Series

One of Canada's most outspoken voices for peace, Tamara Lorincz, joined Camila Escalante to discuss the severe environmental impacts of the Canadian military, her recent visit to Russia to peacebuild and the urgent need to stop the NATO proxy war and immediately disband NATO. Below is a transcript of the interview for The Canada Files’ Speaker Series, which can be watched here.

Camila Escalante: Hello, I'm Camila Escalante, host of The Canada Files Speaker Series, a show where we introduce critical perspectives at people challenging Canadian foreign policy. Today, our guest is Tamara Lorincz. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of International Affairs at Wilfred Laurier University and a member of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Canada, and a fellow with the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute. Thank you so much for being with us today, Tamara.

Tamara Lorincz: Thank you very much for having me, Camila.

Camila Escalante: I'm so glad to be able to speak to you. I think you are possibly the first Canadian guest who I suggested that we interview because I heard you speak to Eva Bartlett. It was largely about your experience traveling to Russia, and Canada and Russia. I heard so many of the things you spoke about and then when I looked into your background, I saw that you actually been involved in different campaigns and activism on a number of issues having to do with Canada and foreign policy. So thanks again so much for for giving us some time to speak to you. I was hoping that you could start us off with a little bit of an introduction about yourself and how you got involved in some of the different things you do. Give us a brief introduction into how into a brief introduction on your journey and what brought you to where you are now.

Tamara Lorincz: Thanks very much for this interview. I guess my journey really started as an environmentalist and as a feminist. I was active in the environmental movement in Victoria, British Columbia, and I realized that one of the worst polluters in the country is the military. And then I started to become very concerned about the military's impact on the environment and the climate.

And I also became very concerned about the fact that the military is really a male dominated patriarchal institution of state violence that is not only harming the environment, it's causing a lot of harm around the world. I started to pay close attention to Canadian foreign policy when Canada was engaged in the NATO's bombing operation against the former Yugoslavia in 1999.

Canada and other NATO allies bombed civilian infrastructure, killed civilians, and led to the breaking up of the former Yugoslavia. It was an illegal operation and it set in motion subsequent illegal NATO operations that have caused so much death and destruction and damage all over the world. I realized, too, as an environmentalist, that we are not going to be able to achieve the the commitments that we've made to the UN framework Convention on Climate Change to try to avert catastrophic climate change if we are investing in carbon intensive militarism and weapons procurement. So I decided that I was going to try to combine my concerns of women's rights and equality, my interests and concerns around feminism, my concerns about the environment and my concerns about peace together. So I'm working now on a Ph.D. at Wilfrid Laurier University in the Balsillie School of International Affairs.

I'm looking at the problem of military emissions and global global climate governance. Military emissions are exempted from the national reduction targets. They are not fully and transparently reported. Countries, especially the NATO countries, are investing in carbon intensive weapons systems like new fleets of F-35 fighter jets or diesel powered warships or very carbon intensive tanks that are locking us into this to this fossil fuel powered militarism that is diverting resources away from investing in climate action and mitigation and adaptation, and also depriving us of the resources that we need to work collaboratively on dealing with this global challenge.

So I started making these connections and wanting to work on them as an activist and as an academic.

Camila Escalante: I think the research that that you're doing and all of that work is particularly interesting. We're going to come back to it a little bit later. I wanted to talk a little bit, since this is my first opportunity, to jump in on it about some of the things that have been in the headlines in Canada and internationally because of what took place recently in the parliament.

Yaroslav Hunka, who fought against the Russians along with other Nazis, was honored in the Canadian parliament during Zelensky's visit, he was honored by Prime Minister Trudeau and everyone essentially who was there in the chamber and afterwards there was this huge fall out. Everyone in there pretended as if they weren't somehow aware of the history. It almost seems as if from the exterior, it seems like Canadians don't know history and they don't know that those who fought against the Russians would have necessarily been fighting on the side of the Nazis during that war. I've also been listening a little bit to the coverage today, this morning I was listening to CBC Radio and some other some other news reporting.

It does seem like the media is trying to downplay it and say that everything is calming down, that no one is really talking about it anymore. But I think people are talking about it and they do need to talk about it, because as I saw that you tweeted as well, it wasn't just that this person was honored in the parliament, it was also that the University of Alberta had an endowment named after Hunka and his wife for the amount of $30,000. And there are probably other similar scholarships and funds that are given to students are provided for these universities in the name of different people who played a similar role as him collaborating with the Nazis. There are also, of course, monuments, at least two of them in Canada. And so I think it's really important to talk about Canada and Ukraine.

The funny thing is that what Trudeau and his ministers have said is that we need not to ‘fall into Russian propaganda’ at this time. But in fact, Canada’s welcoming of of Nazi collaborators is something that was documented in the mainstream Canadian press over several years. You can also find articles on Canada's training of Azov battalion, soldiers in outlets like the Ottawa Citizen and CTV, CBC, among many others. So it's really not coming from Russia. It's coming from reality, as reported by Canadian media, but many others. Tell us a little bit on what your reaction has been to everything that's taken place in the news. You can also get into what Canada claims that it's doing by supporting NATO's war against Russia, that proxy war using Ukraine.

Tamara Lorincz: So there's a few issues here but let's begin with Friday, when President Zelensky came to the Canadian parliament to give an address and the the entire House of Commons was packed, the gallery all of the seats, senators were there, other dignitaries, members of the public, it was absolutely packed.

While Zelensky was there, there were twelve standing ovations given to him, as well as a standing ovation for a guest in the gallery and this was Yaroslav Hunka, who was a resident in the riding of the speaker of the House, Anthony Rota, in northern Ontario. I was following I was following the Zelensky's visit to Canada very closely because I wanted to find out what the Canadian government would announce while he was here.

And sure enough, Prime Minister Trudeau announced that Canada would give another $650 million to prolong this war in Ukraine by giving more weapons to the government. As I was following the news about this, I noticed that Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, who is a Ukrainian Canadian political scientist at the University of Ottawa, had said on his Twitter feed that the man that was was cheered on in the gallery, Yaroslav Honka is actually a veteran of the Waffen SS Division 14 Division Galicia, so he served under the Nazi regime in Ukraine during the Second World War. This is this is a division, the Galicia division, that is implicated in killing Poles and Jews and and other people, other civilians in Poland and Ukraine during the Second World War.

So these were war crimes that were committed and I trust very well Dr. Ivan Katchanovski's work. People should be following him online because he is an expert in Ukrainian military history and especially an expert on the far right in Ukraine. So I immediately put out a tweet that said I did not support I do not stand for what the Canadian government is doing in the House of Commons by giving more money and weapons to Ukraine, honoring a Nazi collaborator. I wanted to let the world know that I it not in my name. I do not stand for this. My tweet as well got circulated widely and and and this public pressure from all of the social media spreading around the world, letting the world know. I said, dear world, you know, the Canadian house of Commons has just honored a Nazi collaborator.

People started to become very concerned, but I have been concerned for many years because our deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, has been one of the greatest cheerleaders for this war in Ukraine. Her background is very circumspect. Her grandfather was also a Nazi collaborator. He was he was an editor for a pro-Nazi newspaper in Poland and helped disseminate Nazi propaganda in the region.

Freeland as well, is very close to a far right organization, a Ukrainian organization called the UCC, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. And this is comprised of members of the Ukrainian diaspora in this country that are, you know, very sympathetic to Ukrainian right-wing positions. They're very Russophobic, and they have been very supportive of this of this NATO's proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

I have a friend named Richard Sanders who is with an organization called COPE - Canadian Canadians to Oppose the Arms Trade. He did a publication about four years ago about far right extremists from Ukraine and other Eastern European countries like Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. He wrote about the concern of these groups strengthening, expanding in the country and his publication was really important and a warning. Through that publication you can go to a campaign to oppose the arms trade in Canada, CODE, and you can find this publication on light by Richard Sanders. He also talks about this history of Canada welcoming Nazi collaborators after the Second World War, not only from Ukraine, like members of this Waffen SS Division, not only like members of Chrystia Freeland’s family and her grandfather, who was a Nazi sympathizer, but also these Nazi collaborators from Eastern Europe, from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Lev Golinkin who is an American Ukrainian journalist just did an interview where he said that one of the reasons why the Canadian government brought in these very violent Eastern European Nazis into the country, one of the reasons why was because they were used by the Canadian government was to break strikes and to challenge the labor movement in Canada. It was an it was a way to weaken the labor movement.

And if you look at at newspapers from across Canada, for instance, in Manitoba and in Alberta and in Ontario, you can see that these immigrants from Eastern Europe who were collaborating with the Nazis were involved in some terrorist activities in the country against labor, against social movements, against communist movements. They were used as a way to suppress the labor movement and the communist movement in this country.

So Canadians need to confront this history, and we need to have a truth and reconciliation process about why we failed to deport these people, to hold these people to account, why we started them. Maybe the last story that I'll share with you, because I saw this evening with my own eyes when I was in Riga, Latvia, last last November looking at Canada's NATO operations in the country.

I went to the War Museum in the capital, and in that museum on the top floor is a display of the Latvians who left the country to come to Canada. And there is a picture in the display that shows the Latvians in Toronto in 1969 having a big party there, all dressed up in their tuxedos and behind them on the wall is a big swastika.

So the Canadian government knew these people were Nazis, allowed them to work in this country, allowed them to live here, allowed them to to be unaccountable for the things that they supported and did during the Second World War and Canadians need to face this reality.

Camila Escalante: Yeah, absolutely. You have been one important voice among a few, I would say, who've spoken about Canada's past, and you were able to do so in part because, as you said, you took this trip last year to Russia and Eastern Europe for a fact finding mission of your own, which I think is very important.

Why don't you expand a bit on what it is you found, the places you went and how it's related to Canada's role in the past. And also and also how that's connected to Canada now participating in this war.

Tamara Lorincz: Last November, I was in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, to attend the climate summit, COP 27. I realized as I was planning that trip that I would be able to get a direct flight from Cairo to Moscow. Right now there is a travel advisory, a ban from the federal government dissuading Canadians from going to Russia and there are no flights that you can take directly from Canada to Russia. You have to go through another country like like Egypt, for instance, which isn't part of the sanctions.

I wanted to meet people, to understand this conflict because I am convinced, like Dr. Steven F Cohen was convinced, that it's really the United States, Canada, other NATO countries; this is a NATO's proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. The last book that Steven Cohen wrote before he died in 2019 was called War with Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate.

And it's a really important book. And it was a warning. I have been following his work for many years and he was one of those rare American experts on US-Russia relations. He could speak Russian. He had gone to Russia many times. So I wanted to follow in his footsteps. I also wanted to follow in the footsteps of members of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace.

There was a delegation of very brave women who, at the height of the Cold War, went to Russia and wanted to reach out and to make friends and to meet with Russian women, mothers, and tried to stop the nuclear weapons escalation and the Cold War. I am so concerned about the climate crisis that I see that this war in Ukraine is impeding progress on the Paris Agreement.

It's causing all of this military spending and carbon intensive militarism. But I want to do what I can to try to end it. So I decided that after I was finished at the climate summit that I would go on a fact finding mission. I went to Russia, Finland, Latvia, Poland and Romania and I went with the motivations of people to people diplomacy, finding ways to engage in peacebuilding, to learn more about the conflict in Ukraine, to learn more about how climate change is impacting these countries, and then also to find ways to make peace.

When I was on the plane from Cairo to Moscow, because I had been propagandized my entire life against Russia, I had actually a lot of anxiety on the plane. I was expecting maybe the people to be not very friendly and helpful and the the city to be very austere, very like Soviet gray style. But I was I was so impressed from the minute that I touched down to the airport in Moscow until I left the country on a bus from Saint Petersburg and to Finland, I had an absolutely incredible experience.

The people are so warm, friendly and helpful. The infrastructure is modern and beautiful. The culture is so inspiring and amazing. The art galleries, the museums, the parks, the public transit is so far superior to the public transit in Canada. It was a dream. I just couldn't believe how beautiful the metro stations were in Moscow.

I don't speak a word of of Russian. I had very few contacts in in the country, and so I had to get around myself. But I was able to easily navigate the system. I was able to get help from people along the way. They were so friendly and nice and pointing me in the right direction. Many of the young people can speak English and I just couldn't believe.. high speed rail from from the airport into the city, from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, in beautiful cars with gourmet food. I couldn't even eat enough of the gourmet food on the high speed rail train that I was supposed to from Moscow to Saint Petersburg that the attendants on the train ended up giving me a doggy bag, filling up a bag with food because I hadn't eaten enough.

And it was inexpensive. It was affordable. I was impressed with every aspect of Russian society. They are a country of a very proud people. They have a shared, tragic history, in the Second World War, about 27 million Russians were killed by the Nazis. They are very concerned about NATO's expansion to their border. They're very concerned about NATO's countries training, funding, supporting neo-Nazi groups and militias in Ukraine who were who had who had killed their family members because the Russian people have many family members in eastern Europe.

They have family members in Ukraine, in Estonia and Latvia, Lithuania, also in Romania, all throughout the region. There are these family and friend ties between the people. And so the Russian speaking minority in Ukraine with family members back in the country, they had been they had been greatly harmed. I learned about this aspect of the war that's hidden by the mainstream media and by the federal government in Canada.

I was so impressed with the Russian culture. Like I said, the sculptures, the painting, the history, the heritage building. I went to St Petersburg as well and I met with many activists. I talked to as many people as I could. I should go back to say that when I was in the capital, when I was in Moscow, I reached out to a university to MGIMO university, which is considered the most prestigious university in the country for international relations. I asked to be able to meet with students and the administration. There were very kind. They organized a seminar for me. It was packed with students and with faculty. We had a really great exchange, a really good dialogue. I was in Russia to find out ways to, like I said, to peace build because we cannot have another Cold War.

I ended my trip in Saint Petersburg and I went to it's absolutely gorgeous city. It's stunning. The buildings are incredible. The Hermitage Museum, the largest museum in the world, it's an absolutely stunning country and I encourage everybody to go because we need to build peace with Russia. We need to build peace with with all countries on the planet.

Then I went I took a bus because all of the public transit, like the trains and the flights have been stopped between Eastern Europe and Russia, so they can no longer take trains. There used to be for high-speed per day from St Petersburg to Helsinki, there are many close ties again between the Finnish people and the Russian people and this new militarized border.

And the fact that Finland has joined NATO's is is devastating to the people. My contacts in Finland said that it was totally anti-democratic and that the Finnish government railroaded in. There was no real debate in the Finnish parliament and the people did not want this. So they are very unhappy about this because it is causing a severing of these close relationships. There were cultural exchanges, music and art and language exchanges and families used to cross the border constantly, every day, all day long. Now there are these border guards and it's becoming very militarized. It's like a new Iron Curtain is falling. And I'm refusing to accept this. I'm refusing to participate in this new Cold War. I'm refusing to agree to contribute to a new Iron Curtain.

I am going to build peace. I am going to dismantle it. I am going to challenge it in the best way that I can. And I think we all should, because we cannot have a new Cold War. So I went to Finland, I talked it with activists there. Then I went to Latvia and I went to go and see Canada's big NATO's operation just outside of the capital, Riga.

Maybe if we have a couple of minutes, I'll just tell people very quickly that Canada is leading a NATO battle group in Camp Adazi just outside of Riga. It's about a half an hour car ride and I was there and I brought my sign that said NO to NATO, Yes to Peace and Cooperation! I had this pink sign and I held it everywhere I went, the embassy and all of the countries that I was in and I stood out underneath the Canadian embassy with my sign, I let everybody know that I was opposed to now contributing to this new Cold War. That is what they are doing by militarizing the region. Canada with our military is is creating a new NATO's Iron Curtain.

It's militarizing the region. We have a thousand soldiers leading a natal battle group at this Camp Darcy. When I was there, I delivered a letter to the commander, said, I do not support this. What Canada is doing. We should be building cultural exchanges, not military, on Russia's border. And while I was standing there at Camp Adazi with my sign, I could hear the shooting and the shelling in the forest.

The Canadian military has contributed to the destruction of the Latvian forest, and if you look at aerial photos, you'll see because we are leading a tank brigade there, the tanks have decimated the forest. They have crushed it. The trees are gone, the land is scarred. And this, you know, this again, shows how militarism is so environmentally destructive. Now Latvia has lost a carbon sink and Latvia is experiencing the adverse impacts of climate change. The whole region is.

Then I went to Poland and to Romania, and maybe there's so much to say, but maybe what I will end by saying that when I was in Warsaw, this was at the end of my trip, I had a really profound experience. I met with a group of Ukrainians. These were young men who fled the country because they did not want to fight. These are Ukrainian men from both sides of the contact line, from western Ukraine and from eastern Ukraine and they left the country. They have families. They said we want to work, we want to care for our families. We don't want to fight each other. We want this war to end. And so that is the message that I heard. The people in the region want this war to end because it is causing hardship throughout the region. There are sanctions; they can't go and see their families anymore. The costs are going up. There were there were businesses in Latvia that didn't even have enough money to run their lights or to be able to stay open for very long. So and people are are struggling to make ends meet. Poverty is on the rise.

So we've got to do what we can to to end this war. So that's why I wanted to go to learn to learn more about the region, to learn more about the harm that NATO's is doing there. Find out how we can try to build peace. I just encourage people to go themselves and do whatever they can.

Camila Escalante: I’m really glad that you got the opportunity to go to all those different places and hear from people and share this with us. I've heard other people express similar findings when they went and I think it's really important as well for me, even though I cover Latin America, to hear those different views.

I'm based in Latin America, of course, this is what I cover and the things I report on. But I was recently in Canada. I went to a couple of places, but I was last there a couple months ago and in fact, talking to a lot of friends and activists. Based on the media and from the outside, it does kind of seem like there is full support across the political spectrum and among Canadians or for support for that war. But there actually isn't. I think that these sorts of views are just really severely underrepresented. And it's very difficult to speak out against Canadian foreign policy, against the media. Of course, it's always been like this, but specifically in recent years, it can be difficult to speak against the mainstream when it’s so in favor of Ukraine and in favor of this this attack on Russia.

But I do think that Canadians have some criticisms in line with some of the things you said. The cost of living is getting difficult, people have concerns or at least are beginning to raise serious questions as to why we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars every couple of months to send weapons to Ukraine. They’re asking why we're getting so involved in something that from the perspective of a working class Canadian, shouldn't have a direct impact on our daily lives. We should be looking at our government (not Russia’s). We should be concerned about things that are happening in our country. Why are we so involved in something overseas?

I do think people are raising these questions. We just finished a high level week at the U.N. General Assembly and I've heard you remark before about the way in which we just are so accustomed to hearing these empty speeches by Canada, for example, which talks about being such an environmentally-friendly country. I believe Canada was among the countries that was included in a special invite breakout meeting on the invitation of Antonio Gutierrez for being a country that works to combat climate change. It's completely false and absurd. With all of the discourse about Canada's work in combating climate change, it doesn't actually mention the ways in which the military contributes, for example with the amount of fuel that’s used to operate these military aircraft. Tell us a bit about about what you have found in that regard.

Tamara Lorincz: In just the past 18 months, Canada has spent $9 billion to to prolong this this war in Ukraine, $9 billion. Canada spends only $1 billion for climate financing. This is money that the wealthy Western countries committed to giving to developing countries for climate adaptation.

Canada gives $1 billion a year for that fund and it is woefully underfunded. The needs are very great and in fact, the 31 countries of NATO have never met the $100 billion pledge for climate finance. But they have they have increased annually their military budgets by over $200 billion since the Paris Agreement in 2015. So military spending for the native countries combined has gone from about $890 billion in 2015 to last year being $1.2 trillion.

This and the 31 countries of NATO's account for 60% of global military spending. All the native countries, including Canada, have been engaged in this fossil fuel powered war-making, the bombing of Libya, for instance, in 2011, bombing Syria and Iraq from 2014 to 2019, and then this new NATO's proxy war in Ukraine, we could have averted this crisis in Ukraine with diplomacy.

But do you know our government refused to even meet with with the Russian government before February 2022. The media in Canada started beating the drums of war in the fall of 2021. I actually sent a complaint to CBC to say, ‘why aren't you doing your job to give a balanced and comprehensive overview about the conflict that is starting to sizzle in Ukraine?’

I became so concerned actually, Camila, that in December of 2021, when I realized that the Canadian government was not meeting with the Russian counterparts, even though there was an open invitation from Moscow. The drums of war were beating louder, I called a meeting with Canadian peace activists and Ukrainian contacts that I have in the country, and we had a strategy meeting December 2021, because I said I'm very concerned that there is going to be escalation to a war.

Then in January 2022, Canada sent Special forces to Ukraine and a electronic warfare unit to Latvia, a warship to the Mediterranean, and more ammunition to Ukraine. This was a month before. But Canadians also need to appreciate that we have been arming and training Ukrainian forces since we started Operation Unifier, a military operation in 2015, and then in 2017, we started flooding Ukraine with weapons.

So we have been instigating this. We have been instigating this conflict for the past eight years, and it could have been averted with diplomacy. But instead, the Canadian government wanted this war, even though they knew that it would lead to to the death of Ukrainians and Ukrainian and Russian soldiers and civilians and to this devastation of the environment and now this derailing of the Paris Agreement.

Canada has contributed to the failure of progress on the Paris Agreement. We are supposed to have our emissions in the next seven years by 2030 so that we can try to limit global mean temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. We are supposed to invest massively in upscaling, renewable energy, greening buildings, public transportation. But instead, in January of this year, Canada announced a $70 billion investment in a new fleet of fossil fuel powered fighter jets in July of this year, 3.6 billion for a new flight fleet of strategic aerial tankers. These are the fuels that provide fuel in the sky for the fighter jets. We are going to be spending upwards of $5 billion for new armed drones and Hellfire missiles. All of this is contributing to destructive extractivism and to carbon intensive militarism. And all of this is derailing our ability to decarbonize.

So it's because of this war-making and this rising militarism and Canada’s military spending, that Canada is not going to achieve its climate targets.

In fact, Canada has never met any of its targets under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. We are one of the most polluting countries historically and one the most polluting countries today, so Canadians need to confront that. If we are serious about trying to have a safe climate for our future generations to have environmental sustainability, we have to demilitarize. We have to stop the wars, and we have to start closing down the military bases and start saying no to fossil fuel weapons systems. We have to start cooperating with Russia and China.

Because I will add one other important thing that I think is just so crucial for everybody to know: In March of this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out with their sixth assessment report about the state of the climate. And though it didn't say anything about military emissions and emissions from wars and conflict, it did say that in order for us to achieve ambitious climate action, we have to have global cooperation. That means we have to lay down the weapons and we have to partner with Russia and China and every single country on this planet to have a have a a healthy planet and a safe future for our children.

Camila Escalante: Those are all really important points, absolutely. That's where the conversation needs to go in Canada, this call for Canada to actually cooperate with Russia and China rather than being at odds with them. Of course, the United States is always looking at Canada to incite new hostilities, new aggression, if not worst, against several of its official enemy countries, including China. So I think these these demands are really important: Demilitarizing, closing the bases, stop the sending of weapons and Canada out of NATO.

Tell us a little bit about what you believe NATO's represents. What is the demand with regards to Canada and NATO? What should Canadians be calling for in that regard? Because we're talking about a specific conflict that's ongoing that could intensify, but we could also get involved in yet another parallel war or some other conflict where Canada begins sending weapons to to even more areas of the globe.

Tamara Lorincz: Well, let me preface by saying that I have been a climate activist for for more than 25 years.

I organized my first climate rally over 23 years ago, calling on Canada to join the Kyoto Protocol. From all of my climate activism, all of my environmental work that I have done, I have come to the conclusion that NATO is the greatest threat to the climate and to the environment because it is the largest US-led military alliance and it is so environmentally destructive and really so murderous.

If we are serious about protecting the planet and protecting people, we have to call for the abolition of NATO. That means we need to have Canada withdraw from NATO and we need to be working for its dismantling because we cannot sustain this carbon intensive militarism and have a safe climate. It is just not possible. Fighter jets, warships, tanks and military operations, military bases, military landing strips.

This is all so carbon-intensive and it's just not sustainable. You know, because of our membership in NATO, we are now spending $39 billion on our military. Canadians can go and look at the latest NATO defense expenditures report and see the rise of our military spending over the past nine years. We've gone from in 2014, we spent $20 billion and we've increased it 95%. Now we are spending $39 billion. And in order to remain NATO, we have to have interoperable weapons systems and we need to constantly upgrade them, buy new systems, and then we have to partner with NATO allies on all of these really destructive and destabilizing operations. Right now, Canada has military officers in in Jordan and in Iraq. We've got a NATO mission in Iraq. Iraq is not part of the North Atlantic region. It's not in Europe. Why are we in Iraq? Canadians need to question that in Iraq—why do we want to militarize further Iraq? Iraqis and other countries in the Middle East are suffering from catastrophic climate change with heat waves and with drought and with dust storms and sandstorms.

Why are we militarizing Eastern Europe when Eastern Europe is is suffering with climate change? Russia is suffering with wildfires in their boreal forest, just as we are suffering with wildfires in our boreal forest. We’re the other lung. Russia and Canada comprise the other lung of the planet. Many people say that the Amazon is is the “lung of the planet”.

But lungs come in two and the Amazon is for the southern hemisphere; the northern hemisphere, the boreal forest and the Arctic are these really precious ecosystems; the forest and ocean that Canada and Russia share. We should be working on protecting these regions instead of militarizing. Instead, because of NATO, Canada spending $36.8 billion and also for our commitments with NORAD to militarize the Arctic with new bases and new naval ports for the new fleet of fighter jets and the new fleet of warships that Canada is building.

None of this is contributing to helping the climate and helping decarbonize. It's doing the exact opposite. It's further entering a conflict with other countries, especially with Russia and China, and it's preventing us from cooperating.

Camila Escalante: You make an extremely strong and important plea and I think that with everything that's going on, I would really hope that Canadians, people in Canada begin to pay a little closer attention to what our role in all of this is, what the role of our government and military has been, what we're actually paying for at our own expense and the expense of the planet and people all over the world.

I wanted you to now give us a little bit of an overview of this global week of action that's going to begin this weekend. Why is it so important for Canadians to activate?

Tamara Lorincz: Yes. So, in June I was in Vienna for the International Summit for Peace in Ukraine and there were over 300 people from around the world that came, working together to try to find a way to end this tragic war in Ukraine that has adverse global ramifications.

An outcome from that international summit for peace in Ukraine was this this a call for a global mobilization to end the war in Ukraine from September 30th until October 8th.

Now, this has been called by groups like the International Peace Bureau, CodePink, among many other groups. In Canada, we are going to have a week of action to end the war in Ukraine.

We're calling it from October 1st to October 8th. We want to ensure that we set aside September 30th, which is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. Our organizer and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Canada and the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, we are part of an umbrella organization called the Canada Wide Peace and Justice Network, and we are working together with about 45 peace groups across the country on having this week of action.

From from Sunday until Sunday, we are going to be having rallies in cities across the country from Victoria, Vancouver, Regina, Ottawa, Toronto, Waterloo, where I am, and Montreal. There's about 20 cities that are participating. We're going to be out in public on the streets with our banners and signs saying ‘ceasefire now negotiations, we want peace and stop sending weapons and start talking and start to using diplomacy’. People can go to our website (PeaceandJusticeNetwork.ca) to find out details about when a rally is taking place close to them.

Then we are going to end our week of action with a webinar on Sunday, October 8th at 4 p.m. Eastern time. We are having Jacques Baud, who was a former senior Swiss military intelligence officer. He was seconded by the Swiss military to serve in with NATO's in Ukraine on small arms and light weapon. He's an expert who speaks several languages; an expert on military intelligence and Eastern Europe. He's written a number of books. His latest book is called The Ukraine Between War and Peace. His other book that I read, which is just absolutely astounding, everyone should read it, is called Operation Z: The Hidden Truth of the War in Ukraine Revealed.

He recently retired. He knows that NATO governments, including the Canadian government and the mainstream media, are not telling the full truth about the war in Ukraine. He knows really what's going on and he put out these exceptional books, providing more information: Information that's being suppressed by our governments and by our media about what's really going on with this conflict in Ukraine and how it really is a NATO proxy war and why it is so crucial for people to call for the disbanding of NATO.

Next year will be the 75th anniversary of NATO and peace groups already are working to to oppose it. That will be July of 2024. I am going to do everything I can to be in Washington, DC, to be in solidarity with peace activists from around the world who will be converging then as well to call for ‘NO to NATO, Yes to Peace!’

As part of our message for our week of action in Canada, October 1st to 8th is also to call for ‘No to NATO, yes to peace and cooperation’.

I urge everyone to get involved.

Camila Escalante: That’s a very important anniversary for people to get involved in. That, in addition to the calls for Canada to exit NATO at the very least.

Thank you so much, Tamara. Is there anything else that you are working on that you would like to share with us and how or where can people find your work?

Tamara Lorincz: I will just end by saying that last year in an interview, the former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, gave an interview where he said that the greatest threat to world peace and security is NATO, and how global movements need to come to to end this US-led war machine.

I think that it's absolutely vital for environmentalists to join us in the peace movement to work for the ending of war.

I also want to give a shout out, of course, to Julian Assange, who remains in prison in the UK for exposing the lies of the US government and the war crimes committed, not just by the United States but other NATO countries, including Canada. There needs to be accountability for all of this harm that Canada has done in the world.

I encourage people to get involved in a local peace group. They're welcome to become members of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace or the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Canada. You can find a list of the peace groups at PeaceandJusticeNetwork.ca.

I will end by saying that I have a piece coming out on Iran and how the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the CBC, has been misleading Canadians about about an Iranian guest that they frequently have on their shows; using this guest as a way to turn the Canadian public against Iran and to set the stage for an escalation against the Islamic Republic of of Iran. We need to make peace with Iran. We need to end the sanctions. We need to make peace with Russia and with China and to end the sanctions. Canadians need to learn how to cooperate with other countries.

Camila Escalante: Thank you so much. It will be really great to hear more about that piece. That's a very important additional point that Canada is pursuing all sorts of hostility and this sanctions war against many countries, but particularly Islamic Republic of Iran, with Canada introducing new rounds of sanctions every couple of months. Sanctions which of course target the population and make it very difficult for everyday people in the country. They are not simply ‘targeted’ against high level officials of the government as Ottawa claims. Sanctions actually make life very difficult for people, as I know, because I've lived in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.

Your work is very important in denouncing the way in which this is covered by the media, particularly the CBC, but in all Canadian mainstream media which collaborates with the government in disseminating the Trudeau administration's line on these various issues while trying to sow resentment for these countries and their peoples, who we should be cooperating with, not going to war with.

Thank you so much. I know you're a busy person and it was wonderful to be able to finally speak with you and hear about some of the things you're working on.

Tamara Lorincz is a Ph.D. candidate at Wilfred Laurier, also a member of a number of peace organizations and initiatives, of course, including the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Canada, and also a fellow with the friendly Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.

Thank you so much for being with us today.

Tamara Lorincz: Thank you very much for having me. Thanks for your work.

Editor’s note: Introducing Operation 135, The Canada Files’ campaign to go from 65 to 200 consistent financial supporters. The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.

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Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah has broken numerous stories, including how the Canadian Armed Forces trained neo-Nazi "journalist" Roman Protasevich while he was with the Azov Battalion, and how a CIA front group (the NED) funded the group (URAP) which drove the "Uyghur genocide" vote in parliament to pass in February 2021. Jonah recently wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.

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