Canada-Europe Free Trade Agreement

Loss of Sovereignty and Public Control

Public Meetings on Threat to Communities Posed by Canada-European Free Trade

Hamilton
Tuesday, September 27 -- 7:00 pm

Hamilton Convention Centre, 1 Summer’s Lane, Albion Room
Featuring: Maude Barlow, National Chairperson, Council of Canadians;
Paul Moist, National President, Canadian Union of Public Employees;
Rolf Gerstenberger, President, USW Local 1005
For poster (PDF), click here.

Windsor
Wednesday, September 28 -- 7:00 pm

Giovanni Caboto Club (Caboto Hall), 2175 Parent Ave.
Featuring: Maude Barlow and Paul Moist
For poster (PDF), click here.
For information: cupe.ca / canadians.org / 1-800-387-7177

Public meetings organized by the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the Council of Canadians to inform of the negative implications of the Canada-European Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) are taking place across the country. The next two are scheduled for Hamilton on September 27 and Windsor on September 28.

Several rounds of CETA negotiations have been held since last year; the next is scheduled for Ottawa at the end of October. The website of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade reports on the present state of negotiations:

"Canada and the European Union (EU) have completed the eighth round of negotiations toward a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. Significant progress continues to be made in key areas, including goods, services, investment, government procurement and many others. The negotiating text is now well-advanced, with a number of chapters closed or parked pending further development, and issues in the remaining chapters narrowed down to key differences where solutions are now being actively explored.

"The parties are committed to resisting protectionist pressures in challenging economic times, and are seeking to achieve an ambitious outcome across all negotiating areas. The Government of Canada has made the CETA negotiations a priority in its international trade agenda and negotiators continue to move the negotiations forward as quickly as possible.

"Both Canada and the EU are committed to maintaining the momentum of the negotiations thus far with the aim of concluding by 2012."

Canadians are already familiar with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) brought in by the Mulroney Conservatives, and the nation-wrecking it continues to cause by making Canada's needs and economy subservient to those of the rapacious U.S. empire and its monopolies. CETA will bring more of the same, but it goes further, exposing municipalities and their delivery of public services to "competition" with European monopolies. It is unacceptable that the affairs of Canada's municipalities be permitted to be privatized and put at the disposal of the monopolies, native or foreign. Canadians have already seen with their own eyes what happens when their public services are privatized. In Toronto, the Mayor is now trying to privatize public services and assets through deals which have been exposed as being for personal gain. For the government of Canada to be doing this as well, using the prerogative of the Prime Minister to negotiate treaties with foreign countries that grossly interfere in provincial and municipal affairs is a very serious matter. Canadians need to be aware of what the government of Canada is up to because it is their birthright which is being systematically whittled away.

The Council of Canadians points out on its website:

"Procurement, or the money our municipalities, school boards, provincial Crown corporations and utilities spend on public contracts, is the EU's first priority in the CETA talks with Canada. If concluded, a deal would ban these public bodies from favouring local or small-business bidders even when the tendering process was completely transparent and fair. The procurement chapter in CETA would remove one of the last remaining tools our local communities have to foster sustainable, local development.

"Services and investment commitments could include promises to liberalize (i.e. encourage more privatization of) drinking water or sanitation services, or to chip away at the relatively weak protections in NAFTA for public health care. They could make it impossible to put local investment conditions on major foreign takeovers such as local production targets in U.S. Steel's takeover of Stelco. The provincial offers we are not allowed to see could also remove foreign ownership caps on so-called strategic industries such as fishing and finance."

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives makes a similar point, adding:

"The exclusion of local purchasing and services from the procurement restrictions of trade treaties [...] has also reduced the risk of litigation and demands for compensation from foreign investors and service providers when privatisation schemes are halted or reversed."

It is important to participate in these meetings, to become informed of the implications of the Canada-EU free trade agreement and join in actions to oppose the government's further sell-out of Canada.

Public Right, Yes! Monopoly Right, No!
Trade for Mutual Benefit, Yes, Not Nation-Wrecking Neoliberal "Free Trade"!

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Europeans Oppose Negative Impact of Trade Deal

Besides the opposition to free trade with Europe in Canada, Europeans are also expressing concern about the clandestine nature of the negotiations and that such an agreement will be a direct attack on various public services in Europe and public health and safety standards.

In a January 18 statement issued by the European organization Seattle to Brussels (S2B), it is pointed out that:

"Using a dispute resolution mechanism under CETA, Canadian businesses would be able to attack policies regulating genetically modified organisms (GMOs) -- which are stricter in Europe than in Canada -- under the pretext that they would be a distortion of trade."

S2B adds that CETA would also reinforce intellectual property rights on patented seeds and hormones used in livestock production. "In this way the Canadian and European biotechnology and agribusiness companies would finally be able to override regulations brought in democratically to ensure public health," the group adds.

Meanwhile, regulations aimed at protecting the environment "would also be open to attack by Canadian and European businesses, given that environmental and social regulations are generally weaker in Canada than in Europe. Market access without regard to the social or environmental impacts is not just a one-way street that benefits European business. The interests of agribusiness, and transnational firms more generally, would prevail over European public interest."

As concerns the issue of privatization, S2B points out that "The EU is today the spearhead of public service privatisation (in telecommunications, postal services, electricity, water distribution, etc.). It sees in the Canadian public markets new opportunities for its big multinationals (e.g. Veolia). CETA threatens to include an extensive interpretation of public services that are targeted for liberalisation and privatisation, since it would automatically cover all public services except those actively listed as exceptions (the negative list approach).

"Moreover, it would be almost impossible for local and national authorities in Europe to roll back liberalisation policies where they find that they have failed (e.g. the remunicipalisation of water services in France), as they would face the threat of action by multinationals to protect their interests through the dispute resolution mechanism."

The S2B statement concludes:

"[U]nderlying this agreement is the ambition to create a vast free trade zone and, as stated in the EU's new trade strategy, to drive an insidious harmonisation of legislation between the USA, Canada and Europe towards a lower level of standards in social protections, environmental regulations, health and safety and other policies. As with other free trade agreements, CETA is being sold on the basis of benefits to the public (e.g. lower prices through competition), while in reality it poses numerous and grave threats to social and environmental standards and protections and public goods in general.

"In view of these threats, the Seattle to Brussels network demands that:

"a) the European Union immediately cease negotiating the CETA.

"b) the European and Canadian governments start public consultations to establish a different basis for future environmental, social and commercial cooperation."

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September 24, 2011 Bulletin • Return to Index • Write to: editor@cpcml.ca