ecoLIVING London

This article is about trade agreements. Stop! Don’t yawn. I heard that. Don’t click out of here just yet. We are about to explore the mechanism mega corporations need to expand their presence in our communities. Maybe you already know.

Free Trade Agreements, contrary to their name, are not about freedom or things being free. The term free comes from the world view they are written from -- the capitalist free market. This style of capitalism is not the kind that creates healthy economies but the type that recently took down Italy. Agreement does not translate to a deepening of relationships between citizens of the countries though the rhetoric used would have us think so. If that were the purpose, wouldn’t they be written with our input and not behind closed doors? CETA, the latest and most aggressive trade agreement to hit Canada, has been created behind closed doors, even without the eyes of our federally-elected members of NDP, Green, Liberal and Bloc parties in the know. Have you even heard of it yet?

Since trade agreements were enacted in North American in the late 80’s, we have seen a lot of cultural changes. We have witnessed small business takeovers by large corporations on mass. We have moved from webs of local economy to large scale circuits of sale – regardless of the expense to human and planetary health. Now CETA, it is a different kind of trade agreement from anything we have experienced. It is much more detailed than NAFTA, and as such, aptly described – comprehensive, indeed. From the leaked documents recovered by the Trade Justice Network and in the hands of CUPE, The Council of Canadians and many other environmental and human rights organizations such as the Sierra Club, we have been informed that most items on CETA are not normally what we would think of as something for sale. The items to be traded to multinational corporations will be the invisibles built into the Canadian experience -- from Medicare to water to our civil services like Canada Post.

CETA does not include any protections for local economies. Under the ‘procurement’ section, the vision of CETA is one where the billion dollar offshore companies will be able to bid with equal voice against our local little guys for purchase of Canadian assets. Is it not bad enough that publically-owned services will be bought and then sold back to us at a cost? Even worse, the people in charge will live somewhere across the ocean with a primary job to increase the profits of their corporation. How likely will they hear our experience of the water they will now be in charge of? What will this do to our little contractors, builders, farmers, many folks involved still in production of local goods and services.

Looking back to NAFTA, the major trade agreement enacted in the 1990’s, we see one of the most dangerous clauses to democracy – the Investor State clause. This states that when governments employ laws that stop the flow of trade or potential trade, even if they are initiated to protect human or environmental rights, they can be sued by corporations. Not all trade agreements have this feature but NAFTA does, and the way CETA is written now, if we don’t speak up, it will too.

We do not know when the Conservative government will reveal CETA to the public. It is a nearly fully developed agreement and they have been meeting in private with the European Union since May 2009, finishing the ninth round of negotiations in October 2011. They will say this deal is great because it is good for the economy. But whose economy will this be good for? Ask that question to our Canadian farmers whose total national debt has gone up by 40 billion dollars since the first trade agreement in 1988 was struck. Or to the thousands of skilled workers in Canada who have lost their jobs as mega corporations took the industries down south to seek workers with cheaper minimum wage.

Large global economies are not good for the vast majority of the people of this planet. They are not good for worker rights. Nor are they good for the environment. In fact, they are exactly the opposite of what a planet on the environmental precipice requires. The buy- local, farmer’s- market, creative- class upswing of cultural movement is what excites and heals.

CETA puts nearly everything Canada owns of value on a platter to be bought and sold by European mega corporations like a buffet style dinner. This ain’t no 100 mile diet vision of Canada. We want to know the people we do business with. CETA, as it is written, has no business in Canada. That’s the bottom line.

Jennifer Chesnut
(Elementary School Teacher, Writer, Engaged Londoner) 

Other articles on CETA:

Hey London, heard about CETA yet? 
TAKE ACTION: Comprehensive Trade and Economic Agreement

Upcoming Events:

Dec 1st, 2011 - TOWN HALL: Canada Is Not for Sale - Stop CETA (Maude Barlow & Paul Moist)