OTTAWA, ONTARIO - 23 trading partners have requested that Canada opens up its health and social services as well as environmental and education services, among many others services being targeted. Canada has sent its demands yesterday for increased market access to 40 countries, regarding 12 various services industries.

Canadian officials have been quick to say Canadian public systems for health, education and culture are not in jeopardy.

The Council of Canadians rejects the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade's (DFAIT) claim that it can protect Canada's public health care system.

"Medicare itself has already been offered up to the WTO," commented Maude Barlow, voluntary chairperson of the 100,000-member Council of Canadians. "In the original GATS agreement, Canada has listed health insurance as an area for negotiation. While the section on "Health services" provides at least a weak exemption for delivery services (such exemption is growing weaker with the creeping privatisation of public services such as hospitals, MRI clinics and laboratories), the health insurance component of Medicare is rather found under the section on "Financial services", which provides no such exemption."

The presence of health insurance on the WTO negotiating table will make it prohibitive to eventually extend coverage of Medicare to promised liberal programs such as pharmacare and home care. If the situation isn't corrected, private insurance companies would claim they were "expropriated" and thus, would be eligible for lavish financial compensation.

The Council demands that Canada guarantee the Canadian people that it will seek an airtight public exemption for all public services, including health insurance and delivery. The clock is ticking and there's only three years left before the final GATS will come into effect, in 2005.

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