OTTAWA, ONTARIO - Today's decision to award over $8 million to S.D. Myers Inc., an American PCB-recycling firm who sued Canada under NAFTA's Chapter 11 is one more blow to the country's ability to protect its environment under the free trade agreement.

"Minister Pettigrew has said that the S.D. Myers' win in this case was not related to Canada's ability to adopt laws to protect the environment, but the decision is just that", said David Robbins, trade campaigner for the 100,000-members Council of Canadians.

"This NAFTA Tribunal shows a blatant disrespect for international environmental treaties that Canada - and the United States as well - signed. This decision shows that, once again, trade rules trump the environment."

The NAFTA Tribunal's decision is in direct violation of Article 4.9 of the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal (the Basel Convention), ratified by Canada, which states:

Parties shall take the appropriate measures to ensure that the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes and other wastes only be allowed if:

(a) The State of export does not have the technical capacity and the necessary facilities, capacity or suitable disposal sites in order to dispose of the wastes in question in an environmentally sound and efficient manner; ...

Canada, in fact, has the necessary facilities for the recycling of PCBs. The other exemptions of thr Basel Convention are not applicable which means that, in effect, the Tribunal's decision violates an international environment agreement.

It is the position of the Council of Canadians that Canadians have the right to intervene fully at these secretive trade panels. The Council of Canadians along with other groups has gone to the Canadian courts to intervene in this case, but was recently denied this right by the Supreme Court.

This award comes on the eve of the FTAA Ministerial Meeting in Quito, Ecuador (Nov. 1-2). The Council of Canadians is pressing Minister Pettigrew to follow the recommendation (known as Recommendation 21) of one of his committees not to include the provisions of Chapter 11 in the FTAA.

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