FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 8, 2008

Majority of Canadians want Canada-EU trade deal text released now

Ottawa – The Council of Canadians has found that 77 percent of Canadians want the draft text of a sweeping new Canada-European Union trade deal made public before the October 14 federal election vote, in a poll conducted by Strategic Communications. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has reportedly decided not to release the draft text and internal study of the trade deal that is said to exceed NAFTA in scope, despite talks on the deal that will take place in Montreal just three days after the election. The poll also shows that 67 per cent of Conservative voters believe that the draft text should be released right away.

“Stephen Harper must be accountable to the people of Canada and release this text immediately,” says Maude Barlow, national chairperson of the Council of Canadians. “This poll demonstrates that Canadians across political lines believe the text should be made public now and debated as part of this election.”

The Canada-European trade deal, described as groundbreaking by Quebec premier Jean Charest and as ‘deep economic integration’ by a senior EU official, is said to favour full access by European Union countries to billions of dollars of Canadian government procurement budgets and include areas of provincial jurisdictional responsibility. Investment, services and energy issues have been cited as part of the deal, raising questions of whether it will include the controversial NAFTA dispute-settlement mechanism and proportional-sharing provisions.

“The fact that Stephen Harper hasn’t uttered a single word about this new proposed Canada-EU trade deal before or during this election, and which promises to be more sweeping than NAFTA, should raise serious doubts in Canadians’ minds about his appropriateness to lead us in new international trade talks,” adds Barlow. “He sees nothing wrong with NAFTA, which most Canadians want renegotiated. And NAFTA is exactly the wrong model on which an EU-Canada trade deal should be negotiated. It will only worsen the impact on jobs, the environment and public services.”

The full results of the poll are available here.

The poll results are drawn from Strategic Communications’ National Omnibus Survey, which interviewed a nationally representative sample of 1,202 adult Canadians over the period October 2nd to 6th, 2008. The survey was conducted over the internet.  Strategic Communications, Inc. is a national public opinion research firm whose polling results have been reported in Maclean's, the Globe & Mail, and the Toronto Star, among others.  Stratcom is the official pollster to 24 Hours newspaper in Vancouver.

 The question asked was: Three days after the upcoming federal election is over, Canadian and European officials will begin negotiating a broad agreement to integrate Canada's economy with the 27 nations of the European Union. Despite how important such a deal could be for Canadians, the federal government has so far turned down requests by the media and concerned citizens to see the draft text of the agreement. Do you believe that the federal government should make public the draft text of this new Canada-European Union trade deal before the October 14 federal election vote?

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For more information, contact: Dylan Penner, Media Officer: Tel.: (613) 233-4487, ext. 249; ;