MEDIA RELEASE
For Immediate Release
September 13, 2010

Japan's WTO complaint against Green Energy Act baseless but dangerous, says Council of Canadians

Ottawa – The WTO case brought by Japan today against local preferences in Ontario’s Green Energy Act is completely baseless but risks setting a dangerous precedent for future trade challenges to legitimate environmental and economic stimulus measures around the world, says the Council of Canadians.

“Japan is trying to use the clout of the WTO to challenge perfectly legitimate and legal environmental rules in Ontario. Even if the claim is not successful, it will encourage other countries to try to dismantle environmental or economic stimulus measures as illegal barriers to trade,” says Maude Barlow, national chairperson of the Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest grassroots social justice organization. “The WTO is not the right place to sort out trade and environmental conflicts because it is designed to rule in favour of trade each time.”

The economic and climate crises are challenging governments to think outside the ‘free trade’ policy box of recent years, combining the creation of local jobs with sustainable and alternate forms of energy. Among the goals of the Ontario Green Energy Act are job creation in a troubled economy and a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. The Act seeks to achieve both by paying a premium feed-in tariff rate to renewable solar and wind projects that meet a minimum local content quota of 50 and 25 per cent respectively. Many countries, including Canada’s major trade partners, including the US and China, have or are developing similar measures to support the creation of a local renewable energy sector.

“This is a test case globally and could put the end to many policies designed to decrease greenhouse gas emissions,” says Barlow.

The Japanese government threatened to take Canada to the WTO over the Green Energy Act earlier this year but it is not the only country to complain about Ontario’s local preferences. Based on a leaked copy of the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), EU negotiators are seeking to kill the Green Energy Act by including energy and electricity agencies and utilities in the agreement’s procurement chapter. Energy and transportation were excluded from Ontario’s recent commitments to the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement. The McGuinty government would be unwise to include them in its offer to the EU, which will be discussed during a fifth round of CETA negotiations in Ottawa, October 18 to 22.

“This is a dangerous and anti-democratic position for Japan and the EU to be taking,” says Stuart Trew, trade campaigner with the Council of Canadians. “The Ontario and Canadian governments should vigorously oppose this challenge at the WTO and halt the CETA negotiations until it is clear such programs are protected.”

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For more information:

Dylan Penner, Council of Canadians, Media Officer, (613) 795-8685; dpenner@canadians.org