Trade Insert: Educate. Organize. Activate. Summer 2003

Canadian Perspectives Summer 2003

Trade Insert: Educate. Organize. Activate.

Educate. Organize. Activate.

Making the Links: A Citizen’s Guide to the WTO and the FTAA

The following is an excerpt from Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke’s new report, “Making the Links”:

From September 10-14, 2003, the 5th Ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) will take place in Cancun, Mexico. There, the 146 member countries of the WTO will intensify negotiations to complete the Doha Development Agenda, which was launched at the 4th Ministerial meeting of the WTO in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001.

Much rides on the success or failure of this meeting. The stakes are huge. Powerful governments and their business communities are seeking a major liberalization of services, agriculture and intellectual property rights as well as bold new initiatives on investment, competition and government procurement. WTO leaders – the European Union and the United States – have set the end of 2004 as the final deadline to conclude this “round” of negotiations. The pressure on smaller countries and reluctant governments in Cancun to sign the deal will be intense.

Two months after Cancun, from November 20-21, 2003, the 8th Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Trade Ministerial will be held in Miami, Florida. There, the 34 member countries of the Western Hemisphere (except Cuba) will be putting what they hope will be the final touches on a far-reaching free trade and investment regime, dramatically extending both the scope and size of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). Like the Doha Round of the WTO, the FTAA is scheduled to be signed by the heads of state by the end of 2004, and then sent to each nation’s capital for ratification in 2005.

Between them, these two trade and investment treaties will further lock in a global regime of liberalization, privatization and deregulation, while giving more control than ever to transnational corporations. Governments will be increasingly limited in their ability to provide public services for their citizens, control or protect their natural resources, and set health, safety and environmental standards that displease big business interests.

For the peoples of the Western Hemisphere, the double impact of the new rules of the WTO and the newly minted FTAA will be profound. The FTAA will contain the worst of the WTO, including a wide-ranging services agreement based on the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), as well as the investment provisions of NAFTA, which allow corporations to sue governments through legally binding trade tribunals. Combining these two powers into one agreement will give unequalled new rights to the transnational corporations of the hemisphere to compete for and even challenge every publicly-funded service of its governments, including health care, education, social security, culture and water.

Both deals contain new provisions on competition policy, government procurement, market access, and investment that could remove the ability of all the governments of the Americas (except Cuba) to create or maintain laws, standards, and regulations to protect the health, safety, and well-being of their citizens and the environment they share. And as they are drafted now, neither agreement contains safeguards to protect workers, human rights, social security or health and environmental standards.

Click here for the complete report, “Making the Links: A Citizens’ Guide to the WTO and the FTAA.”

How will the WTO and the FTAA impact your community? BC Water Demonstration

More corporate challenges to the public interest. A new Multilateral Agreement on Investment at the WTO, and NAFTA-plus investor rights in the FTAA would mean more opportunities for corporations to challenge public interest legislation (such as bans on toxic chemicals), and more tax dollars diverted to compensate for their “lost profits.”

Increased threats to public services. An expanded General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) at the WTO, and FTAA coverage of all services would mean foreign for-profit corporations could claim rights to provide critical services in Canada, and get the same grants provided to public services.

Loss of control over water. Water services are up for grabs both at the GATS and the FTAA. This means municipal water utilities are threatened with privatization. But it also means control of water itself is threatened because both GATS and FTAA rules cover anything “affecting” markets for services.

Extreme new restrictions on regulation. Under new restrictions proposed for the GATS and the FTAA, regulations over services - such as water quality standards, how many staff per patient are required in nursing homes, the rules accounting firms have to follow - would only be permitted if they are “necessary”. In the event of a challenge to a regulation, unelected, unaccountable WTO panels will decide what is “necessary”.

More expensive medicines. A more restrictive Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement at the WTO, and rules based on TRIPS in the FTAA, would mean millions more dying in poorer countries because of the high cost of essential medicines, and Canadians paying increased prices for their pharmaceutical drugs. This would be all to maintain the profits of the transnational drug companies.

Eliminating consumer choice over genetically engineered foods. The entrenchment of rules on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards (SPS) at the WTO, and the expansion of Chapter 11 investor-state rights in the FTAA could mean countries are forced to accept genetically engineered food even when their citizens oppose it, and an end to mandatory labelling legislation on these experimental foods.

Undercutting environmental protection. Despite the grave environmental threats to the planet, negotiators appear intent on approving a “supremacy clause” for the WTO, one that would make WTO rules trump environmental agreements under international law. As well, FTAA market access provisions would override environmental laws and multilateral environmental agreements.

What is the Canadian government’s position?

Supports negotiations for a new MAI at the WTO, agrees to Chapter 11 investor-state rights in the FTAA;
Refuses to exempt energy, postal services, post-secondary education and financial services from the concessions Canada could make in the GATS negotiations;
Refuses to recognize water as a human right; will not ban bulk water exports from Canada;
Supports extended patent rights for drug companies. Domestically, Canada has granted transnational corporations longer patenting rights on pharmaceutical drugs, meaning that in the last 15 years drug prices in Canada have increased 342%;
Opposes addressing the development needs of the Third World at the WTO. Canada has blocked efforts by Third World countries to get fair and open decision-making processes at the WTO. This means Third World countries will continue to be sidelined when key decisions are made.
Opposes consumer choice over genetically engineered food. Canada has joined the U.S. in a WTO challenge of the EU's ban on GE food, and has rejected mandatory labelling legislation in Canada.

“In that our governments no longer even attempt to appear fair, and listen only to the voice of their corporate elite, civil society – ordinary people - are the only chance the world has for a system of real and sustained social justice. We are going to have to become what some have called ‘the other superpower,’ referring to the massive street protests that gathered on the eve of the recent war. We must renew our fight against the WTO, the GATS and the FTAA.”
- Maude Barlow

What does the Council of Canadians advocate?

No new Multilateral Agreement on Investment at the WTO; no expansion of investor-state rights in the FTAA;
Recognition that water is a human right, and that it should be excluded from all trade agreements;
A roll-back of patenting rights from 20 years to 10 years - allowing more generic drugs to combat the full range of threats to public health, including AIDS, and to reduce the cost of prescription drugs in Canada;
No use of trade agreements to force countries to accept genetically engineered foods or to block mandatory labelling legislation;
The elimination of any provision that allows WTO and FTAA trade rules to overturn a nation’s public interest legislation.
Exemption of culture (including funding for the CBC, Canadian content regulation, and limits on foreign investment in telecommunications in Canada) from the disciplines of the FTAA and the GATS.

What Can You Do?

Commit to defeating the new agreements of the WTO and the FTAA before they are signed in 2004.
Participate in the September 13 day of action against the WTO, and get involved in anti-WTO activities during the week of action against the WTO, September 8-14.
Participate in the November 16 day of action against the FTAA, and get involved in the anti-FTAA activities during the week of action against the FTAA, November 17-21.
Read the Council’s new report “Making the Links: A Citizen’s Guide to the World Trade Organization and the Free Trade Area of the Americas,” by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, available on our website (www.canadians.org) or by calling 1 800 387-7177.
Send a letter or arrange to meet with your MP telling him or her that the Canadian government has ‘No Mandate’ to proceed with the WTO or the FTAA.
Support the Common Frontiers’ petition against the FTAA. Visit the Council’s web site and sign it today!
Share your concerns. Using information from the Council’s toolkit and the report, write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper (3-4 paragraphs), and participate in local radio call-in shows on the WTO and the FTAA.
Join the Council of Canadians. There may even be a local chapter in your community, where you can work with other Council of Canadians’ activists.

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