A Primer on Trade Deals Impacting Ontario - Download booklet here or follow HTML links below.
October 2009
Dear concerned Ontarians,
We are pleased to offer this booklet that provides analysis on Canadian trade agreements and the impact they have on local economies and our communities.
We are currently suffering multiple crises – an economic crisis that threatens our jobs and livelihoods, an environmental crisis that threatens our habitat, and an energy crisis that demands we move away from fossil fuel and a reliance on long-distance trade.
In times like these, we need our municipal, provincial and federal governments to be innovative and responsive to the communities they represent, as well as the international community we are all part of. We need governments to recognize, like so many people already do, that many of the solutions to all these crises are going to be local solutions.
Unfortunately, the Ontario government is now signing and endorsing interprovincial and international agreements that will restrict what provinces and municipalities can do to protect the environment, save existing jobs and create new ones, strengthen public services, and support local economies. These agreements say that local solutions are “barriers” to trade and investment and must therefore be eliminated. Democratic solutions lose out to business-friendly objectives.
The purpose of this booklet is to review specific trade agreements including the Ontario-Quebec Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, and the North American Free Trade Agreement, as well as a proposed agreement on local procurement. We will examine the impacts they will have (or, in the case of NAFTA, are having) on Ontario communities and our ability to promote local priorities. We will show how these agreements, and the market-based priorities they represent, impose broad constraints on the exercise of local democracy under the rubric of addressing trade barriers.
Ontarians have a right to discuss and debate these agreements, and should have the power to modify, expand on or cancel them if they’re not in the province’s interests.
These agreements should not be negotiated and signed behind closed doors – which is currently happening – because the impacts of these internal and international agreements are broad and often incompatible with social goods, such as stimulating local economies, maintaining a universal and publicly funded health care system, and protecting the environment. People have a right to know all the details before any deal is signed.
We invite you to stand with us and demand a say in Ontario’s future.
Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians
Sid Ryan, President of CUPE Ontario
Download booklet here or follow HTML links:
- Background
- Ways Forward
- Examples
