Open letter to Pierre Pettigrew, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
By Guy Caron, Council of Canadians 2003
Dear Minister,
Maybe you will read these lines while behind closed doors at the Montreal Sheraton Hotel, during a break between negotiations with the 25 trade ministers you are hosting this week. Tough negotiations they must be, but how would we know? They are behind closed doors, after all.
I suspect that the protests outside the hotel doors might come as a surprise to you. You were quoted last June as saying the anti-globalisation movement is dead. But to dismiss a movement does not mean it will disappear.
I am truly shocked that you are shifting the blame for the plight of African farmers and AIDS victims onto those who protest against the WTO’s structure. Are they responsible for the $300-billion spent each year in subsidies on factory farms (with basically nothing for family farmers) by developed nations? Do you really believe these protesters are responsible for the pharmaceutical industry’s unrelenting pressure to strengthen its patent protection around the world?
Despite efforts to cast yourself as fighting the good fight on behalf of the developing world and portraying protesters as mere Luddites, Canadians have good reasons to doubt your sincerity and that of the Canadian government. After all, it was a memorandum of yours which, last August, vowed to “isolate hard-line opponents” (supposedly countries like India and the African bloc) in Cancun on topics such as intellectual property rights.
These rights are framed in the Trade-Related Aspects on Intellectual Property (TRIPS) agreement. However, what the hard-line opponents you wish to isolate want is the flexibility to produce the life-saving drugs that would help them fight AIDS, tuberculosis and other diseases that plague them.
You claim that you are working in the best interests of the developing world, but these countries want real development to be at the forefront of the debate. You remain deaf to their requests, even as you are pushing for new issues to be put on the negotiation table In an astounding “Father knows best” impersonation, you expressed in the same August 2002 memorandum that “acceding to [developing nations] requests would have serious implications for the structure and nature of the global trading system”.
Is it possible that your advisors kept you in the dark about the real economic impacts of one-size-fits-all trade deals? The table below, from a study of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research, using data from the World Bank and the United Nations Development Agency, shows graphically how the free market policies that have marked international economics since the early 80’s have failed the developing world, at least when compared to the previous 20-year period.
If you took a minute to truly listen to the leaders of developing countries, you would find that before starting to negotiate a new Multilateral Agreement on Investment (like the one that was soundly defeated a few years ago), there are many problems with the current agreements that remain to be settled. The TRIPS agreement is badly flawed as it puts the profits of the pharmaceutical industry before the health of millions in developing nations.
Agricultural subsidies also show how hypocritical the industrial countries are. The latter are pressuring the developing countries to open their market while heavily subsidising their own industry. These subsidies could be understandable if they were going to help family farmers, but most of them are supporting large factory farms.
There are also other concerns, such as the fact that trade and investment agreements under the WTO are superseding other international agreements like the Multilateral Environment Agreements (MEAs). It is also problematic that developing countries are increasingly asked to align their foreign policy to the superpower’s if they want to “taste the benefits of free trade”.
You certainly know something of this linkage between trade and foreign policy. After all, in reference to the softwood lumber dispute in February 2002, you did say "I think the Bush administration has taken good notice of Canada's loyalty to the cause of fighting terrorism and I think it will have dividends" (Globe and Mail, February 1, 2002).
Trade is not a bad thing and most of the WTO opponents know it. They shout “fair trade, not free trade.” I certainly hope you know the difference between the two concepts. Fair trade benefits people everywhere, like the coffee growers who might want to earn a living wage that free trade does not offer them.
But simple questions need to be asked of any international initiative: Will you make things better or worse? And who benefits?
To help you answer these questions, I recommend the following checklist recently compiled by the organisation Rights and Development:
- Do citizens have access to the content of these agreements?
- Did Parliament vote on these agreements?
- Do these agreements recognise the primacy of human rights?
- Do these agreements protect women’s rights?
- Could citizens freely express dissent during negotiation of these agreements?
- Are citizens’ health care and education protected in these agreements?
- Do citizens want these trade agreements?
If you answer “yes” to these questions, then you face a serious credibility problem. However, answering “no” to most questions should help you understand what makes the anti-WTO movement tick.
Guy Caron is the Media Relations Officer for the Council of Canadians, a 100,000-member Canadian civil society organisation. He can be reached, in Ottawa, at 613.233.4487 #234.
Source: Centre for Economic and Policy Research, The Emperor Has No Growth: Declining Economic Growth Rates in the Era of Globalization, September 2000. Available at http://www.cepr.net/IMF/emperor.pdf.
