Trade agreement between Canada and Europe – Canadian free trade and the electoral campaign
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Le Devoir | 20 August 2012
Freely translated by Anoosha Boralessa in April 2015. Not reviewed or revised by bilaterals.org or any other organization or person.
Trade agreement between Canada and Europe – Canadian free trade and the electoral campaign
Claude Vaillancourt – President of ATTAC-Quebec
Angela Merkel and Stephen Harper have just firmly announced the need to conclude a Comprehesive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) with the European Union. All that may seem rather removed from the concerns of the people of Quebec. However, this agreement directly impacts numerous areas where Quebec has jurisdiction. And not unimportant ones: health, water, agriculture, education, culture, public procurement and investment.
Indeed CETA’s scope is so broad that once it has been adopted, we will no longer live in the same Quebec.
The agreement is not on the electoral platforms of the various political parties except that of the Quebec Liberal Party. However, its consequences will go beyond the mandate of the next elected government. According to lawyer Steven Shrybman, in an opinion given to the Chair of the Canadian Trade Union for Public Workers, the approach adopted in this agreement
“gives away the prerogatives of future provincial governments and territories. This is thanks to the current government that can, today, impose its views on all the governments that will be elected subsequently to govern this province or this territory.”
The future party in power will therefore have enormous responsibilities since it will have to decide on something that will affect its population for many years, despite any electoral choices of its citizens. The liberals have decided to guard these negotiations in the utmost secrecy. Pressurized to explain this matter by MPs for the opposition, they have firmly maintained their position: the Quebecois will not know anything that their government is ready to offer to the Europeans in the negotiations, even if they will affect the most vital sectors of our economy.
What do we know about the negotiations?
The work of several organizations of civil society, from leaks and occasional meetings with the negotiators, has allowed us to sketch a worrying picture of the negotiations that are taking place. Canada and the provinces seem ready to guarantee to European multinationals a huge amount of access to our markets. As for the Europeans, it is clear that they are more astute: they have established broad “carve-outs” in the same sectors: in other words, they refuse to open them willy-nilly to competing Canadian businesses. So, this agreement is not negotiated on a reciprocal basis.
Through the NAFTA most favored nations clause, the provinces shall also be required to open these same sectors to Mexican and US businesses. State monopolies and public services that will not be adequately protected, will be eroded gradually leaving an even greater space for private businesses.
The agreement provides for the opening of public, provincial and municipal markets to international competition. Because they cannot discriminate in our favor, and due to the rule of the lowest bidder, it will become very difficult for our governments to develop the following policies: “to buy local”, regional development or plans that will promote quality employment and environmental protection.
Furthermore, even wider opening of these markets to powerful companies will not put an end to the problems of collusion and corruption. On the contrary, in a position of oligopoly, such companies will be able to easily share out public contracts as has unfolded in a number of cases in Europe.
CETA will include investment rules that will permit investors to bring an action against a state party if its regulations limit expected market access even if the regulations have been conceived in the public interest. This probable renewal of the famous NAFTA chapter 11 makes a profound attack on the independence of governments. Furthermore, the Government of Canada has recognized this on its website:
“it could be the case that governments simply desist from proposing regulations out of the fear of claims.”
A public debate is essential
It is paradoxal that such fundamental challenges are not often addressed in the electoral campaign when parties are looking to score points, make one-sided announcements, introduce pledges and give preference to cronyism. This is of genuine concern as democracy needs also to be expressed on subjects that electorally are less profitable but that concern choices that will mark out our future. This works well beyond one-off announcements.
CETA questions us neither more nor less on the type of society that we want to live in. Do we wish to preserve the integrity of our public services or to open them to private and foreign competition? Do we want out our governments to be able to freely adopt laws to limit corporate power, favor local development and protect the environment? Or the free market, must it bring about even greater deregulation? Must it commoditize or determine what belongs to all and maximize the common good? Is it necessary to negotiate an agreement in secret?
Similar questions can and must be debated in this electoral campaign. All the more since the negotiators think that the agreement should be concluded in the course of next year. It predicted that the agreement including its annexes will be much more than 1000 pages drafted in obscure legal jargon. Should our politicians not explain now their intentions rather than subsequently adopting an agreement whose consequences they will not make out because they have not had to take a position on this subject?
CETA has such a great impact on vital sectors that even affects how our society works. Therefore it would be necessary to make CETA an important electoral bargaining stake just as the free trade agreement with the US was in the past. Those that defend this agreement claim that it will be good for our economy. However no one has succeeded in demonstrating tangibly what it will bring for us apart from promising us, as an Eldorado, access to a big market of 500 million inhabitants that is already largely liberalized.
The crises that occur one after the other, show us just how total market liberalization can be harmful. Rather than rushing blindly into these free trade agreements that no one has convincingly assessed, would it not be good to reflect, as we have reminded our students to, on our collective choices and the very essence of our social organization?
