Trent Hills warned trade deal bad for municipalities
Northumberland News, Canada
Trent Hills warned trade deal bad for municipalities
26 July 2011
By John Campbell/The Independent
TRENT HILLS - The Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement currently being negotiated between Canada and the European Union will have a profound effect on the way municipalities conduct business, council heard last week.
"We’re dealing with a very serious issue," Charlotte Majic, coordinator for the Northumberland Chapter of The Council of Canadians, warned council.
"For the first time ever provinces are included partners in the free trade discussions," she said, and that means municipalities "will be impacted ... in a way they have never been impacted by any free trade agreement before."
Ms. Majic said the EU "has made specific requests for full access to all levels of public procurement in cities across Canada," for contracts as little as $25,000, involving "core municipal services such as public transit, water services and wastewater treatment."
The CETA documents also "explicitly proposes that environmental and local development considerations be excluded as factors in procurement decisions," Ms. Majic said.
Once the deal is in place, "European corporations could challenge a municipality if they deemed a municipality stood in the way of them getting a contract or hindered them from making profits," she said, even if the reasons for the local decision were based on public health or environmental concerns.
And the municipalities and provinces "would be held responsible for the costs incurred" in any investigation, Ms. Majic added.
"The federal and provincial governments have not offered any meaningful assessment or the impact of what the municipalities might gain by giving up procurement rights."
Negotiations to reach a deal have now gone eight rounds and are expected to be wrapped up by the end of the year.
Opponents of CETA are calling on the federal government to hold public discussions "before proceeding any further since it is virtually impossible to reinstate the rights of government once they are abandoned," Ms. Majic said. "If procurement authority is ceded under CETA it will not be recoverable."
Council approved a resolution presented by Ms. Majic on behalf of the Northumberland Chapter of the Council of Canadians and in coalition with local Trade Justice Networks Partners comprising CUPE, steel workers, Alderville First Nations, health care workers and the National Farmers Union.
The resolution calls upon the Association of Municipalities of Ontario to ask the Province to explain "the scope and content" of trade negotiations with the European Union and to negotiate along with other provincial governments "a clear, permanent exemption for local governments from CETA."
The resolution also asks AMO to urge the federal government not to give the EU access to subnational government procurement, and to request that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities analyze CETA’s "potential impacts on municipal functions and powers of the procurement regime" should the EU get its way.
Deputy Mayor Rosemary Kelleher-MacLennan, a director with the Ontario Municipal Water Association, said she gets "really concerned" when she sees large multinational companies involved in supplying water to communities around the world "really pushing for this kind of thing" because of "what countries have been left to deal with."
