Key point missed

Stuart Trew
The StarPhoenix
February 21, 2012

Saskatoon councillors and business groups celebrating the recent vote against a municipal exemption from the CanadaEU trade deal might be missing the point.

If there's one thing the Council of Canadians and other groups have been emphasizing in meetings with local governments, it's that the rules on public spending in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) have nothing to do with trade.

They are needlessly restrictive and represent a marked change from existing internal and international rules on government procurement.

There's no ban in the Agreement on Internal Trade or even the New West Partnership to "offsets" - described in CETA and in the WTO procurement agreement, to which Canada is a party, as "any condition or undertaking that encourages local development."

Canadian content preferences are allowed within reason under the AIT, as are some incentives to encourage local development. These would be disallowed by CETA.

This is a new problem. Saskatoon will lose important tools that most other global cities have retained.

We either can lean on platitudes about being "open for business" and the importance of trade to Canada's economy, or we could take a closer look at what is being asked of municipalities under CETA.

We are all pro-trade. We all appreciate open and fair procurement. But CETA won't improve on Saskatoon's openness in that respect. It will, however, needlessly remove tools from Canadian municipalities that others worldwide rely upon to make good use of public spending to create jobs and support sustainable development.

Stuart Trew Trade campaigner, Council of Canadians

www.canadians.org/ceta