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First Nations and other “funny issues” not covered by human rights clause in Canada-EU deal: diplomat

Embassy Magazine reports today (paywall) that Canada is still resisting human rights language in a proposed Strategic Partnership Agreement with the European Union, delaying it and parallel free trade negotiations, which continue in Brussels this month. The Council of Canadians broke this story in November, after a trip to the European Parliament revealed the Harper government did not want the EU to be able to suspend any trade benefits in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) as a response to serious breaches of human rights in Canada.

According to Embassy, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird confirmed the dispute over rights language in a May 30 press availability following a meeting with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle in Ottawa. Baird said the two “had a long discussion about this. And I’m really confident that [EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy] Catherine Ashton and I can come to a mutually satisfactory agreement to make that happen.” Canada’s position is that only the political agreement (SPA) should be affected.

The story took a very interesting turn in April when Liberal Senator Joan Fraser backed up the Conservative government’s position.

“The problem is that in the European formula they want to include a clause that would make it possible for the trade agreement to be suspended if the Europeans judge that Canada had engaged in a serious violation of human rights,” she said in the Senate, as reported by Embassy at the time. “Human rights could conceivably be viewed as rather more theoretical, but we know how some Europeans have been able to attack Canada on grounds from the oil sands to the seal hunt to I know not what.”

 

Problem? How is it a problem that there should be serious consequences in this world for violating fundamental human rights. God knows there are enough serious consequences for violating trade treaties, like multi-billion dollar fines and orders to get rid of or tone-down overly burdensome (for corporations) policies or laws. The act of governing (or doing literally anything) in Canada is held back by the gravitational pull from a black hole of fear that new policies will trigger a trade or investment dispute from some country or company.

The real problem isn’t the human rights language the EU is proposing. It’s that the EU may have no intention of ever using this clause, for Canada or any other country with which it has a trade deal, according to diplomats and officials quoted by Embassy.

Manfred Auster, head of the political section at the EU Delegation in Ottawa, told Embassy “the idea is that in countries other than Canada where the human rights situation or the situation as far as weapons of mass destruction are concerned are not as crystal clear as they are with Canada, in those cases we have a variety of tools including the suspension of existing agreements at our disposal.”

Tools they do not use for even those countries, we should add.

Another unnamed European diplomat, also possibly trying to smooth things over with the Bairds and Frasers of Canada, added that the human rights language in the Canada-EU deal would likely never apply to “funny issues” like First Nations or the seal hunt.

Human rights is such a “funny” issue for Indigenous peoples in Canada that there have been 390 complaints about violations filed with the Canadian Human Rights Commission since 2008 (225 against First Nations governments and 165 against the federal government). In April, a Universal Periodic Review of Canada at the United Nations suggested Canada was not doing enough in response to violence against Indigenous women and girls. A UN special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples was subsequently granted permission by the Harper government to look into living conditions in Indigenous communities.

Canada also came under UN scrutiny this year on the human right to food. A report by special rapporteur Olivier de Shutter “calls on Ottawa to create a national food strategy to fight hunger among a growing number of vulnerable groups, including aboriginals and people struggling to make ends meet on social assistance,” according to CBC. That report also criticized the Canada-EU trade deal (CETA) for how it could hurt municipal efforts to support local food and local farmers.

So the EU-Canada conflict on human rights and trade comes down to this: Europe pretends to want to enforce human rights violations by putting phony enforcement language into its trade and strategic partnership agreements; Canada is so sick on the Kool Aid of corporate globalization it can’t even imagine letting anything get in the way of trade and investment flows, even temporarily, even in the event that people’s lives are being put at risk.

What a shame for Canadian and European corporations if their governments can’t put this false conflict behind them, because CETA will be otherwise very good for them.

Canadian Press reports today that Canada has rejected EU demands for its companies to be exempted from a foreign takeover screen in the Investment Canada Act applying to takeovers in excess of $1 billion. Harper has agreed to at least raise the threshold for review to $1.5 billion for EU-based companies, but for this “climbdown” Canada has agreed to EU demands that there should be “few restrictions on the ability of European firms to sue Canadian governments for policies judged unfair to investors.”

One way or another, CETA will be a barrier to protecting human rights. You can ask the Prime Minister to walk away from the negotiations using our action alert here. Please add to or change the message to let the government know you think human rights are more important than corporate rights, not “funny issues” that should be of no consequence in global trade and investment agreements.