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CETA Week of Action a big success as over 80 organizations demand an end to Canada-EU negotiations

It was a great end to a great week of action against the CETA negotiations in Ottawa. Yesterday, the Trade Justice Network and RQIC released a statement signed by over 80 European and Canadian organizations demanding an end to the Canada-EU trade negotiations and for the offers to be made public. We put it over the newswire about an hour after International Trade Minister Ed Fast made a brief announcement on the status of the 9th round of talks, which ended today in Ottawa.

Minister Fast explained to the media that Canada and the EU had exchanged services and investment offers as expected. This step would be as contentious if not more so than the procurement and goods exchange which took place in July because the services on the table could include drinking water, health care and insurance, education, postal, telecommunications and financial services among other areas. In each case where the provinces and federal government make new commitments there will be pressure to privatize and deregulate.

I say it would be contentious because we don’t know what the offers are, so it’s impossible to talk about. The media apparently asked a few too many unwelcome questions on the matter because after Minister Fast’s press conference, a government spokesperson told journalists they could not print what the Canadian and European negotiators in the room had explained to them. There were stories about this negotiating round, but they probably weren’t what the Harper government was hoping for.

For example, a Reuters article questioned Fast’s claims that the negotiations are moving along smoothly, pointing out comments early in the week from European sources that Canada’s procurement and telecommunications offers were insufficient. Canadian Press reported that the government’s “rosy assessment is rejected by unions and other civil society groups who believe Europe has the most to gain from such a deal.” The article specified, “Critics fear a free trade deal with Europe would open up government services such as municipal water facilities to privatization and outside competition, as well as eliminate local preferences for such government spending as Ontario’s Green Plan.

Then there was the 14-foot Trojan horse that showed up at the gates of Parliament on Monday, which was reported in over 60 news outlets worldwide! New assessments from the Canadian Environmental Law Association, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the National Union of Public and General Employees and the Canadian Auto Workers all expose the likely effects CETA would have on the economy and social policy. And there were those embarrassing revelations at the top of the week that Canada will be the big loser from a trade deal with the EU, and that free trade does not create jobs.

“Trade agreements do not create jobs. Never have. Never will. But ministers have never accepted that economic insight,” Michael Hart, former trade negotiator and current Carleton University professor, told the Huffington Post.

As Maude Barlow told the crowd at Wednesday’s “Our Communities are Not For Sale” event with Paul Moist and Frederic Viale, the Harper government, which doesn’t normally give any updates on the progress of the CETA negotiations, probably felt compelled to undo some of the bad publicity. Banning the press from reporting updates from the negotiators, which civil society groups have been publishing for two years now, isn’t going to help.

LETTERS TO MEPS ON TAR SANDS AND CETA

On Thursday, Council of Canadians Energy and Climate Justice Campaigner Andrea Harden and I sent a letter to each and every member of the European Parliament commending them for seeking to block entry of dirty fuels into the EU transportation fuel market. The Fuel Quality Directive is very close to becoming law. It would rate tar sands as much more polluting than conventional oil, which will disincentivize European fuel companies from buying it. The Harper government has numerous times threatened to take the EU to the WTO if the policy goes ahead as planned. Our letter encourages the EU to ignore these threats, but also to take steps to remove the directive from the scope of the Canada-EU free trade deal.

“We are also writing to encourage your rejection of a proposed investor-to-state dispute settlement process in the CETA, and to suggest that the FQD should be carved out of the scope of the Canada-EU agreement altogether,” says the letter. “Disputes between investors and governments related to environmental and extractives policy are on the rise in Canada. Firms are increasingly using the NAFTA investorstate dispute process to challenge legitimate public policy or decisions by provincial governments to deny permission to dig quarries due to the impacts on water and farmland

“Investment disputes in the Canada-EU trade and investment relationship are, as the EU Parliament has already declared, best handled by Canada’s and the EU’s just and fair legal systems,” continues the letter. “We believe it would be in the best interests of the EU to insist on this with respect to the ongoing Canada-EU free trade negotiations, particularly given the Canadian government’s clear opposition to an EU FQD that attributes a high carbon content value to tar sands crude.”

Shortly after we sent the letter, we read in the news that the Alberta government had sent its own letter asking the complete opposite of a 27-member expert committee that is set to decide by Tuesday on the higher value for tar sands. “Alberta believes that the Fuel Quality Directive implementing measure as it currently stands would be incompatible with the EU’s international trade obligations,” it read, according to news reports.

But the executive of the European Union bloc has also sent a letter to that committee arguing the Fuel Quality Directive would likely survive such a challenge. This is the position of several European environmental organizations, and it’s why Scott Sinclair argues European politicians should insist that any complaints against the fuel quality directive should go to the WTO. Sinclair’s report encourages the EU to carve out the fuel quality directive from the reach of a potential free trade deal with CETA. A legal opinion by Steven Shrybman of CETA’s likely impacts on tar sands regulation and environmental measures in the EU doubts the security of the WTO route. It says:

Given the risks and uncertainty of relying upon the environment and conservation exceptions of GATT Article XX, if policy and regulatory options are to be preserved, CETA must include more robust safeguards for measures needed to address the challenges of climate change. Arguably the best approach would be to include a “climate chapter” within the treaty as the International Trade Committee has recommended.

But of course a climate chapter is as unlikely in CETA as a broader carve-out for climate measures since the Canadian government clearly sees trade agreements as another means to curtail sustainable development policy in partner nations. The climate/tar sands issue remains one of the biggest problem areas in the CETA negotiations. As the transatlantic civil society declaration on CETA proclaims:

This agreement is democratically and socially regressive. It gives more tools to corporations to permanently blackmail states and local governments in Europe as well as federal, provincial and municipal governments in Canada, threatening them with the possibility of taking legal action to condemn them if they ever think of regulating commercial activities coveted by these companies. This agreement will have tremendous consequences on the environment, making it easier for the productivist and extractivist system to perpetuate itself even though everyone knows it is a failure and a threat to humankind’s future.