NAFTA has put the environment of all three countries in danger. Canada, Mexico and the United States would benefit enormously from getting rid of Chapter 11, which has been used by corporations to challenge environmental rules and local control of natural resources. Here in Canada, it has been used to challenge bans on the cross-border trade in a dangerous gasoline additive, and on P.C.B. waste and fracking near the St Lawrence River.
For our continent to meet its Paris climate commitment, the energy provision of NAFTA also must go. Under that provision, Canada gave up its sovereign control of Canadian energy supplies and signed a “proportionality clause” that means it must continue to supply the U.S. with its dwindling oil and gas supplies, or pay to conserve by cutting its own energy use. This has led Canada to expand the climate-harmful Alberta tar sands and promote pipelines such as Keystone XL that would endanger the continent’s water sources by carrying the dirtiest oil on earth.
Water is also at risk under NAFTA. Water in all but its natural state is a “tradable good,” meaning that once commercial exports of water commence, there would be no turning the tap off. Massive water trade of this kind would be very expensive and controlled by corporations more interested in profit than human rights. Like the rest of the world, North America has a water crisis and needs the kind of cross-border cooperation that conserves water and protects it as a human right and public trust. This must be built into a new agreement.
Published in the New York Times, January 30, 2017
