The National Farmers Union has started a campaign against Bill C-18, Conservative government legislation that would have Canada ratify a plant breeders’ rights treaty (UPOV ’91) that undermines farmers’ rights in Canada and that is closely connected to Harper’s trade deals with the European Union and the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.
As explained by the NFU:
The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) is an intergovernmental organization that has created model laws that allow seed developers to claim property rights similar to patents. Canada joined UPOV and adopted its 1978 model law by passing the Plant Breeders’ Rights Act in 1990. The 1991 model law, known as UPOV ’91, enhances the rights of multinational seed companies such as Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Dow, Viterra, Pioneer, DuPont and Cargill, while restricting farmers’ rights.
You can read more about the campaign, called Save Our Seed, at this link, as well as recent news articles about UPOV ’91 here, here and here.
As the NFU explains, based on leaked documents, we know ratifying UPOV ’91 is a U.S. condition in the TPP intellectual property rights chapter. Dismantling the Wheat Board, as the Harper government did in 2012, was similarly a long-standing demand of the U.S. government but is proving disastrous for Canadian grain farmers, whose product is fetching a much lower price than it should, and whose distribution system has been thrown into disarray by the lack of coordination that the single marketing desk provided. Read more about that fiasco in David Climenhaga’s excellent Rabble article here.
Both moves—ratification of UPOV ’91 and the political murder of a functioning, highly beneficial Wheat Board—are signs of how blinded the Harper government is to “free market” ideology even when its policy programs are so clearly detrimental to the farmers and people the policies pretend to benefit.
TAKE ACTION
The NFU is asking people to print off and collect signatures on a petition that members of parliament can then be asked to read in the House of Commons. Council of Canadians chapters and other food security advocates are encouraged to take the petition to public events, post to websites, and distribute in your communities.
