The Trade Justice Network (TJN) met last week in Ottawa about two kilometres from where a seventh round of CETA negotiations were getting underway. The group, which includes the Council of Canadians and nearly 30 other environmental, labour, student, farmer and Indigenous organizations, celebrates its one-year anniversary this month, right in the middle of a federal election that could impact the future of the CETA negotiations in important ways. The TJN has posted an election-related video, as well as 20 questions you can ask your candidates about CETA, to its website. I’m posting those questions here for anyone with the opportunity to ask candidates about CETA over this last stretch of the election campaign. The network is asking that you forward the answers you get back to TJN.RCJ@gmail.com.
1.What, in your view, are the major potential benefits of the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA)?
2.What, in your view, are the major potential risks or drawbacks of CETA?
3.Does your party support the inclusion of an investor-state dispute settlement process in CETA?
4.Does your party support the inclusion of municipal drinking water services under the procurement, services and/or investment rules of CETA?
5.Does your party support the right of provincial and local governments to “Buy Canadian” and/or to consider local economic development benefits when tendering public procurement contracts?
6.Should provincial and territorial governments be held liable for any damages when a provincial, territorial or municipal measure is found to violate CETA?
7.Does your party support extended patent terms for medicines as demanded by the European Commission and the Canadian brand-name drug industry? Related to this, should the federal government be responsible for any additional costs for medicines incurred by the provinces and consumers due to strengthened patent protection under CETA?
8.Do you support the position of the Canadian auto industry and unions that the automobile sector should be excluded from CETA?
9.Does your party support a broad cultural exemption in CETA that would exclude books, magazines, newspapers, publishing, broadcasting, film, video, performing arts and all other aspects of Canadian and European cultural industries?
10.Does your party agree that Canadian governments should protect the right to expand public health insurance into new areas, such as Pharmacare or home care, without having to pay compensation to foreign insurance companies or health care providers under CETA?
11.Does your party support a broad exclusion for health care that would stipulate that nothing in CETA shall be construed as applying to health care or public health insurance?
12.Will your party ensure that Canada’s agricultural orderly marketing systems, including supply management and the Canadian Wheat Board, are not adversely affected by CETA?
13.Would your party agree that labour mobility is a human right, not a commercial issue, and therefore should not be included in CETA?
14.The October draft text of CETA says that violations of labour rights occurring within the public sector could not be brought up within the CETA labour provisions. Does your party oppose or accept this view?
15.Do you agree that in return for dropping high European tariffs on Canadian fish products, European boats should be allowed to catch more fish in or adjacent to Canadian waters?
16.Do you agree that Canada should maintain its current export bans on unprocessed fish and raw logs under CETA?
17.Do you support the maintenance of existing foreign ownership limits in telecommunications under CETA? What about in the financial services and fisheries sectors?
18.Should Canada protect or renounce its current ability to screen foreign investment to ensure that it is of net benefit to the country?
19.Do you agree that Canada should continue to pressure the EU against adopting fuel quality standards that would assign a carbon content value for tar sands above the value for conventional fuels?
20.Do you believe that CETA should remove European non-tariff market access barriers such as regulations on GMOs in food, hormone-treated beef and seal products?
