At a 7:30 am this morning, Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow spoke to more than 300 people at the CUPE Ontario convention in Toronto making our against the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). She was joined at this event by CUPE Ontario president Fred Hahn and Toronto city councillor Mike Layton.
On Tuesday evening, Barlow spoke to more than 100 people in Montreal about CETA. At that bilingual public forum, she was joined by CUPE national secretary-treasurer Claude Genereux, ATTAC-Quebec representative Claude Vaillancourt, and Eau Secours president Martine Chatelain.
These two public forums follow a successful event in Calgary on April 29 in which 300 people came to hear Barlow and CUPE national president Paul Moist speak about CETA during the Alberta Federation of Labour convention in that city.
The speaking tour continues on May 30 in Saskatoon, June 27 in Winnipeg, June 28 in Halifax and June 29 in St. John’s. For more information on those upcoming events, please go tohttp://canadians.org/tradetour.
Additionally, stops in Moncton, Sudbury, Hamilton, Abbotsford, Vancouver, Victoria, Charlottetown and Ottawa are being discussed for this coming September-October. We will have confirmation and more details on those dates soon.
The tour this spring is taking place prior to the critical eighth round of CETA negotiations in Brussels this July 11-15. The fall portion of the tour will take place prior to the ninth round of negotiations anticipated to occur in Ottawa this October 17-21.
During the federal election, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he was committed to proceeding ‘full-throttle’ on CETA and on having the deal — larger in scope than NAFTA – signed by January 1, 2012. More details on our campaign against CETA can be found at http://canadians.org/ceta.