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UPDATE: The Council says ‘Put CETA on Ice’ on the Rideau Canal this evening

This evening, the Council of Canadians took to the Rideau Canal in Ottawa with a message written in LED lights – ‘Put CETA On Ice’. The action took place at the same time that Trade Minister Ed Fast and European Union Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht were meeting in Ottawa to discuss the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).

The Council is opposed to the Canada-EU CETA, notably because it includes unreasonable restrictions on municipal public spending, unnecessary patent term extensions and other monopoly rights for brand name pharmaceutical companies, a NAFTA-like process for corporations to sue Canada or the EU for public health and environmental laws or policies that potentially lower profits, and the way it is written to encourage more privatization of public services.

Trade campaigner Stuart Trew, who was interviewed on skates on the Rideau Canal this evening by the CBC Radio program ‘The House’, says, “We need to think of the Canada-EU trade deal like one more Harper government omnibus budget, full of economic, environmental and social policy changes requested by Big Business and hidden from public view. CETA pretends to be about trade but it’s actually more of a corporate power grab that takes away options for how to make that trade more sustainable and beneficial to everyone.”

For more about the Council of Canadians campaign against CETA, please see http://canadians.org/trade/issues/EU/index.html.