Trade campaigner Stuart Trew writes that, “It’s not the apologetic policy reversal you might have been expecting (or not) from Trade Minister Peter Van Loan, but it is a victory nonetheless. And it is proof that public pressure on the government for parliamentary hearings into the Harper government’s embarrassingly one-sided ‘Buy American deal (the Canada-US Agreement on Government Procurement) has worked.”
“Starting next week, the Commons Committee on International Trade (CIIT) will hold hearings into the deal… thanks to a motion from NDP trade critic Peter Julian, one of a dozen MPs on the federal trade committee who received a copy of your letters to Van Loan based on our February 22 Action Alert, ‘We need parliamentary and provincial hearings on Buy American deal’.”
Trew concludes, “Congratulations to everyone who wrote the government demanding them. And congratulations to the NDP for securing them.”
His trade blog can be read at http://canadians.org/tradeblog/?p=725.