The Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) have voted at their annual convention in Whistler to support a resolution from the District of Logan Lake and City of Burnaby asking that the provincial government negotiate a clear, permanent exemption for local governments from the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).
We had called on people to contact their councillors to support this resolution through our ‘ACTION ALERT: Demand permanent exemption for municipalities from CETA’, http://canadians.org/action/2010/CETA-1709.html.
Several months ago we told you about a resolution from Burnaby requesting a permanent exemption, which was adopted by other municpalities, including Trail and North Vancouver. The Council of Canadians supported this resolution and encouraged other municipalities to adopt the same position with respect to CETA.
Last month the Federation of Canadian Municipalities passed a similar resolution at its board of directors meeting, calling on the federal government to respect municipal autonomy in its free trade negotiations with the European Union. But a permanent exemption for cities is the best and possibly only way to truly achieve this.
The UBCM vote sends a strong message to both the provincial and federal government that Canadian municipalities do not want to be pawns in the CETA negotiations. A copy of the CETA resolution just passed by the UBCM will be sent to the FCM for consideration.
More to come on this soon.
For more information on our campaign on the Canada-EU CETA, please go to http://canadians.org/CETA.
