More On Freelands's Double-Speak

Recently, I wrote a post about CETA, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement; part of it examined the double-speak of Chrystia Freeland when she talked about both the protection of investor rights and the benefits of the deal that will redound to Canada. To me, the two are mutually incompatible, especially since the former allows for the virtual abrogation of our sovereignty rights over any issue that could adversely affect corporate profits.

Reading this morning's Star, I was glad to see that others are rightfully suspicious of our International Trade Minister's claims. Here is what reader Mary Crosato of Burlington had to say:

Re: Canada-EU trade deal could take effect in 2017, March 1

International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland says, “This is a gold-plated deal. It’s going to bring tremendous benefits to Canada.”

Please show us in black and white what benefits Canadians will receive from this agreement. What manufactured goods are we going to be exporting to create more jobs here, in our country? Are we just going to keep importing substandard products and clothing, some of which are made by underaged children in Third World countries?

We must start taxing companies that choose to manufacture goods offshore and continue making billions of dollars to increase their bottom line. We have to create a level playing field for companies that want to manufacture in Canada.

I hope Ms Freeland will not be bullied into accepting any agreement that is not fair or beneficial to Canadians.

I'm not so sure it is bullying that we have to worry about so much as the seduction of Ms. Freeland by the siren call of neoliberalism.

And This Is A Good Deal Because?

Despite the best efforts of the ever-secretive Harper cabal, details about the CETA deal are finally emerging thanks to leaked portions of the text. And as has been long-predicted, those details are not encouraging when it comes to Canadian sovereignty in general, and local sourcing of construction contracts, goods and services in particular.

While government websites, replete with encomiums from business entities, crow about what this deal will accomplish, more critical sources offer much to suggest the need for grave misgivings.

Take, for example, the matter of investor rights. Chapter 11, the investor-dispute mechanism under NAFTA, has resulted in numerous suits against the government from companies claiming loss of earnings due to legislation or judicial rulings. One such case involved Eli Lily suing Canada for $500 million over patent rights to two of its drugs. Another involved Lone Pine Resources, which is suing the federal government for $250 million due to Quebec’s moratorium on oil and gas fracking beneath the St. Lawrence River.

Yet the Harper government, in its apparent zeal to cede even more authority to multinational corporations, seems undaunted by these and many other ongoing suits.

With apparently almost identical provisions under CETA, perhaps the direness of the situation is best summed up by Scott Sinclair of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives:

"The outcome of the deal is that corporations win and citizens on both sides of the Atlantic lose."

Equally disturbing is the provision about procurement rights:

The main benefit for Europe is easy to name: Canada opens its public procurements to European corporations. European companies are much stronger when it comes to public tenders because there aren't as many Canadian companies willing to bid in European public procurements.

Today's Star offers more details of the public procurement provisions, and gives this bleak assessment:

The ability of provincial governments and cities like Toronto to boost their economies by favouring local companies on major goods and services contracts will be sharply curtailed under the terms of Canada’s free-trade pact with Europe, leaked details of the agreement confirm.

Specifically, provincial agencies and ministries will have to open up bidding to businesses from EU countries on goods and services contracts worth approximately $300,000 or more.

The threshold is higher for construction contracts: about $7.9 million.

Essentially, the same rules will apply to school boards, [p]ublic agencies or utilities that operate airports, rail or bus transport, marine ports, electricity distribution, drinking water provision or the production of gas and heat.

Once more, Canadian citizens must sit on the sidelines in government-imposed ignorance, thanks in large part to the most secretive government that has ever existed in Canada, Tony Clement's recent hilarious declarations about government transparency notwithstanding.

While it is highly unlikely the CETA deal will be finalized before the next election, given the millimeters of difference that exist between the major parties on most issues, holding an unsanctioned 'faint-hope' clause in our collective psyche may be all we can realistically aspire to.

Who Do You Trust?

Two seeming unrelated stories, both connected by one pernicious element: unwarranted government secrecy.

In this morning's Hamilton Spectator is the sad tale of Marit McKenzie, an 18-year-old Calgarian who died after taking an anti-acne drug known as Diane-35. Often prescribed off-label as a birth-control pill, the drug's side effects can include formation of blood clots, a contingency that led to the girls's death.

Bruce McKenzie would like to know how a controversial acne drug suspected of killing his healthy teenage daughter this year has, in Health Canada's words, "benefits" that "continue to outweigh the risks."

But the report that could explain how the federal agency arrived at this conclusion is a secret. It's one of more than 150 classified safety reviews completed by Health Canada this year alone.

Despite the fact that France has banned the drug, and despite the fact that even the bastion of free enterprise, the U.S., along with the European Medicines Agency, routinely publish details of post-market safety reviews of drugs as a basic accountability measure, Health Canada refuses to provide any details about its alleged efficacy. The reason? According to our government, it is due to "confidential business information."

The implications of this stance are indeed frightening for anyone in Canada on long-term medication, given that the current database for adverse reactions is simply based on voluntary reports from doctors and patients. But at least the health of our pharmaceutical industry will be protected, the obvious priority with the Haper cabal.

On a similar, though ostensibly unrelated corporate note, is the CETA agreement that Stephen Harper is crowing about. Will it be a net benefit or a net detractor of Canadian jobs? Will it be an impediment to environmental protection and other matters crucial to our sovereignty? Who knows? As Tim Harper points out in today's Star,

But no one can say that definitively right now ...This was an agreement in principle, but there was no fine print.

Despite Harper's claim that these negotiations were the most “transparent and inclusive in Canada’s history”, the truth is that they have carried out in a cloak of secrecy that perhaps rivals that which shrouded the development of the atomic bomb. Secrecy, that is, for everyone but business groups who have been in a position to dictate their demands for quite some time.

And as for Harper's promise that affected sectors will be compensated for any losses, such as the probable $2 billion extra that the provinces will have to come up with due to increased drug costs thanks to another gift to the pharmaceuticals, a two-year patent extension on drugs, I leave that to the overly credulous to believe.

Who do you trust? Not this government, and not this Prime Minister who has proven countless times that truth and honesty are merely quaint notions that sound nice on paper, but have little to do with the debased elements by which he operates.