CETA - Part Four - Trust No One

Ultimately, the critical thinker has an obligation to educate him/herself. To simply accept government 'assurances' that all is well is to surrender the responsibilities inherent in being a citizen in a democracy.

HARPER SAYS: CETA and free trade deals do not allow foreign investors and foreign companies to challenge Canadian laws and regulations.

WE SAY: NAFTA’s chapter 11 protections for foreign investors have allowed corporations to challenge dozens of Canadian laws and regulations simply because they interfere with profits. Canada is the sixth most sued country under the investor-state dispute settlement regime, which exists in around 3,000 bilateral investment treaties globally. Those corporate lawsuits have attacked environmental assessments, the failure to get approval for unpopular or environmentally dangerous quarries and dumpsites, measures to reduce the use of pesticides, research and development payments from offshore oil and gas production, the way hunting and fishing licences are distributed, and local content quotas in Ontario’s Green Energy Act. Canada has had to pay out or is on the hook for over $200 million in settlements or losses to investors under these extreme investor rights which countries such as Australia are now avoiding in their trade deals.

HARPER SAYS: CETA has been the most open and transparent trade negotiation in Canadian history.

WE SAY: So why did it take the government three years to try to explain the agreement to the public? The fact that the provinces are negotiating a trade deal for the first time says nothing about transparency since the provinces are being even more tight-lipped than the Harper government. There have been and will not be any opportunities to see or modify CETA before it is signed, perhaps as early as this winter. Once it is signed, the Harper government will block attempts to modify it in parliament. This is the antithesis of transparency. If CETA and agreements like it are supposed to be 21st century or “next-generation” free trade deals, they should be negotiated in 21st century ways — openly, transparently, and with broad public input.

CETA - Trust No One - Part Three

Here are two more CETA myths being perpetuated by the Harper regime, according to the Council of Canadians, that we should be aware of:

HARPER SAYS: Free trade deals like CETA do not prevent governments from regulating standards that protect the public, including in the areas of the environment, labour, health care and safety.

WE SAY: CETA and free trade deals like it are designed specifically to limit opportunities for governments to introduce new rules and regulations that have an impact on trade and investment flows, even if the intention of the rules was to protect the environment or public health. The United States has just lost three World Trade Organization disputes involving meat labelling, a ban on flavoured cigarettes to discourage smoking among children, and voluntary measures designed to protect dolphins from tuna fishing. CETA and other trade deals include language on avoiding new regulation as the best and least trade-distorting option. CETA will provide Canada and the EU with tools to frustrate or delay the introduction of new standards. It will give corporations the right to sue governments in the event that regulations interfere with their profits.

HARPER SAYS: Canada’s FTAs do not force governments to privatize, contract out or deregulate water-related services.

WE SAY: European member states are so concerned about how CETA might affect their ability to deliver public water services that they have proposed to exclude drinking water from their side of the bargain. With only one exception in Yukon, federal government, provinces and territories have not asked for the same protection for water services, which leaves Canada’s public water systems vulnerable to claims by the EU or its large private water companies that their investment opportunities are being undermined either by local water monopolies, or, where there is already some level of privatization, by new water use or other standards.

Free trade? Everything about the CETA deal carries a very heavy cost.

Police Surveillance

Funny, isn't it, that while the police generally favour video surveillance cameras as a way to prevent crime, they are not nearly as sanguine when the cameras are turned on them.

Yesterday, Dr. Dawg provided a link to a story in The National Post written by Karen Selick, who discusses how it is becoming increasing the illegal practice of the authorities to prevent citizens from videotaping their actions and confiscating their equipment when these orders are ignored, some even being charged with obstructing police.

As Selick, the litigation director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation, points out, There is no law in Canada that prohibits people from openly photographing police.

Last week, Corey Maygard of Edmonton fell afoul of the constabulary there when he refused to stop filming an arrest they were making. He asserted his right to be present with his phone camera, but his knowledge of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms earned him a charge of police obstruction and the confiscation of his phone. The charges were withdrawn last Monday, and his phone was returned yesterday, after an initial song-and-dance about it being lost.

There are those who say we should never refuse a police officer's orders. I obviously do not share that sentiment because in my view, such blind compliance is simply one of the steps on the descent into tyranny.

What Canadian Media Outlets Need

What they need is people like CNN's Soledad O'Brien, who refuses to be cowed by right-wing bullies like John Sununu.

Peter Mansbridge, are you listening?

H/t Roger Ebert

See also Andy Ostroy's thoughts on The Huffington Post.

Language Unbefitting a Govenment

As a retired high school teacher, I follow educational developments within Ontario but only occasionally write about them, my bias making most such posts rather predictable. That being said, however, I feel compelled to add to the commentary I have previously made about the 'education premier,' Dalton McGuinty and his henchwoman, Education Minister Laurel Broten.

Perhaps desperate to appear tough in anticipation of the two byelections coming up in September, McGuinty and Broten have been ratcheting up their confrontational and demagogic language as they try to create a sense of crisis about the upcoming school year.

As reported in The Star, yesterday Minister Broten offered a preview of the legislation the Liberals are prepared to introduce should contracts not be in place before school opens. Not only do I object to the crisis atmosphere such a preview creates but also, and more especially, the demagogic language that plays to the worst prejudices the general public has about teachers:

“I don’t believe the average Ontario worker would expect to get a 5.5 per cent pay increase after taking the summer off and refusing to negotiate,” Broten said in a shot at unions representing elementary and high school teachers that walked away from bargaining with the province.

The figure dangled is misleading, since teachers have already offered a two-year wage freeze, and only refers to an average figure that less-experienced teachers would receive as they move up the grid, where the number of years in the classroom is recognized with established salary increases.

Once again, despite its occasional lofty rhetoric, the McGuinty cabal, in its willingness to be deeply divisive, has revealed its unfitness to govern.

CETA - Trust No One - Part Two

As reported in today's Star, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, after meeting with Stephen Harper, has promised to push for early completion of the gruelling negotiations for a Canada-European Union free trade pact.

While that may hearten those who believe the pact would be an unalloyed blessing for Canada's economy, there are many others, including Canadian municipal governments, that are not so sure:

HARPER SAYS: It’s a myth that CETA would prevent Canada’s municipal governments from sourcing goods and services locally.

WE SAY: The procurement rules in CETA will prohibit any covered government or public agency from preferring one bidding firm over another based on the amount of Canadian or local content in the goods or services that firm is offering. Already procurement, or public spending, is open and transparent in Canada. Already European firms bid on and win major construction and other projects. The only thing CETA does is lock municipalities into one way of spending, where the lowest bid wins every time. It means giving up the right to use procurement as a sustainable development or job creation tool.

Wayne Easter, the Liberal Party's critic for International Trade, expresses similar misgivings about CETA in an article for iPolitics.

CETA - Trust No One - Part One

As I get older, I sometimes feel like a character from the X-Files, one of the recurring motifs of which was "Trust No One.'

I think I have lived long enough and read widely enough to know that things purported to be the truth are often the exact opposite. Such is the case, I believe, with the Harper government propaganda surrounding the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement CETA) currently being negotiated.

While much has been written about it, it has a relatively low public profile, and even lower public understanding of its implications, thanks largely, I suspect, to the kind of breathless endorsement of its 'potential' from the MSM, including The Financial Post.

Happily, as always, there are organizations that challenge this rosy depiction, not the least of which is The Council of Canadians.

While the full piece is available at the above link, I am going to post parts of it tonight and tomorrow in the belief that small amounts of information, especially when read online, are more readily digested than large ones:

In April 2012, the Harper government launched a propaganda campaign in response to growing criticism of the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). The campaign material, housed on a new DFAIT webpage , attempts to respond to several claims about CETA which the government believes to be myths. Unfortunately, in answering these claims, the Harper government introduces even more misleading and even false information about the impacts that “next generation” trade agreements like CETA will have in a number of social and public policy areas.

HARPER SAYS: Canada’s free trade agreements exclude health care, public education and other social services maintained for a public purpose.

WE SAY: Public pressure forced the Canadian government to seek better protections for health care in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) but CETA could undermine those protections. As private, for-profit activity increases in health care, education and other social services, it’s not clear a trade or investment panel would agree that these are services “maintained for a public purpose.” As proposed by Scott Sinclair , senior trade expert with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Canada should negotiate a new exemption, modeled on the cultural exemption in Canadian trade deals, which assures that nothing in CETA “shall be construed to apply to measures adopted or maintained by a party with respect to health care, public health insurance, public education and other social services.”

More to come tomorrow.