UPDATED: Lament For A Vanishing World

Those who read this blog with any regularity probably know that nature is something near and dear to my heart. I defy people to watch well-made nature documentaries, walk among the creatures we share the world with, or even visit a well-run zoo (I highly recommend the one in San Diego!) and not be struck and moved, as I have been. by the energy and intelligence that pervades our world.

Sadly, much of that energy and intelligence is being lost, as reports show that we are facing drastic reductions in our wildlife populations. The most startling statistic suggests that by 2020, just more than three years from now, the numbers that existed in 1970 will be reduced by two-thirds!

For more hard truth about what looks like a pending mass extinction, check out a post by The Mound of Sound, who writes regularly about matters that affect all of us.

As well, take a look at these two brief video reports to better understand the peril we are responsible for:



The picture for marine life is hardly encouraging either.



These reports are difficult to watch, as they should be. We should all feel not only disheartened but ashamed as we view them, given that our actions as a species have led to this; we need to also urgently understand it is only by responsible and mindful action that we can reverse an increasingly ugly truth.

But do we care? Are we willing to confront our self-indulgence and egoism, modify our wasteful ways, and begin to respect the other creatures we share this world with?

Those are more than rhetorical questions, my friends.

UPDATE: The Star's editorial today suggests measures our government can take to slow this precipitous decline in our animal population, and Thomas Walkom talks about threats to our iconic moose.

The Danger Of False Equivalency

In this morning's Star, Daniel Dale has a very interesting essay on why, despite the fact that it forks no lightning but provokes much outrage from his supporters, it is important to keep reporting on Donald Trump's shameless aversion to truth. Unfortunately, it is not yet available online, but if it becomes available, I will add a link here.

On a related matter, however, my friend Jonathan alerted me to a piece from Bill Maher that is well-worth watching in which he indicts not only the lying Trump but also excoriates the laziness and cynicism of those who embrace him:



And one more thing: it appears that Trump is right in claiming the election is rigged, just not in the way he meant.

A woman in Iowa was arrested this week on suspicion of voting twice in the general election, court and police records show.

Rote told Iowa Public Radio that she cast her first ballot for Donald Trump but feared it would be changed to a vote for Hillary Clinton.

"I wasn't planning on doing it twice — it was spur-of-the-moment," Rote told the radio station. "The polls are rigged."

Star Readers Speak Out On CETA

Recently, my newspaper of record, The Toronto Star, wrote what I felt was an uncritical endorsement of CETA. The part that especially disturbed me was this:

In the case of CETA, the demonization focuses on one part of the agreement, involving a process for resolving disputes between investors and governments. The so-called Investor-State Dispute Settlement system would allow foreign firms to challenge European laws if they felt they were being unfairly discriminated against.

The critics portrayed this as a way for corporate interests to ride roughshod over local concerns. So the EU amended the deal early this year, with the Trudeau government happy to go along.

They changed the system for resolving disputes, proposing a permanent system closer to a permanent trade court. They added measures aimed at making arbitrators act impartially. And they affirmed the right of governments to regulate to achieve “legitimate policy objectives” in such areas as the environment, labour, health and culture – even if that damages investors’ expectations of profit. In other words, they made efforts to tip the balance away from corporations in favour of the broader public interest.

What the paper failed to acknowledge was that most of the above is more aspirational and cosmetic than it is legally binding.

As usual, Star readers are voicing their views strongly and unequivocally. Each letter is worth reading, but I am reproducing just a few of them below:

Re: Trade deal with Europe should be salvaged: Editorial, Oct. 25

The Star was absolutely correct in saying that CETA is a deal worth saving. Who can argue with something that provides more opportunities for our goods and services and gives Canadian consumers access to European goods at a reduced cost.

But the editorial completely missed the boat when it didn’t indicate what changes to CETA were needed in order to make it more acceptable to all participants and by glossing over the main sticking point, namely the ISDS provisions.

ISDS stands for Investor State Dispute Settlement. In a nutshell, ISDS is a process whereby a foreign corporation (not a domestic company) can sue a government (federal, provincial or municipal) when it feels that a regulation adversely affects its potential profit. The process completely bypasses the court system of the country being sued and the decisions (made by a tribunal of corporate lawyers instead of impartial judges) are final and cannot be overturned.

ISDS is an affront to the sovereignty of any country and should be eliminated from all trade agreements, particularly those involving countries with well-established and independent court systems.

Can CETA be improved? Yes, by eliminating all sections that provide a clear and significant advantage to multinational corporations, starting with ISDS.

Dennis Choptiany, Markham

It’s hard to believe the Star’s editorial board would be lamenting the death of a trade deal like CETA. This is the same type of deal as all the rest. It has been negotiated for the benefit of large corporations and even the best arguments in favour of it are a joke.

Desmond Fisher, Ottawa

I find it astounding that people are surprised that the people of Wallonia, who were informed about CETA’s contents and had the power to stop it initially, did so. I have met zero people who have gone to meetings about CETA or the TPP and felt they were in our best interests.

Harper sold the wheat board to foreign investors, while Wynne sold the well that a town wanted for drinking water to Nestlé to be bottled — both showing government favours profit over public interests.

Just wait until corporations have even more power, which is the real purpose of trade agreements.

What we need are deals that can be discussed with, and supported by, the public. Trudeau promised transparency but is just finishing what Harper started, still behind closed doors.

Well done Wallonia!

Stephen Albrecht, Toronto

I fear your editorial bad mouthing the EU is unfair. And so is Freeland’s tough-guy take-it-or-leave-it attitude.

The investor state dispute settlement mechanism has been problematic for many Canadians and clearly is for Europeans. Your editorial states that’s all been taken care of, but a recent column by Thomas Walkom says the renegotiated arrangement is “non-binding.”

Which is correct? Clear explanation of this has been fairly thin in Canadian media. But the Europeans are communicating quite openly and I feel their concerns about a Trojan horse of multi-national corporate interests using “nice” old Canada to take advantage of the deal should be taken seriously.

Ken Pyette, Toronto

As I have written before, one of the foremost duties of citizenship is to be informed and knowledgeable. It is the only chance we have of holding our elected representatives to account. Anything less is a betrayal of us all.

Thomas Walkom on CETA

While it is disappointing to see that Wallonia has dropped its opposition to the CETA deal, thus paving the way for signing and ultimate ratification, all may not be lost, at least for the Europeans, according to Thomas Walkom. Morever, this imbroglio has brought forth some interesting facts, facts that again raise questions about Canada's underlying motivation in so aggressively pursuing the deal.

... the deal as written contains a fundamental imbalance. European firms would be able to challenge, at special investment courts, Canadian laws and regulations that interfere with profit-making.

But Canadian firms would have the same rights only in those EU countries that specifically allow such challenges. That’s because the EU treats the proposed Investment Court System as a matter of national, rather than Pan-European, concern.

In Canada, on the other hand, investment courts need only the imprimatur of the federal government to come into effect.

Think about that for a moment. The EU has structural protections built in to permit or exclude such challenges, while our own federal government raises not one objection to them. Indeed, you may recall how International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeladn has described CETA as "gold-plated," after tinkering around the edges of the investor state dispute settlement process, tinkering that was, for all intents and purposes, cosmetic.

Walkom cites Osgoode Hall law professor and trade expert Gus Van Harten, who says,

Ottawa may want to put the investment court portion of the deal on ice until the EU nations decide which of them will agree to it.

The Guardian reports that as part of its deal with Wallonia, Belgium has agreed to ask the European Court of Justice whether the investment court dispute settlement proposal is even legal.

However, investor rights are only the most egregious part of a very flawed deal:

A 2010 study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives estimated that removing tariffs on European cars and trucks would cost the Canadian auto industry between 28,000 and 150,000 jobs.

According to one 2013 estimate, drug patent rules envisioned by the treaty would end up costing both individual consumers and provincial governments up to $1.6 billion each year, making it even more difficult to set up a national pharmacare plan.

Canadian dairy farmers would be hurt as would fish processors. Canadian beef and pork producers would probably benefit from exporting more to Europe — although the scale of this has been called into question.

So what does the deal come down to for Canadians?

The main economic benefit of CETA may be that it would allow Canadians to buy European luxury goods at marginally cheaper prices.

Otherwise, this never was a compelling deal. Even without CETA, the EU is already Canada’s second-largest trading partner.

Ordinary Canadians have every right to demand an explanation for why Canada is so content with protecting the investor rights that will so hamper our sovereignty, as has been our experience with NAFTA.

Government rhetoric and neoliberal enthusiasms notwithstanding, we all deserve much, much better from the people we elected to protect and advance our interests.

UPDATED: CETA: The Real Deal

While it looks, unfortunately, like the Belgian opposition to CETA is dissolving, it is perhaps instructive to understand the core of Wallonia's concerns about it. While some of it revolves around the hit that some of its domestic industries will take if it is ratified, of much greater concern is the power it gives corporations through the investor state dispute settlement mechanism. They are objections that most reasonable Canadians, I believe, would share if they were more familiar with the 'trojan horse' that will compromise national sovereignty on a much wider scale than NAFTA already has.

Given that Canada has been sued many times under NAFTA, we should all be very, very wary of ensconcing those rights further, despite the unalloyed enthusiasm the Justin Trudeau government has for such deals.

1. RAGE AGAINST THE MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION
While the Walloons are worried their agriculture sector will suffer under the deal, they are increasingly concerned about the investor-state dispute settlement system (ISDS) as well. The region’s socialist government has adopted many of the concerns of the civil society groups that oppose the free trade deal: they say it gives multinational corporations too much power to sue governments if they make regulations that affect their ability to turn a profit.

2. TRANSPARENCY
The Walloons want changes to the ISDS provisions of the treaty, specifically the tribunals that would settle disputes. They want them to be more transparent to eliminate the possibility of bias or conflict of interests by the people appointed to adjudicate disputes.

3. CLOSING LOOPHOLES
The Walloons want to see loopholes closed that they say would allow U.S. multinationals with offices in Canada to use the treaty to sue governments in Europe, says Osgoode Hall law professor Gus Van Harten.

4. PRESERVING JURISDICTIONS OF DOMESTIC COURTS
Van Harten also says the Walloons want stronger language in the treaty that would preserve the jurisdiction of domestic courts in individual countries to hear disputes, instead of turning them over to the new tribunal system envisioned by the treaty.

5. ‘A CAT IN A BAG’
In a parliamentary debate last week, Wallonian President Paul Magnette used an interesting metaphor to describe what he says is the opaque nature of the tribunals. He said it was like buying “a cat in a bag.”

Magnette has also said that “we have to say no so we can negotiate” better labour, environmental and legal standards.

Some have said that the five-page “joint interpretative declaration” that is to be added to the CETA text could be given the force of law and could clarify some of what the Walloons view as objectionable in the treaty.

As they say, stay tuned for further developments, but in the meantime, all of us as Canadian citizens have an obligation to educate ourselves on these issues and decide on them for themselves, rather than placing unearned confidence in Mr. Trudeau and his sunny smile.

UPDATE: Former MP Craig Scott has a lacerating look at our government's support for CETA in The Tyee, support that mirrors the agenda pushed by the former Harper government:

Based on a European negotiator’s briefing to NDP MPs during CETA negotiations (the Harper government refused to brief MPs), it was Canada that insisted on some of the most regressive and dangerous provisions in CETA.

The provisions in question were — and still are — the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) procedures. This part of the treaty takes CETA’s interpretation and, ultimately, enforcement out of the hands of national courts and places it in the hands of arbitrators.

The Youth Voice is Our Voice

If ever there was ever any doubt about the neoliberal agenda being pursued by our 'new' government, Finance Minister Bill Morneau's recent comments removed all uncertainty. He asserted that precarious work is here to stay and Canadians must adapt to having a variety of jobs throughout their lives as they experience the euphemistically phrased 'job churn.' Never have I read a more bald admission of submission to the corporatocracy agenda.

The above was just one of the frustrations about the Trudeau government that a group of youth was voicing yesterday as a number of them turned their backs on the Prime Minister at the Canadian Labour Congress National Young Workers Summit in Ottawa. While precarious work is the problem they most immediately feel, they also did not forget about climate change, pipelines, and a litany of other issues that reveal the disparity between Trudeau's lofty rhetoric and the reality of the Harperesque policies the Liberals are following.

In my mind, we owe these young people a debt of gratitude for their refusal to be polite and pretending all is well. They are the voice of all who care about our world.

The Art Of The Deal: A Guest Post By John B.

In response to yesterday's post about free trade, John B. provided a detailed commentary that derves a separate posting. Below is what he wrote:

Are any Canadians asking?

I find the current tap dance we are witnessing reminiscent of the public displays of angst and pretense of desperation by Mulroney and Burney a generation ago over the possibility that the Canada-US deal was in peril because of American apprehension. I've always believed that we were the unwitting dupes of a ruse designed to seduce an uninformed public into assuming, without any further analysis and consideration of what it would occasion that, because a negotiating and simultaneously competing business partner had some reservations, the deal must certainly be much more beneficial to Canada than to its supposedly hesitant deal partner at whose expense the anticipated benefit was to be achieved.

On Saturday when I met up socially with a couple of old acquaintances, both university-educated persons, one of them initiated a discussion of the current CETA situation. They're not people who are generally uninformed: one has an honours degree in history; and the other is a retired police chief. Before I had said anything on the subject, one of them introduced a conversation expressing his displeasure that an insignificant region of a country that had been freed from oppression by Canadian efforts during the Second World War would dare to obstruct an enterprise beneficial to Canadian interests. As my grade eight history teacher would have said: "Shades of the CUSFTA." My pal had made the assumption, just as many other Canadians must have done when Mulroney submitted his star performance, that the other side was balking because the relative benefits of the deal were so heavily weighted in Canada's favour. (There must be a term that marketing specialists use for this baloney sales tactic. Maybe it's got its own chapter in "The Art of the Deal" or "Think and Grow Rich".) After listening to the others' comments, I interjected my opinions on the I-SDS and ICS factors, the enhanced corporate opportunity for achieving regulatory capture and the implications of transnational labour mobility, and briefly stated my view that an insignificant component of this and other "trade" deals actually has anything to do with trade and tariffs. Both of them looked at me as though they didn't speak English and then one of them said that he didn't remember whether he had ever even heard of the CETA prior to Friday. The other one then said that he thought he had heard the first mention of he could recall it earlier in the week.

Now consider what they've been putting on the TV regarding this subject since the hiccup in Belgium on broadcasts that purport to be political and economic analysis : Ed Fast lambasting the Liberals for possibly wrecking his deal when all they had to do was to get it signed; Kevin O'Leary, while Evan Solomon grins from the other side of the interview, ranting in full leadership campaign mode that, because of Freeland's apparent failure, we should now question the competence of all of Selfie-Boy Zoolander's cabinet choices; a private equity and derivatives exchange expert telling Michael Serapio that "trade deals are win-win deals" and that the uncertainty in Wallonia is "absolutely appalling"; and, as we should expect, no discussion dealing with the substance of the objections.

So what's my point? It's that there must certainly be some convergence of interests that has willed the Canadian public to be kept in the dark and cooked the pablum we are being served.

What has happened during the CETA negotiations under both political parties seems to have taken it all up a notch. How did Canada become the headwaiter to and chief water carrier for the global investor-rights business lobby? What additional net benefit are we expected to assume will accrue to the country's economy through the adoption of this irregular national policy as a standard practice? Have we become the go-to guy for the transnational commerce management industry? I'll leave it up to someone smarter and better informed to consider those questions. But I'll suggest that an investigation into some revolving doors and the subsequent career choices of former negotiators and political leaders might provide some possible answers. Maybe Dominic Barton could make some explanation that relates to what's happening now under the Sunny Ways Corps.

With respect to Mound's comment on the possibility of abuses in investor claims, it seems that another innovative market has already emerged from the vibrancy and dynamism of the I-SDS protection racket:

http://theindependent.ca/2015/02/10/ceta-what-government-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about-isds-lawsuits/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/financial-speculation-corps-vis-lawsuits-isds-court-part-martin-jr-