What You Don’t Know About
a Deal You Haven’t Heard Of
by Council of Canadians
In coming days, Canadian and European officials will intensify
negotiations on a new trade agreement most Canadians have never heard
of. The Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement
is by far the largest free-trade deal this country has ever
undertaken.
CoC National Chair, Maude Barlow
If it goes through, CETA will open up the rules, standards and
public spending priorities of provinces and municipalities to direct
competition and challenge from European corporations. Ottawa refuses to
even discuss the environmental implications, but a recent trade
sustainability impact assessment commissioned by the European
Commission has sounded alarms in several areas.
The report says the kind of liberalizing trade deal envisioned will
lead to increased European investment in the Alberta tar sands, and
thus to increased greenhouse gas emissions. Trade lawyer Steven
Shrybman has sounded a similar warning in a recent legal opinion,
noting that CETA will give corporations the right to ignore or
challenge existing or new rules aimed at reducing the current heavy
footprint of the tar sands. He posits that the Conservative government
sees international trade regimes as an important tool for defeating
efforts to address climate change.
The impact assessment also warns that CETA will open the door for
European water utilities, such as giant transnationals Suez and Veolia
of France, to privatize Canadian public water services and raise
rates. Such companies would be able to challenge local water
conservation and source protection rules, as well as bottled water
bans, as unfair barriers to trade.
Any increase in commodity exports to Europe will place a greater
strain on groundwater in Canada, which is already a leading “virtual”
water exporter, sending massive amounts of surface and groundwater out
of the country in agricultural products. Our current net export of
water in grains alone is totally unsustainable, equivalent to twice
the Athabasca River’s yearly discharge.
The report also singles out a possible negative impact on northern
and first nations communities as the deal opens up massive new
industrial, mining, forestry and energy development, leading to
“water, air and soil contamination.” Europe is seeking a comprehensive
and aggressive global approach to acquiring the raw materials needed
by its corporations. At its heart, this deal is a bid for
unprecedented and uncontrolled European access to Canadian resources.
This includes fish. The EU is seeking to remove export restrictions
and foreign investment limits from Canadian processing plants, as
well as increased access to Canadian ports to bring the raw fish back
to Europe for processing. Europe has overfished its own waters and is
seeking uncontrolled access to ours; the impact report warns that CETA
will likely lead to overfishing, especially in the Atlantic.
The Canadian Environmental Law Association warns of another threat
posed by this deal. The text on “regulatory co-operation” calls for
further harmonization of regulatory measures and requires both
jurisdictions to agree before more protective and progressive rules
can be adopted. It will now be twice as hard in Europe and Canada to
bring in new rules and standards to protect the environment.
Finally, CETA will likely have a NAFTA-type investor-state
enforcement mechanism, which means that European corporations will
have the same right that U.S. companies now enjoy to sue the Canadian
government if it introduces new rules to protect the environment. Gus
Van Harten of Osgoode Hall Law School and David Schneiderman of the
University of Toronto’s law faculty warn that this tool emphasizes
investor protection over government policy in environmental
protection, and provides a powerful new means for large corporations
to frustrate regulatory initiatives without a comparable mechanism to
police these same companies.
A new study of NAFTA’s Chapter 11 dispute mechanism, by Scott
Sinclair of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, found that
since NAFTA, Canada has paid $157-million and Mexico has paid
$187-million to corporations that challenged their domestic laws,
while the United States has yet to pay out in any challenge against
it. Canada should expect a similar outcome if it goes up against
European transnationals.
CETA is the wrong model for Canada and Europe. Unlimited growth and
economic globalization are killing the planet. CETA serves the only
profit interests of the big business community. We can do better.
Maude Barlow is national chair of the Council of Canadians.
Read more about CETA at www.canadians.org/CETA.
