Free trade agreements currently being negotiated by the federal government could limit local government’s ability to buy local, according to an activist who travelled to Powell River last week to address the issue.
Stuart Trew, a trade campaigner with the Council of Canadians (COC), was one of the speakers at a presentation on Tuesday, May 28, hosted by the Powell River chapter of the organization. He was joined by Harsap Grewal, Pacific regional organizer with COC, and Powell River residents Ellen Gould, a researcher into free trade agreements, and Claudia Medina-Culos, a former regional organizer with COC.
Recent reports have indicated the government is set to sign the deal with the European Union (EU) when Prime Minister Stephen Harper visits Europe for the G8 conference mid-month. Called CETA (the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement), the deal is one of many the federal government has in play. Other free trade agreements include TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) and FIPA (Canada-China Foreign Investment Protection and Promotion Agreement).
Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Kathy Dunderdale raised the curtain on some of the behind-the-scenes discussions that surround negotiations. She told a business audience in St. John’s recently that Nigel Wright, Harper’s former chief of staff, pressured her to eliminate provincial regulations that protect local fishery jobs and linked the concession to a $1-billion federal loan guarantee for a hydroelectric project.
Trew said in Atlantic Canada there are a lot of local processing rules on fisheries. “If you catch the fish in local waters, you do have to process it, at least partially, in the province,” he said. “We know the European Union has been looking to get rid of those local fishing processing rules.”
Dunderdale said she hung up on Wright and Trew said that was a good example of a province standing up to the pressure. He also said it was a good example of the ways in which the Harper government is basically “bullying the provinces into getting these changes to very important rules to those provinces that actually are designed to create jobs, to make the fisheries more sustainable.”
CETA provisions include full access by the EU to municipal procurement and to water rights and services. The deal would increase municipal administrative costs by requiring additional reporting and contract management and would diminish the capacity of local governments to hire or buy locally, to use public spending as a tool for local economic development. Disputes by private firms against local policy decisions could be taken before private trade tribunals that lack transparency and have the authority to impose fines.
The City of Powell River passed a motion in 2012 that stated its opposition to CETA and asked the federal government to protect its autonomous powers to create local jobs, protect the environment and provide services and programs from any restrictions to those powers in CETA.
The procurement issue is fundamental to the trade deals, Trew said, and municipalities across Canada and BC have been fighting back. “It really is about banning ‘buy local,’” he said. “A city will not be able to prefer local goods over goods that come from 50 kilometres away or across the Atlantic. They basically have to treat all bids as equal, even if the local bid is going to have those extra benefits for the community in terms of keeping people employed.”
Although over 50 municipalities have passed motions stating they want to be excluded from CETA, the provinces aren’t listening, Trew said. Some local governments are demanding immediate dialogue with provincial officials about the issue, just to make sure there is some sort of transparency, he added. “This deal is almost done and municipalities have been ignored,” he said.
Trew also talked about how CETA will increase drug prices, increase Canada’s trade deficit and go further than past deals in the rights corporations will have to challenge public interest legislation and decisions.
For more information about CETA and the other trade deals, interested readers can visit the COC webpage on trade.
