Montreal, February 7, 2002 - We are here to announce our categorical rejection of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and to urge that provincial representatives take a rejectionist stance with regard to this thinly disguised corporate swindle. This is a deal that is mainly designed to erode democracy, and, by extension, to jeopardize our ability to safeguard our own health, our environment, and labour. It is a deal that is designed to transfer economic decision making powers from the people to corporate boardrooms. It is a deal that, unsurprisingly, most people don't want - even though our government seems bent on convincing them otherwise. So we want to say here that we reject the deal itself, and also that we deplore Pierre Pettigrew's shameless efforts to foist it on provincial representatives.
Contrary to what Minister Pettigrew would have people believe, NAFTA is not a model we want to repeat. Minister Pettigrew pretends that this agreement was the most wonderful thing since sliced bread, but look at the facts: the negative fallout was massive, and still continues to expand. The Minister rattles off GDP figures, export percentages, and market share values with the assurance of a slick, international financial pitchman -- which, of course, is exactly what he did in the corporate world for a decade prior to entering the Chretien government.
But what Pettigrew's flashy graphs and figures conceal is a grim reality: the steadily deteriorating situation for working people. The good jobs - the jobs for which workers spent decades struggling to get a fair share of the productive wealth - are rapidly disappearing. lt began with the closure of the main production facility of Gillette Canada only days after the Free Trade agreement, and since then it has been a steady stream of closures, with the latest major ones being Fruit of the Loom in Trois Rivières and the GM factory closure in Boisbriand late last year. Just two weeks ago the Avon plant in Montreal announced it will be closing in late 2003 in order to move operations out of Canada, putting 150 more people out of work. From 1990 to 2000, 75% of Canadians experienced a decrease in real income according to Statistics Canada. Down in Mexico, real wages have declined by 23% under NAFTA, and in the U.S., economist Robert Scott has shown that NAFTA eliminated over 700,000 job opportunities between 1994 and 2000.
But while the people lose, corporate interests are winning big time. Corporate claims pending against the Canadian government now total well over a billion dollars, and these claims are helping to make democratic choice a thing of the past. Take, for example, these recent cases:
On March 11, 2002, one of NAFTA's trade tribunals decided that the confidentiality of corporate documents examined within NAFTA trumps Canada's access-to-information laws.
On October 21, 2002, Canada was ordered to pay $8.23 Million to S.D. Myers to compensate the company for "lost profits" after the Canadian government attempted to enact a law which would have implemented the Basel Convention forbidding transboundary movement of hazardous wastes. Canada also removed the offending law.
And on September 19, 2002, Crompton Corporation refiled its hundred million dollar suit against Canada for banning a pesticide which is widely suspected of causing birth defects and of being a carcinogen.
Yet Minister Pettigrew continues to churn out the hype. Just four days ago in Washington, he said: "NAFTA has been a tremendous success in making North America one of the most efficient, integrated and competitive regions in the world."
Of course Pettigrew knows how to camouflage his position when he senses that people are on to him. Back in the months prior to the Summit of the Americas, it looked like he was actually beginning to listen to popular demands. He began to talk about removing the offensive investor-state provisions in NAFTA's Chapter 11. Now, however -- two years later -- it has become clear that this was not at all his intention. Far from removing the investor-state provisions in NAFTA's Chapter 11, his negotiators are busy trying to *strengthen* them so that democracy can be swept away more quickly.
And what about the spectre of a Chapter 11 in the FTAA? Facing immense criticism prior to the Summit of the Americas, once again, the sly Pettigrew made assuaging sounds, promising that there was "no way" Canada would accept a similar chapter in the FTAA (June 15, 2000; Financial Post).
However in late 2002, ministerial spokesperson Sébastien Théberge admitted that Canadian negotiators at the Quito ministerial were in fact pushing for investor-state provisions to be included in the FTAA deal. And more damning still, in November 2002, a leaked working version of a DFAIT memorandum destined for federal cabinet ministers called for the inclusion of investor-state provisions in *all* trade agreements as standard policy. But the minister himself demurely continues to claim that he "is not advocating the replication of the NAFTA dispute settlement rules in the FTAA", with 'replication' meaning, presumably, the exact positioning of every comma.
This sort of sneaking duplicity might be common practice in the boardrooms of Samson,Bélair/Deloitte & Touche, but is this the sort of man we want to trust to negotiate with our basic democratic rights?
Let's not forget how Pettigrew, as Minister of Human Resources, was the one who implemented reforms which resulted in about 20% of claimants being cut off from benefits - and this even as the EI program was enjoying huge budget surpluses. Nor should we forget how over 1 billion dollars was irresponsibly allocated during his term to various corporations for so-called 'job creation'. Eighty per cent of such projects were discovered to have undergone no financial monitoring, and in 15% of cases, not even an application form could be produced. But a few months prior to the government audit which brought these facts to light, Pettigrew was shuttled over to the International Trade Portfolio, leaving his successor, Jane Stewart, to shoulder most of the blame.
Remember Pettigrew's response to demands to release the FTAA draft text in early 2001: Pettigrew claimed that "there is nothing that looks more like a free-trade agreement than another free-trade agreement". People have "nothing to fear from those texts" he said. It took a series of demonstrations, petitions, and direct action initiatives to actually *force* Pettigrew to relent. And in spite of being heavily bracketed, the text confirmed all the worries that critics had voiced (and Pettigrew had emphatically denied).
This is a man who is not to be trusted, and we strongly caution provincial delegates to be on their guard. And don't let this man seduce you into thinking that the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) at the WTO is any better than the FTAA. The GATS will open "all of education, including primary schools, to foreign corporations; allow foreign ownership of hospitals; get rid of crown corporations in auto insurance, liquor sales, telecommunications; allow foreign competition to public water and electrical utilities" (Council of Canadians report). All of these sectors are largely within the provincial jurisdiction, but Pierre Pettigrew makes no distinction -- left up to him he'd put it all up on the corporate auction block and spend the next decade joking about it over cocktails in Davos.
We reject Pierre Pettigrew's corporate vision, typified by the GATS and the FTAA, because we believe there is more to life than the thirst for ever-larger profits and opportunities for exploitation. We believe another world is possible which is built on principles of respect for the environment, respect for democratic decision making, and above all, respect for human rights, including the principle of freedom of movement. The FTAA, which would put goods before people, which would put money before democracy, and which would ensure that the environment is handed over to the highest bidder, is diametrically opposed to our vision. We reject it and we urge provincial delegates to do the same.
Solidarity Network to Stop the FTAA (SNSF)
Réseau de Solidarité Contre la ZLEA (RSCZ)
Red de Solidaridad Contra el ALCA (RSCA)