MONTREAL - The city is playing host to a series of World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings next week — and once again the global commercial body is attracting its fair share of protesters.
'What they're trying to do is screw the African cotton farmers and the African HIV victims'—Pettigrew
Trade ministers from some two dozen countries will be in Montreal from July 28 to July 30 to prepare for bigger meetings in Cancun, Mexico this September. Anti-WTO protesters are planning a series of demonstrations against the global commercial body, including demonstrations aimed at shutting the meetings down.
Stefan Christoff, a spokesperson for the protest organizers, criticizes the WTO for standing in the way of people having access to food, medicine, water, and basic human rights.
"We're for the WTO shutting down, period," says Christoff.
Protest organizers say they do not intend for the demonstrations to become violent.
Federal International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew, who is hosting the mini-ministerial meeting in Montreal, says that those opposed to the WTO are stuck in the past and afraid of change.
"If they want to stop us — fine, good luck," says Pettigrew. "But they should bear the responsibility that what they're trying to do is screw the African cotton farmers and the African HIV victims."
He says the WTO protects economies in developing countries, and the Montreal meetings will help remove trade barriers.
Key issues
Pettigrew said key topics include how to open the $500-billion world market in farm goods and how to waive patent rules so that poor countries can import cheap medicines to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
But Few WTO watchers expect breakthroughs on such divisive issues.
In another twist, federal New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jack Layton says that Canadian sovereignty is threatened by the WTO discussions.
Layton says that international trade deals give rights to multinational corporations and take them away from people. World trade deals give multinational companies new powers, he explains.
"It's a race to the bottom in order to give rights to the top," says Layton.
He says Canadians are not opposed to trade, but that they want it to be fair and they want it to respect Canada's sovereignty.
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