CETA: Secrecy around trade agreement contents doesn’t sit w

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Secrecy around trade agreement contents doesn’t sit well

[ http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/opinion/20 ... nt-si.html ]

By Rosalind Waters ~ GUEST OPINION Published on March 2, 2017

Atlantic premiers plan to save money through bulk pharmaceutical purchases.

The media frenzy last week about the plan discussed by Atlantic premiers to save us all money by bulk purchasing of drugs has been hard to ignore.

Nova Scotia’s minister of Health announced, “There are great savings to be had and ultimately what we all want is benefits to our citizens.”

P.E.I. Premier Wade MacLauchlan apparently agreed that cost containment in the health care system was a priority.

If lower drug costs have such a positive impact on Atlantic Canadians, why has no one ever come clean and told Islanders that, as a result of the provisional application of parts of the CETA (the trade agreement with the European Union), drug costs for Islanders will eventually increase by an estimated $3.6 million annually?

Why has our government insisted on a narrative that would have us believe CETA is only about tariff reductions? Before CETA was negotiated 60 per cent of Canadian goods exported to Europe were already tariff-free, and the average tariff was only 2.2 per cent. We had very free trade with the EU to start with.

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