CETA: Putting corporations ahead of Canadians

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CETA: Putting corporations ahead of Canadians

[ http://rabble.ca/columnists/2014/10/cet ... -canadians ]

By Murray Dobbin | October 6, 2014

By sheer coincidence, the media has recently been filled with stories that reflect the parallel universes we seem to be living in. The first were the stories about the international climate summit and the huge climate march (and hundreds of smaller ones) that preceded it -- punctuated by the launch of Naomi Klein's powerful call-to-action book This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus the Climate adding to the power of the moment.

But while climate activists were demonstrating and some 100 world leaders were making pledges to finally get serious about climate change, many of those same leaders had already put their name to an international investment treaty, parts of which seem to have been virtually written by the same oil companies targeted for criticism and calls for greater regulation. That agreement is called the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA), in the news recently because of yet another photo op with Harper signing it with European leaders.

While there has been attention paid to some key provisions of CETA -- such as its investor state rules, its impact on Canadian drug pricing and its curbs on governments' ability to buy local -- there has been almost nothing in the media about CETA's chapter on domestic regulation. But a new Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report on CETA suggests there should be, because the articles of that chapter seem designed to kill efforts to regulate the resource industry. [ https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publi ... sense-ceta ] In other words, just as governments need to get deadly serious about reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, they are tying their own hands through new restrictions on their right to regulate.

CETA's domestic regulation chapter would be more aptly called "Gifts for the Oil and Gas Industry." These CETA provisions are so biased in favour of corporations it is easy to picture industry execs sitting at the elbows of CETA's negotiators, guiding their pens as they draft the agreement. Short of an international treaty banning all government regulations outright, CETA gives the oil and gas industry virtually everything it has been asking for, for decades. Of course these anti-regulation gifts are also available to other sectors, including the mining industry, but given the special place in Harper's universe reserved for Alberta's oil patch it's not hard to see where the impetus came from.

Restricting the right to regulate

Most trade and investment agreements are full of obscure legalese, but the Domestic Regulation chapter of CETA is actually relatively simple to understand. So check it out. [ http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-ag ... x?lang=eng ] The restrictions on regulation you will find are right out of the oil and gas industry's wish list. Chapter 14 on Domestic Regulation provides so many grounds for regulations to be challenged that almost any regulation could conceivably be ruled in contravention of the agreement.

CETA places an absolute value on the ease with which corporations can get approval of their projects. It demands that parties ensure "…that licensing and qualification procedures are as simple as possible and do not unduly complicate or delay the supply of a service or the pursuit of any other economic activity." (Article II.7) Requiring that oil and gas companies do environmental assessments, archaeological studies or get approvals from different levels of government is clearly a process that could be made simpler by doing away with these requirements altogether. Obligations to consult with the public and First Nations certainly complicate the regulatory process and cause delays.

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