BARLOW: DON’T BE FOOLED - CETA IS TTIP, THROUGH CANADA

[Oscar]

DON’T BE FOOLED - CETA IS TTIP, THROUGH CANADA

by Maude Barlow September 8, 2016

IN GERMAN [ http://www.mittelbayerische.de/politik- ... 28117.html ]

There has been much speculation in recent days that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment partnership (TTIP) is dead. Statements from the French commerce secretary Matthias Fekl and French President Francois Hollande as well as German economy minister and deputy chancellor Sigmar Gabriel have made it clear that Europe’s leaders are abandoning this poisonous treaty. Public opposition to TTIP has been fierce and smart political leaders, still reeling from the Brexit slap, are listening. Chalk one up for democracy.

But here’s the problem. These same leaders support the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), citing it as a “good” trade agreement unlike “bad” TTIP. In many meetings with MEPs last fall, I heard over and over that a deal with the US would be dangerous for Europe while a deal with “nice” Canada – which shares so many European values – would be seen as a unifying and positive project for a Europe facing so many crises.

At his party’s critical September 19 meeting, Gabriel will attempt to convince his colleagues that CETA is significantly different and better than TTIP. Certainly this is the line the Canadian government is promoting. And it is completely false.

In its own right, CETA will threaten Europe’s higher standards on food safety, environmental laws, the treatment of farm animals and allowable chemicals, hormones and pesticides. Canada harmonized many of its once higher standards through the informal regulatory convergence process of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Canada is among the top three largest producers of GMO foods in the world, and has no mandatory labelling for GMOs. Many of our animals are raised in horrible factory farms using chemicals not allowed in Europe.

Canada is also home to the most aggressive mining industry in the world, cited in industry studies as having the worst record of human rights and environmental abuses. The Canadian mining industry heavily promotes CETA and other trade and investment agreements as vehicles to challenge local resistance to its operations.

But CETA is also the back door to all the American companies who might have used TTIP to challenge the significantly higher standards and laws of Europe. There are almost 42,000 American companies already operating in Canada who, through their Canadian subsidiaries, can use CETA to promote the downward harmonization of standards through a variety of mechanisms contained in both deals. These include all the big oil companies and agribusiness and chemical giants such as Monsanto.

Like TTIP, CETA contains a mandatory provision to enforce regulatory cooperation in order to harmonize standards between North America and Europe in areas as diverse as pipelines, financial services, labour laws, chemicals and food. Like TTIP, CETA contains Investor–State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), a provision that grants foreign companies in one jurisdiction the right to sue governments in another jurisdiction for financial compensation if their regulations and laws violate the investors’ right to profit. American corporations will be able to use these provisions in CETA exactly as they would have used TTIP, had it been adopted.

Canadians can tell Europeans what it is like being on the receiving end of such challenges. Since NAFTA was adopted, Canada has been sued 39 times by American corporations and paid out over 135 million Euros in penalties. Canada is currently facing 1.75 billion Euros worth of challenges, two thirds of them related to environmental rules. These include challenges to bans on fracking, lawn pesticides, and the cross border export of PCBs. These same American (and Canadian) companies will use CETA to do the same thing to Europe.

Do not believe those who say that the Investment Court System (ICS) that replaces the original ISDS provision is a reform or an improvement. Setting up a “special court” for foreign companies not available to domestic companies or groups or communities is still profoundly antidemocratic and dangerous.

And a recent report found that the ICS would allow the most controversial ISDS challenges launched in NAFTA!

There is something profoundly wrong with the current form of economic globalization characterized and protected by corporate-friendly trade agreements like TTIP and CETA. Too few are benefitting; too much damage is being done to the natural world. If ever there was a time for courage and a vision for a more just system of growing food, producing energy and trading across borders, this is it. Much rests on what we do now.

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Maude Barlow is a Canadian author and activist and chairs the board of the Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest social and environmental justice organization.