The protesters had initially been seeking to prevent the destruction of the last treed green space in central Istanbul – Gezi Park – that was slated be covered over by a shopping mall development. Heavily armoured Turkish police using tear gas and rubber bullets over-reacted, injuring and hospitalizing many of the protesters. This in turn triggered a much larger series of protests across the country over the continuing deterioration of civil liberties and freedom of the press under the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey currently has the dubious distinction of having the largest number of reporters in jail of any other country and its mainstream media organizations have mainly ignored four days of widespread civilian protests which have now claimed their first fatality. The public information gap has consequently been filled by social media organs that Prime Minister Erdogan attacked as a “social menace.” President of Turkey Abdullah Gul has taken a more conciliatory approach calling peaceful protest a democratic right.

“Social media is not the menace in Turkey or elsewhere,” commented May. “It is governments that think that, just because they have majority power, they try to get away with whatever they can between and during elections.”

International Affairs Critic Eric Walton called on the Turkish government to demonstrate why they deserve a place in the European Union by listening and learning from democratic voices – because this will be expected if their goal to join the E.U is eventually successful.

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Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense comes a mere three years after Israel’s Operation Cast Lead. The former operation was followed by a significant reduction in Hamas rocket fire, but only for a while. There needs to be a non-violent way to stop the violence.

“The Green Party of Canada urges both sides de-escalate the violence immediately, so a peace process can move forward,” said Elizabeth May, Green Party of Canada leader and MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands.

The Green Party of Canada supports Palestinian statehood. We base our support on U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 and U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, advocating a two-state solution and defining borders.

One possible avenue is the Quartet Conditions. They were put forward a decade ago by the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, and Russia, and negotiations based on them, under U.N. aegis, are still ongoing. The Quartet offers support and aid to Palestine once Hamas agrees to non-violence, recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and commits to current peace agreements.

“We urge bringing all parties together in negotiation premised on the rights of all to space in the part of our planet from which so much of our religious and ethical tradition comes. Canada now has a recognized, growing number of accredited peace professionals. We recommend their participation be included,” added Ms. May.

“Peace-building will enable more aid to Palestine for health care and education, and will make possible focus on green economic development and attention to water conservation and distribution, for the future welfare of the region and its people,” noted Green Party of Canada International Affairs Critic Eric Walton.

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No doubt the failures in his first term must be shared with, or even primarily laid at the feet of, Republican hyper-partisan refusal to meet half-way. With the fiscal cliff in view, those Republican law makers should now be chastened by the failure at the polls. The president has no time for a victory lap, he must get right to work.

In the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Sandy and the summer of parched earth and lost crops, the president must listen to his science advisor, Dr. John Holdren, and the head of climate science at NASA, Dr. James Hansen, and actually lead on climate. The world needs the U.S. to join the European Union in moving aggressively to a low-carbon economy. Barak Obama got a second chance. Let’s hope that the rest of us did too.

Elizabeth May is Leader of the Green Party of Canada and Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands.
Originally published in the Huffington Post.

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The second point is that for all that CETA has more attention than the Canada-China Investment Treaty, it does not have enough either.

Unlike the Canada-China Investment Treaty, this trade deal is one the Prime Minister has not kept under a barrel.  It has already been over-hyped by PMO with Stephen Harper claiming the deal will bring $12 billion worth of benefit toCanada. Even though this figure was called into question by an assessment conducted by the European Commission, a study that put the benefits at a more conservative $3-6 billion, Mr. Harper continues to use the exaggerated figure.

The proposed Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union (known as CETA) is an ambitious attempt to cover huge aspects of our economy – impacting health care costs, supply management in agriculture, procurement, arts and culture to name a few.  As well, like the Canada-China Investment Treaty it would create opportunities for arbitration for claims for the EU investors against Canada and vice versa. It has been on a three year negotiation track with the goal of concluding negotiations by the end of this year. But Matthias Brinkmann, head of the European Union Delegation to Canada, thinks the deadline may not be met.  Speaking in Halifax on October 22, 2012,  Brinkmann confirmed that little to no progress has been made on most of the key issues.  The issues identified as among those Brinkmann describes as leaving the most difficult until last include patent protection for pharmaceuticals, procurement rules for public projects, supply management in agriculture, rules of origin and investor-state provisions.

That’s a long list to get done by the end of this year.  And then there’s the approval process.  The EU must vote to approve and so must each parliament of the 27 member states. And some member states are already angry with Canada over more restrictive Visa requirements (Czech Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria) and quite a lot of parliamentarians, certainly all those in green Parties in the EU Parliament itself, as well as Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway, France, UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, Greece, Spain, Italy, to name a few, are concerned about Canada’s efforts to over-turn the Carbon Fuel Standard, disrupt global climate negotiations, undermine the Kyoto Protocol,  our appalling obstruction in June 2011 at the Rotterdam Convention asbestos discussions, to name a few.  Even if this agreement were negotiated between Canada and the EU, approval is far from a sure thing.  One thing the Prime Minister cares about (CETA) could be sabotaged by his record on things he thought didn’t matter (Kyoto, climate, asbestos).

Take it as read that the Green Party will support the civil society groups that are opposed to higher prices for pharmaceutical drugs by granting greater patent protection to EU Big Pharma. We will oppose any agreement that undermines our ability to ensure municipal water systems remain public, or that undercut the Canadian arts and culture sector.  We will insist that any new trade agreement be about fair trade and a fair deal for Canadians.

There is no need to rush the negotiations to a desperate last push this year.  Given the EU approval process, it is more important to get the right deal than a rushed deal.

Elizabeth May is the Leader of the Green Party of Canada and the Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands.
Originally printed in Embassy News.

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We believe that the process should be transparent. This agreement has been negotiated behind closed doors with a level of secrecy that is completely unacceptable in a democratic society.

The Right to Set Our Own Laws

The governments of Australia, Canada and New Zealand traditionally have the right to set down their own laws for the good of public health, consumers, workers and the environment.

Leaked details of the TPPA reveal that, foreign investors and firms could sue Canada or New Zealand in a private international tribunal if their parliaments or local councils pass laws that reduce their profits or adversely affect their businesses. This could include laws such as:

• a requirement for large graphic warnings or plain packaging of cigarettes and other tobacco products (such as in Canada and Australia, and forthcoming in NZ);
• laws requiring labelling of genetically-modified food and drink (NZ); and
• retention of agricultural regulations such as Canada’s supply management system for dairy, which aims to preserve farmers’ livelihoods.

The Australian government has indicated it will not agree to these clauses intended to protect multinational businesses from the impact of policy decisions, but New Zealand and Canada’s leaders refuse to do the same (even after Canada was on the receiving end of costly lawsuits under NAFTA).

The End of a Free Internet

We believe the TPPA is being used to sneak in measures to bind its member countries to extensive and harsh laws on Internet use that wouldn’t be acceptable at the domestic level – including harsher criminal penalties for minor, non-commercial copyright infringements, a ‘take-down and ask questions later’ approach to pages and content alleged to breach copyright, and the possibility of Internet providers having to disclose personal information to authorities without safeguards for privacy. The European Parliament voted 478-39 against the international ACTA treaty, which was trying to create similar standards. Now, the same type of regulation is being attempted under the TPPA.

More IP Rights for the Big Players

The Intellectual Property Rights chapter of the TPPA was leaked in draft form in February 2011. We anticipate that unless a more moderate and balanced version is adopted, NZ, Canada and Australia’s shoppers, schools and libraries would end up paying more for their books and DVD’s  because it would let copyright holders veto parallel importing. Small and medium-sized software and IT businesses would have their innovative visions stifled by constraining patent laws. Finally, large pharmaceutical companies could use the legislation to deny state drug-buying agencies like those in Australia and NZ access to reliable, low cost medicines.

Behind Closed Doors

Almost everything we have learnt about the TPPA’s contents comes from leaked documents that the negotiators didn’t want the public to see. No agreement this important should be finalised without the informed input of the ordinary people it will affect.

Yet while representatives of AT&T, Verizon, Cisco, major pharmaceutical companies and the Motion Picture Association of America have access to the text, democratically elected members of parliament, advocacy organisations for healthcare and the environment and ordinary citizens are being left out in the cold.

Governments, including the US, have opened up to the public in the past by releasing the draft text of agreements. In 2001, all nine chapters of the Free Trade Area of the Americas Agreement were released. At the time, this was called an ‘important step’ that would make the trade negotiation process ‘more transparent and accessible’. If this was the standard for public accountability in 2001, it is disconcerting that similar standards are not in play in 2012.

Together, we Green Parties are declaring that we will only support a fair, genuinely progressive trade agreement that promotes sustainable development and the creation of new jobs alongside the protection of the environment and human rights (including freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining). We call on our current governments to remove the veil of secrecy surrounding this agreement and to open these negotiations to public input and comment.

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The Greens have long called on the federal government to put an end to the industrial-scale kill by buying out sealing licenses and helping affected workers transition into sustainable seal eco-tourism initiatives.

“The sealing industry had been dying for years,” said Green Party leader Elizabeth May. “It’s time to stop providing life support to this disappearing industry by ending the massive government subsidies. Taxpayers’ money is better spent creating sustainable economic opportunities in coastal communities.”

Markets for seal products have disappeared because countries around the world–including the US, EU and recently Russia–have banned seal product imports.The Greens are the only party in Parliament that would end the seal hunt to protect Canada’s reputation, the environment, the economic well-being of the sealers, and the seals themselves.

“Federal and provincial governments have injected millions of dollars to attempt to revive the sealing industry, with zero success but a great deal of bad publicity for Canada,” said Georges Laraque, Green Party Deputy Leader and animal welfare advocate. “It is now clearer than ever before that these subsidies are embarrassing and wasteful political spending. We should transition workers out of an industry that is rapidly imploding. Developing marine energy and tourism would let communities benefit from the natural beauty and riches of their coastal lands.”

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With respect to this bill, does my colleague have any recommendations concerning the environment?

Elizabeth May: Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Brossard—La Prairie for the question.

A completely different approach is needed. The European Union has regulations that compel member countries to use the highest standards to protect the environment in their trade transactions.

If we did the same thing here, we would say that Panama must improve its environmental standards to be at least equal to Canada’s, and that Canada will provide trade assistance to make sure it is able to do that.

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One of the issues I have is that history has proven that as countries become more prosperous, average family income goes up, life expectancy goes up, as does the amount of freedom in a country. If my colleague went online to a YouTube video called “200 Countries, 200 Years”, she would find those facts recorded there.

Why would the member be against a free trade agreement with Panama that is going to increase not only those people’s place in life as far their family income is concerned, but also their life expectancy and freedoms in their country? Would the member not support the agreement just on those grounds?

Elizabeth May: Madam Speaker, I tried to be very specific in my response to this proposed treaty, specifically the investor-state provisions.

It is true that when a country is not prevented from selling its goods by tariff barriers, there is a trend toward improved incomes. I will not deny that for one minute, but the member should to ask the people of San Luis Potosi whether they feel that the NAFTA agreement advantaged them.

There are consequences to these trade deals that we should now be able to examine forensically. We should now be able to ask where our good intentions went wrong and how can we improve on the model. Trade agreements in other regions have not included investor-state provisions, and I mentioned the European Union as one example, and the trade bloc in Latin America is another. Investor-state provisions are not a necessary ingredient to improving one’s trade relationships. In fact, they are a poison pill.

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There were also suggestions regarding how Canada could help the situation. CIDA is currently providing funds of civil society groups in Ukraine as well as Ukrainian diaspora groups and further involvement was encouraged by the witnesses. The witnesses agreed that these initiatives were important in keeping Ukraine engaged with the international community, which is preferable to isolation and closer ties with Russia. Another way that was suggested was for Canada to send a large number of election observers for the upcoming election, as has been done in the past. In general the witnesses were very positive about the efforts that Canada has made to date and expressed their wishes that such initiatives continue.

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As always, the models for free trade are based on the NAFTA principles and not on the principles of other agreements that would, in my opinion, produce more benefits for the environment and for all societies.

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There are specific issues relating to Jordan with this trade agreement. I would like to preface that with a review of how we came to where we are in terms of where Canada’s interests lie as a society, not merely our trade in goods. All of these debates usually rest on the notion that if members have questions about new trade agreements, they are against trade with another nation. I remember a venerable senator who had been minister of agriculture for many years commented that trade is not new, what was Marco Polo doing. We certainly have had trade for a very long time. No one is against trade.

In the context of global trade, we have seen a remarkable transition. We used to live in a world of tariff barriers that allowed the Canadian economy to grow to be as strong as it is now. After the Second World War tariff barriers were targeted and we began to see them coming down. The efforts to say that one country must not discriminate against another began to swing the pendulum in the opposite direction to what we had seen before the Second World War.

These efforts led to the creation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. In the first instance, the GATT was quite restrictive in terms of focusing on trade in goods, which is what most Canadians understand we mean when we talk about trade agreements: trade in goods, our ability to buy and sell, the ability of our neighbours to buy and sell to us. This trade in goods is something that has been handled by the GATT for a very long time.

Things changed substantially in the 1990s. It took nine years of negotiations, the Uruguay round, to bring forward an updated version of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and within that new agreement to do some things that had not been done before. It was the advent of looking beyond goods to look at trade in services, to look beyond those things that were completely commercial and make changes that had implications for culture, for society overall, for the environment and for labour. In other words, the approach of the trade world began to impinge on other aspects of society. They became not just trade agreements, but agreements that actually changed the very fundamental relationship between citizens and their government versus the relationship of corporations and those governments.

If there was a time when we had too many tariff barriers, if there was a time when we were too protectionist, that time is long past. We have now seen the pendulum swing so far that the so-called liberalization of trade is not just advancing the flow of goods but to advance the interests of a dogma of globalization, which allows more and more multinational corporations to dictate policies, to have a greater role and arguably a greater role than the citizens.

I will back up and look at the model to which I referred earlier, the NAFTA model. It has dictated a great deal since we entered into that agreement. Probably the most egregious part of the NAFTA model is the investor state provisions which allow a corporation based in a country that is part of the trade agreement, in the case of NAFTA corporations based in the U.S. or Mexico, to have the ability to sue the Canadian government if it passes a law that they do not like.

Chapter 11 of NAFTA, the investor state provisions, allows a foreign corporation from the U.S. or Mexico to sue the Canadian government at the federal level. It allows a foreign corporation to have rights which are superior to those of a domestic corporation. A domestic corporation does not have the right to sue our government. This provision actually gives preferential treatment to foreign corporations to sue Canada if there is a regulation passed by the House of Commons. In a democratic house of assembly we can pass a law which is untouchable by a Canadian corporation, but a foreign corporation can sue us for damages.

Not only under the investor-state provisions within NAFTA can a U.S. or Mexican corporation sue us, it can sue the federal level, a province and a municipal government. We have seen the examples under chapter 11 of NAFTA for quite some time. Laws passed by this House had to be repealed because of a chapter 11 challenge. I refer specifically to Ethyl Corporation of Richmond, Virginia, which sued the Canadian government for costs and damages when this House chose to restrict access to a manganese-based gasoline additive that the health community warned was neurotoxic and the environment community warned was a danger to the environment. The car manufacturers said that they did want it in their cars because it compromised the catalytic converters, hurt their warranties and they needed action on it.

Even when the factual basis for governmental action is not in question and there is no notion that the action taken was in any way motivated by trade discrimination, in other words, we were not trying to give preferential treatment to a Canadian industry or product, the agreement is sufficient. The lawyer who represented Ethyl Corporation at the time, Barry Appleton from Toronto, said, “it would not matter if one added liquid plutonium to children’s breakfast cereal, if the government banned it and the people who made it said that they lost profit through that action, they could sue”.

I may have taken too long on that specific example but I wanted to make the point that trade agreements have gone too far. We are no longer talking about access to goods and services. We are talking about changing the fundamentals of the relationship. The primary relationship between a government should be to the citizens who elect the members of Parliament to serve in that government. There should be no superior rights of redress to a foreign corporation but we have seen that happen time and time again.

The most recent and egregious example was when the Prime Minister chose to pre-empt a complaint by a forest company against actions taken by the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. In that case, AbitibiBowater was the holder of what had been a 99 year lease that allowed it, at bargain basement prices, to have access to a large area of forest on the condition that it ran a pulp mill. Into the bargain, believe it or not, in this 99 year lease, had been thrown water rights and other ancillary benefits.

When the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador said that it would not let AbitibiBowater close its mill and sell off everything it had under the lease, which would include water rights and the forest itself, as Newfoundland and Labrador said that it did not have access to those, the foreign corporation sued. In that instance, the Prime Minister chose to castigate the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to pay out tens of millions of dollars to AbitibiBowater and said that it did not want something like that to ever happen again.

These investor-state provisions are creeping into all of these so-called bilateral investment agreements, or BITs. The Prime Minister just returned from Beijing and was very thrilled to have a new proposed trade agreement with China that would include these very provisions that would allow a foreign government to sue us.

In this instance, we are looking at a proposed agreement with Jordan. There are many good and substantial reasons to improve relationships with Jordan. Jordan has a reputation and a long-standing role as one of the most stable and least xenophobic Arab states and is certainly the most supportive of the existence of the state of Israel compared to most of the nations in that region.

Jordan has many things to recommend it but democracy is not among them. It is a monarchy. However, the late King Hussein of Jordan was always seen as someone of enormous wisdom. I must say that I was always impressed by his sense of wisdom and by his wife, Queen Noor, who was a strong advocate for the environment.

I had the great honour of serving on the earth charter commission, which was co-chaired by Mikhail Gorbachev and Maurice Strong. I had the good fortune to get to know Princess Basma of Jordan, who was King Hussein’s sister. As I approach this, I have a sense of Jordan’s place in the world and a sense of, albeit small, personal connection.

However, when we look at the implications of this trade agreement with Jordan, I do not think we should rush into it without having much better and more substantial answers for a couple of key points. We have heard numerous commentators point out that the Canada-Jordan free trade agreement could create free licence to greater human smuggling, that there would be an increased flow of foreign workers into Jordanian factories and that this could undermine labour rights in Jordan.

When we enter into a negotiation such as this, I would suggest a couple of steps that we tend to miss. The first step would be how to build a stronger relationship with a country. We can fill in the blank for the country, although in this case it would be Jordan. Yesterday we were talking about Panama. How do we build good links? Canada, traditionally, has been able to build good links through a robust Department of Foreign Affairs. There were skilled and qualified diplomats working in these countries. There were people who spoke local languages, spent time getting to know the local NGO community and were able to provide a context with which we dealt with nations. The importance of our foreign affairs outreach in recent years has been quite diminished. We have closed embassies and consulates around the world, which means that our reach is reduced.

When we have a relationship with a country, whether it is Panama, Jordan or China, it is important that the relationship be built on many pillars. One is, of course, the diplomatic one to which I referred. Another is greater social interaction and cultural exchanges. The government has shut down all the programs that dealt with allowing Canadian artists to perform overseas, which was building stronger relationships through our culture.

We also need relationships to be built on, not on the model of the NAFTA but more like the model from the European Union. In that model, all nations within the EU, when they undertook to become part of that shared common market, had to accept the toughest levels of environmental and labour standards of any one of the member countries. This is a key principle that is completely lacking in NAFTA. Under NAFTA, there are no requirements to meet higher standards. The most we got out of the language of NAFTA was that it would be unacceptable for a country to lower its environmental standards in order to advance trade.

There is a very large difference between NAFTA saying that countries are not allowed to lower their environmental standards to attract more trade and the completely different approach of the EU, which is that countries must raise their standards. Generally speaking, Germany has the highest environmental standards and therefore other countries had to raise themselves up to equal the German standards. Some of those countries were poor and so there was a transfer of resources to help them do that.

If one were looking at models around the world to find ways to use the trade pillar to advance other issues, then one would never follow the NAFTA model. It would be the worst possible way to go. One would look at the best examples around the world and follow those. If we have relationships on the basis of trade, those relationships should include raising the bar and telling foreign corporations that they need to look at a code of conduct enshrined in law internationally in the same way that we protect intellectual property rights. We know how to design regimes, such as the TRIPS Agreement, which requires that all nations proactively pass legislation to protect intellectual property rights and give all countries the ability to search and seize goods crossing a border if they do not meet the qualifications for intellectual property rights. We know how to do these things.

What if we were to say, for instance, that no goods at a border are allowed to pass if they have involved child labour? We could say that we will not allow goods to cross a border if they involve the destruction of precious ecosystems. Instead, our trade mantra is that we do not interfere with PPMs, process and production methods. What is an intellectual property infringement other than a process and production method? It means the product was produced by stealing someone else’s intellectual property. Why is it a greater offence under the trade regime to steal intellectual property than to exploit children, destroy forests or increase greenhouse gas emissions?

If we look at the global governance of trade, there is tremendous potential there for good. There is tremendous potential to harness the ability that has been used to protect intellectual property rights and use those kinds of agreements to protect labour standards, to protect children, to protect ecosystems and to advance a low carbon economy. All of these things could be done but they are not being done.

To ensure that Canadian corporations, U.S. corporations, Dutch, Chinese or whatever corporations participate in the GATT, we should have a global agreement on corporate behaviour stating that all corporations operating within this trade zone, which is basically every country except Cuba, need to meet minimum standards, such as proper labour standards and environmental standards. In that way, no corporation would be disadvantaged by having to take these standards on because all corporations would have a level playing field. It would be quite progressive coming from the lessons learned through the development of the GATT, the WTO, the TRIPS Agreement, the General Agreement on Trade in Services and so on. We have not done that here.

We have before us an agreement that follows the traditional typical model. It would give investment rights. It has a few nice words. There would be more of an environmental assessment review. We have had a review of what the Canada-Jordan free trade negotiations would mean. There is some agreement to work together on environmental issues. However, we still have the looming problems of reduced labour standards within Jordan, the risk of human trafficking and the fact that we have skewed the relationship that we have with other nations to the effect that it appears that nothing matters other than trade.

I suppose the House can now sense that there is a theme to what I am saying. We are not against trade and we are not against new trade agreements but a balance must be achieved so that our relationship with other countries in the world is based on multilateralism and internationalism. It must always recognizes the priority of citizens in a country to make decisions and have them binding. It must not give superior rights to corporations over citizens. It must rebalance the importance of diplomacy, of exchange and of fair trade in goods. It must insist that the rules that govern our trade agreements constantly reinforce and elevate the nature of our relationships, not put us in a situation where the populace of various countries push back.

We will see come before the House before too long the comprehensive economic trade agreement with the European Union. As I have been talking about EU trade agreements, how ironic is it that we are not seeing in the draft of that agreement a replication of the EU model but one that looks more like the NAFTA model with the benefits that will largely accrue to European pharmaceutical companies and so on? However, that agreement is not before us yet.

I do not oppose the bill going to committee where it can be improved. Our relationship with Jordan is important but it must be much richer, more complex and more nuanced than advancing agreements and relationships with Jordan through a trade agreement that fails to live up to its potential. We must revisit this. We must protect the rights of workers and protect the environment.

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