On March 4, the committee heard witness testimony from the President of Pacific Exotic Food Inc, as well as an individual; both shared their thoughts on a CEPA with India. Gian Dhesi, President of Pacific Food Inc discussed India’s economic history and argued that India has effectively attracted traders for centuries due to their treatment of guests; in India, guests are treated as gods. Dhesi proceeded to discuss current and future economic opportunities for Canada with India given India’s growing middle class (267 million people, in contrast to Canada’s 34 million citizens). Following Jas Ghuman’s testimony, however, the benefits of signing a trade agreement were derailed and a conversation about challenges facing business people emerged.

The duration of the meeting dealt with the merit of a CEPA and its ability to alleviate concerns with corruption. The solution that witnesses suggested included centralized control of business management, and ensuring a commitment to contract enforcement. While both witnesses exclaimed concerns with a CEPA, they both supported signing as agreement in theory.

Following the witnesses’ testimony, committee business was held in camera; the Honourable Wayne Easter questioned the rationale behind moving into camera.  While in camera, it was agreed , among other things, that the committee commence a study of the benefits for Canada in joining the Pacific Alliance as a full member beginning 18 March 2013 . The committee agreed to invite the ambassadors of Mexico, Peru, Chile and Colombia in Canada to appear before the committee as witnesses. The text of the decision can be found here.

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“The combination of this investment treaty and the weakening of our environmental laws introduced in the two omnibus budget bills is very worrying,” said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, MP Saanich-Gulf Islands. “The new lower standards established by Stephen Harper will be seen as the new norm, and they will apply not only to this FIPA but the many others he has signed without Canadians’ notice and approval.”

The Canada-China Treaty is unlike the last significant agreement Canada signed with a powerful economic partner – the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Under NAFTA, member countries (Canada, the United States, and Mexico) can exit the treaty with a six-month notice.

The Canada-China Investment Treaty is much less flexible. Both countries are bound to the potentially dangerous terms of the deal – which include China’s right to sue Canada for damages relating to decisions made by any level of government – for an initial 15 years. (The main investor in this case is and will be State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) which are ultimately the Government of China. NAFTA gave corporations, not governments, the right to sue.)

After the initial 15-year period, if a future government wishes to exit the treaty, a one-year written notice is required. However, any investors from China already in Canada will continue to be covered by the agreement for another 15 years – until 2044.

What if we had signed an agreement giving the People’s Republic of China this kind of power over Canada back in 1981 – 31 years ago? The threat of angering our investment partner could well have prevented us from introducing major social and environmental legislation, including the establishment of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (since neutered under Bill C-38, the Conservatives’ omnibus Budget Implementation Act in the spring).

“This treaty could tie our hands for the next three decades when it comes to protecting our environment and our communities,” noted May. “It will limit the democratic and sovereign rights of our children and our grandchildren.”

The post Canada’s Hands Could Soon to Be Tied Until 2044 appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Attention should be paid to the fact that the Prime Minister has signed a deal with President Hu of China that promises investor protection. The text of said deal is not yet before the House of Commons, but everything I read about it (including from business analysts at Heenan Blaikie and Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt) anticipates the deal will include investor-state provisions similar to those in Chapter 11 of NAFTA.

Chapter 11 of NAFTA allows corporations from Mexico or the USA to claim damages against Canada if any level of Canadian government (municipal, provincial or federal) causes them to experience less profits than they had anticipated. Canada has actually repealed a law limiting a toxic gasoline additive when the US-based manufacturer sued under Chapter 11 — and we paid $10 million plus in damages. This outrage only gets more outrageous if the claims for multiple millions in damages come from a non-democratic enormous economy to which we have hitched our wagon as a compliant resource colony.

When will Mr. Harper share the text of this investor agreement with Parliamentarians? When will it be shared with Canadians? It was signed on September 8th when both Harper and Hu were in Russia. It must now be ratified. Assuming all the Conservative MPs who are worried about selling out our country to China do what they always do and submit to the will of the Boss, it will become a trade obligation. China will, if offended by any new health, labour, or environmental law, be able to make a claim for damages. I have already witnessed the chilling effect of Canada knowing a US based corporation can sue under Chapter 11. It was rumoured that former Liberal Health Minister Allan Rock refused to ban cosmetic use of pesticides for fear of Chapter 11 claims by US pesticide manufacturers.

What happens when Canadian laws, passed democratically, are struck down in hotel room arbitrations launched by the Communist Party of China?

I pay attention to things that CNOOC’s CEO says in public. In the August 29, 2012, Wall Street Journal, CNOOC CEO Wang Yilin said, “Large-scale deep-water rigs are our mobile national territory and a strategic weapon.” OK, so the bitumen isn’t mobile – until you mix it with diluents and stick it in a pipeline. But the oil sands do become Chinese territory. What did he mean about “strategic weapon?”

Are there national security implications?

I would love to trust in a national security review under the 2009 amendments to the Investment Canada Act, except that Stephen Harper specifically rejected the advice of the blue ribbon panel (struck after the Minmetal attempt to buy Noranda) that Canada needed a clear, objective definition of “national security.” The experts thought we should have a definition and use it to assess any takeovers of Canadian companies by foreign interests — particularly state-owned enterprises. Our PM rejected the advice. Instead the Canada Gazette for the 2009 amendments says that “national security” cannot be defined. It is, apparently, a fluid term.

Smart people I respect, like Andrew Coyne, say “don’t worry — there’s no national security threat when you cannot take the resource out of the country.” But then I run into stories like this:

Beijing hints at bond attack on Japan

Jin Baisong from the Chinese Academy of International Trade – a branch of the commerce ministry – said China should use its power as Japan’s biggest creditor with $230bn (£141bn) of bonds to “impose sanctions on Japan in the most effective manner” and bring Tokyo’s festering fiscal crisis to a head.

Writing in the Communist Party newspaper China Daily, Mr. Jin called on China to invoke the “security exception” rule under the World Trade Organisation to punish Japan, rejecting arguments that a trade war between the two Pacific giants would be mutually destructive.

Separately, the Hong Kong Economic Journal reported that China is drawing up plans to cut off Japan’s supplies of rare earth metals needed for hi-tech industry.

– The Telegraph, September 19, 2012

OK, maybe he’s just threatening to destroy Japan’s economy. Maybe he doesn’t mean it. Maybe the WTO wouldn’t let him do it…. but then there was the Sino-Forest fraud, busted by the Ontario Securities Commission:

OSC puts the spotlight on Sino-Forest gatekeepers

In its allegations Tuesday, the OSC noted that auditors Ernst & Young “were not made aware” of Sino-Forest’s “systemic practice of creating deceitful purchase contracts and sales contracts.” The commission makes no further comment on the audit firm’s work. A spokeswoman for Ernst & Young could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

The OSC issued a report in March calling on boards, underwriters, auditors and stock exchanges to improve the practices for listing foreign companies on Canadian stock exchanges, saying there has been a broad lack of “skepticism” about business practices in emerging companies like China.

– Globe and Mail, May 22, 2012

There’s a beautiful term: “broad lack of skepticism.”

It makes me nervous that Chinese companies are merely branches of the Chinese government. The Communist Party hierarchy appoints the boards of directors of CNOOC, Sinopec and Petro-China.

When I read in the business pages that Petro-China wants to bid on construction of the Enbridge pipeline, and read in the same story that Chinese companies are very competitive in their bids because of low labour costs, I picture the labourers who built the national dream of Pierre Berton’s imaginings… with a brutal and nasty history. We have a temporary foreign workers programme. It could happen. And the bitumen going through the proposed pipeline is to go to Chinese supertankers to Chinese refineries.

All this makes me nervous. It makes me nervous in two quite contradictory ways. Firstly, I am a tolerant small “l” liberal type of person. I am not Sino-phobic. China is not a country one can ignore. In terms of global climate negotiations, China’s engagement is essential. China has been, at least at COP17, far more progressive than Canada in talking about the need for a global climate deal.

I want greater ties with China for environmental endeavors, and cultural exchanges, and — yes – trade too. Losing sovereignty to China makes me nervous. I don’t want to be intolerant. But I want us to trade items made in Canada, by Canadians, to China. I don’t like the idea of China owning Canada. It makes it hard for us to point out to the Chinese government that it must start respecting human rights. We need to be really forceful in advocating for religious and political freedom in China. How do we do that when they have veto power over Canadian laws?

And then there are issues of global tensions. Mr. Harper and John Baird are talking tough to Iran. But what about the fact that, while we claim we are exerting sanctions on anyone doing business with Iran, Sinopec, now a major stake-holder in Syncrude, is Iran’s number one customer for oil? Or, that Chinese oil money helps prop up Bashar al-Assad?

So, bottom-line, the Nexen-CNOOC deal doesn’t have me nearly as freaked out as the investor deal Stephen Harper signed in Russia. But when I think about the idea of “net benefit” I just don’t see any answer but “no.”

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Others in this House might not have been thinking throughout this debate of the famous palindrome: a man, a plan, a canal — Panama. As members know, a palindrome is something that reads the same forward and backward. Unfortunately, I cannot read this trade deal as anything but backward. When the man is the Prime Minister and the plan is this free trade agreement, we do not get anything very progressive. We do not get a canal; we get a ditch.

We have a very small level of trade with Panama. While we see the Conservatives trying their best to gather up as many small trade agreements as possible, such as the one we passed with Jordan and this one with Panama, it is worth bearing in mind the level of trade that is currently at stake.

In 2010, there was just under $214 million in trade in goods between Canada and Panama. We do not expect this to go up very much even with a free trade agreement. If we look at previous free trade agreements with countries like Costa Rica and other small bilateral free trade agreements, we find that in a number of cases our trade has declined after signing the agreements.

We have a global trading framework already which includes the general agreement on tariffs and trade, and under the Uruguay round the creation of the World Trade Organization. We are not labouring any longer as a global society of nations under high tariffs and protectionist measures. They have been mostly slashed.

What would one want in trading and approving a trade agreement with Panama?

We have heard much in this House of the need to improve labour rights within Panama. We have heard that Panama continues to be a nation that traffics heavily in narcotics and drugs, and the rest of the world would like to stem their flow. We also know that Panama is a country that has extensive money laundering problems. This agreement does nothing to address these issues.

When we look at the ways in which Panama has operated as a tax haven, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Panama is one of 26 jurisdictions in the world that have not yet fulfilled their promise as of 2002 to provide tax sharing information. That would provide a greater understanding of when a country is operating unfairly and illegally to harbour revenue and wealth so that the country of origin cannot tax it properly.

The trade agreement with Panama unfortunately does not deal with any of these issues. It does not deal with narcotics trading. It does not deal with the tax haven problem. It does not deal with money laundering. It does have a side agreement to deal with labour, but we can already measure from previous efforts with such side agreements that they have no real effect on improving labour conditions in a country. 

Through the 1990s there was a great increase in trade agreements and a great wave of globalization. Its triumphalism was the creation of the World Trade Organization, but things have slightly stalled since Doha and there is a little less triumphalism. Some people feel that trade, trade liberalization and greater economic activity, particularly greater strength and power to corporations, will raise all boats. Gus Speth, the former head of the United Nations Development Programme, famously said, “This kind of trade raises all yachts”, but it does not do much for the poor. It certainly does nothing to improve labour conditions. If we negotiate a trade agreement while turning a blind eye to the things about our trading partner that worry us, things like drug trafficking, money laundering, human rights abuses, tax havens and places to shelter income that should be taxed under public revenue elsewhere, it is unlikely we would be able to fix them later.

Turning to the text of the agreement, in article 106 there are some carve outs so that the agreement would not unfairly target multilateral environmental agreements. I wish the trade negotiators for Canada had listed all the agreements that are important. They certainly have carved out the ones that were listed in NAFTA, such as, CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the Montreal protocol on the ozone layer, the Basel convention on the transport of hazardous materials, the Rotterdam convention on trade in hazardous goods, and the Stockholm convention on persistent organic pollutants. 

A startling omission, since both Panama and Canada are parties to the framework convention on climate change, is that the framework convention on climate change is not listed as an agreement that would be protected against any incidental accidental implications from this trade agreement to climate policies. As we speak, both Canada and Panama remain parties to the Kyoto protocol, although we know that Canada has signalled its intention, quite shamefully I may add, to withdraw from its legal commitments there. I would not expect to see the Kyoto protocol in this agreement, but I certainly expected to see the United Nations framework convention on climate change, to which both countries are currently committed.

More concerning are the sections that appear in chapter 9 of the Canada-Panama free trade agreement. Chapter 9 deals with the quite devastating investor state provisions.

It sounds like the most boring of topics, an investor state provision. What could it be and why do we care? I want all Canadians to care. This provision is our innovation. We were the first anywhere on the planet to create this provision. It was done in NAFTA. In NAFTA, it is chapter 11. In the Canada-Panama agreement it is chapter 9, but it has the same effect.

There was an effort to make this kind of provision global. Some may remember the efforts were negotiated within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. It started within the World Trade Organization, but it stalled there. At the WTO they were called multilateral investor agreements. They regrouped and went to the OECD and called them the multilateral agreement on investment, the MAI instead of the MIA. It stalled and failed there. Thank goodness. It was the result of widespread grassroots opposition.

It is the first truly global campaign I have ever seen where grassroots groups using the Internet reached out to each other. I remember one parliamentarian saying to me at the time, “I can’t imagine that any Canadian citizen is really worried about something called the multilateral agreement on investment”. He came back to me a few days later, after he had been on an MPs’ study tour and said that while he was paying for gas at a station in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, he saw on a clipboard a petition to stop the MAI. It contained several pages of signatures.

Why do Canadians at the grassroots and people globally not want more investor state provisions? I should say that once it failed at the OECD, largely thanks to France, but other countries ran to catch up, once it failed there, they abandoned it. By they I am referring to the corporate entities that are pursuing the notion that corporations should have powers superior to those of elected legislatures. The essence of an investor state provision is that multilateral corporations should be able to trump decisions made by democratically elected parliaments and legislatures around the world and they should be able to sue a country if that country passes legislation that a corporation does not like. That is the essence of it. It is not in any traditional way an expropriation.

They have taken it from global to doing it BIT by BIT, literally the acronym BIT, bilateral investment treaty, such as this one. They are collecting up by BITs to replace what they could not do directly, a global agreement that allows corporations to sue governments when governments take action, even when that action is not in any way designed to inhibit trade. It is as such when Canada banned a toxic gasoline additive, or when Canada took steps to ban the export of PCB contaminated waste pursuant to the Basel convention I mentioned earlier, or in the very sad and tragic case of Metalclad, a U.S. corporation. Metalclad wanted to put a toxic waste site next to a little community in Mexico called San Luis Potosi. The people of San Luis Potosi said no, that it was too close to their water source and they would not let that giant U.S. corporation, Metalclad, put its toxic waste disposal facility there. Under chapter 11 of NAFTA, Metalclad sued the federal state of Mexico. 

This agreement means that any corporation with a mailbox in Panama can claim to be an investor and sue Canada at the municipal, provincial or federal levels for any decision it does not like, that it feels impedes its expectation of profits.

In the case of poor little San Luis Potosi, Mexico ended up owing Metalclad just under $17 million.

I fear that my time to speak to this agreement may be coming to a close. I want to conclude by saying firmly and clearly that we must learn from what has gone wrong with chapter 11 of NAFTA and stop including investor-state provisions as an automatic, unthinking addition to every single trade agreement we negotiate.

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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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One of my constituents sent me the following update with a request that this statement be shared:

On January 5th, at a meeting attended by approximately 300 people from the local and foreign community of Melaque, the community expressed how very shocked, saddened, and appalled they are about the robbery-related murder that took place on January 3rd.  This has never happened before in Melaque and its citizens are extremely concerned about the safety and security of everyone in the community, both foreigners and locals.  The Mexicans in attendance also expressed their deep sorrow and remorse over this incident.

In response, Mexicans in Melaque are going house to house to collect signatures to petition the municipal government.  On January 9th a large delegation will be meeting with this government, based in nearby Cihuatlan, to ask for increased security and to bring justice to this crime.  They want everyone to feel safe in Melaque and will be demanding an increased police force and also the resumption of the tourist police force, who speak English and can readily assist English-speaking visitors and residents.  The delegation will also be requesting an accounting of the actions and progress on this by the local government.

I know all Canadians wish these local efforts well and will appreciate any efforts by Mexican government(s) to respond positively to this local request for greater security.

The post Statement from Elizabeth May, Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands, Leader of Green Party of Canada in relation to murder of Robin Wood in Mexico appeared first on Elizabeth May.

In my last column for 2010, appearing on December 9, I wrote about the inspiring work of Canadian youth, using the example of pressing for climate action. Our young people were out in force in Cancun, Mexico for the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

They wore a powerful message on their T-shirts. It was a quote from Christina Ora, a young woman from the Solomon Islands, at last year’s COP: ‘You have been negotiating all my life. You cannot tell me you need more time.’

Now for the rest of the story.

After last year’s failure in Copenhagen, few held out any hopes for a good result in Cancun. The abuse and lack of trust in Copenhagen—the hijacking of negotiations to back-rooms by Barack Obama, the repeated insults to various delegations, particularly (and inexplicably) China by the host government, the rich country gambit that developing countries would take large amounts of money and look the other way as industrialized countries continue polluting—all led to a deep level of distrust as negotiations opened in Cancun.

By the time I arrived in Cancun on December 4, the atmosphere was gloomy. Initially there were rumours that the Mexican host was also working on a secret text, as Denmark had done last year. Prospects for success were dampened when Canada, Russia and Japan were named as countries unwilling to commit to a second phase of Kyoto. The mood was not optimistic.

At the mid-point in negotiations, Sunday, December 5, the president of the conference, Mexico’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Patricia Espinosa, convened an informal session of the plenary. Espinosa used that Sunday session for what amounted to a group therapy session. She set out how she planned to work over the remaining week, emphasizing repeatedly that she would not hold secret discussions. She explained that she was setting up a number of informal working groups on key issues, with co-chairs selected to pair a developing country with an industrialized country. While she was asking small groups to meet behind closed doors, risking comparisons to Copenhagen, she ensured that any country could join any meeting underway. Her repeated assurances of transparency and inclusiveness led to a remarkably cathartic discussion, with country after country calling for an exorcism of the ‘ghost of Copenhagen.’ That discussion seemed to shift the negotiations to a more constructive approach.

Still, progress was slow and sessions laboured in fragmented discussions, all off to the side. On the afternoon of the last day of the conference there was no sense of the dramatic events that were to unfold.

What we had not understood that: Mexican host Patricia Espinoza and Christiana Figueres, respected Costa Rican diplomat and new head of the United Nations FCCC Secretariat, had decided to try something novel (and risky). As each sub-group made progress, whereever consensus appeared, comprehensive draft language was prepared and distributed—fifty nations were in direct consultation around the emerging, consensual text.

Last Minute Surprise

Finally, in the afternoon of that last day, two texts were released. One dealt with the future for Kyoto, the other with the so-called ‘Long-term Cooperative Action’ (LCA) issues. In total over 30 pages of detailed text. The text had something for everyone. If accepted, everyone would have to give a little ground.

The two draft texts had been distributed and delegations were the mood of the room was clear. Espinoza was greeted by a prolonged, emotional, standing ovation. Work continued through the night, indeed until 6:30 the next morning. But the enthusiasm for the text was shared, nearly universally.

Only Bolivia registered its objections. Canada clearly didn’t like the text, but Canada was not going to block what was a widespread consensus. (I spoke with acting Environment Minister John Baird just as the plenary resumed at 9pm. He told me Canada had lots of problems with the agreement, and if the text was opened up, it would not survive.)

What Was Agreed?

The documents do not by themselves obligate governments to take any new steps to reduce emissions. What they do is build a strong foundation for agreements to be reached at COP17 next year in Durban, South Africa.

The language is strong and unequivocal. In the LCA decision it is stated ‘climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and the planet, and thus requires to be urgently addressed by all Parties.’

The decisions confirm that the science and IPCC advice is compelling. It commits to find ways to avoid allowing global average temperature from increasing by 2oC, but recognizes the need to consider that the high point should be 1.5oC. For the first time in a UN decision, it mandates that all nations should immediately determine the year by which GHG emissions should peak and begin to fall. It states all parties agree ‘that Parties should cooperate in achieving the peaking of global and national greenhouse gas emissions as industrialized countries should reduce emissions by 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020.

It deals extensively with the need for adaptation (creating a Cancun Adaptation Framework and Adaptation committee), for financing, it creates a new Green Climate Fund, as well as funding to help arrest deforestation.

What Does It Mean?

It means Kyoto is still alive, but the parties are not committed to a second commitment period when Kyoto’s first period ends in 2012. It just means there could be a second commitment period. Anchoring of voluntary pledges from the Copenhagen Accord may fit into the language of the LCA text, but the Copenhagen Accord targets are laughably weak. Hence, the language calling for industrialized countries to ‘raise the level of ambition’ in their targets.

Somehow in Durban at COP17 we will have to find a way to either continue this two-track process (Kyoto and FCCC) or merge them in one agreement.

What Can Canadians Do?

Once again, our government won the Colossal Fossil Award for being the most obstructive nation in the negotiations. Before Durban, we have to get a change in our government’s position, or get a new government. Canada stepping up to commit to a second commitment period, even on weaker targets, could help shift the balance to saving Kyoto. The bottom line is that we are running out of time. In the next 12 months, we must seize the small ripples of hope that are emanating from Cancun. We must build a public demand for real action to bring the words and framework of the Cancun agreements to life.

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Pockets of old growth are being discovered and documented by the organization that sponsored the meeting, Ancient Forest Alliance (www.ancientforestalliance.org). Ancient Forest Alliance is new on the scene, founded in January 2010 by Ken Wu. In less than a year it has grown quickly as an important voice in forest protection in BC.

What struck me about the AFA team was its idealism, its energy and its youth. For those of us who have been in conservation battles for decades, it was electrifying to listen to a new generation of young activists who are passionately committed to this land and its forests.

Adriane Carr, Paul George and I found it reminded us of ourselves in the mid-1980s fighting to protect Gwaii Haanas. Yet, these young activists have a different energy. Something hard to articulate is their knowingness—an awareness of the fact that the lines they draw in the sand are around tinier and tinier ecosystems.

As you read this I will be at the climate negotiations in Mexico, where the early dispatches of calls for action are from the global climate youth movement. Over 1,000 young people from forty countries have made their way to the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16). Youth are at the forefront of the call for global climate action.

The chair of COP proceedings has the discretion to recognize representatives of civil society. While there is no obligation to do this, UN practice allows two interventions a day from those not speaking for nation states. On the first day, youth demanded protection of global forests as carbon sinks. A young New Zealander, Emma Moon, spoke on behalf of global youth in demanding a proper classification system for forests, distinguishing between natural forests and plantations.

On the third day, youth took the stage again. One of my colleagues, Adriana Mugnatto-Hamu, who serves as climate critic in the Green Shadow Cabinet, is already in Mexico for the conference. She wrote that the youth provided ‘a moment of hope.’

A twenty-two-year old young woman, Hanna Smith of the UK, spoke on behalf of the UK Youth Climate Coalition. ‘We are reaching the end of the first (Kyoto) commitment periods, and we—the International Youth— are asking you to look beyond your national interests and towards the interests of us all as global citizens,’ Smith told UN leaders. The youth urged negotiators to take seriously the proposal from Grenada that emission reductions be made aggressive and sufficient to avoid a global average temperature increase of 1.5oC. According to Adriana, the youth were ‘broadly applauded.’

Meanwhile, closer to home, on October 21, United Nations Day, students from Salt Spring Island schools held the 5th Annual Children and Youth Peace Assembly. They launched the ‘peaceworks’ project asking all of us to sign on on-line to a ‘command statement’ calling on ‘the United Nations and all the governments of the world to bring world peace and the complete end to all wars on planet Earth by November 11, 2018—100 years to the day that the treaty to end all wars was signed (www.sd64.bc.ca).

Looking to our children for leadership is not really new.

We have embedded in our collective consciousness (regardless of religion) fragments from gospel (‘And a little child shall lead them…’), and song, (‘we rise again in the faces of our children’) But there is a peril in recognizing youth leadership. It lies in the generational cop-out: ‘these will be issues for the next generation. They will be wiser….’

Ending war, finding peace, eliminating poverty, saving what’s left of ancient forests and rare species, and weaning our addiction to fossil fuels are not issues with long time lines. The need for action is well past its ‘best before’ date.

We cannot abandon our children to solve these issues where we have failed. It is our responsibility as adults, no matter how grey our hair or aching our bones, to fight ever harder for our children’s future. It is in that compelling honesty of youth, in their energy and clear-eyed statements of the changes that must come, that we should find inspiration and resolve.

In the face of evidence to engender despair, it is the young who keep alive in us that most courageous of emotions—hope.

Elizabeth May is the leader of the Green Party of Canada and youth emeritus. For full disclosure, Ken Wu is also working part-time on her campaign to be elected as the MP for Saanich Gulf Islands.

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