NAFTA
by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products
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Introduction
You may have heard terms like NAFTA, FTAA, free trade and globalisation. You may
be aware that some people are violently opposed, willing to risk their lives to
protest. Never do the news commentators explain why. I am going to do that for
you. It turns out the protesters in general are in favour of free trade, just
opposed to the way it has been implemented. It also turns out the politicians
have pulled a boondoggle so outrageous it is hard to believe they are getting
away with it.
Background
In 1992 Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, the
American President George Bush Senior and Mexican President Salinas signed a
free trade agreement called NAFTA (North American Free Trade
Agreement). It took effect 1994. It dropped
duties on trade between the countries and made it easier for companies in one
country to invest in the other two. So far so good.
The negotiations were arduous. To push negotiations along, at the last minute,
the Americans tried a bluff, a bargaining chip they intended to push then
withdraw. This was the famous chapter 11 you will hear so much about. Chapter 11
has nothing to do with bankruptcy; it is a section of the agreement that gave
outrageous powers to foreign corporations. To the American negotiator’s
surprise, the Canadians accepted it.
In 2002, negotiations are underway to extend NAFTA to
include 31 new North and South American countries. This new agreement called
FTAA (Free Trade Agreement of the Americas) has an
even stronger version of chapter 11.
Protests are heating up. The Canadian government announced it would shoot free
trade protestors. The right wing Bush administration in the USA and the right
wing Harper government in Canada have funded a propaganda blitz to persuade the
public that anyone who has any reservations about NAFTA is a raving lunatic.
“Soon after the US petroleum production had peaked, official policy began
emphasising ‘free trade’ as a global panacea for unemployment,
underdevelopment, and virtually every other economic and political ill. Through
the manipulation of the rules of global trade, the US sought to maintain and
increase its access to natural resources worldwide. Those rules — written
primarily by US-based corporations and encoding in policies of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as
well as treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) —
essentially said that wherever resources lie, they must be available for sale to
the highest bidder. In other words, whoever has the money to buy those resources
has a legally defensible right to them. According to those rules, the oil of
Venezuela belongs to the US every bit as much as if they lay under the soil of
Texas or Missouri. Meanwhile technology, or ‘intellectual property’,
was regarded as proprietary; thus nations with prior investments in this
stragetgy were at an advantage while ‘underdeveloped’ nations were
sysetatically discouraged from adopting it.”
~ Richard Heinberg, The Party’s
Over
In other words free trade and globalisation are a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose
game rigged in favour of the USA. That is partly how the USA, with only 1/20 of
the world’s population, manages to hog most of the planet’s
resources.
The Case Against NAFTA in a Nutshell
- Even Liberal Minister of the environment Caccia admitted, "NAFTA has been
an environmental disaster."
- NAFTA prospers the richest 3% of Canadians, but is a disaster for the rest of us.
The wealthy bamboozle the public and bribe politicians to keep NAFTA.
- Under NAFTA, Canadian farmers are exporting seven times as much to the Americans,
but are making 24% less income. There are similar stories in other sectors.
- NAFTA put Canada up for sale at bargain prices. Even Tim Horton’s is now
American.
- Under NAFTA, Americans have the right to buy as much of our electricity, oil,
gas and water as they please and we are stuck paying American prices for
our own resources.
What is the Matter with the Free Trade Agreement?
There are many complaints, most centering around chapter 11. The agreement gives
foreign corporations the right to sue the government for any lost profit
and any lost future profit as a result of any government action,
even when the corporation was selling a harmful or dangerous product.
You may be coughing just now, saying preposterous, no government in their
right mind would hand over such a blank cheque to foreign corporations. That was
my reaction when I heard about it Bill Moyer’s documentary Trading
Democracy. Keep in mind who made the agreement — Mulroney and Bush
senior, men known for promoting the interests of the corporations over citizens.
Because Chapter 11 gives the corporations the right to sue for billions in lost
profit, it gives foreign corporations immense political power as well.
- The agreement gives foreign corporations the effective power to overturn anti-pollution
legislation.
- The agreement gives foreign corporations the effective ability to overturn court
decisions, even those of the supreme court.
- The agreement gives foreign corporations the effective right to overturn the
rules for organic food labelling. If a foreign corporation loses sales because
their products don’t quality, either the government has to relax the rules
to allow them to comply or else compensate them for all current and future lost
profits.
- These lawsuits are not decided in courts, but by secret tribunals, made up of
guess who, industry members! Guess who always wins these lawsuits: the
corporations or the federal governments? These decisions override even the
supreme court. The new version of chapter 11 wants to keep not only the
proceedings secret, but also the rulings. The public will never find out about
the billions their government is handing out to foreign corporations in Chapter
11 lawsuits.
- Canadians are alarmed that Chapter 11 will be used to challenge water safety
regulations. Canadas stringent regulations are according to Chapter 11 a
restraint of trade.
- Canadians are alarmed Chapter 11 lawsuits will destroy the public health care
system. American health providers can sue, since they are losing profits because
the government competes with them in providing health care.
- Canadians are alarmed the AOL Time Warner will use chapter 11 to dismantle the
subsidies to help the fledgling Canadian publishing industry. Americans should
be alarmed that Mexican agribusinesses could similarly use it to dismantle the
extensive American farm subsidies.
- Literally, foreign corporations should not even have to pay any taxes at all
since that interferes with their profitability. Whether they take chapter 11
that far, foreign corporations still have a huge unfair advantage over domestic
ones.
There are two other major problems with free trade:
- Trade is not always free. George W. Bush slapped a 33% duty (illegal under the
NAFTA treaty) on Canadian softwood exports to the USA, which crippled her lumber
industry, the number one industry in the provinces of British Columbia (where I
live) and Quebec. Most Canadians suspect, but cannot prove, that George W. Bush
was arm twisting Canada to get Prime Minister Chrétien to support Bush’s
illegal war on Iraq. When that did not work, Bush raised the duty to 47%. Prime
Minister Chrétien diplomatically told him to shove it up his nostrils.
“The price of being the world’s only superpower is that its motives
are sometimes questioned by others. Great strength is not always perceived by
others as benign. Not everyone around the world is prepared to take the word of
the United States on faith.”
~ Jean Chrétien, Prime Minister of Canada
The USA is a big country and makes up the rules as she goes in her favour.
- It weakens the power of the workers. Multinational corporations take jobs
wherever labour is cheapest. Jobs moved from Canada to the US to Mexico and from
there to China. National unions have no power to compete with slave wages in the
third world.
The Actuality
You may say, "Yes, such ripoffs may be possible in theory, but in practice,
nothing that outrageous would be allowed to happen." Bill Moyers, a
respected PBS journalist documented a number of abuses, which I summarise below.
All amounts in the following exposition are in:
- Under Chapter 11, Raymond Loewen, a Canadian funeral company, sued the US
Federal Government through the tribunal for
, because it lost a jury trial in a legal dispute with a small Louisiana funeral
chain owned by Jerry O’Keefe, the mayor of Biloxi, claiming the jury was
biased against Canadians. In the original trial, the jury awarded
to Okeefe. Loewen originally settled for
then struck back some years later with Chapter 11. Here we have a jury trial was
overturned by a secret tribunal, not by a superior court. That should ring alarm
bells for civil libertarians.
- Under Chapter 11, Methenex, a Canadian gasoline additive company, sued the US
Federal government for
million because the state of California banned MTBE a gasoline additive that
causes cancer in animals.
- Under Chapter 11, the Ethyl Corporation, an American gasoline additive company,
successfully sued the Canadian federal government when it banned MMT in gasoline,
even though the additive is illegal in the USA. Canada could not afford the
lawsuit and so caved in allowed the additive in Canadian gasoline and paid up
for the short time the ban was in effect. To add insult to injury, the
settlement required two cabinet ministers to go on TV and lie to the Canadian
people that MMT was considered completely safe.
- Under Chapter 11, Metalclad, an American company successfully sued the federal
government of Mexico for
when local Mexican governments refused them a permit to expand a toxic waste
dump until they had cleaned it up. They took the money then went ahead with the
toxic dump without any cleanup.
- One of the Canadian negotiators of the free trade agreement said that even if a
company were putting plutonium in children’s food, the company could still
sue for lost profit if they were required to stop. Foreign corporations are
insured from economic risk, unlike domestic corporations, no matter how
irresponsibly they behave. Not only are governments required to compensate them
for lost profits, but also for all lost profits indefinitely into the future.
Ironically, the worse the foreign corporations behave the more they can extort
from governments under Chapter 11.
Why?
Why would any government in its right mind sign such an agreement that so
seriously undermines its own authority?
- Politicians get the bulk of their campaign contributions from corporations, and
so they do what the corporations want. The large corporations are quite
understandably wildly in favour of Chapter 11.
- The negotiators of the treaty were lawyers who are now in private boutique
practice teaching corporations how to milk the Chapter 11 cow. They put the
language in there on purpose so they could exploit it later. The politicians may
not have realised how foolish they were being when they signed.
- Note that the major news media TV and newspapers have a conspiracy of silence of
Chapter 11. Not a one has reported it. Not a one has explained what the free
trade controversy is about. All they show are pictures of protestors and fire
hoses as if the protests were a form of mindless violence.
Books
 |
recommend book⇒The Truth about Canada: Some Important, Some Astonishing, and Some Truly Appalling Things All Canadians Should Know About Our Country |
| | hardcover |
|---|
| ISBN13: | 978-0-7710-4165-5 |
|---|
| ISBN10: | 0-7710-4165-9 |
|---|
| publisher: | Douglas Gibson |
|---|
| published: | 2008-04-28 |
|---|
| by: | Mel Hurtig |
|---|
Hurtig points out that if you compare Canada economically before and after NAFTA, all 30 indicators he looked at show Canada was better off before. NAFTA’s purpose is to transfer Canadian sovreignty to corporations. International corporations get rich off NAFTA, but ordinary citizens have just gotten screwed. I talked with Mr. Hurtig at a book signing. He has thousands of facts at his fingertips. How well do you know Canada? | Statistics about Canada |
|---|
| % | statistic |
|---|
| 0 | percent improvement in child poverty since 1989. | | 0 | percent increase in middle class income, inflation-adjusted income since 1980. | | 0.75 | percent of Canadians who donated to any political party in 2006. | | 2.4 | percent of direct foreign investment that created new jobs, 97.6% was for takeover of existing companies which diverted the profits to offshore tax havens. | | 21 | percent of jobs that are paid too low to provide food, shelter and heat. 8-12% is typical in Europe. | | 55 | percent foreign takeovers financed by Canadian banks. | | 56 | percent drop in foreign aid since 1975. | | 76 | percentage of print and TV media in Vancouver BC owned by one company. | | 80 | percent of Canadians who have never belonged to any political party. | | 100 | percent increase in GDP since 1989. | | 400 | percent increase in share of the economic pie by taken by investors at the expense of workers since 1992. | ~ Mel Hurtig |
|
 |
recommend book⇒One Big Party: To Keep Canada Independent |
| | paperback |
|---|
| ISBN13: | 978-0-9733116-0-0 |
|---|
| ISBN10: | 0-9733116-0-6 |
|---|
| publisher: | Chimo Media |
|---|
| published: | 2003-01 |
|---|
| by: | Paul Hellyer |
|---|
| Paul Hellyer was Canada’s former defense minister. He methodically builds a case that Mulroney sold out Canada to the USA with NAFTA. He explains why, if NAFTA is extended with the FTAA, it will be the end of Canada. |
|
 |
recommend book⇒The Selling of "Free Trade": NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy |
| | paperback | hardcover |
|---|
| ISBN13: | 978-0-520-23178-8 | 978-0-8090-8531-6 |
|---|
| ISBN10: | 0-520-23178-3 | 0-8090-8531-3 |
|---|
| publisher: | University of California Press |
|---|
| published: | 2001-10-16 |
|---|
| by: | John R. MacArthur, Jr. |
|---|
| MacArthur is editor of Harper’s Magazine. People have accepted NAFTA because few people bothered to read the agreement and discover it had nothing at all to do with free trade. It is about giving Americans the same rights as Canadians when it comes to buying up Canadian resources and companies. |
|
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