SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS

Tuesday March 27, 2001

 

 

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to follow my colleague, the hon. member for Burnaby—Douglas, in putting on the record the very real concerns of the NDP about the FTAA. We have concerns not just about the FTAA but also about various other trade agreements which contain the same elements as the government would like to see included in the FTAA.

Our opposition to the free trade of the Americas is consistent with our opposition to the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement, the North American free trade agreement, the multilateral agreement on investment and the World Trade Organization. All these agreements, some in place like NAFTA, some historical like the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement, some defeated like the multilateral agreement on investment and some in process, are like the WTO, all these agreements have in common the fact that they are agreements which were conceived in the first place to restrict the ability of democratically elected governments to act in the public interest, to act on behalf of the common good.

As my colleague referred to earlier when he was quoting Renato Ruggiero, the former director of the WTO, it has been the view of the corporate elite both nationally and globally for some time basically since the early mid-seventies that there has been a surplus of democracy in the western world. Things were getting out of hand. The economy was regulated in a way that did not permit the maximization of profit in the way that corporations would like.

There began a corporate backlash in the 1970s, which by the late 1980s took the form of free trade agreements. It took the old concept of free trade as protectionism, which sometimes had been supported by various elements of the political spectrum and which basically had to do with the elimination of tariffs, et cetera, and applied it toward an entirely new phenomenon that included not just what free trade used to include but entirely new sectors with respect to energy, investment and now services, the latter being the latest addition to what the corporate elite would like to see brought under the authority of these agreements.

The member for Burnaby—Douglas said that he was sad to see that we were debating the free trade agreement of the Americas without the text. It is not a coincidence that we do not have the text. The one time that we did have the text before there was an agreement it was defeated. Somehow the text of the MAI, multilateral agreement on investment, was put on the Internet and everybody had a copy of it. That agreement did not survive because people could actually point to what it was that their governments were planning to do to them.

I do not believe the minister of trade when he says that he would really love to release the text of the draft agreement but he cannot get the other countries to agree. It is clear to me that there is an agreement among all the countries not to release the text. If they release the text they know there would be a lot more people protesting in Quebec City, more than those already planning to protest what it is that their governments are planning to do to them.

It is not just what the governments are planning to do to their citizens in terms of taking away their rights and their ability through their governments to act in the public interest. The real question is: Why do governments want to do this to themselves.  It is the most pathetic element of what we have seen in the last decade of the 20th century and what we are seeing more of in the beginning of the 21st century.

When the history of western liberal democracy is written 100 years from now, it will be about the decline of liberal democracy. It will be similar to the books we now read about the decline of Athenian democracy, the decline of the ideals of the Roman republic, or various other historical epochs that started out with an idea which flourished, reached its zenith at some point and then for some reason began to deteriorate.

Since the late 1980s we have seen through the free trade agreements the relentless but willing abdication of power by elected representatives, both by parliamentarians individually and collectively, by democratically elected governments with power vested in them by their citizenry and electorate, to corporations, either to corporations directly or to international or regional trade agreements which embody the values and the interests of those corporations.

The really interesting point for historians 100 years from now will be to try to understand what went on in the 1990s and in the early part of the 21st century, if we survive, if we can breathe the air and drink the water that a deregulated global market economy will bring us. However, if we survive, somebody will be asking what possessed these people to surrender the control of the economy, the trust that had been placed in them by the citizens who voted them into power. What possessed them to give up that power?

That is what people in Quebec City will be protesting. That is what they protested in Seattle and Windsor. They will be protesting at the next meeting of the WTO in Qatar, those who can get there. I will put on the record now that the next summit of the Americas will probably be in the Falkland Islands. These things will have to go beyond being held in artificially created gated compounds. They will have to be held on islands that can be defended by various navies because more and more people are seeing that this is an attack on democracy.

The real shame is that the people who should be in the forefront of defending democracy, the people who are actually elected, are the ones who are being sucked in royally by it. We have heard a lot of that tonight, people getting up and singing the praises of free trade without seeing that they are singing the praises of their own continuing demise as parliamentarians both individually and collectively.

What is this all done in the name of? As I said before, it is done in the name of constraining the power of government. However it is also done from a Canadian perspective, as a Liberal member said earlier, in the name of enhanced market access. The Liberal member who was talking about enhanced market access was talking about enhanced market access for Canadian service corporations.

We are being asked to trade away the mechanisms and the public policy instruments through which we have built up a different kind of society and through which we have regulated the economy in a way that accrued to the public interest rather than the private interest and corporations. We are being asked to give all that up so that our Canadian corporations will not run into similar public policy instruments in other countries.

In the interest of their corporate profits and their profit strategies we are being asked to give up our way of life. That is what it amounts to. We are told that this leads to jobs. It may well do so. If at the same time we have to give up our way of life and give up the possibility of being a distinct country having distinct social and economic values, it will be a classic case of having sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind. It will not be worth it.

Mr. Jim Abbott (Kootenay—Columbia, Canadian Alliance): Mr. Speaker, the member will know that I have only the highest regard for him as an individual and for his history in parliament. I have been very impressed in the last few weeks with some of his sage wisdom that he has given to parliament.

I will not debate him on the issue that he has just put forward. I have a fundamental disagreement with his thesis. I would like to give him and perhaps the New Democratic Party an opportunity to go on record about a related issue. I sincerely respect the New Democratic Party, particularly this member, and the fact that they have a particular perspective. They want to go to Quebec to make those statements.

I also sincerely respect other thoughtful Canadians who hold to that perspective. I would like to give him the opportunity to make some comment about those who take the credibility of thoughtful people like him and others who want to protest and take it to the anarchistic extreme.

It is unfortunate that the government has had to put up barriers and walls and take other security measures. I would like to give the member and his party the opportunity to say that they want to have the right to democratically attack this summit, that they want the right to demonstrate peacefully and that they want the right to make their statement as forcefully as they possibly can, but that they resent and reject the anarchistic tendencies of some who will be coming with the avowed intention to get up to anarchy and public mischief.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, I say to the hon. member that there has never been any doubt in any of the statements that have been made by the member for Burnaby—Douglas on behalf of the NDP as trade critic; by myself, formerly the trade critic; or by our leader that we are going to Quebec City to be in solidarity with the people who want to peacefully protest against the free trade area of the Americas.

I was in Seattle representing the NDP. This was not inconsistent with what we will be doing in Quebec. It was not inconsistent with what had been done before. Tens of thousands of people in Seattle were demonstrating against the World Trade Organization who had nothing to do with the planning, the executing or the approving of the actions of a minority of protesters who had a different philosophy that chose to break windows.

There are people who are against any kind of world governance. We have already said we are not against a multilateral rules based economy. We want one that is designed not in the interests of multinational corporations but in the interests of the well-being of all peoples. That means we have to include core labour standards and environmental standards, et cetera, all the things that the corporations do not want included in these agreements.

I thank the hon. member for the question, but the answer is something that has been given many times by myself and other New Democrats.

Mr. Svend Robinson (Burnaby—Douglas, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I will ask a brief question. It is a complex issue, but I do want to give the member an opportunity to comment briefly on one of the most dangerous provisions in the existing NAFTA which is being proposed as quite possibly extending into the FTAA. It is chapter 11 dealing with the investor state provision.

We have seen challenges by UPS of our public postal service, by S.D. Myers on banning PCB exports and by Sun Belt Water regarding bulkwater exports. Could the hon. member comment briefly on his concerns with respect to this very dangerous provision?

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, if I had more time to elaborate on how these agreements affect democracy and how they threaten democracy, I would have turned to chapter 11, the investor state dispute settlement mechanism, as a prime example.

The things the member for Burnaby—Douglas listed, and one can list others, is basically a list of public policy options or public policy decisions that democratically elected governments have made in the past or could make in the future which could now be challenged through this investor state dispute settlement mechanism.

Not only do those decisions then become challenged, but we have this chill effect whereby governments never make make other possible decisions because they are afraid of this mechanism.