In the spring of 1999, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade completed cross-Canada hearings on what Canada's role should be at the upcoming World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations. The following is the NDP response to the Committee's report.

A Critical Perspective on The WTO

Submitted by Bill Blaikie, MP - NDP International Trade Critic

June 1999

The NDP notes that Trade Minister Sergio Marchi is quoted in the majority report as saying that "trade allows us to export not only our goods, but also our values." The NDP files this minority report on Canada's approach to the World Trade Organization because we believe that, contrary to Minister Marchi's vain hopes, the WTO has become, and was intended to be, like unto the NAFTA, a context where most of Canada's most important values are not exported, but rather exterminated, by being made unlawful.

On the same page the majority report quotes former WTO Director General Renato Ruggiero asking, in response to those who want environmental and social issues to be dealt with at the WTO, "do we really want the WTO to play judge, jury, and police of our environmental, social, and ethical values?" The answer to Ruggiero's question is that the WTO is already playing this role, but neither he nor it can admit this reality. Trade rules, trade and investment interests, and an all pervasive ideology of trade liberalization, are trumping many established ways of doing things in Canada, and in other nations that have developed on the basis of social or cultural goals being paramount, or of ethical and environmental norms being superior to economic ones.

Unfortunately, despite the existence of international agreements and institutions which address so-called non-trade issues, it is only trade rules that have the distinction of being enforceable, and enforced. This is why, as the majority report itself notes, that the whole question of intellectual property eventually came under the umbrella of the WTO, in the form of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS Agreement). The World Intellectual Property Organization had existed since 1967, but it had no mechanism to force compliance. Under the WTO, the multi-national drug companies and others who profit from global patenting found what they had been looking for. For the NDP, this raises the question of why a similar thing could not be achieved in other areas of concern. If the International Conference of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) had as much power as the global drug corporations would we not already have a (TRCLS agreement) i.e. an agreement in trade related aspects of core labour standards.

Thus there are only two politically and morally adequate approaches to the WTO. The first is to insist on the WTO dealing, in an enforceable way, with social, environmental, labour and human rights issues, before it goes any further down the road of trade liberalization. The second is to insist, before there is any more trade liberalization, that other international agreements and institutions, like the International Labour Organization (ILO), be given "teeth", be given the power to effectively sanction behaviour which violates certain agreed upon rules.

Either of the two approaches suggested above would take time, and this would dovetail nicely with the view of many witnesses who testified before the committee, a view which the NDP shares, that there is a need for more time to digest what was agreed upon in the Uruguay round of trade negotiations that produced the WTO in 1994. Some developing countries need time just to implement the last round. Others, like Canada, should at least take the time to reflect upon and to analyze what has already gone on, before going any further.

The majority report does not recommend either of the two approaches suggested above. Instead, while recommending full Canadian participation in the upcoming negotiations, it only talks about Canada putting forward options to integrate the "trade-linked social dimensions" within the existing "WTO constitutional principles, agreements, and activity structures." Not much of a challenge to the status quo here. And compliance, in terms of WTO rules and practices being in conformity with other multilateral obligations in areas such as labour rights and human rights, is left, by the majority report, to be considered "in the longer term".

As the NDP said in our minority report on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), those who would complete or perfect the enshrining and enforcement of corporate rights, while leaving the enforcement of corporate responsibilities and the rights of workers, the environment, and societies for another day, perhaps even another generation, have much to answer for by way of moral reasoning.

The NDP does support a rules-based global trading regime, or a rules based global economy. We believe in rules, for two reasons. Canada is an exporting nation, and needs to have fair access to other markets in order to ensure prosperity. But we also believe in rules, just as importantly, because there is a need to regulate economic activity in the public interest. Our problem with the WTO is that it is based on an uncritical embrace of the view that unfettered free markets are the solution to all of humanity's problems. Instead of economic power being regulated in order to serve the common good, the primary purpose of the WTO is to regulate, or limit, the power of governments to stand in the way of the profit strategies of multi-national corporations. The mandate of the WTO has too much to do with trade liberalization as an end in itself, and far too little to do with promoting social, economic, and ecological justice. Instead of acknowledging the growing gap between rich and poor, within and between countries, a growing inequality caused by "globalization", WTO leaders continue to pretend that more of the same will somehow do the trick.

The WTO was created by and is still informed by, a certain free market triumphalism and fundamentalism which tolerates no ideological or political diversity, no matter how democratically arrived at. State trading enterprises, like the Canadian Wheat Board, and other ideological hybrids like orderly marketing and supply management, are clearly on the hit list. Canadian policies on generic drug pricing, and split-run magazines have already been struck down by the WTO. Countries like Canada, with a history of ideological diversity, are to be homogenized and assimilated into what is essentially an American view of what constitutes proper policy. The democratic choices of countries with different political traditions and different visions of the global future are treated as forms of political deviance, to be cleansed by the steam rolling political monoculture of which the WTO has become a servant.

The NDP takes the view that, of those who had an opinion about the WTO itself, most witnesses were sceptical about the nature and mandate of the WTO as it currently exists. Of course, many other witnesses, particularly those from particular economic or business sectors, took the existence of the WTO as a given, and gave advice to the committee as to how their particular interests could be advanced or protected by the government in the upcoming negotiations. This is perfectly understandable. But the role of an opposition party is not to take for granted the political choices of the government, no matter how long established or well entrenched.

The NDP believes that our critical stance towards the WTO is more reflective of how Canadians truly fell about their first taste of world government. To give up on sovereignty for the greater good of global justice or planetary ecological survival is one thing, and something that Canadians might support. But giving up sovereignty just to make the world a barrier free playground for the economically powerful and aggressive, that is something that the NDP doesn't support. We believe a majority of Canadians share our view on this, and so we file this minority report.