arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Confidential Cabinet Document Reveals Canada's Double-Speak in Johannesburg

September 3, 2002

OTTAWA, ONTARIO – A Memorandum to Cabinet, obtained by the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), shows that the Canadian government is looking at what amounts to a fast track mandate for trade negotiation, to push for a new Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and to make environment a secondary concern to trade imperatives.

The confidential document, which has been sent via an unmarked and anonymous envelope, is a final draft of Canada's WTO negotiating strategy that is awaiting Cabinet approval.

"This document shows without a doubt that the Liberal government is hypocritical in challenging the European Union and the United States for harming the Third World," says Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the 100,000-member Council of Canadians. "This government's mandate for the WTO negotiations proves that the Chrétien government is no friend of developing countries and the environment."

To Bruce Campbell, Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the memorandum is attempting to sell to Cabinet a position that completely ignores the negative aspects of globalisation.

"The document repeats assertions about the miraculous power of trade and investment liberalisation a la WTO to bring prosperity and cure poverty, as if the raging worldwide debate about the malignancies of the current globalisation didn't exist; as if the actual economic record of more than two decades of globalisation were irrelevant."

The federal government is also seeking a mandate through cabinet to revive the ill-fated Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) at the 5th WTO Ministerial Meeting, which will take place in Cancun, Mexico, in September 2003.

"Civil society has fought and defeated the MAI in 1998, but we then announced it was not fully dead and that there would soon be an attempt to resurrect it," said David Robbins, trade campaigner with the Council of Canadians.

"Unfortunately, we were right."

"Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew is seeking a mandate from Cabinet, but we will see whether he will obtain a mandate from the Canadian people."

While the document acknowledges that developing countries "continue to be concerned about taking additional obligations and express concerns that they are not benefiting from the international rules framework as much as they should", Canada refuses to recognise the needs and inequalities of developing countries.

Canada is also looking "to work closely with like-minded countries to build support of moderate developing countries and to isolate hard-line opponents who do not share these objectives and want to hold up any progress on trade facilitation negotiations until implement demands are fully satisfied."

Therefore, it limits its WTO options to a "one-size-fits-all" solution in an unlevelled playing field, despite the rhetoric it expressed at the Johannesburg Summit.

An analysis of the document, prepared by the Council of Canadians and the CCPA, is available in the press kit.

For comments, please contact:
Maude Barlow, National Chairperson, Council of Canadians - 613.233-4487, ext. 234
Bruce Campbell, Executive Director, CCPA - 613.563.1341, ext. 302
David Robbins, Trade Campaigner, Council of Canadians - 613.233-4487, ext. 249

For more information, please contact:
Guy Caron, Media Officer - Council of Canadians - 613.233.4487 ext. 234

http://www.canadians.org/documents/analysis_wto_mandate_020903.pdf

http://www.canadians.org/documents/wto-draft.pdf