ISDS : Investor-State Dispute Scam

A German documentary on the investor rights in trade agreements - ISDS - now with English subtitles : "Corporations Complain - We Pay".



Canada and Canadian ISDS losses - described as the "gold rush in the ISDS industry" - figure prominently in the film :

"Canada is the only western country that has ever accepted ISDS with the United States. We're actually one of the most sued countries, always by US companies, because we signed one treaty that allowed ISDS with the United States.

And ultimately it only exists because at some point everyone expects the public will have to pay." 

In 1989 not a single lawsuit was filed; by the end of 2014 there were over 600:

"It's a new way to access public money."

The film traces the story of the two Nova Scotia lobster fishermen who fought for five years and successfully turned back US corp Bilcon's bid to build a basalt quarry on environmental grounds, only to have the ISDS tribune rule against them. Bilcon sued for US $300M over future financial loss on a quarry they hadn't even started building. As lobsterman Kemp Stanton remarks :

"If you can make US$300 million and not have to build the quarry, it'd be stupid to build it."    

And because ISDS litigation costs US$4-8 million, New York lawyer Selvyn Siedel brokers deals between "those who want to sue and those who want to invest in such litigation - litigation funders". A whole new industry model with returns of $20M of taxpayer money on an initial $5M investment. US litigation financiers have seen their own profits rise 900% by fuelling more corporations to launch more cases against sovereign governments over domestic policies :

"The litigation funders are the ones greasing the wheels of this system" 

as they did against the easy pickings of Spain and Greece during their financial insolvencies, using shell companies in Luxembourg, phantom mailbox companies with no employees, to sue their own governments for lost profits. 

In Germany, the government of Hamburg gave in to a German corp suing them for $1B through a New York company rather than face the loaded odds of an ISDS tribunal. Liberal Marc Lalonde was president of that ISDS tribunal, working alongside US Republican Larry Craig.

Sylvan Seidel in New York sees a new business opportunity in these lawsuits - bundle them as investment stocks :

"Banks, hedge funds and insurance companies are investing in this growing market. It's like a casino and the party for litigation funders is not over yet. As this grows, more corporations launch cases against governments."

CETA, TPP, TTIP - they're all trojan horse casinos designed to enable the arbitration industry to change laws in sovereign states while bleeding the public purse. 

Good doc.  h/t Murray Dobbin who circulated the link to it last night.

The Osgood Hall law prof featured in the doc wrote a Tyee column last month on the TPP :
Gus Van Harten : Seven Ways TPP Favours Mega-rich Foreign Investors, Not Canadians
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Happy Temporary Foreign Workers Labour Day!

Bloomberg, Dec 2010 : Europe’s largest oil-field service provider, Saipem, wins $1 Billion onshore contract from Husky for the Sunrise Energy Project in Canada.

Nine months ago, Fort McMurray Today reported that 270 unionized welders and pipefitters contracted to that Husky Sunrise tarsands project were laid off and replaced by cheaper temporary foreign workers from Mexico, Ireland, Portugal and Italy.

A commenter under another FMT article explained:

"We had to conduct a handover to Saipem (a mostly Italian workforce), detailing to them where we had stopped work so that they may continue. In the final week, Saipem foreign workers were actually in the facility working side by side with us; a very uncomfortable situation for those of us about to be laid off."

Yesterday, CBC's Kathy Tomlinson revisited that story : Canadians expose foreign worker 'mess' in oilsands"

"Canadian tradesmen from a huge oilsands construction project are waving a red flag about safety hazards and near misses, which they blame on the use of foreign workers who aren't qualified and can't speak English.

Stand-outs from her report :

• a foreign worker taking a blowtorch to a propane tank to defrost it, 
• Canadians with better qualifications passed over for jobs while foreign workers from Europe continued to show up 
• foreigner workers arrived without Canadian-standard trade certification but "under government rules, they have a year before they must take their test." after which they can take it again later if they fail,  and 
• "Probably 75 per cent of [foreign] ironworkers on site were only at the level of a labourer."
• When refused LMAOs, Saipem used "intra-company transfers" instead [which I wrote about here.] 

But back up a bit. The company that brought in those workers - Italian oil and gas services contractor, Saipem.  Haven't we heard about them before?

Dec. 2012 : Saipem CEO resigns after Algeria corruption probe

July 2013 :Milan court rules Saipem guilty of corruption in Nigeria ... 

July 2013 : Saipem drilling rig sinks off Angola One person missing

"The Italian oilfield services provider said that one of the jack-up rig’s three legs collapsed, causing the rig to suddenly tilt and start taking water. The incident, according to Saipem, occurred during the rig positioning on location between the coasts of Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, in approximately 40 meters of water. 6 crew members have sustained minor injuries. At approximately 10:30 am CET, the rig, with no personnel on board, capsized and sank. "

Sept. 2013 : Milan prosecutors investigate Saipem for alleged market manipulation and insider trading

May 2014 : RBC Investor and Treasury Services - SAIPEM  - Class Action Notice 

"As a result of the company's untimely disclosures of relevant information, particularly its involvement in an Algerian corruption scandal from 2007 to 2010, and it is alleged that Saipem paid bribes to win a series of contracts worth around $11 billion which led to significant stock drops in January and June 2013. Various (criminal) investigations against Saipem by the Consob, the Italian market regulator, and Italian prosecutors are ongoing."

July 2014 : Australian unions fury at Coalition`s gas job sell-out

"Saipem's enormous pipelay vessel Castorone will start work soon off the Australia coast.  The Government issued a regulation eliminating the need for any worker on a craft not tethered to the Australian mainland to have a work visa. That would free foreign companies with the contracts to lay pipework and other vital infrastructure on huge projects such as the Browse Basin gas field to hire thousands of foreign workers instead of Australians."

Gosh, just like here.
But no, not any of those stories ... 
Ah I remember - it was Arthur Porter, SNC-Lavalin, and Saipem!

In 2005, Saipem won a contract with SNC-Lavalin for the Horizon oilsands project, owned by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.
In 2006, SNC-Lavalin and Saipem awarded "joint partnership contract" to build LNG Terminal in New Brunswick.

Four years later, SNC-Lavalin had signed a deal to award soon-to-be CSIS watchdog Dr. Arthur Porter of Sierra Leone (currently on the lam from Canadian law in Panama) and his company Sierra Assets Management, 3 payments totaling $10-million for consultancy fees regarding a gas project in Algeria.  The $1.2 billion Rhourde Nouss gas project deal was awarded to SNC-L the same year by Sonatrach, Algeria’s national oil company.

In 2013,  Algerian police raided SNC offices in Algiers regarding "allegations of bribery and kickbacks involving Sonatrach and public officials and agents hired by SNC-Lavalin to procure a number of large infrastructure projects."

G&M February 2013 : SNC-Lavalin bribery probe widens to Algeria :

The investigation focuses on one of the company’s agents in Algeria, Farid Bedjaoui, a jet-setting money manager hired to help secure at least $1-billion in contracts with the country’s state-run oil company, Sonatrach. Mr. Bedjaoui was educated in Montreal and occasionally resides there

Sources close to the investigations in Europe and Canada believe that SNC and the Italian oil services firm Saipem SpA relied on Mr. Bedjaoui, the nephew of former Algerian foreign affairs minister Mohammed Bedjaoui, to obtain contracts from Sonatrach.

Mr. Bedjaoui is one of several foreign agents hired by SNC who have fallen under suspicion for allegedly paying bribes.

Several Saipem executives are under investigation, including the construction unit’s recently suspended chief operating officer, Pietro Varone, who was so close with Mr. Bedjaoui that the two men launched a wine-making company together outside Naples.

Well, I'm sure when we sign off on those investor-state rights trade deals with Europe, CETA and TTIP, all this will go much more smoothly, right?

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Chris Alexander, Minister of IMPs and ICTs

When Jason Kenney grandly announced his new temporary foreign worker program reforms last week - Putting Canadians First! - he slyly handed off the greater part of his troubles to Chris Alexander - Minister of Gollumization, Citizenship, and Immigration - and now also Minister of IMPs and ICTs.  

We don't hear much about IMPs (outside of childrens' books) - the International Mobility Program under which the majority of workers enter Canada. They do not have to pass a labour market test (LMIA) to determine whether they will be putting Canadians out of work because, as our new MinIMP explained, the program is intended to benefit not individual businesses by filling specific jobs, but rather "Canada as a whole".

Via Kenney's ministry, Employment and Social Development Canada :

Of the 221,273 foreign nationals who entered Canada in 2013, 38% came in under the TFWP, but 62% came in under the IMP - 83,740 vs 137,533

Then there's the ICTs - Intra-Company Transfers - also not reliant on LMIAs to safeguard Canadian jobs because they were created to allow multinational corps to move their skilled workers easily from country to country.

You may recall this whole TFW fiasco first blew up in the public eye because the Royal Bank farmed out part of its IT work to iGATE, a company that straddles US, Canada and India, who then cycled its workers in and out of Canada for training by RBC staffers they would later replace under an intra-company transfer. 
As RBC CEO Gord Nixon explained at the time, only one of them came into Canada as a TFW, and besides, RBC "does not get involved in the hiring practices of the companies it hires."

In BC, eight US construction workers were granted entry to BC by the CBSA under an ICT after a US company got the contract to build a wood-waste storage building near Prince George. These "specialized workers" included a former rancher and an apprentice roofer and produce clerk. Yea NAFTA! and all that, but don't we have enough ranchers, apprentice roofers, and produce clerks looking for any kind of work in Canada already?

Asked about the union-backed court case protesting import of the eight US workers, Kenney referred reporters to Chris Alexander, but a year ago he stated : "The obligations we have have for intra-company transfers are often hard-wired into trade agreements."

G&M, May 17, 2014 :

"The final text of the much-vaunted Canada-European Union free trade agreement (CETA) is expected to include a list of occupations that can be fast-tracked into Canada and would allow European firms to bring European workers into Canada through inter-company transfers ...  

The Conservative government has described the deal’s provisions for temporary entry of labour as “the most ambitious ever in a free trade agreement.”

Still you can't please everyone.

B.C.’s deputy premier and natural gas development minister Rich Coleman is worried Canada is going to "fail" if companies cannot hire temporary foreign workers for the 100,000 jobs needed to develop LNG export projects on the coast.

The Kitimat LNG project is co-owned by Canadian branches of U.S. energy giants Chevron Corp. and Apache Corp. Will they be bringing in their own workers?
TransCanada, once billed in the US as "an American company with operations in Canada", is slated to build a $1.9-billion pipeline link for Kitimat LNG project. 

In February Mr. Coleman announced there was "no question the industry will be looking to foreign workers to get up and running", and in March he touted the importance of being on 

"a continent with a lot more people south to us ... so we have access to other skilled labour on the continent and there are people who are very good at doing certain jobs - specialized welders." 

One presumes he isn't referring to the TransCanada welders on the southern leg of the Keystone XL Canada to Texas project : 

"Over 72 per cent of welds required repairs during one week. In another week, TransCanada stopped welding work after 205 of 425 welds required repair.

Inspections by the safety agency found TransCanada wasn’t using approved welding procedures to connect pipes, the letter said. The company had hired welders who weren’t qualified to work on the project because TransCanada used improper procedures to test them."

So. PM-hopeful Jason Kenney's TFW Program "will now refer to only those streams under which foreign workers enter Canada at the request of employers following approval through a new Labour Market Impact Assessment." 
For everything else - the difficult politically damaging bits - there's the guy wearing the IMP ears.
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Protectingcanadianjobs-hahaha.com

So if I understand the argument correctly, Restaurants Canada members employ 1.1 million workers of which TFWs only comprise 2% - a tiny fraction and certainly not enough to impact Canadian unemployment - but if restaurants can't have them they'll be forced to "scale back their business and even close their doors".
Ergo, TFWs are protecting Canadians' jobs!  Got it.

Protectingcanadianjobs.com, sponsor of the flyer at left which is also a petition to MPs, is brought to you courtesy of Smithcom, "a boutique communications firm dedicated to reputation management."
h/t NTFW   

Smithcom's President "was instrumental in driving the growth of Hill and Knowlton in its inception in Canada and then founded and led Fleishman-Hillard."

I think Restaurants Canada, formerly CRFA, would have benefited from Smithcom's market expertise a little sooner - perhaps sometime before Canadian workers were being denied work , or being laid off and replaced by a 926% increase in accommodation and food services TFWs since the Cons came to power.

In case you're wondering who the two guys in the Restaurants Canada flyer/petition up top are, they are an "African chef and a Hispanic businessman" featured on a St. Louis Missouri University website for a course in Dietetics. 
The same photo is used at Restaurant Canada's US lobby counterpart, the National Restaurant Association aka "The Other NRA" - a $680 billion industry representing KFC, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Taco Bell, etc. They have been sending petitions like the one above to members of Congress and threatening closures if they can't get more TFWs since at least the year 2000.

Both orgs have lobbied to cap the minimum wage for all workers.

The NRA was busted by the NYTimes last month for circulating a petition against raising the US minimum wage to $10.10 an hour that was fronted by an unwitting Nobel economist and distributed under his name. It was then signed by over 500 prominent economists and released to the media with nary a mention of the NRA.

In Canada, slide #20 of a powerpoint presentation by the VP of CRFA/Restaurants Canada  boasted : 

"Due to CRFA’s lobbying efforts, Ontario froze the minimum wage in 2011 - saving the industry $266 million."

Meanwhile, from yesterday's G&M : Foreign worker reforms clash with trade agenda

"The Conservative government’s overhaul of the temporary foreign worker program is on a collision course with its ambitious plans to sign trade deals that would allow more foreign workers to enter Canada hassle-free. 

The final text of the much-vaunted Canada-European Union free trade agreement (CETA) is expected to include a list of occupations that can be fast-tracked into Canada and would allow European firms to bring European workers into Canada through inter-company transfers, with reciprocity for Canadian firms.  

The Conservative government has described the deal’s provisions for temporary entry of labour as “the most ambitious ever in a free trade agreement.”

Temporary entry of labour the most ambitious ever in a free trade agreement.

Awesome.

Update : NTFW has added Newfoundland Labrador to interactive TFW map.
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Update 2 : Great piece from David Climenhaga

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The human rights fly in the CETA ointment

I'm sure Liberal Senator Joan Fraser was speaking for all of us when she expressed her displeasure at the idea that Europe seeks to link the Canada-EU trade deal to human rights.

Referring to the Strategic Partnership Agreement, CETA's parallel political companion, Senator Rivers explained : 

The SPA would enshrine "our common commitment to human rights, to certain common values and to non-proliferation of nuclear weapons," Liberal Senator Joan Fraser said in the Senate on April 18. 

However, "the problem is that in the European formula they want to include a clause that would make it possible for the trade agreement to be suspended if the Europeans judge that Canada had engaged in a serious violation of human rights, Ms. Fraser said. " 

Canada wants to keep trade and human rights separate ....
The Canadian government has "very properly and entirely appropriately refused" to link the two issues, trying instead to find other ways to "reassure Europeans on human rights," Ms. Fraser said.  

Damn straight. 

Just tell them none of our other trade agreements are linked to human rights.

China? You're kidding, right?

Colombia? Sure the US State Dept.'s  Colombia 2012 Human Rights Report refers to "the worst human rights record in the hemisphere" including :

"Corruption exacerbated by drug revenue; extrajudicial killings; insubordinate military collaboration with members of illegal armed groups; harassment of human rights groups and activists; trafficking in persons; illegal child labor; political killings; killings of members of the public security forces and local officials; widespread use of land mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs); kidnappings and forced disappearances; subornation and intimidation of judges, prosecutors, and witnesses; infringement on citizens’ privacy rights; restrictions on freedom of movement; widespread recruitment and use of child soldiers; violence against women, including rape and forced abortions; and killings, harassment, and intimidation of teachers and trade unionists."

But did we let that get in the way of signing off on the Colombia-Canada FTA two years ago, even though Canadian exports to Colombia only amounted to 0.15% ?

The hell we didn't. 

After Libs and Cons voted for it 183 to 78 in the House, CIDA backed Canadian extraction industries consultants to rewrite Colombian mining regulations, the Toronto Stock Exchange opened shop, Scotiabank started buying up Colombian banks, and just this January, Foreign Affairs Min  John Baird lifted the ban on Canadian arms manufacturers exporting assault weapons to Colombia, where we're sure they'll be put to continued good use securing the 40% of the country now under consideration for mining contracts by Canadian companies, as whole villages and local mining companies with the bad luck to be sitting on top the gold or oil need to be displaced, even if it means killing off the occasional protesting local priest.

Fun fact : The Canadian embassy in Bogata Colombia resides inside the Scotiabank building. 

So, EU, don't be bothering us about linking human rights to trade. 

As Senator Joan Fraser points out, in Canada we like to keep 'em separate :

The Canadian government has "very properly and entirely appropriately refused" to link the two issues.

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The NAFTA to TILMA to CETA race to the bottom

BC jobs go to Alberta; the profits go to Texas ...

The public utility BC Hydro is spending $1-billion to upgrade its transmission lines.

The Northwest Transmission Line contract - $364-525 million with 280 direct jobs per year - went to Valard Construction, based in Alberta and owned by Quanta Services from Texas. A BC company qualified as a bidder but were later told by Quanta to withdraw from the competition.
 
The Lower Mainland Transmission line - $540-780 million with 543 person years of work - is going to Graham-Flatiron, who subcontracted the line work to another Alberta company, also owned by Quanta.

The Columbia Valley Transmission project - $132-209 million - went to RS Line Contr.Co., another Alberta company.

As Doug McKay of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers told The Tyee, these companies come in with their own workers :

"They're scared to hire the people out here because we're quite unionized."

The B.C. jobs typically go to the lowest bidders, he said. "Here we look at low price and close our eyes and hope nobody gets killed," he said. "It's a race to the bottom as far as we're concerned."

According to BC Hydro :

"BC Hydro is subject to both the Agreement on Internal Trade and TILMA. BC Hydro’s policies require public competitive bids to be fair, transparent and open to all bidders who meet the requirements for each procurement. We do not track whether contractors are union or non-union."

So while the people of BC might expect to benefit from local jobs and revenue from their publicly owned electricity utility, TILMA and NAFTA sends those jobs and personal taxes to Alberta while the profits go on to Texas and BC Hydro doesn't care whether those jobs are union or not.


Meanwhile CETA, Steve's Canada-EU free trade agreement, promises more of the same "freedom" for foreign investors.
Here's the text of the negotiating mandates approved by the EU General Affairs Council for investment protection chapters in free trade agreements of the EU with Canada, India and Singapore. Note the last line.

Annex 1 TITLE 3 A : Investment protection

Objective: In accordance with the principles and the objectives of the Union's external action the respective provisions of the agreement shall provide for :

the highest possible level of legal protection and certainty for European investors in Canada/India/Singapore,

Scope: the investment protection title of the agreement shall cover a broad range of investors and their investments, intellectual property rights included, whether the investment is made before or after the entry into force of the agreement.

Enforcement: the agreement shall aim to provide for an effective investor-to state- dispute settlement mechanism. State-to-state dispute settlement will be included, but will not interfere with the right of investors to have recourse to the investor-to-state dispute settlement mechanism. It should provide for investors a wide range of arbitration fora as currently available under the Member States' bilateral investment agreements (BIT's).

Relationship with other parts of the agreement: the chapter on investment protection shall be a separate one, not linked to the market access commitments. These markets access commitments may include, when necessary, rules concerning performance requirements.

All the sub-federal or local entities and authorities (such as provinces or municipalities) must effectively comply with the investment protection chapter of this agreement

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The NAFTA CETA TILMA SPP Beyond the Borders Security Perimeter deep integration corporate globalization bunfest

 Under NAFTA, provinces retained the right to administer their own government procurement contracts as they saw fit - water, power, highways, garbage, and local cultural/environmental/job stimulus programs.
In fact most of the regulations in Canada are provincial and municipal - which rather got in the way of the federal government's ability to cede whatever the US wanted under the massive deregulation program called the SPP, because the federal government's power to do so was always constrained by the provinces' authority over those regs.

 TILMA was supposed to get around this.
TILMA is an investors' rights agreement to gut the ability of locally elected governments to enact public policy for the environment, consumer protection, health care, education, and other social services - albeit with some limitations. TILMA's job is to allow corporations to directly sue a provincial or municipal government whose laws or policies might impinge upon their profits in the event a province was seen to favour, say, Local Joe's over some competing out-of-province outfit. This was promoted under the guise of harmonizing regulations between provinces - it's always about 'harmonizing', isn't it? - but as only Alberta and BC signed on, it was not implemented across Canada.

TILMA was intended to replace the less onerous Agreement on Internal Trade, which did not allow corps to sue governments directly but only to petition another level of government to sponsor a complaint on their behalf.

Erin Weir, CPPA blog, emphasis mine:

"A month ago, Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial governments volunteered to be directly sued by investors under the Agreement on Internal Trade."

What, all of them?!

It is, as Weir notes, "TILMA by the backdoor", with "persons (individuals, businesses and other organizations)" able to sue for "financial penalties of up to $5 million" over public policy.

A mini NAFTA Chapter 11 for provinces. If passed next year, it will produce a considerable pre-emptive chill on any province or municipality favouring Local Joe's over ... well, anybody else looking to prevent them from doing just that.  
Weir :

"The Canadian government is simultaneously trying to negotiate similar provisions with much larger fines for investor-state disputes involving the European Union. Since the proposed Canada-Europe deal would include provincial governments, creating an investor-state dispute process encompassing provinces may help pave the way."

Yes, because the main sticking point preventing a Canada-EU free trade agreement in the past, as far as the Europeans were concerned, has been the Canadian provinces' stubborn reluctance to open up these local government procurement contracts to European corporations.

Embassy Mag on CETA :

"At the end of 2010, Canada asked for the inclusion of an investor-to-state mechanism in the deal, similar to Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement. This is a controversial provision that allows corporations to seek compensation from states if government policies hurt their business interests."

Back to Weir on the AIT :

"The press release even notes “the importance of linkages between the Agreement on Internal Trade and international trade agreements."

As TILMA was to the SPP, so the Agreement on Internal Trade will be to the Canada-EU CETA free trade agreement, if they both pass.

From the Declaration in Support of a Canada-EU Trade and Investment Agreement, signed by the 101 corporations whose participation and recommendations are apparently vastly more important than yours :

"A Canada-EU agreement will provide European companies with a gateway into the vast North American free trade area."

Currently the US-Canada Security Perimeter Beyond the Border Working Groups are also beavering away harmonizing US and Canadian regulations - also entirely out of public sight.

And voilà - the EU-NAFTA free trade zone.
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Why the Canada-EU free trade deal is a bad deal for Canada.

Economist Jim Stanford deftly savages the economic model behind Steve's promotion of the Canada-EU free trade agreement.
A $12-billion gain in our GDP? Would you like to see my pet unicorn later?

His original lecture "Out of Equilibrium" appeared here. Too long for either Blogger or Youtube, I've merely split it into two parts.
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Canada-EU Trade Agreement update

Why does it fall to a former Irish MP and Member of the European Parliament to raise questions about the detrimental effect to Canadians of the proposed Canada-EU trade agreement? Isn't that the job of the Canadian government and the Canadian media? *rhetorical lol*

Under the guise of harmonizing regulations between provinces, TILMA enjoyed limited success in the west in jettisoning the provinces' and municipalities' right to "Buy Local" in favour of investor rights for international corps. That was a big sticking point for the EU going ahead with a Canada-EU trade deal - if European companies weren't allowed to bid as equals on Canadian government contracts for both goods and services and if the provinces refused to end the favouring of local or national providers of public-sector services, well then the EU wasn't very interested in pursuing a deal.

Luckily - for Harper and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the 100 transatlantic CEOs - the big "Buy American" scare showed up. In exchange for a one day opportunity window into the 4 or 5 billion dollars left in Obama's Buy American stimulous package - jobs! jobs! jobs! - Harper convinced the provinces to give up their local procurement rights.

Between the two deals - the throw-away Buy American 'exemption' and the proposed Canada-EU deal - we're caught in a pincer move to further corporatize public services.

Good thing there's one lone Irishman at the European parliament asking a few questions on our behalf then, eh?

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From SPP to TILMA to "Buy North American"

Harper and Stockwell Day want the provinces to allow US corporations to be allowed to bid on contracts to supply local infrastructure to Canadian municipalities, schools and hospitals. It is their hope, they say, that this "gesture" will convince the US to repeal the "Buy American" provisions in U.S. stimulus legislation.

Not likely it will, of course, but it does provide Harper with yet another opportunity to make concessions to the US that they haven't even asked for.
Currently, because provinces and municipalities are not bound by international trade laws, if they want to give the work to local Canadian joes, they are free to do so. According to Steve and Doris, this is a bad thing. An example given in the G&M is : "Ontario buys only Ontario food for its prisons."

News media reports on this are all assbackwards so I've translated part of one from the G&M for you :

The Canadian government Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives are asking the provinces to join it in creating a new trade deal with the United States conceding even more sovereignty to the US.

Because the 1993 North American free-trade agreement does not include spending by local jurisdictions, contracts across North America involving everything from sewage systems to subway repairs are being awarded outside the framework of continental free trade to local joes.

Mr. Harper said, "Obviously, at a time when we're trying to keep borders open internationally consolidate the power of corporate oligarchy via deep integration, I do think that the proliferation of domestic preferences in subnational government procurement Canadian nationalism and the "Buy Local" movement is really problematic."

Trade Minister Stockwell Day has been canvassing the provinces on the idea of opening up local spending to free trade giving up their local authority, citing the consensus on EU free-trade talks.
The Europeans would not launch the talks until Canadian provinces committed to negotiating a deal that would allow their companies to bid for provincial and municipal contracts on an equal footing. Only Newfoundland refused stood up for Canada.

Day acknowledged the pending EU free trade talks would likely compel the provinces to commit to opening up their procurement sectors further corporate globalization.
"That's really opened the door to the discussion now that we're having with the provinces "Ha, ha, bet you didn't see that one coming," Mr. Day said yesterday.

See Monday's post for how easily we progressed from the SPP and TILMA to the new "Buy North American" proposal.
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Friday Update : The G&M is cranking out two or three headlines of support a day now.
Here's one : "Premiers rally behind Harper in fight against Buy American"
Yeah, two premiers "offered encouragement". Big whoop.
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Cellucci suggests huge aqueducts to carry Canadian water to US

Embassy Mag :

"Pointing out the imminent droughts in the southwestern United States caused by climate change, [former US Ambassador to Canada] Paul Cellucci raised the idea of constructing huge aqueducts to carry Canadian water south of the border.
He added that "to some extent, fresh water is a renewable resource," and that this opinion is shared by a recent report by the Montreal Economic Institute."

Yes, we already covered that Montreal Economic Institute report back here, Paul :

The chairman of the board of the Montreal Economic Institute, the 'independent non-profit' so keen on privatizing and exporting Canadian water, is Helene Desmarais. Helene Desmarais is married to Paul Desmarais Jr., co-CEO of Power Corporation of Canada and board member of GDF Suez, a multinational corporation that is a world leader in water privatization.

So. Not entirely arm's length then.

GDF Suez recently spun off its water equities into Suez Environnement Company, now Europe's 2nd largest private water management corp, in which it maintains a 35% controlling interest.

Meanwhile, we learn Paris is the latest city to take action to put water back into public hands, in Is the Water Privatization Trend Ending?, an interesting article about Suez, "corruption, fraudulent accounting practices, and high prices", and the EU's attempt "to impose the worldwide privatisation of water and other public services through the WTO".

Oh yeah, by all means bring on that Canada-EU Free Trade Agreement with its "deep economic integration negotiations", so enthusistically touted by French President Sarkozy, currently also president of the EU, as he awarded France's highest honour to Paul Desmarais Sr. ten days ago.

In 2006, Mr. Cellucci suggested "that water should be included in the same category as other natural resources exported as Canadian commodities on the open market," an opinion also shared by the Montreal Economic Institute.

Stick it, Paul.

SPP - Canada Election 08

Paul Manley, the guy who shot this footage of police provocateurs attempting to start a riot at the Stop the SPP protests in Montebello Quebec, is working on a documentary about the SPP.
In the meantime he has produced this short vid about all the questions not being asked in this election about issues related to the Security and Prosperity Partnership and Canada-EU Free Trade Ageement. An excellent short history.

Why isn't this an election issue?

Go Nanaimo Blog!

Will the Canada-EU Free Trade Agreement out-NAFTA NAFTA?

Be careful what you wish for.

Melvin J Howard, CEO of the Arizona-based Centurion Health Corporation, is in the process of filing a NAFTA Chapter 11 complaint against Canada's public healthcare system. Although our government has repeatedly assured us that Canadian healthcare is protected under NAFTA, recent tinkering with P-3s and privatization by the Quebec, BC, and Alberta governments has led Mr. Howard to believe he has a case, as argued on his blog :

1. Canada claims to have exemptions on their public health care system.
2. Canada has registered health insurance at the World Trade Organization as a financial service.
3. The World Trade Organization allows governments to exempt any service provided "in the exercise of government authority," as long as such services are not also available commercially.
4. Canadian private companies are already in the health business in Canada.
5. NAFTA dictates that Canadian, US, and Mexican businesses must have equal opportunities in all three countries.
6. Centurion has been barred from having the same investment opportunities private Canadian companies enjoy because it is based in the US.
7. Enter Chapter 11.

Mr. Howard is claiming $4 million in expenses and an additional $150 million in lost profit after a failed attempt to invest in the BC health care system. Although he has put his claim on hold until after the Canadian election, he states his intention to proceed "after the new Government is installed" if private negotiations with the federal government do not satify him.


Yesterday Red Tory was rather amused at my post on Harper's insistence on keeping his upcoming secret squirrel Canada-EU Free Trade Agreement negotiations out of the public eye till after the election. A "yawning non-story" and a "conspiracy theory", he said, despite the fact that the EU negotiators have already pressured Canada into accepting, as a precondition of their participation, a stipulation "which would require that Canadian governments allow European companies to bid as equals on government contracts for both goods and services and end the favouring of local or national providers of public-sector services."

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.
After, say, a company in Liechtenstein wins the bid to run the CBC on a for-profit basis, how long do you think it will take Fox News to file a Chapter 11 complaint at the WTO? An extreme and unlikely scenario to be sure, but I submit it to all of you who take comfort in the idea that a free trade agreement with the EU would naturally provide a much-needed corrective balance to NAFTA and our trade dependence on the U.S. Under the corporate-friendly conditions Canada has unfortunately already agreed to so far in the EU talks, I see no assurance that the balance will necessarily tip in our favour.

And Harper doesn't want to talk about it.

Canada to integrate with the EU?

"Welcome to the official Web site of the Mission of Canada to the European Union", says the Government of Canada Canada-EU website.

Canada-EU trade proposal rivals scope of NAFTA
"Canadian and European officials say they plan to begin negotiating a massive agreement to integrate Canada's economy with the 27 nations of the European Union, with preliminary talks to be launched at an Oct. 17 summit in Montreal three days after the federal election."

"an effort to begin what a senior EU official involved in the talks described in an interview yesterday as “deep economic integration negotiations.”

"The two governments have completed a detailed study of the proposed agreement that will be unveiled shortly after the election, should the Conservatives win."

Deep economic integration? Should the Conservatives win?
How come we haven't heard about this before?

"European officials said Prime Minister Stephen Harper decided not to release until after the election..."

Yes, let's not risk having a summit on deep integration spoil the election.

"Because of the election, Mr. Harper appears to have decided not to unveil a full text of the proposed agreement, but instead to use the summit to inaugurate the trade talks with the launch of a “scoping exercise” that will quickly set the goals of the pact and lead to formal “comprehensive trade and investment negotiations” to begin in “early 2009”, according to communications between senior Canadian and European officials examined by The Globe and Mail."

You know, maybe this could be a good thing - diversify and increase our markets and all that.

"Proponents, including all of Canada's major business-lobby organizations, are in favour of the deal .."

I see. So the electorate is not to be included in the information loop yet, but the Canadian Council of Chief Executives has already given its stamp of approval. If it's anything like the SPP, I'll bet they wrote it, and if I go over to their website, they'll be bragging about it already.

"The proposed pact would far exceed the scope of older agreements such as NAFTA by encompassing not only unrestricted trade in goods, services and investment and the removal of tariffs, but also the free movement of skilled people and an open market in government services and procurement – which would require that Canadian governments allow European companies to bid as equals on government contracts for both goods and services and end the favouring of local or national providers of public-sector services."

"Ottawa officials say they have overcome what they see as their biggest hurdle: the resistance of provincial governments to an agreement that would force them to allow European corporations to provide their government services, if their bids are the lowest.

So it's a Canada-EU TILMA then.
But why now?

"With the breakdown of World Trade Organization talks in July, European officials have become much more interested in opening a bilateral trade and economic integration deal with North America. A pact with the United States would be politically impossible in Europe, senior European Commission officials said."

Yes, you can see why Harper might not want this to come up now, just before the election.
The theme of this Sunday's Cross Country Check Up on CBC is the economy.
Their phone number is : 1-888-416-8333.

I think more people should know about this before the election whether Steve likes it or not.