Staff Writer, DL Mullan
Trade Agreements / Treaties / Government
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We can tease and make fun of Canadian sensibilities and stereotypes all day long but the fact is residents of Canada are piping mad.
NAFTA, WTO, TPP, and now CETA... Who could blame them?
According to the Trade Justice Network, CETA is:
The Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement is being negotiated as a “next-generation” free trade deal that goes beyond NAFTA and the WTO in shielding corporate activity from government controls. The draft agreement includes extensive chapters on services and investment, government procurement, intellectual property, and standards and regulations. It will also contain a controversial NAFTA-like investor-state dispute process that allows corporations from Europe to directly challenge and sometimes overturn Canadian laws that interfere with profits – even for public health or environmental reasons.
So on January 31, 2014, there is a call for an Intercontinental Day of Action! Here's how you can participate in your local area to bring awareness and help stop these horrible trade agreements and treaties from becoming laws in your country.
No more NAFTA — 20 Years is Enough!
This is a call to action for communities throughout Mexico, Canada
and the United States to join together on January 31, 2014, and say
“ENOUGH!” to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the
pending Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other corporate “trade”
deals. Solidarity actions elsewhere throughout the globe are also
welcome.
January 2014 marks the twenty-year anniversary of the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a pact that has had devastating
consequences for working families, small farmers, indigenous peoples,
small business and the environment in all three countries and beyond.
The pending Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been described as “NAFTA
on Steroids.” Four years into the TPP negotiations, this new corporate
power grab threatens to:
- Destroy livelihoods and accelerate the global race to the bottom in wages and working conditions
- Further commodify agriculture, trample food sovereignty, hurt small farmers and contribute to forced migration
- Enable new corporate attacks on democratically-enacted environmental and consumer protections
- Undermine global economic stability by prohibiting effective regulation of financial markets
- Reduce access to life-saving generic medications, increase the costs of prescriptions, and restrict freedom on the Internet
The harm that NAFTA has already cost our communities, and the new
threats that the TPP poses, must be both acknowledged and resisted. We
also need to spread the word that since NAFTA, when people have come
together across issue areas and across geographic borders, we have
defeated similar corporate power grabs like the Multilateral Agreement
on Investment (MAI), the Millennial Round of the World Trade
Organization, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). We will do
so again with the TPP.
We are calling on you to attend, and ideally help organize, a
demonstration against NAFTA and the TPP in your community. An
international march is already planned for Mexico City, and people are
already beginning to organize actions in other cities.
Get involved now and save humanity from more globalist catastrophes.
