Today the regional government of Wallonia in Belgium rebuffed Canada’s last-minute efforts to salvage a deeply flawed and increasingly unpopular transatlantic free trade agreement. By standing firm under incredible pressure (and a considerable amount of bullying), First Minister Paul Magnette gave a voice to millions of citizens who feel the…
Read more
After a year of large public demonstrations against Canada-EU free trade, which have—refreshingly—given some European politicians cold feet, the Canadian government and European Commission have been scrambling to make CETA more palatable to EU member states before an important October 18 vote on the deal. Their main weapon is a…
Read more
I appeared yesterday at the parliamentary committee on international trade alongside Hassan Yussuff and Angella MacEwan (Canadian Labour Congress), Gus Van Harten (who just released a report for the CCPA on investor-state dispute settlement), and Victoria Owen and Susan Haigh of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries. For once, at…
Read more
Hidden between the lines of the federal budget’s typically short section on trade policy is the assertion that the “competitiveness of Canadian businesses in the international marketplace will be enhanced by breaking down barriers to trade, both internal and abroad, and providing the appropriate tools and policy framework that allow…
Read more
On Monday, International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that Canada and the European Union had finished the “legal scrub” of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). Now, she said, the path is clear for speedy ratification of the deal in the Canadian and European parliaments. As Thomas Walkom points…
Read more
Today WikiLeaks posted the final text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) intellectual property chapter hammered out at the TPP ministerial meeting in Atlanta last weekend. While the chapter is not as bad as previous leaked drafts, and falls short of the most extreme demands from the brand-name drug industry and…
Read more
The supply management system for Canada’s dairy, poultry and egg farmers has come under sustained attack by conservative economists, big agribusinesses and foreign governments, who would like to see these sectors fully liberalized, putatively in the interest of the “consumer.” The attacks become especially fiery around trade negotiations like the…
Read more
Last week I spoke along with Maude Barlow and Paul Moist at a well-attended public meeting in Charlottetown on the Canada – European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). The PEI meeting was the last stop in a cross-country tour by Maude and Paul. Here are my opening remarks….
Read more
The recent decision by the European Union (EU) to disregard Canadian government pressure and forge ahead with regulations that recognise the higher green-house-gas intensity of fuel produced from tar sands and oil shale is encouraging. But, as reported in today’s Globe and Mail, the Canadian government is still lobbying furiously…
Read more
No one should be surprised that a Buy American provision has been included in the American Jobs Act, President Obama’s new job creation bill. Such provisions have been standard features of U.S. infrastructure spending and procurement legislation for decades. Despite the economic importance of this bill, there is a lot…
Read more