After spending all year consulting with Canadians on the pros and cons of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement (TPP), the Trudeau government is close to ratifying an equally controversial, equally intrusive deal with Europe: the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). Like the TPP, CETA was negotiated almost entirely by the previous…
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A week of pressure from four Belgian regions opposed to CETA, led by the courageous Walloons, has produced a revised “joint interpretive instrument” and, importantly, a new list of conditions that must be met before Belgium can ratify the deal. The instrument, agreed to Thursday and part of a package…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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….
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