rabble.ca Canadian federal election blog

What’s the big deal?

By Brent Patterson, the Council of Canadians

Recent media reports have brought to our attention the news of a draft text of a Canada-European Union trade deal that would eliminate tariffs and promote an unrestricted trade in goods, services and investments; harmonize regulatory rules on products; end ‘discriminatory’ investment rules; create an open market in government services and procurement allowing companies to access government contracts and public-sector services; and bring down non-tariff barriers.

The deal has its high-profile supporters. Foreign Minister David Emerson says Europe is attracted to Canada’s energy wealth, while Quebec Premier Jean Charest says the EU sees this deal as an entry point into the North American economy and that Quebec is their ‘gateway’ to North America. A senior European Union official describes the talks as ‘deep economic integration negotiations’. The major business-lobby organizations say it will allow European investment capital into Canadian companies without restrictions.

Talks are now set to proceed on this deal in Montreal on Friday October 17, not even three full days after the federal election. Reportedly this meeting – attended by French President Nicolas Sarkozy - will be a ‘scoping’ exercise to determine which sensitive areas of trade are open for negotiation. Then the real negotiations are scheduled to begin in early 2009, as early as twelve weeks from now.

Why haven’t we heard more about this? Well, Prime Minister Harper has decided not to release the draft text of the agreement, apparently because of the election. The CanWest News Service has only managed to obtain an executive summary of a draft internal study by Canada and the European Union on the deal. This isn’t good enough. The Council of Canadians is demanding that the prime minister immediately release the full text of the proposed Canada-EU deep economic integration agreement and the detailed study of it so that the Canadian public is able to make as informed a choice as possible at the polls on Tuesday October 14.

Will the Liberals help? Not likely. With the release of the Liberal Party platform today, we see that they are “committed to free trade,” “committed to multilateral negotiations through the WTO”, and to pursuing “bilateral trade agreements that reduce not only tariff, but non-tariff barriers.”

In Hamilton today Jack Layton of the NDP touched on the issue by calling for “exploring opportunities for a model fair-trade deal with the European Union.” And we now have an unlikely ally – Andrew Coyne. The national editor of Maclean’s magazine, after deriding us for being anti-European, wrote last week in his blog, “I agree with the Council — show us the text! The time to talk about this is during the election, not after.”

But it will take more to get the text released before election-day. The Council is saying to all party leaders that the text should be released. You can add your voice by going to http://www.canadians.org/action/2008/18-Sep-08.html.

Brent Patterson is the Director of Campaigns and Communications for the Council of Canadians.