[All] Fwd: The CETA and municipalities

[Eleanor Grant]

Hi All -

Below is a letter I just sent to Berry Vrbanovic.

HOW can we get a public debate going on the dangers of this corporate deal
with the EU?  The media have sure been asleep at the wheel.

Eleanor
 ---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Eleanor Grant" <eleanor7000 at gmail.com>
Date: Oct 23, 2013 9:13 PM
Subject: The CETA and municipalities
To: <berryv at kitchener.ca>
Cc:

To Berry Vrbanovic,
past president, Federation of Cdn Municipalities -

Is it true that the Federation of Cdn Municipalities is in favour of
proceeding with the free trade deal with Europe, which PM Harper signed
last week?

Have you seen the text of the CETA?

The secrecy around its contents should be our first "red flag" with this
deal.

I'm sure you've heard of many more red flags that municipalities need to be
alert to.

Like local procurement:
- Will cities be obliged to award contracts to foreign bidders if they are
lower than Canadian ones?
- Will cities be sued if they promote local food or other Buy Local
campaigns?

Like privatization:
- If a city in a time of desperation sells off its water operations to Suez
or Veolia, and later wants to make them public again, will they be sued for
all future profits the companies would have made?  This obviously would
break a city.
- For that matter, if after 30 yrs of a private company running our LRT,
will we never be allowed to reopen the question of choosing public
operation of it after that?

Like the environment:
- What if a municipality wishes to protect its natural assets?  Suppose RoW
or Ontario wished to ban fracking, could we be sued?
- And labour standards: What if the city or region wished to bring in a
living wage policy, could a company sue us for excluding them?

I'm extremely concerned about all these "investor rights" provisions.  The
media and the FCM should be jumping up and down and yelling about this!

The CETA isn't mainly a trade deal, it's an investor rights deal.
Corporations are getting the unfettered right to move freely around the
world, use resources, and over-ride local wishes and local democracy.

The resolutions passed by our Region and cities asking for exemptions, will
be blown away in a puff of wind.

PLEASE find out all you can, and speak up before this thing gets ratified.

Yours sincerely,

Eleanor Grant
Waterloo
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gren.ca/pipermail/all_gren.ca/attachments/20131023/ac3f3578/attachment.html>