The Great Turning – Negotiations for Public Power

Who will control our power in this crucial decade? 

With the race for climate security on, energy is risky (and expensive) business to be run by corporations. We know there has been irreversible damage to the atmosphere, land and waters. We feel shame and we want change. More serious than the carbon impact of one company, the risks of regional management by a fossil fuel cartel are many. A sustainable energy future requires public control. What will it take for the government of Canada to follow the people’s will? 

The Great Turning 

We live in a time of contrast that raises hope and fear. We put our heads in the sand or open our minds to the question – how can I serve? For me the pressure brings both responses: hope inspired by creative localization, and fear and grief from the dismantling of the commons by private interests. David Korten, and other progressives, call this time of tumultuous change: the Great Turning. Trade and investment pacts are mechanisms of the power crisis because they are the long-term platform for the extraction-privatization of nations. With the new deals, city assets and municipal energy bodies are being traded on the free market. In Ontario where I live provincial and municipal energy service is in the process of being privatized. Selling this people’s asset without permission, and hiring private corporations to run it into perpetuity, is a deal breaker for me. In these energy shaky times, I want the next generation to inherit a public system. This knowing is resultant from more than my Tar Sands shame. Privatizing the energy of Canada’s most populous province risks essential stuff, like affordable rates and service quality. In this blog I explore why energy sectors should not privatize, and if they do, never through trade. I also ask questions about the plans to deregulate Ontario energy. 

Extreme Risks 

 What does it mean to have corporations be in charge of energy? Very few of us can survive off the grid – the majority rely on public energy. All day long we employ energy sources in service of our eating, bathing, working, learning. Nearly all our activities are beholden to shared power. Just like water, energy is essential and the quality of our lives depends on its availability. Many problems can arise when energy becomes managed by for-profit interests. With privatization (or p3ing) we frequently see: decreased access, service limitations, job cuts, rate increases, and environmental risks. California saw rolling blackouts when they privatized. Ontario has its own privatization stories that have increased stress and expense like the 407 highway and Hamilton city water. Because of repeated problems, many municipalities are bringing energy (and other life-dependent sectors) back to public hands. Hamburg Germany residents won an energy referendum in 2013 and are in the process of bringing their energy service fully public again. The purpose behind the “Our Hamburg, Our Grid” campaign is to reclaim public authority in order to create a system based in renewables. Under a North American style trade treaty, like CETA-TTIP, this change could be difficult. 

Ontario announces privatization 

Ontario’s premier, Kathleen Wynne, recently announced her intention to sell 60% of the public’s energy shares. Last week, at the London town hall for a public Hydro One, Andrea Horwath, MPP for Hamilton and head of the Ontario NDP party, announced that this number could reach 90% or higher. The transfer of power remains regardless of the percentage, however, Horwath shared this — if Ontario ownership reaches below 10%, the legislation implies that the public will be barred from bringing it back to public control. Why privatize a successful crown corporation that has been generating funds and providing stability since 1906? The government says they will privatize Hydro One to build other public infrastructure – transit lines, roads and bridges with an anticipated 4 billion of the sales, and to pay off debt with the other anticipated 5 billion. This asset makes 300 million a year in dividend income for Ontario people. Why sell it off for small short-term gain when the return is long-term losses forever? The danger for our future is not only the loss of reliable consistent funding but also the ability to shape our energy program and monitor its integrity. The auditor general and provincial ombudsperson have warned that they will no longer be able to monitor a private Hydro One. 

Plausible Future Outcomes 

Big business investors cannot focus on equitable rates and environmental impacts at the expense of their bottom-line. Company survival depends on increasing profit. This does not an-evil-corporation-make, but a dangerous mismatch of public need with private goals. How do energy corporations manage their quarterly profit targets? Increases in rates, decreases in service, or cutting of jobs is likely. What else can do they do to make more money in a context that requires profit growth? In a future Hydro One, we would have no shareholder voice to create renewable infrastructure. The premier knows that we must take care of the climate. She announced a commitment to dealing with climate change this spring. However, encouraging corporations to run Ontario’s energy is fundamentally incongruent with sustainability. Ontario public energy was previously funding renewables until local procurement provisions were banned by the World Trade Organization. Trade law gets in the way of environmental change. 

More of the story can be found here: http://newgenerationtrade.com/2015/04/21/earth-day-isnt-just-for-turning-off-lights/ 

Ontario Energy and Trade Pacts 

The government should not make key policy and structural changes without a public mandate. Doing this behind closed doors and legislating far into the future through trade treaties, like the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), encourages skepticism. For the first time Canadian energy entities of provincial jurisdiction, like Hydro One, and municipal jurisdiction, like Toronto Hydro, will be ruled through international treaty law. According to the CETA text, Ontario’s energy, including Hydro One, the Ontario Energy Board, and major municipal entities are not protected by Annex reservations. On the European side of CETA-TTIP, sustainable energy choices are also not protected. Europeans will lose their ability to favour cleaner energy sources or suffer the threats of ISDS lawsuits. 

Taking Back Power from the CETA-TTIP 

There are many things that work in a profit model, and many that don’t! Corporate energy systems, that put us at risk of going even higher in parts per million, is not on my list of what the generation after us should inherit. What I love about this time is the sweet significance it holds. The Great Turning is abundant with ways to make purpose of our quiet lives. It’s a time of opportunity to think about what we stand for and what we can do to make things better for those coming next. How we power this planet should not be decided by a management team of large corporations nor secretly designed in a trade deal. What you will you do with your power in the Great Turning? What part of story do you feel compelled to voice? Canadian economist Marjorie Griffin Cohen, back in the early days of new trade, in a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives study, says this of energy: “It is an industry that provides for human survival in a densely populated and complex world. Electricity is the basic infrastructure for every industry. The significance of who controls its generation and supply cannot be overstated.” After all, energy is an expression of our collective power as a civilization. Right now that power is being taken away. There are so many other possibilities. Let’s shine a light on them. 

http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National_Office_Pubs/electricity.pdf

Jennifer Chesnut

Trade Justice London 
London, Ontario Chapter
Council of Canadians

Originally published here:
http://newgenerationtrade.com/2015/06/02/the-great-turning-negotiations-for-public-power/

Ontario Takes Action on Neonicotinoids

Ontario is to be commended for taking a proactive approach to reduce the use of neonicotinoids by 80 percent by 2017. This proposed partial ban is based on findings of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that showed that the use of neonics has minimal effect on corn and soybean yields. And the Health Canada Pest Management Regulatory Agency agrees. 

Executives of industrial agriculture seem to suggest that opposition to neonicotinoids is based on non-science and hysteria. However, scientific researchers around the world have overwhelmingly shown the negative effects of neonics. So let’s look at that evidence. 

Neonicotinoids target early season insect pests like seedcorn maggot, wireworm, and bean leaf beetles. These pests appear sporadically; they are not found everywhere, or every year. So most neonic treatments are applied ‘just in case’. This is like taking antibiotics all winter ‘just in case’ you get sick. 

The EPA has also reported that neonic seed treatments are ineffective against the two major soybean pests - soybean aphids and the bean leaf beetle. “This is because the limited period of (neonic) bioactivity in soybeans (three to four weeks) does not usually align with periods of soybean aphid presence/activity”. “Similarly, neonicotinoid seed treatments are not effective in controlling bean leaf beetles as this pest occurs too late in the season.” 

There is increasing evidence that neonicotinoids decrease populations of insects, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles. Scientists from Radboud University in the Netherlands and the Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology and Birdlife Netherlands (SOVON) found that in areas where water contained high concentrations of imidacloprid (a common neonicotinoid), bird populations tended to decline by an average of 3.5 percent annually. 

Neonicotinoids affect birds, fish, and other animals in two ways. The first is by ingestion. A 1992 study by the EPA found that House sparrows would only have to eat one and a half beet seeds coated with imidacloprid to die. Even a quarter of a treated seed would have sub-lethal effects, including damage to DNA and the immune system. 

The second way neonicotinoids can affect birds, fish, and other animals is by killing their food sources. This would affect their growth, breeding success and survival. 

We are animals too. The European Food Safety Agency (EFSA), reports that recent research suggests that acetamiprid and imidacloprid “may affect the developing human nervous system”. 

And here are a couple of other unintended consequences of neonicotinoid insecticides: Researchers at Penn State University noted in the Journal of Applied Ecology that neonics increase slug populations and the damage they cause. Slugs are kept in check by predatory insects, especially ground-foraging beetles. Neonics have no direct affect on slugs. However, neonics are systemic which means that they permeate all parts of a plant including the leaves that slugs love, so the slugs become contaminated with neonics, too. Essentially, the slugs become the insecticide that kills the beetles and other predatory insects. Without their natural enemies, slugs proliferate. 

Then there’s the spider mites. PLOS (Public Library of Science) reports that applications of neonicotinoids are associated with severe outbreaks of many species of spider mites. 

The neonic issue is bigger than a disagreement between beekeepers and farmers. It’s a plea for the butterflies, beetles and birds. It’s a call for evidence-based decisions. It’s a quest for courage in the face of heavily financed opposition. It’s a wish of our great-great-grandchildren who should be included in this discussion. 

Celeste Lemire is Chair of the Food Diversity Committee of the Council of Canadians, London Chapter

The Battle to Buy Local

Some leaders in government are rejecting a binding treaty that diminishes buy-local and allows corporations to sue us if we don’t comply. Do the rest feel that it’s okay? 

Being able to buy and source locally in goods and services is the heartbeat of a community. People value procurement power — it’s key to community security and happiness. Farmer’s market, post office, city square — local procurement not only secures jobs but it’s the fabric of community relationships. With free trade, local exchange is being shrunk to carve out markets for transnational corporations, and a super-national law system, ISDS, is being erected to enforce this goal. 

Last week, the government of Newfoundland and Labrador took a stand. Premier Paul Davis told the federal Conservatives they would not take part in the CETA, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, without compensation. The province join an ignored group of approximately forty Canadian municipalities who between 2010 and 2014 sent resolutions to upper government requesting exclusion. The concern for the province and the city councils is CETA’s restrictions to buying and processing locally. Newfoundland is refusing to participate because of these impacts on fisheries. Jobs in fish plants are expected to be lost to align with the ban on local standards. The province says that the federal government originally agreed to compensate for the incalculable loss with $280 million in a fisheries fund. The province wanted to use part of the money to help transition lost workers. CETA will nullify sub-national policy. Newfoundland and Labrador’s — Minimal Processing Requirements (MPR) — provincial rules to ensure that a percentage of fish from coastal waters is processed by local workers will be trumped by trade laws. 

Newfoundland is not alone. In 2013 and 2014, Toronto requested the federal and provincial government exclude them because of restrictions imposed on essentials like local food networks. Toronto is unwilling to relinquish job creation initiatives. Some transit vehicles are sourced in the region on purpose. Though more expensive to set up locally, in the end, the jobs created boost Toronto’s economy and community well-being. 

It’s not just the new CETA restrictions, it’s the severity of their enforcement under ISDS. If ignored, the government opens itself to lawsuits from transnational corporations. In this historical moment of developing the long-term rules of relationship between the EU and North America, instead of giving special legal rights to corporations for accessing contracts in our cities, we could rewrite procurement to explicitly protect local decision-making for jobs, environmental protections and social well-being. We could set a precedent for the security of the whole globe by removing ISDS from the CETA; this may be what Germany and France are now pushing for. Forget minimum standards of treatment for a corporation. Appropriate trade would set enforceable standards of treatment for people in Newfoundland and beyond. 

Some sub-national governments are looking at the implications on communities in the future under these multi-decade treaties. It’s time the rest put on their spectacles. We need to source and build locally for jobs, for the climate, for our well-being. A legal system that battles for the rights of corporations to make profit has no business interfering with the ancient exchange of local goods and services. Who next is willing to stand up for local buying, building and being? 

Jennifer Chesnut

Trade Justice London 
London, Ontario Chapter
Council of Canadians

Originally published in:

http://newgenerationtrade.com/2015/01/25/the-call-for-economic-justice-gets-louder-nfld-labrador-joins-canadian-cities-blocking-the-ceta-lawsuit-deal/

Further Reading:
http://www.canadians.org/blog/ceta-appears-wobbly-provincial-dispute-isds-lurks-horizon

Trade Justice Workshop: FIPA and CETA

Workshop on the FIPA and CETA: International laws created for corporations. 

"Trade is the transfer of power from citizens to corporations." Maude Barlow, Chair of the Council of Canadians 

 This workshop, given by our Trade Justice Chair, Jennifer Chesnut, will explore new generation trade pacts, the CETA and the Can-China FIPA, their purposes and consequences. We will map similarities between these deals and what they mean for the new frontier of international laws benefiting corporations. Special emphasis on Investor State Lawsuits and strategies for creating trade justice. 

 What do you think fair trade looks like? 

 Wed. Oct. 29/2014 @ 5pm EVAC, 757 Dundas St.

CETA: One-Stop Shopping for Corporations

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is a quintessential “new generation” trade pact. Its purpose is to open trade to areas that are managed by government at the provincial and municipal levels. Large European corporations will be able to use their trade legal “favoured nation status” to have equal access to municipal and provincial contracts on things like city energy management. After many calls to make this deal public, on September 26, 2014, the EU disclosed the massive finished document on their website. Critics are upset about the diminishmed capacity of city councils to control assets and local jobs, purchase locally, and create future policy for sustainability. There are many other questions over eighty municipal councils, associations and school boards have expressed about the CETA in resolutions to provincial and federal government. Over fifty of them have asked to be exempted from the CETA. 

These exemption requests from Victoria to Toronto make up the only movement of one level of government against another in Canada since we started using free trade to change national policy in 1989. Maybe the over fifty councils, school boards and associations do not want to be involved at all because they were not allowed to see the details. Or maybe because Canada is offering the EU a one-stop-shop website where foreign corporations will be able to see what contracts are open for them to bid from coast to coast. For more info on the one-stop-shop site see the EU’s trade portal: 

http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/ceta/index_en.htm#outcome 

“With CETA, EU companies will be able to bid for public contracts in Canada…This includes the provincial authorities, (and) in 2011 procurements by Canadian municipalities were estimated at C$ 112 billion (approx. €82 billion)…European businesses will be the first foreign companies to get that level of access to Canadian public procurement markets. No other international agreement concluded by Canada offers similar opportunities…Canada will also create a single electronic procurement website that combines information on all tenders to ensure that the EU companies can effectively take advantage of these new opportunities.“

Jennifer Chesnut
Trade Justice Chair

Originally published on October 20, 2014 at
http://newgenerationtrade.com/2014/10/20/ceta-one-stop-shopping-for-corporations/

I’ve been thinking about how corporations are suing countries.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about transnational corporations suing countries. The fancy name for this is Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) and it happens in free trade. ISDS is on my mind a whole bunch as Germany speaks out about the inclusion of ISDS in the soon to be announced CAN-EU CETA deal.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/campact/sets/72157647398779707/ 

ISDS was first employed in NAFTA , the North American Free Trade Agreement. Some say this deal, circa 1994, was the first New Generation deal partly because of its use of Investor State. ISDS is a trade legal mechanism for how the pacts are enforced. It affords corporations the opportunity to sue nation states if the profits they expected from the opening of specific sectors in a free trade deal are diminished because the country has laws or policies that prevent earnings. Ethyl Corporation was the first to successfully sue Canada in the mid nineties, for approximately 16 million, when Canada attempted to bar its gasoline additives. Researchers in Canada believed their additives could be carcinogenic. Ethyl won on the grounds that profits expected as a result of NAFTA were lost. There have been hundreds of cases administered through trade tribunals since and the number of cases launched is on the incline every year. Through leaked texts in German news and other places, critics of CETA have said that corporations will be able to sue countries when municipalities use public money for various buy-local initiatives, municipal procurement, and protection of local public management, but no ones knows for certain as the text has not been shared publicly. 

Let’s talk trade that works. Opening borders to gastronomic delights! to expertise in regions that most benefit! How about encouraging the growth of sale in specialty items (like fair trade bananas) that could give economic stability to a struggling country? But when you get into lawsuits waged in a one way direction from corporations to countries, it feels like we are no longer talking about trade. The conversations turns a whole lotta dark. People don’t like it. Investor State creates an Investor’s State superimposed on a Nation State. This is the kind of trade that makes people uncomfortable. It’s the kind of design that will sink itself. 

People from Canada, Germany, France, and many other locales in between are bidding Investor State Adieu. Adios. Au Revoir. 

We are entering a new era — one of critical trade justice understanding that will not tolerate excessive corporate rights at the expense of family and community well being — whether or not we call them new generation free trade, CETA, or we@#$@#lkflskdjfls investor state ding-a-ling.

Jennifer Chesnut 
Trade Justice Chair

Originally published on September 21, 2014 at
http://newgenerationtrade.com/2014/09/21/ive-been-thinking-about-corporations-sueing-countries/

A People's Ceremony to Honour the 50+ Municipalities, School Boards and Associations Requested to Be Excluded from the CETA

No to CETA! No to Investor State! 

A Big Yes to Fair Trade!

London marked the CETA completion with their own ceremony. The Council of Canadians London Chapter hosted a rally outside city hall on Thursday, September 25th at 4:30 pm to share the historic resistance of the grassroots to the CETA. With about 50 people overall, the chapter enacted a ceremony to honour municipal councils who for the first time rejected a trade pact.

London Chapter representatives, Jennifer Chesnut and Aldous Smith, gave opening remarks about this municipal trade deal and Investor State. London Chapter justice folk singer, Margo Does debuted "The CETA Song". The chapter chair, Roberta Cory, ran work parties to create the many signs, including a sign for every municipal entity that requested an opt out. Chapter members Julie Picken-Cooper and Jessie Chesnut along with other supporters led the ceremony to recognize the municipalities requesting to be excluded from the CETA.

The National Council of Canadian's CETA google map was used to collect the data. 

Excerpts:

"We come together today on the eve before the official announcement of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement to bear witness. We stand outside city hall in recognition of the municipal movement critiquing CETA that included more than eighty resolutions passed by municipalities, school boards and associations. We gather today to thank the many great city councillors in Thunder Bay, Hamilton, North Vancouver, Essex County, Toronto, and so many others who stood up to this deal to protect local choices, local jobs, and the well-being of families. Of those many, over fifty requested to be excluded from the CETA. None of these requests have been publicly acknowledged and debated. We will acknowledge them together today."

"We stand in solidarity with the Ottawa people’s response tomorrow under the tagline “The text might be finished but the fight is just beginning”. Organized by the Canadian Maritime and Supply Chain Coalition with support from the Trade Justice Network, the Quebec Network on Continental Integration (RQIC), and Campact Germany, we stand in solidarity with you."

The event was reported by local indie media here:

https://www.facebook.com/theindignants

https://www.facebook.com/events/1470686059864734/

Picture Credits: 
1. In blog body photo, Mike Roy of The Indignants; 
2,3,4. Kevin Jones



-- Jennifer Chesnut
          Trade Justice Chair, London CoC

Announcement of the rally:

http://londoncouncilofcanadians.blogspot.ca/2014/09/london-rally-on-eve-of-ceta-ceremony.html

London RALLY on the Eve of the CETA Ceremony!

We Stand on Guard for Canadian Cities!

No to CETA!
No to Investor-State!
And a Big Yes to Fair Trade!

The world famous CETApus of London, Ontario, 2011.

On Thursday, Sept. 25, 2014, at 4:30 pm, outside London City Hall, you are invited to take a stand for Canadian cities. Together we will mark the historic resistance to the CETA trade pact by city councils from Victoria to Thunder Bay to Toronto. These municipal governments, along with dozens of others, including London, represent the first ever cross-country resistance to a corporate trade pact. The CETA gives corporations the right to directly sue governments if new laws or regulations impact their profits. It also removes the right of municipalities to govern local assets publicly, in favour of privatization and foreign corporate management.

Together we will acknowledge London city council, which passed two resolutions to be excluded from the CETA, for which it has received no reply from either the federal or provincial governments. This gathering will also bear witness to the official announcement, on Friday, Sept. 26th in Ottawa, that negotiations for the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement are complete. In reality, while the agreement is nearing completion, the CETA still needs to be ratified, a process which could take up to two years.

Following the announcement, the CETA cannot be changed. But it can be rejected!

Thursday, September 25

4:30 pm – 5:30 pm

Outside City Hall (300 Dufferin Avenue, London ON) 

Hosted by Council of Canadians, London Chapter 

More info: www.canadians.org/trade 

Local contacts:

Aldous Smith         tradejusticelondon@gmail.com 
Jennifer Chesnut   jennifer.reanne@gmail.com 

Come together, connect, and thank Canadian city councillors for standing up to protect families and democratic process.

Bring your voices, ears for listening, and determination for democracy. Stand tall together, knowing we are on the right side of history. No to CETA and Investor State! Yes to Fair Trade!

FREE or FAIR? The Trade Justice Movement!

You Are Invited

To a Presentation by

Trade Justice London

The Global Trade Justice Movement: 

Past Successes and Future Possibilities

Jennifer Chesnut, Chair
Trade Justice London
Council of Canadians

Council of Canadians

London Chapter

When:   Monday, February 10, 2014

Where:  Tolpuddle Co-op general room

380 Adelaide between Dundas and King

Time:  6:30 - 9:00 pm

Finger food, coffee, tea

Networking and Action Plans

This is a FRAGRANCE FREE event.

Bus goes down Dundas - questions - need a ride - 519 - 601 - 2053

Background:  Since the late 80's, trade deals have increasingly become the dominant model of inter-country governance. Written behind closed doors, trade justice action is a challenge ripe for those who care about water, poverty, food sovereignty, public services, culture and democracy. Learn about the successes in the trade justice movement from the MAI to the FTAA, and creative strategies past and present for educating and pressuring for fairer trade.

Council of Canadians, London Chapter   -   Agenda
Monday, Feb. 10,  2014 - 6:30 - 9:00 pm 

Tolpuddle Co-op general room (380 Adelaide between Dundas and King)

6:30 - 6:45 coffee, tea, finger food
Bring a plate of something to share if you can

1) BUSINESS - Reports and updates

Treasurer - Masoud Karimi
Trade Justice - Jennifer Chesnut 

Solidarity Film Coalition - Marie France 

Peace and Human Rights - David Heap 

Health - Jeff Hanks

Food Security - Celeste

Report on Birdbone Theatre - Roberta

Walker Landfill Protest every Friday - Roberta
Fundraising

services auction - Celeste 

Hyland film night - Roberta

2) Announcements

Gaza's Ark <info@gazaark.org>  Supporting Gaza

Paul Ferris, SumOfUs.org <us@sumofus.org>  Info on the TPP and actions to take

Oppose the "Fair Elections Art" which is NOT FAIR

"Hold the phone! Call for democracy"  12:30 pm today

Sign our Democracy 24/7 petition<http://www.canadians.org/election/letter-to-Harper.html> now, as we will be delivering the petition to Craig Scott, NDP Democratic Reform Critic, on Monday afternoon on Parliament Hill.

As part of the delivery, we're inviting people from Ottawa to join us on Parliament Hill for a mass phone-in to Conservative MPs asking them not to ram this legislation through without further thought and study. People across the country can also participate by phoning an MP from wherever they are. Start time is 12:30 PM. Craig Scott will be arriving to accept the petitions at 1:00 PM.

3) GLOBAL TRADE JUSTICE MOVEMENT: PAST SUCCESSES AND FUTURE POSSIBILITIES

    Program and action to follow

4) BREAKOUT GROUPS AND NETWORKING - FIND YOUR PASSION - PICK AN ISSUE

50 NEXT MEETING - Monday, March 17, 2014 - Tolpuddle - 6:30 to 9:00.

THE BOAT FROM GAZA - David Heap

Bus goes down Dundas. Ride pooling - offer a ride or need a ride - 519-601-2053

Meeting Minutes, Jan. 13, 2014
Present: Roberta Cory, Robert Cory, Aldous Smith, David Heap, Jennifer Chesnut, Masoud Karimi, Jeff Hanks, Julie Picken-Cooper, Anne Dyer, Jessie Hanke, Rod Morley, Celeste Lemire, Paula Marcotte, Christine Troughton, Kathy Clee, Phil Butterworth, Bryan Smith, Steve McSwiggan, Suzanne Crellin, Mike Farlowe, Deb Woodhall, Monika Rauche, Bill Smith, Jodi von Wahl, Susan Smith.
Agenda
BUSINESS
a) Reports and updates

•   Treasurer - Masoud Karimi: updated C of C accounts.
  
•   Trade Justice - Jennifer Chesnut
  

o NAFTA closing factories, creating insecurity for jobs. 500,000 jobs lost since 1994.
o Outlined Our Intercontinental Day of Trade Justice Action, on Feb 1st. 20th anniversary
of NAFTA.
o Please connect with us if you have a network you can help with. Walk begins at noon; and movie at 2pm.
o Initiative for City Hall motion on CETA. Modelled on Toronto’s request for opt out and vote – to Kathylnn Wynne. This will be ongoing through Jan/Feb.
 Solidarity Film Coalition - Marie France
o Report by Paula Marcotte: Museum London co-sponsoring. April 5th and 6th. Theme
will be all water.
 Peace and Human Rights - David Heap

o Regional People’s Social Forum, Central Library 1-5pm. Working towards peaceful social forum in August – cross-Canada
o Prison Justice Film Festival showing around London from January 29th to February 2nd.

•   Willexplore:connectionsbetw.IndigenousandPalestinianstruggles
  
•   Immigration/detention/security certificates (current strike at Lindsay Detention Centre
  
•   Effects of Residential Schools on Turtle Island, and connections to prisons
  
•   QueerandTrans.prisoners
  
•   Warondrugsandusers
  
•   PoliticalprisonersinLatinAmerica
  
•   Illegal and inhumane treatment of Omar Khadr
  
•   TherewillbeaMarchmonthlymeetingaboutGaza’sArk
  

 Health - Jeff Hanks
o Making Waves campaign in Windsor – Jeff will update when info. available
o The federal health accord is running out in March. Conservatives have said they will peg spending to 3% of GDP which means about 36 billion in cuts planned. Harper said would keep escalator payments for a few years but has reneged and is refusing to give about 600 million promised.
o Ontario liberals passing legislation to allow LHINs (Local Health Integration Networks) to take cataract surgery and endoscopy out of hospitals and offer it in private clinics. This is seen as a move to privatize services and will lead to closure of rural and community hospitals as more and more services are offered in clinics. Necessary to try to stop them by mobilizing people.
 Water Committee
o Roberta: We have no water committee. Need to discuss this and bring a group togther. On breakout, cards from Maude’s visit circulated, to get momentum for inititatives to go with.
 Related issues that could be addressed by Water committee: Conservation; The RIGHTS of water, legal protection; Education about water issues - Blue Communities Project; Fracking and aquifers



f) NEXT

o o o

Charlie Angus’ book Unlikely Radicals – on the mine dump war.
Penn Kemp’s book in memory of Jack Layton. $25:00, $5 of which goes to C of C Tailings of Warren Peace, $20:00

 

Bee issue and neonicotinoids headed up by Celeste and Margo. They approached city hall for ban on neos, but no go. Work continues apace.
OPAL Presentation: Steve McsSwiggan, Suzanne Crellin , Bryan Smith, gave compelling and informative presentation on the proposed Ingersoll Dump.
o “Located adjacent to Ingersoll, Centreville, and Beachville, the proposed Walker Industries mega-landfill would occupy a section of Carmeuse Lime's quarry operation and is planned to be the 4th largest landfill in Canada” -- opalalliance.ca
o Next protest – Beachville Rd and Embro Rd. [See ‘Stop the Dump’ on FB] o See also: www.opalalliance.ca
o For similar information, see movie, Trashed, by Jeremy Irons.
Fundraising Initiatives discussed. o Celeste - Services auction
 Servicesdonated,fromgardeningtolawyerdonatingawill.LasttimeCeleste was part of Services fund raiser, netted over $6,000.
o David Heap - Hyland film night
 David is talking with Ali (Mgr. of Hyland); Roberta will follow up.
Roberta introduced books



Birdbone Theatre, doing Line 9 work. Coming to Woodstock and Feb 2-3 at East Village Coffee House
MEETING - Monday, February 10, 2014 - Tolpuddle - 6:30 to 9:00. 

Formatted minutes:
http://londoncouncilofcanadians.ca/LondonCoCMeetingMinutes.pdf

Roberta Cory's letter to the editor of the London Free Press re CETA

Editor:

On June 27, 2013 the London Free Press published the results of a poll (Canadians unaware of trade talks: Poll) about citizens' perceptions of the Canadian/ European Union trade deal Harper is trying to complete. The Harper government has been secretive about the contents of this "deal" and has avoided any public discussion of possible negatives to local communities if it is signed. Our own elected representatives, when asked about the details, have admitted that they are as much in the dark as we are. The Harper government is clearly trying to circumvent the democratic process and to muddy the waters to prevent any transparency in this negotiation. 

What we do know is this:  it is the first time that a Canadian Trade Agreement will operate at a local level. It means the unprecedented opening up to foreign investors of our essential public services such as water.  It includes the controversial investor-state dispute settlement clause, which, in everyday language, means that a foreign corporation has the right to make a profit and the right to sue a municipality if any local by-laws designed to protect our quality of life cut into their anticipated profit.  This would weaken or over ride any environmental laws now in place and allow foreign owned corporations to underbid local businesses for food contracts, labour, equipment, and services. 

Do Canadians know that in Europe the media carry up to date information about the progress of the trade negotiations?  Europeans know what the EU is demanding and what Canada is giving up. Much of the information that we citizens get in Canada came from European sources and not from our own government. If we do get a bit of information it is likely to be about cheese or beef. We are not told that Harper is willing to extend patents on pharmaceuticals which will mean fewer generic drugs and escalating drug costs to consumers. 

Trade Agreements seem remote to most citizens. The language of such agreements is off putting. Many Canadians trust their MPs and MPPs to handle this sort of thing for them. They trust that their government has their best interests in mind. The Canada/EU Trade Agreement has only the interests of international corporations in mind. It is not something remote, it is very personal. It is about our neighbourhood and our town. We need to wake up and act now. 

Roberta Cory

Love that Purple Potato! CETA and other "free trade" agreements threaten family farms in favour of factory farming by global mega-corporations.

Love that Purple Potato! 

by Jennifer Chesnut

One of the joys of the farmer's market is experiencing the ancestry of forgotten vegetables and fruits -- those purple potatoes, paddy pan squashes, and crimson carrots. Fields in Southwestern Ontario and across the planet are capable of exquisite magic. With a little sunshine and rain, they turn up a fascination of shapes, sizes and flavours. Because of the people’s movement to get back to eating within the nearest hundred miles, we are experiencing more local variety than the last twenty-five years of free trade food even though globalization is supposed to create more options. Why have most of us not met the purple potato until recently? The answer is simple. Farmers in our region, like everywhere else, have been experiencing numerous pressures to stay afloat since the late eighties in free trade economies that focus on distant export pathways not regional networks. During Canada’s first two decades of free trade from 1988 to 2010, approximately seventy-five thousand family farms were lost and farm debt tripled. One of the side effects of competing in free trade agriculture is that farmers are pressured to grow mono-crops. These are common crops that can travel the globe far distances and make the most bulk profit.
CETA, the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement, a huge deal with Europe, the United States and Mexico, is the most radical free trade policy Canada has ever considered. One of the dangers is CETA will encourage more long distance travel of food and in the process diminish our farmers’ options. Ontario farms will be competing with corporate farms from over twenty countries to serve you dinner. Though the deal is supposed to be signed with only the European Union, because of NAFTA, whatever sectors are opened to European corporations, will also be opened to American and Mexican big business. In CETA, specific unnecessary restrictions will punish our farmers. The National Farmers Union is alarmed that because of the way CETA’s intellectual property laws are written, farmers will likely no longer be able to save seed year to year but be forced to purchase them every year anew.
Looking down the road, citizens will be subject to the cultural impacts at the Saturday morning market by what federal Conservative Trade Minister Ed Fast calls the most ambitious deal ever negotiated. If the small and medium sized family farms survive the post-CETA era, they will be pressured to use the seeds that Monsanto and other agricorps sell. This means more genetic modification, less variety and less indigenous heirloom plants.
CETA isn’t an issue for bureaucrats. It’s about your family’s life. It’s going to impact the food you eat, the water you drink, the hydro you use and more. And don’t expect that when the municipal public Commons are opened for permanent foreign corporate bidding that costs are going to decrease or stable job opportunities will grow. If this did occur in the last twenty-five years of a Free Trade Canada, all the mamas and the papas would be singing its praises.
Besides our memories of life before free trade, an eyes open attitude and a good look at Statistics Canada can help us remember. For example, the first NAFTA decade of the nineties saw the highest rates of unemployment in Canada since the Great Depression. Necessary global trade is valuable. But free trade deals like the CETA don’t bring you soy sauce from Japan but they do diminish your local food options. Don’t take my word for it, look around and remember all the family farms that have disappeared since the seventies and eighties. Remember those rolling fields of corn that were not genetically modified. Remember how much closer you were to nature’s pastures.
CETA puts serious pressure on family farms to survive and ensures that corporate mega farms thrive. Join the wave of Canadian city councillors and citizens that are saying no to this vision. Toronto, Stratford and London are just three out of forty municipalities across the country that have asked their Premier for official exemption from CETA to protect their families and regional food networks. In this last month before its signing, citizens are contacting their city council, MPPs and MPs to ask that their municipality be opted out permanently. If we allow CETA to become trade law, we may just lose those purple potatoes, but we are also going to lose a whole lot more.
*Previously published at www.ecolivinglondon.org

For the Love of Canada, Stop CETA Actions in February 2013

Our "For the Love of Canada, Stop CETA" ad was published on Saturday, February 16, 2013, on page A11 in the London Free Press. Thanks to all of you who worked on making the ad happen, in your many capacities and talents. You can find a copy of it here.

"For the Love of Canada….." was the Valentine's Day theme for a Stop CETA action by the Trade Justice group starting on February 6 at the downtown library. Four hand made valentines were mailed to each and every premier as well as to MPs Susan Truppe, Ed Holder, Bev Shipley, and Ed Fast.

Continuing with the "For the Love of Canada…." theme, and in support of the Stop CETA ad in the paper that same day, members of the Trade Justice group and some of their supporters wore sandwich board signs in the shape of giant Valentines, while more volunteers handed out handbill "Valentines" with the theme "take our cities out of CETA"  and "keep it local: jobs, services, food." Copies of the handbill suitable for reproduction can be found here.

Photos of the Valentines and the handbill action can be seen by clicking on the image below.

Stop CETA Valentines Actions, London, Ontario, February 2013

Is Canada losing its marbles? by Jennifer Chesnut

Growing up in Canada in the eighties, I got a bit dusty around the marble pits. There was the ceremonial reveal of the marble bag from pocket. Mine was a velvet purple with gold stitching. It suited my little girl need for beauty and soft perfectly. I thought the label Crown Royal referred to Queen Elizabeth so it felt a rather stately carriage for my little shinies. But it wasn’t the bag I loved. It was the spherical sculptures inside gently clinking their light translucent bodies. My collection expressed the wink of a cat’s eye, the wisp of the wind and the shimmer of silver minerals from somewhere deep in the earth. These my seven year old gems.

Out on the edge where tarmac meets playground, I remember digging many holes with tan corduroys rolled at the ankles and rayon chemise sleeves pulled above knobby elbows. I, like my fellow competitors, meant business from beginning to end. Us marble enthusiasts were bent on protecting our shiny assets. With front teeth missing, one of the only things we owned was these beautific rolling spheres. Value and rule were continually reinvented by our big imaginations. Is that very different from the global system of economics today? The marble game was serious business.

I wish our federal government took what Canadians owned more seriously. I wish they remembered the shiny-eyed value of the little people’s assets over policy table, especially free trade, foreign investment negotiations. The CETA, or Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, is the largest rolling of assets Canada has ever sat down for. Much wider in scope than CAN-CHINA Foreign Investment treaty, more impactful on Canadian urban life than the TPP, this comprehensive plan is the most high stakes game Canadians like you and me have ever played. Do you know that we have been playing since 2009?

Called the most important under-reported story facing Canadians (NewsWatch Canada), the CETA is a new generation trade deal negotiated behind closed doors. It is not so much concerned with tariffs and trade of goods but intimate items never before offered to non-Canadian entities. Ready to roll with the signing of CETA in early 2013, our prized possessions such as city services: water, transit, energy, aspects of hospital and education are being pulled from the public purse. The content of this policy shift is the traditional Commons, nature-made and human-sustained for generations, including modern cultural offerings like the internet. The water that we drink, the land on which we walk, the systems we have created for health and education are all in our care for the people that are coming. Does the Canadian federal trade committee, so focused on competition, remember that?

In an unprecedented decision, municipal assets under the jurisdiction of city councils coast to coast will be given equal opportunity for foreign management by companies that could include Veolia water corporation, BP Shell and others. The corporation who can parcel together the cheapest bid will set the rates, decide the environmental and health standards and ultimately, oversee the particulars of the jobs in the sector they manage. The CETA will permanently open contract bidding of Canadian city assets to corporations across the European Union (EU), the United States (US) and Mexico. Though crafted to encourage competition with European corporations, the US and Mexico will be invited into the bidding process because of NAFTA rules that mandate all new trades must include NAFTA partners. 

As a Canadian who is first a global citizen of the earth, it’s not that I don’t value many influences from European thought. Development in the arts, sciences, philosophy, have been encouraged by centuries of accumulated wisdom. Some solid environmental protections have come from Europe, for example, bans of genetically modified (GMO) agriculture. It was France that through committed research showed that we can restore at-risk bee populations by no longer using GMO seed. I think we are all are thankful for these many blessings that have propogated culture and made the planet a little more stable. I'm glad they also shared the latte with us. However, CETA will get us no closer to the European ethos of slow and style or increase our environmental protections. What it will do is allow their largest corporations, which are actually rootless transnational entities, to make important decisions involving our environment and city infrastructure to suit their needs. It would be wise to never forget in these fragile times that transnational corporations are not evil but their shareholder-at-the-top structure requires them to base every decision on their mandate -- which is to make ever higher returns. Do we want this impulse to be the source that shapes Canadian cities and landscapes now and far into the future?

Ultimately, the CETA game is not an equal competition. The EU, many times larger than us, has a 50% trade surplus over us. That means that for every one item we export to them, we import two. Trade deals don't change these relationships, they only increase the amount of items being moved around the globe. This scenario is much like what we had with the US when we negotiated NAFTA, an un-savvy bargain with all sort of giveaways like the Canadian magazine industry. It is unsurprising that among global trade enthusiasts, countries are sometimes disparaged with the saying “pulling a Canada”. Another reason why CETA is not a fair deal is that the EU is pulling out its smallest marbles while Canada is offering the big crocks -- raw resource management, crown corporations and city assets, especially public services.

Canadians have the right to decide together whether they want to play this high risk game wagering many of our precious shinies. Over our first free trade agreement with the US and Mexico, though much smaller than CETA, we had an election. Sitting with a London city councillor, he said CETA requires a referendum. No doubt, many other councillors feel the same. There is the city council of Victoria, Thunder Bay, Mississauga, Toronto, Niagara Falls, London and many more who don't agree with the CETA negotiations so much that they have asked their premiers to fully exclude them. These sub-national elected representatives understand that like in marble matches, whoever plays must play for keeps. Now in the Canadian version of marbles, if players call the game not for keeps at the beginning, then the trade is not permanent. What if we did the same with the CETA? In a way this is already happening. Through thirty-nine full exemption requests, and forty other partial requests, future-invested, local-savvy city councils and school boards are asking that their premiers walk away from a game with too much at stake.

Wanna play? Only you can decide.

One website with more information on trade and the CETA is www.canadians.org.

Crocks:  a term for the large marble; also part of a colloquial expression meaning nonsense.

Originally published in London Fuse:
 http://londonfuse.ca/blog/canada-losing-its-marbles