Council of Canadians Addressing Issues of Concern to Council

The Prince Albert Chapter of the Council of Canadians has been deeply entrenched in promoting awareness of environmental issues and pushing for change. Lately we have been involved in the following:
 
1) Harding presention on Nuclear Waste Storage was a raving success with, according to a library official, around 110 people in attendance. The Chapter donated Harding's book, “Canada's Deadly Secret”, to the library for which Janet Gray was very grateful.
 
2) CETA– Rick Sawa is making a presentation to city council on Monday, Feb. 14 sometime after 5:00. He will be asking council to pass a resolution found below.
 
3) World Water Day–March 22–We received today correspondence from Mayor Scarrow.
 
He is proclaiming March 22 in the city of Prince Albert as World Water Day. We have also invited Mayor Scarrow or his designate to attend on March 22 at JMC Public Library to answer 2 questions:

1)             Since the North Saskatchewan River is the only raw water source for the City of Prince Albert, have Mayor and Council anticipated and assessed the impacts that industrial expansion in Upgrader Alley may have on water flows and water quality in the North Saskatchewan River? If so, what have you done to address this issue?

The large industrial area known as Upgrader Alley northeast of Edmonton is a concern. Although construction of several proposed bitumen upgraders in that area has been halted or deferred, or regulatory applications for the projects have been withdrawn, two projects are scheduled to become operational by 2013.  Three more projects that were halted or deferred for now may still go ahead in the future. A report by the Pembina Institute in 2008 indicated that the upgraders will consume a huge amount of water in the process of converting bitumen into synthetic crude oil – if all the proposed upgraders were constructed, they would consume 10 times as much water as the City of Edmonton. The North Saskatchewan River will be the water supply for the upgraders. Even though the number of projects has been reduced for now, water withdrawals from the North Saskatchewan River will still be substantial. Although Alberta’s Water Management Framework for the North Saskatchewan River indicates that withdrawals will be limited when water levels are low, the withdrawals will not stop, even during critically low flow conditions.

AND

2)         Given the current and continued pressure to privatize water resources in many jurisdictions around the world, will you pledge to keep our water resources in public utilities under the City of Prince Albert?

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The current pressure worldwide to privatize water resources – to replace collective public ownership of water sources with corporate control – is also a concern. Repeated examples have shown that putting water resources into the hands of large water corporations such as Veolia has not resulted in cost savings or infrastructure improvements that the corporations promised. Instead, service and infrastructure has typically worsened, while the price of water has increased. In fact, many jurisdictions that previously privatized water, upon realizing their mistake, have fought and paid to bring water resources back into public ownership. One such example is the City of Indianapolis, which paid $29 million in October 2010 to end its contract with Veolia. In that case, consumer complaints more than doubled in the first ten months of Veolia’s contract, and the city’s water system had been plagued with problems. Other examples where service declined and/or prices increased include Syndey, Australia whose water, was contaminated with giardia and cryptosporidium shortly after its water was overtaken by Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux; Casablanca, Moroccowhere the price of water tripled after the water service was privatized;Britain, where water and sewage bills increased 67 percent within 6 years, and the rate at which people's services were disconnected increased by 177 percent, and South Africa – where water became unaffordable for poor people, and also unsafe after being privatized by Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux. In that case, thousands of people were disconnected from water supplies, and cholera infections became widespread.

Jim Bahr will be making this request on Feb 14 at city council meeting.
 
        On World Water Day we will be showing the film Burning Water which is about fracking (a dangerous shale gas extraction method that contaminates drinking water) and a small town in Alberta where a farming family is living the oil and natural gas boom. Yet there’s a catch: their water can be lit on fire…” This event is being co-sponsored by the library which means that it will handle most of the publicity.
 
4) Earth Day–April 16–Plans are underway. We will continue to plan for this important event at our next meeting on March 3 at 7:00 pm at Great Western Coffee.   
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Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA)

The Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is being negotiated behind closed doors, and has been since October, 2009. Only the business lobbies have been duly consulted, despite the fact that the subjects included go far beyond just trade issues. 

CETA will open up the rules, standards and public spending priorities of provinces and municipalities to direct competition and challenge from European corporations. It could lead to water privatization, unregulated tar sands expansion and environmental devastation, privatization of public services, and an attack on local democracies and economies, while boosting corporate rights and profits.

OUR WATER

CETA would limit how our governments regulate the profit-making activities of private water corporations, give multinational water companies, such as Suez and Veolia of France, unprecedented access to our drinking water services and maybe even a claim to our precious water itself. Such companies would be able to challenge local water conservation and source protection rules, as well as bottled water bans, as unfair barriers to trade.

OUR ENVIRONMENT

The CETA will allow transnational corporations to ignore or challenge our existing environmental regulations, and make it much harder for our governments to create new ones.

It will also encourage more extraction, production and trade, all of which increase greenhouse gas emissions at a time we should be drastically lowering them.  For example, CETA will lead to increased European investment in the Alberta tar sands.

The text on “regulatory co-operation” calls for further harmonization of regulatory measures and requires both jurisdictions to agree before more protective and progressive rules can be adopted. It will now be twice as hard in Europe and Canada to bring in new rules and standards to protect the environment.

OUR JOBS

It would allow European corporations unrestricted access to the purchasing contracts of our governments.

So instead of purchasing the goods and services they need from local companies, and therefore boosting job creation in our local communities, our governments may be forced to use our tax dollars to create jobs and business opportunities in Europe instead!

OUR MEDICARE

The EU wants all of our public services covered by the CETA – including health care. This will expose our medicare to even more privatization pressures than past free trade deals did.

Other CETA reforms mean higher generic drug costs. Since drug costs are the leading cause of increased health care budgets across the country, it will threaten the sustainability of our public system.

OUR DEMOCRACY

Our elected governments should be able to regulate on our behalf, make policies and decisions in the public interest, and use our tax dollars to support local economies when needed.Municipal governments will be forced to fall into line with an international trade agreement that is signed without their involvement. Any conditions provinces or municipalities can now put on public spending, such as local content rules, environmental or ethical sourcing, or requirements to hire locally will be discouraged and potentially illegal under CETA.  Spending on local priorities may soon come to an end.

INVESTOR-STATE ENFORCEMENT MECHANISM

CETA will likely have a NAFTA-type investor-state enforcement mechanism, which means that European corporations will have the same right that U.S. companies now enjoy to sue the Canadian government if it introduces new rules to protect the environment. This tool emphasizes investor protection over government policy in environmental protection, and provides a powerful new means for large corporations to frustrate regulatory initiatives without a comparable mechanism to police these same companies.

A new study of NAFTA’s Chapter 11 dispute mechanism, by Scott Sinclair of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, found that since NAFTA, Canada has paid $157-million and Mexico has paid $187-million to corporations that challenged their domestic laws, while the United States has yet to pay out in any challenge against it. Canada should expect a similar outcome if it goes up against European transnationals.

If the CETA trade rules put corporate and investor rights first, then it is a fundamental threat to our democratic system!

CONCLUSION

CETA is the wrong model for Canada and Europe. Unlimited growth and economic globalization are killing the planet. CETA serves only the profit interests of the big business community. We can do better.

Other models of commercial trade are not only possible, but desirable and urgently needed. They must be based on respect for democratic laws and the needs of populations (which are not merely equivalent to those of transnational corporations), cooperation, respect for human rights, the rights of workers and indigenous peoples, the protection and development of public services, and the absolute right of states to make laws in the public interest and to safeguard ecosystems.

Municipalities must be consulted on the CETA because they risk losing so much control over how public tax dollars are spent in their communities. You must demand a say in international trade agreements that put a premium on no-questions-asked corporate profits at the expense of all other social goals, including local democracy itself.

The seventh round of CETA talks is planned for April, 2011 and the Canadian government hopes to have the final agreement signed by October 2011. So the time to act is now. Find below a draft resolution for you to consider.