TRADE: Role of Civil Society Unclear at FTAA Talks

By Paul Weinberg Reprint | | Print |

Paul Weinberg

TORONTO, Nov 1 1999 (IPS) - Negotiators from 34 countries sit down here Wednesday to begin the long process of establishing a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) with the role of civil society still very much a mystery.

Talks on accommodating non-governmental organisations at the Nov 3-4 gathering of national governments went “absolutely nowhere,” said Michele Swenarchuk, executive director of the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

The entire FTAA process remained on a tight schedule, having started with an international summit of political leaders from all nations of the Americas, with the exception of Cuba. They decided in Miami in 1994 to embark upon the complex process that eventually would culminate in the treaty being signed by 2005.

The new FTAA was meant to combine include existing bilateral and multi-lateral trade agreements within the Western Hemisphere with the trade rules and procedures established by the World Trade Organization (WTO).

“The FTAA will be ‘WTO plus’,” according to a Canadian government trade spokesman.

One of the nine working FTAA committees writing up reports on various areas for the trade ministers, the committee on civil society, apparently failed to reach a consensus on how to handle 68 submissions from individuals and NGO’s from across the western hemisphere.

According to one published report, a proposal by the Canadian chairwoman of the committee, Kathyrn McCallion, to accept all the submissions was opposed by representatives of other governments on the committee.

It a news conference last week, McCallion cited the Canadian government’s own discussions with citizens and non-governmental organizations on proposed FTAA plans as a model for how this process could work.

Without mentioning names, McCallion told reporters that some countries in the Americas had a long history of talking to their citizens, while others had “no experience in this area whatsoever.”

“Part of what we’ve been trying to do, internal to the civil society committee, is to remove the fear that, if you actually talk to your citizens, the next step is that they will riot in the streets and overthrow the government,” McCallion said.

Among the sticking points in the civil society committee was the notion of a hemisphere-wide process of consulting individuals and non-governmental groups, McCallion added. “You want to do it collectively, but it’s your own responsibility [as a government]. It is the sovereign right of governments to talk to their own citizens.”

Canada had played a leadership role in the past 18 months in the FTAA negotiating process in trying to open up the proceedings to civil society, Swenarchuk acknowledged. Ottawa also paid for the travel expenses for NGO delegates to attend a three-day alternative summit which began Monday.

Nevertheless Swenarchuk, who personally had discussions with officials of Canadian department of foreign affairs and international trade, said that the Canadian government’s consultation process for the FTAA had been largely “a public relations exercise.”

Also, countries such as Mexico had been “a huge barrier” in terms of a receptivity to discussions with civil society, while the United States stayed on the fence, Swenarchuk said.

There had been reluctance among government representatives on the civil society committee even to submit summaries of the 68 submissions to the trade ministers before they convened, she said. “In general [for all the nine working committees], we are hearing that the FTAA is not going very well.There is a great deal of disagreement across the hemisphere.”

A veteran of more than 10 years of lobbying on behalf of the environment in various international forums and in Ottawa, Swenarchuk said that the Canadian government had not shifted from its narrow economic position on trade.

“More fundamentally, with regards to the FTAA and the World Trade Organization, the Canadian government is completely secretive in the development of its position [prior to official negotiations],” said Swenarchuk. “In other countries, there is lots of information available on what is being debated, where they are going. Not with Ottawa.”

Questions that had not been answered included how Canada intended handling sensitive political topics like health care, education and culture during the WTO discussions in Seattle this month, she said.

The possible opening up of public education to the private sector was of major concern among the Canadian labor and community groups attending the alternative summit for the Americas in Toronto.

One of the “four baskets” in the FTAA plan for action, following a recent meeting in Santiago Chile, involves education, according to Montreal sociology professor Dorval Brunelle, a spokesman for the Quebec Network on Continental Integration and a speaker at the Toronto alternative summit.

The fact that, in Canada, education was a provincial responsibility made it difficult for this country to have one consistent voice in hemispheric discussions, said Brunelle.