Erik BJORGAN for Parliament

Ottawa – The Harper government is escalating its attack on democracy with the deals announced today on Buy American and Canada signing up the provinces to the WTO procurement agreement. More than 25 organizations are meeting today in Ottawa to launch efforts to counter this and other trade deals whose aim is to destroy local democratic control over public spending.

“This deal is an attack on the democratic institutions capacity to govern,” says Steven Shrybman, international trade lawyer and Council of Canadians board member. “Canada appears to have given away the store for very little access to US procurement, so we need to ask why the Harper government is agreeing to it.”

“This is the first bad step in a perfect storm of so-called trade agreements, which are designed to open up local procurement that was left out of NAFTA,” says Council of Canadians Chairperson Maude Barlow. “There is absolutely no need to put health care, water, and other public services on the chopping block and indeed doing so with this deal runs counter to the priorities of Canadians.”

“This is really ideologically driven by the Harper government which is using the economic crisis as a pretext to get what they want, namely expanding private access to the public sector resources, which are valued at $100-200 billion,” says Council of Canadians Trade Campaigner Stuart Trew. “The attack on local procurement is really about the demands of the EU in the ongoing Canada-EU free trade negotiations.”

“The majority of US stimulus money has already been spent and US contracts for mass transit, utilities, and municipal infrastructure are not even included,” notes Trew. “The reality is that Canada’s suppliers will never be permitted to compete on the same terms as US suppliers for government contracts funded by stimulus money.”

The Council of Canadians is criticizing the deal for being thoroughly unbalanced, as it commits Canada more and permanently, while not providing a real exemption from Buy American for Canada.

Trew, Barlow, and Shrybman are available for comment.

For more information or to arrange interviews: Dylan Penner, Council of Canadians, 613-795-8685, dpenner@canadians.org

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