[R-G] Canada's Deadly Trade Deals

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/2482

Canada's Deadly Trade Deals
An interview with Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas Program of  
the International Relations Center

by Stefan Christoff

The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

A protest in Oaxaca in 2006. Photo: Pazkual

One of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s first major foreign visits  
after being elected to his first minority government in 2006 was to  
Latin America and the Caribbean. The trip aimed to promote a Canadian  
foreign policy focused on establishing "new partnerships in the  
Americas."

Canada has aggressively pushed to establish trade agreements in the  
Americas, and in pursuit of this, signed bilateral trade deals with  
Peru and Colombia in 2009. Concurrent to the push towards more trade  
pacts in the Americas, Canada has cut the number of nations receiving  
bilateral aid through the Canadian International Development Agency  
(CIDA).

Today's Canadian foreign aid policy sees a smaller number of countries  
being targeted for aid through the Conservatives' "countries of  
concentration" policy which limits aid to twenty nations, focusing on  
trade policy with Latin America and the Caribbean, while aid to  
African nations including Kenya, Cameroon and Rwanda has been cut.

These shifts in policy are undoubtedly influenced by corporations in  
Canada that hold significant sway over government economic policy,  
such as Canadian mining and oil and gas corporations.

Bilateral agreements in the Americas signal this important shift.  
Canada’s trade agreement with Colombia has been the subject of intense  
criticism from labour unions in both Colombia and Canada.

The current Colombian government is embroiled in political scandals  
over ties to right-wing paramilitary groups that target and  
assassinate labour activists, Indigenous people, and members of  
popular and community movements. Human rights activists argue that a  
bilateral agreement with Canada lends international legitimacy to  
Alvaro Uribe's government in the face of such gross breaches of human  
rights.

"As for labour rights and the freedom of association, the FTA [with  
Canada] is a shameful reward for government and managers when it comes  
to violating these rights, forgetting more than 2,700 murdered  
unionists and letting their killers go unpunished,” outlines a  
February 2009 declaration to the Canadian government from Colombia’s  
major trade union federations.

Canada’s bilateral negotiations with Colombia come at a time when a  
similar US-Colombia trade accord has been halted in the United States  
by Congress, due to concerns about human rights violations in  
Colombia, and its government's connection with such activity,  
expressed by US law makers.

US trade policy in the Americas was a major subject within the recent  
US elections. During the final campaign debate, Barack Obama slammed  
attempts by the Bush administration to sign a bilateral trade  
agreement with Colombia:

“Labour leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly  
consistent basis [in Colombia] and there have not been prosecutions,”  
stated Obama.

Despite such open concerns south of the border, Canadian Prime  
Minister Stephen Harper has pushed forward the Canada-Colombia deal.

Canada’s accord with Colombia is rooted in the same free market  
economic policies enshrined in NAFTA, which have been the subject of  
opposition for over a decade from labour unions and peasant  
associations across Mexico, the US and Canada.

Resistance by social movements successfully halted the proposed Free  
Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement, which would have seen a  
single trade zone throughout the hemisphere.

The governments of Canada and the US have since shifted their focus to  
creating bilateral and regional trade deals in the Americas, spelling  
out a new policy battle ground for the upcoming years that will  
undoubtedly be fought out both on the streets, and within the halls of  
power.

In the interview which follows, Laura Carlsen, director of the  
Americas Program of the International Relations Center, based in  
Mexico City, outlines some specific economic and social impacts of  
existing free trade agreements on Mexico and also throughout the  
Americas.

Stefan Christoff: First, can you outline the social and economic  
impacts of NAFTA as related to migration from Mexico to the US and  
also within the contemporary context of the push by the US towards  
bilateral agreements?

Laura Carlsen: NAFTA marked the first time that there was a major  
trade agreement between two developed countries - including the  
largest economic power in the world - and Mexico, a developing  
country, which presents major challenges in negotiating a free trade  
agreement.

Despite the inequality between the economies of Mexico and the US, in  
regards to size and productive capabilities, the agreement basically  
delivered tremendous privileges to transnational corporations in the  
US to the detriment of Mexico.

Since NAFTA has been in effect we have seen serious damage done by the  
accord on Mexican society. There have been serious impacts on people  
in the countryside and also to small-to-medium size industries  
throughout the country, leading to growing rates of unemployment and a  
doubling of the rate of migration from Mexico to the US Economic  
impacts of NAFTA have created serious internal displacement and forced  
migration.

Christoff: Similar trade policies to NAFTA in Latin America have  
played a major role in forced migration. Could you address for example  
how the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) has impacted  
migration?

Carlsen: The CAFTA agreement is also going to lead towards increased  
outward migration. All the Central American countries have been going  
through an economic restructuring along the lines of these free trade  
agreements, leading to free trade zones where assembly workers are  
dealing with [working] conditions that are very bad and wages that are  
very low.

People are displaced from the [rural areas] in large numbers due to  
foreign imports upsetting local market values, creating the conditions  
for forced migration.

Essentially these [trade] agreements lock in an export-oriented model  
of development, a model which according to other experiences in Latin  
America, particularly in Mexico, benefits a very small group of  
people, while causing serious dislocation for many social sectors.

Along the Guatemala-Mexico border a couple years ago most of the  
people waiting to cross into Mexico were then going to move on to the  
US: farmers who had been displaced by imports or by growing corporate  
control over prices of commodities such as coffee; farmers who could  
not make a basic living from harvesting their crops.

CAFTA will only increase this process of displacement, as the foreign  
businesses that move in work on an export-oriented farming production  
model, not employing a huge amount of local people, while the economic  
benefits are directed towards a very small social sector.

Often it is claimed that such agreements bring in foreign investment,  
however the lived experience is that foreign investment doesn’t come  
pouring in the minute you sign an agreement. On the contrary, the  
economic impact is generally negative. In the majority of Latin  
American countries subject to such trade agreements, we are seeing a  
net outflow of capital.

Christoff: In your time within regions impacted by NAFTA, can you  
outline how this agreement has impacted people, specifically small  
farmers and peasants?

Carlsen: It is best to examine a specific town, for example in a  
village within the Mixteca Indigenous region in Oaxaca, in the  
mountains where many families live [through] a combination between  
subsistence farming and selling corn on the regional market.

As NAFTA came into effect, we began to see large amounts of subsidized  
cheap agricultural imports, specifically corn, coming in from the US,  
causing domestic prices in Mexico to dive.

For local farmers who rely on selling small amounts of corn to survive  
this was a devastating shift in the local and regional markets in  
Mexico, which undermined their ability as family farmers to survive.

Given the US corn imports, the Mixteca region in Oaxaca has become one  
of the major out-migration regions in Mexico, with townships that are  
showing negative population growth, specifically due to out-migration  
to the US.

Many local farmers in Mexico who use traditional farming methods,  
working often without mechanized equipment, without fertilizing  
chemicals, were displaced by NAFTA, given cheap US imports.

It was clear that such farmers would face displacement even before the  
agreement was signed. A US trade representative outlined at the time  
of NAFTA’s signing that US trade analysts were expecting around three  
million local farmers in Mexico to be displaced by the agreement. It  
was argued that these farmers would move into more modern and  
competitive industries, particularly the industrial corridors that  
were being constructed in the countryside, often by foreign  
corporations.

However, in reality, the massive displacement happened, in the  
millions, but the new jobs never arrived to Mexico, so people were  
left with nothing. Today many local farmers are simply growing corn to  
survive. Often women are left on the farms with the family to survive  
while the men travel to the US to work. Major rural displacement  
caused by NAFTA has been very clear.

In villages within Oaxaca and throughout the country many, many people  
are migrating to work in the US due to trade policies that have made  
survival at home impossible. Traditionally, there were always regions  
in Mexico where workers would travel to work in New York City or LA –  
this was a labour circuit – however, traditionally, this was a much  
smaller migration, and most often the migration wasn’t permanent.

Mexican workers would travel to the US to work during the harvests and  
then travel back to Mexico to work, however given that the border has  
been so hardened and militarized today, the migration to the US tends  
to be much more permanent. [This was] exactly the opposite result to  
the expressed intentions from US officials on why the border with  
Mexico was hardened.

Displacement has spread throughout Mexico, as the inability to make a  
decent living is now impacting multiple regions, as a result of such  
trade policies.

Christoff: In examining the impacts of free trade on peasant  
communities in Latin America, do you have reflections on the reactions  
from social movements in Peru and Colombia to the US push for  
bilateral accords with these two nations? Do you think that bilateral  
deals with the US will have similar results to regional trade accords  
in Latin America?

Carlsen: Many of the general tendencies that we see in NAFTA basically  
hold to bilateral agreements, there have been few substantial  
modifications.

Democrats in the US claim that the Peru agreement is a new model for  
trade agreements, given there are a couple clauses concerning labour  
rights and public health; however the agreement is still based on the  
same trade model.

Essentially this agreement – like NAFTA – is based on a forum of  
development in which a developing country opens up markets completely,  
while granting a whole series of privileges to foreign investors and  
[hoping] that economic development trickles down to weaker social  
sectors.

However, this economic model ensures that there is no trickle down,  
while a country loses the ability to maintain national development  
policies that also support the weakest in society.

Peru’s bilateral agreement with the US includes clauses for the  
privatization of social services, despite the fact that throughout  
Latin America, in other countries, privatization policies often lead  
to cutting off access to basic social services for the poorest.

So the key point is that these ‘free trade’ policies, in Central  
America, in Peru, in Mexico, equal increased inequality. Essentially,  
such trade agreements drive the gap between the rich and poor to grow.

Laura Carlsen is director of the Americas Program of the International  
Relations Center based in Mexico City.

Stefan Christoff is a journalist and community organizer. This  
interview was originally produced in audio format for the Fighting  
FTAs project, an international project that provides a global picture  
of free trade agreements (FTAs), and insight into struggles being  
waged by social movements fighting back.