A highly respected law firm has found that international trade agreements pose a massive threat to public education.
Lawyers from the renowned international trade firm Gottlieb and Pearson say private companies wanting to provide for-profit education could use provisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to demand governments provide private companies with financial subsidies previously reserved only for public institutions.
“[The legal opinion] is a tool to demonstrate that our concerns are valid and are not just figments of our imagination,” said Ian Boyko, chairperson of the 400,000-member Canadian Federation of Students (CFS).
CFS joined with the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) and a number of other education groups to ask the firm to consult legal jurisprudence and determine the impact of trade liberalization on education in Canada. The investigation not only found there were insufficient protections for public education in the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS)—signed six years ago by members of the WTO—but also that the agreement endangers hiring preference given to Canadian teachers and the restriction of degree-granting authority to Canadian institutions.
“I would like to believe the Canadian negotiators have the right position,” said David Robinson, associate executive director of CAUT. “Unfortunately, the track record for this negotiating team is not very good.”
The Canadian government has lost most of the WTO tribunals launched against it by foreign companies seeking greater access to Canadian markets.
Under the GATS, companies offering services in foreign countries can sue those governments for providing unfair subsidies to local companies.
However, the legal opinion found these subsidies could be read to include government funding of not-for-profit education.
The Canadian government claims services that are fully under public control, such as education and health care, are exempt from the agreement. However, it is increasingly unclear if education is fully under public control in wake of recent developments which include private degree-granting universities being allowed in Ontario, B.C. and Alberta, and tax credits for parents sending their children to private school in Ontario. Such a mixture of public and private funding amounts to “creeping privatization,” according to the CFS and might jeopardize a university’s status as a public institution protected under the GATS.
“The Department of International Trade is overzealous in its efforts to guarantee that our private service providers will be given equal treatment to public institutions in other countries,” said Boyko. “They’re not being diligent enough in understanding what that’s going to do to Canada.”
Not so, said Department of International Trade spokesperson Oussamah Tamim.
“The government has always had the power to regulate our public education, even when there is some collaboration with the private sector,” he said.
“There are some fears that our government might yield in exchange for other things, and that’s a legitimate concern…but to us, public education is not a bargaining chip that we’re willing to abandon a little bit in favour of other things,” said Tamim.
Robinson said the CAUT and CFS presented International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew with the legal opinion two weeks ago, but there has been no response so far from his office.
