The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), a sweeping free trade deal between Canada and the European Union, has been in the works since politicians from Quebec began promoting the idea in 2007.
According to a draft copy leaked in April by the left-leaning Trade Justice Network, many things could change for Canadians, including tougher copyright laws, more job internships in Europe, and more competition in the labour market. It might even mean cheaper French wines and Belgian beers.
Talks were launched in May 2009 at the EU-Canada Summit in Prague. Since then, there have been two main diplomatic quarrels. Weeks after the summit, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney issued restrictions requiring Czech citizens to apply for entry visas.
Kenney explained that this was due to mass emigration of ethnic Roma people claiming refugee status because of the Czech government’s inability to remedy large-scale discrimination and violence. The Czechs, upset at being the only EU citizens to apply for visas, angrily said Canada exaggerated the problem and unsuccessfully tried to implement similar restrictions on Canadians.
This was followed by an EU ban on Canadian seal products, a response to the seal hunt, which many Europeans deem to be inhumane. Although neither of these thorny incidents has been settled, they are relatively mild disagreements and do not impede our unique, advantaged position.
Canada, in spite of its unstable minority governments, is seen as secure. We weathered the recession spectacularly well due to reforms introduced during ’90s and have strong trade ties with the European economic powerhouse, Germany.
With trillions of EU stimulus dollars being pumped into its member states, Canada has the opportunity to participate in Europe’s debt crisis recovery. Linking ourselves to a continent with better environmental policies could help, or force us, to cut emissions. We could loosen our dependence on the U.S. as it inches closer to its own, much larger, debt crisis.
But concerns remain. The expansion of the EU and its euro is only temporarily on hold. We could be signing on to a deal which will expand to other countries even if it’s to our disadvantage, and the euro is supposed to be adapted to more member states.
In a stronger relationship with the EU diplomatic questions arise, such as the implications of the U.S. actively advocating for France, Germany and Canada to remain in Afghanistan. We could be suffer from politically-motivated economic sanctions placed on Europe, and even lose our freedom to implement our own.
Our biggest concern should be about our vast amount of natural resources. Geopolitical conflict is predicted in the coming decades due to growing populations who will have to sustain themselves with diminishing natural resources.
According to a report released in May by the Centre for Civic Governance, a Vancouver-based advocacy group, we should be specifically concerned about our water. The amount of freshwater is in decline worldwide, and Canada has the world’s largest supply of it.
The EU has asked that drinking water services be included in CETA, opening the door to foreign ownership of municipal water delivery and possibly water itself. This increased privatization could mean less investment in local communities and more seriously, less autonomy over our freshwater in the event of a global drought.
CETA should move slowly. Many say the current European debt crisis is a result of the EU growing too quickly. Similarly, this trade deal should move in increments to avoid a crisis. Bringing less sensitive issues such as intellectual property and goods into the fold for five years, and then gradually widening the scope to areas like government procurement and labour would ensure the deal progresses without becoming too big. If freer trade turns out to be at our disadvantage, we could pull out.
It remains curious that CETA has not received much media attention, considering that free trade was the topic of a national election. CETA could affect not only trade, but the federal-provincial-municipal hierarchy of decision-making. The only public debate happening involves labour groups denouncing the free market.
This deal is more ambitious than NAFTA, and its potential implications could be spectacular or catastrophic. It’s a boring, complicated topic but, for the sake of Canada’s future, it demands our attention.
