Maybe Obama was right on NAFTA
Mel Hurtig, the Toronto Star
April 26 2008
Prior to the Canada-U.S. free-trade negotiations, incredibly, Canada’s chief negotiator, Simon Reisman, was said to be in favour of allowing water exports to the United States, but fortunately many officials in Ottawa and others on the negotiating team were not.
During the lengthy debates in Canada about the FTA (Free Trade Agreement) in the mid- to late-1980s, Canadians were repeatedly assured that there was nothing to worry about – water was not included in the proposed agreement. There were full-page, big-business ads in newspapers across the country that said expressly, “water is not included.” Either big business was intentionally lying to Canadians, or they hadn’t taken the time to study closely the proposed agreement.
Water is, in fact, part of both the FTA and NAFTA because of the definition in the agreements of “goods” as defined in GATT’s (General Agreement on Tariff and Trade’s) harmonized commodity coding system, which includes Tariff Item 22.01: “Water: All natural water other than sea water.”
…
Meanwhile, as the noted Canadian fresh water scientist David Schindler has reported, rivers and lakes on the prairies are drying up, and some river flows are already down between 40 and 80 per cent. At the same time, the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto is clear: Federal and provincial bans against bulk water exports “probably will not stand up to court challenges” as long as the FTA and NAFTA remain in place.
Canadians had better decide to protect their precious water supplies, or soon it will be too late to do so.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:20 pm
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