Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010

Summit holds hopes, dangers

The Summit of the Americas this week in Quebec City may turn out to hold the key to greater democracy and social justice on the American continent. The greater likelihood, however, is that it will accelerate the momentum to corporate domination of every facet of life.

First, the barricades. Protecting political leaders from violence is a reasonable goal. However, serious protesters are not going to Quebec City to do violence, but to work for democracy. The four-metre barricades around Old Quebec are a symbol of what is all-too likely to go on behind the barricades. Politicians and corporate leaders may well finalize a trade deal that they have refused to discuss in public. The elites are protected; the public is frozen out.

Second, investor-state lawsuits. When NAFTA created a new so-called free trade area, corporations were given the right to sue governments whose environmental and other laws hindered their ability to make profits. So far, corporations have launched at least 15 lawsuits against local, regional and national governments. U.S. negotiators are adamant that similar investor-state provisions be included in the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) pact being discussed in Quebec City.

Third, the Canadian government says it will push for a democracy clause in the FTAA deal. If properly worded and implemented, this holds out hope that the FTAA will protect, rather than undermine, the right of governments to protect the environment, health and social programs of their countries. Unlike UN declarations, which are long on high-minded idealism and short on enforceability, a strong democracy clause in an FTAA agreement might well be a major protection for human rights. But will the U.S., countries with poor human rights records and corporate leaders accept a democracy clause with teeth?

Political leaders, unfortunately, are sometimes too concerned with the climate for business and trade, and not concerned enough with the climate for human development. The Canadian bishops have waded into this issue by stating, "Governments, entrusted by their citizens with responsibility for the common good, appear to be using multilateral negotiations in order to relinquish their own powers to intervene."

This is the so-called inevitability of globalization. A narrow form of globalization has been inevitable because governments have bowed obsequiously to liberalized trade and have failed to negotiate trade agreements that would protect their own citizens. Former Foreign Affairs Minister Joe Clark said as much when he admitted, "If I have one regret, it's that we didn't do enough to deal with the most disadvantaged in Canada. There were people that were hurt by the free trade agreement."

Former U.S. trade representative Charlene Barshefsky has noted, "The single greatest threat (to globalization) is the absence of public support."

Yet if economic integration were hitched to protection for human rights, support would appear. We could chart a future as a global community with economic equity, a cleaner environment, greater democracy and protection for human rights. Globalization could begin to realize that which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights held out as an ideal.

Unfortunately, the political will - that is, the will of political leaders and their corporate bosses - does not appear to be there for such change. The Summit of the Americas, like so many world trade meetings, has been planned in secrecy.

We can only applaud the protesters, who have made personal sacrifices to attend the Quebec City conference and to flush out those planning the future of the hemisphere behind the barricades. Without the protests, this process of trade liberalization would be even more of a mystery to the general public. And without public scrutiny, there would be an ever-greater danger of the financial elites gaining an uncontrolled hegemony over the nations of the world.

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