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Activists: We Won't Be Fooled By Summit of the Americas PR
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Activists: We Won't Be Fooled By Summit of the Americas PR
Protesters say people know free trade pact is for corporate gain
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by Allan Thompson
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OTTAWA - People won't be fooled by a government public relations offensive just days before the Quebec city Summit of the Americas, organizers of the alternative People's Summit said yesterday.
The bottom line is that a proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas would still put corporate interests ahead of human rights, the environment, labour standards and other vital issues, the activists told a news conference.
And more and more Canadians are joining the movement to oppose government efforts to negotiate a hemispheric free trade pact, they said.
People walk behind 'Wall of Shame' security fences Monday April 9, 2001, in old Quebec City, Canada. The security perimeter for the Summit of the Americas to be held later this month has been almost completed. (AP Photo/CP, Jacques Boissinot)
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``There has been so much interest and so much concern across the country and within the hemisphere about these negotiations . . . I find it hard to see that trying to manage the issue by press release is going to (make it) evaporate tomorrow,'' said Rieky Stuart, Oxfam Canada executive director.
Hassan Yusuf, executive vice-president of the Canadian Labour Congress, said governments are ``playing to the media to try and assert that they are concerned about other issues than free trade in the Americas.''
Yusuf said there is still no sign that a free trade deal would help to fight poverty, improve working conditions or help people take control of their lives.
International Co-operation Minister Maria Minna yesterday announced Canada would contribute $25 million to support ``fragile'' democratization efforts in Latin America.
Marc Lortie, senior Canadian organizer for the Quebec city summit, told reporters earlier this week that promoting democracy in the hemisphere will be the summit centrepiece.
Leaders might spend as little as 15 minutes talking about the trade pact itself and a ``democratic clause'' being drafted for approval by the 34 leaders would say only democracies can join the summit process, Lortie said.
According to a draft copy of the summit's final declaration obtained by Reuters yesterday, democracy is an ``essential condition'' of a country's presence at this month's and future summits. Cuba has been excluded from the Quebec meeting.
``Any unconstitutional alteration or interruption of the democratic order in a state of the hemisphere constitutes a fundamental obstacle to the participation of the state's government in the Summit of the Americas process,'' the draft states.
The 48-page declaration and plan of action, dated March 26, also calls for a stronger Organization of American States and an anti-poverty initiative to reduce by half the number of people living in poverty in the Americas by 2015. It does not refer to the free trade pact itself, which is expected to run as long as 900 pages.
International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew has heralded the decision to make public a draft text of the proposed pact as a sign of unprecedented openness, even though it won't be available before next week's summit.
Activists call it window dressing.
``Our government is engaged in a major PR offensive against the citizens of Canada,'' said Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians.
``I think we've become the new Soviet Union. We're the target of the biggest police security operation in modern Canadian history and it's an offence,'' she said, of the mounting police and security presence in Quebec city.
``We're jaded about this now . . . only the words of the text matter. Not the preamble, not all the nice meetings we have, not all the nice things that governments say to us.''
Copyright 1996-2001. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited
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