Around the corner, the golden arches and the conspicuous yellow letters of the fast food chain McDdonalds have been removed by its owners to conceal the shop's presence, but the outline of the word still needs to be washed off.

''This is to keep out the hooligans,'' says a workman as he puts up a shield on the windows of the fourth shop he has worked on Wednesday in this particular block.

French activist Jose Bove, left, and Maude Barlow, right, of the Council of Canadians, hold up anti-globalization T-shirts on the site of the People's Summit of the Americas Wednesday April 18, 2001, in Quebec City, Canada. (AP Photo/CP, Fred Chartrand)

He is rushing to catch another job ahead of the competition in what has proven brisk business here this week - covering shop windows with wooden sheets to conceal any signs of corporate globalisation.

The reason: Quebec is the venue of another anti-globalisation battle this week when 34 heads of state of all of the nations of the Americas, except Cuba, meet at the Summit of the Americas where they are expected to endorse negotiations for the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

The biggest police presence ever seen in this tiny city of a little more than a half a million people - some 6,000 officers - and a 4.5 kilometre metal fence anchored in concrete, tell the tale of a city under siege. By the end of the week, some 30,000 people are expected to swarm into this walled city to oppose the agreement.

''Instead of fighting poverty, our governments placed a priority on negotiating trade deals,'' notes the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA), a 45- million strong civil society network from across the region that is hosting the People's Summit, an alternative forum to the Summit of the Americas.

''They believe that free trade and the market will solve the problem of underdevelopment ... that globalisation is an irreversible process that will be good for all of us in the long run, yet even the richest countries are undergoing cuts to hard-won social welfare services.''

The reality of the majority of the region's population is best described by the terms unemployment, social exclusion, human rights violations, destruction of the environment, discrimination against women, child labour, illiteracy and the dismantling of public services.

HSA argues that the acronym 'FTAA' does not rhyme with 'democracy', neither does it rhyme with 'sustainable development' and this will be played out on the streets of Quebec this week when police and demonstrators who want the FTAA negotiations to be transparent and accountable to the region's 750 million people converge on the streets of Quebec this weekend.

The negotiations have thus far been conducted in secrecy, but it is expected that the draft text of the agreement will be released here this week as government's bow to civic pressure.

Civil society groups are suspicious of a negotiation process that has so far only been open to government and business leaders. They have described the FTAA as a way of bringing back the discredited Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and of expanding the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) into the rest of Latin America.

''The FTAA is the son of MAI, which in turn is the son of NAFTA,'' says Konrad Von Moltke of International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). ''Any new trade agreement that does not promote climate-friendly investment is simply unacceptable.''

Civil society groups have come a long way since 1994 when NAFTA was adopted by Canada, Mexico and the United States. Then, the implications of Chapter 11 of the agreement were still too obscure. Chapter 11 is now the catalyst for anti-FTAA protests.

It allows corporations to seek private arbitration against governments and so far at least 15 known cases have been launched, allowing contesting parties to choose who the arbitrating judges would be or whether or not to allow public access to the proceedings.

All three governments have been sued. Companies have challenged a variety of state actions such as environmental protection policies, and the damages sought have exceeded 18 billion dollars.

In one instance, the Canadian government issued a ban that stopped a US-based company, SD Meyers, from importing waste contaminated with PCBs from Canada between November 1995 and February 1997. During this brief period, the United States opened its borders to PCBs, which are among the most highly toxic industrial wastes.

SD Meyers is now demanding damages to cover lost profit during that period which could amount to 50 million dollars arguing that the Canadian government deprived it of its right to invest in the PCB disposal market in that country.

Canadian government officials have argued that they were merely carrying out their duties under the Basel Convention, an international protocol which encourages countries to limit the export of hazardous waste. Canada does not permit the disposal of PCBs in landfills while the United States does.

''While Canadians say yes we have to carry on with free trade with the rest of the region, at the same time they are beginning to say we have to give more importance to social issues,'' says Henri Masse, a Canadian national who chairs the People's Summit. His government has been the leading proponent of the FTAA.

''Perhaps you may think I believe in Santa Claus but I believe we need to work out a model that for instance, allows for redistribution of resources during times of good economic growth as we have had during the last decade, that respects worker rights and that contains environmental provisions. We cannot trade away the environment.''

If it comes into force as envisioned by 2005, the FTAA will become the world's biggest free trade area, linking countries that currently produce 11 trillion dollars' worth of goods and generate 3.4 trillion dollars of world trade.

''While the FTAA faces many difficulties it also offers a number of opportunities,'' Juan Carlos Chavez of PRISMA, a Bolivian institute that specialises in international relations and the environment told a three-day environmental symposium held here ahead of the Summit of the Americas.

''An opportunity to conceive a free trade treaty based on principles like the promotion of incentive systems aimed at producing goods that are environmentally safe and produce them in a socially responsible manner.''

Copyright 2001 IPS

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