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Why I'm Joining the Quebec Protests
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Why I'm Joining the Quebec Protests
Democracy is about self-rule, about people participating in the political activity and the decisions that affect our lives.
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by Sarah Blackstock
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These days the world seems out of our hands. As Prime Minister Jean Chrétien recently said: "Globalization is not an option that one chooses from among others. It is a reality we are faced with day in and day out." And, as Chrétien and his pro-globalization cronies repeatedly intone, globalization is the key to our present and future prosperity.
But it's hard to even be sure what globalization is. There's talk of market integration, countervailing duties, WTO, FTA, NAFTA, FTAA. There are "globalization meetings" in faraway places like Davos and Qatar. Even those closer to home, such as the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Quebec city, occur behind barricades — protected from criticism by the largest police operation in Canadian history.
Globalization appears a matter for trade ministers and their retinues of economic experts rather than the lowly citizen. So why are thousands of people from all over Latin America, the United States and Canada going to Quebec city? Well, there are at least five reasons I'm going.
Because globalization isn't inevitable. According to Finance Minister Paul Martin, "The fact of the matter is that globalization is our reality; it is inevitable."
But if globalization is inevitable, why such tremendous effort to draft very particular free trade agreements that bind the hands of future governments? Because governments — and thereby the citizens who empower governments — can make decisions that affect globalization. As our parents and grandparents might remind us, history is not something that simply happens to us; people shape history.
If globalization is inevitable, why so much effort to create rules that enable globalization? Because rules, such as those that ensure minimal health and safety standards, minimal tariffs and national treatment for non-national businesses, are crucial to the "success" of globalization.
The globalizers present "globalization" as something driven entirely by technology and international capital. But how could globalization occur without the work of real people who make the goods that are shipped around the world and who develop and implement the technology on which globalization relies?
Because the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) threatens democracy in Canada. The FTAA isn't just an agreement. It's what York University's Stephen Gill refers to as a "new constitution." This "new constitution" creates rights and freedoms for corporations that override our rights and freedoms.
Consider, for instance, that the U.S.-based Ethyl Corporation was able to force the Canadian government to eliminate its ban on MMT, an additive to gasoline that is banned in many countries and that Chrétien once referred to as a "dangerous neurotoxin." Or consider that if any province — Newfoundland, for example — decides to export bulk water, all of Canada's water will have to be treated as a tradable commodity under the terms of NAFTA and its cousin, the FTAA.
In deals like the FTAA, governments are more concerned with protecting corporations' right to profit than our right to decent public services, to say nothing of our right to self-rule.
Because the FTAA will make Canada a less healthy and just society. Over the last few decades, we've seen a growing gap between the rich and the poor, a deterioration of the environment and a slashing of the social safety net. Just when it seems things couldn't get worse, they just might. The goal of the FTAA is to eliminate "barriers" to trade. Such barriers include labour standards, corporate taxes, environmental standards and the public provision of services, such as social assistance and education. Do we really want our water delivered by someone whose motive is profit?
Because I've seen what's at risk. In anti-poverty work I do with Low Income Families Together, I've caught glimpses of what a future may look like when public services have been privatized. (The privatization of public services is just one possible outcome of the FTAA.)
Since 1995, the Ontario government has been reforming social assistance with the aid of U.S.-based multinational Andersen Consulting. Andersen gets paid according to how much money it saves. This has ensured the welfare system is not designed to help people, but to get them off the system — by almost any means necessary. We need public service providers guided by a commitment to ensure Canadians have the resources, programs and support we need to be healthy, secure members of society, not service providers motivated by the bottom line.
Because this is part of a broader struggle. This struggle started long before the Battle of Seattle. It is a struggle centuries old — for self-rule, social and economic justice, for democracy.
Quebec city is about more than exercising our democratic rights to freedom of expression and assembly. The struggle is about insisting that democracy is more than regular, well-managed elections where citizens choose representatives from among a narrow group of like-minded elites. Democracy is about self-rule. It's about people participating in the political activity and decisions that affect our lives. It's recognizing that neither politicians nor a faceless market drive society. It is people — our work and ideas — who create the kinds of worlds we live in.
Earlier this month, Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew bragged that Canada had taken the lead in getting agreement to release the draft text of the treaty. Pettigrew and his fellow globalizers have forgotten they are responsible to the citizenry. The text of the FTAA doesn't belong to them to share as they see fit. The text, as with all legislation, belongs to those who give the politicians their positions and power — the people of the Americas.
Too often we lament the injustices and inhumanity of the world. We throw up our hands and say there is nothing we can do. Too often we fail to push ourselves to examine the ways in which we let these things happen. So maybe the onus for justification should not be on those of us who are going to Quebec city, but on those who aren't doing anything at all.
Sarah Blackstock is actively involved with the Toronto Mobilization for Global Justice, the city's main coalition organizing for the protests in Quebec city.
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