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A Crowbar for Maude
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Summit of the Americas
A Crowbar for Maude
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by Gordon Barthos
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A CROWBAR can be an awesome thing in the hands of a gleeful wrecker of political smugness like Maude Barlow.
And the Summit of the Americas has just handed her a shiny new one.
There it is, tucked away on page 43 of the 43-page "action plan" of political promises that Jean Chrétien and the other leaders endorsed, to carry them from Quebec city to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2004.
Couched in language only a bureaucrat could love, it states:
"We further support consideration by the Organization of American States {ellipsis} and national governments of ways in which civil society can contribute to the monitoring and implementation of summit mandates."
Civil society includes groups like Barlow's Council of Canadians, the Canadian Labour Congress, Common Frontiers and the whole panoply of trade unions, nationalist groups, church groups, human rights and environmental activists who are opposed to unfettered free trade.
The "mandates" they'd help monitor include the politicians' heady promises to promote democracy, social justice and human rights. And to make the secretive Free Trade Area of the Americas talks more transparent.
Put it together, and the politicians seem to have handed the activists a tool they can use to pry their way into the secretive process that is shaping the future of 800 million people in 34 countries who produce $17 trillion in goods and services.
After all, civil society can hardly help monitor and implement progress, when progress is being made behind closed doors by politicians talking chiefly to business lobbies.
But if those words don't mean what they say, the activists can use page 43 as a wrecking bar on the politicians' credibility. It will be one more broken promise.
Barlow is keen to test Ottawa's sincerity, or to expose its hypocrisy.
"Am I jumping for joy? No," she told me this week after she had washed the tear gas out of her clothes. "Will we take everything we can get? Sure."
However, the Council of Cana-dians isn't about to be co-opted into supporting policies that erode national sovereignty, subordinate public policy to corporate profits and do nothing for working people.
If offered observer status, "I think that we would say we'll designate our observers from our coalitions and organizations," she says. "And then those people would come back and report to us.''
Post-Quebec, there are two ways in which "civil society" can be given a bigger role: during the Summit Implementation Review Group process, which keeps track of everything the politicians have agreed to; and during the hitherto spotty public consultations on the trade talks.
"We'd have to have the same access to the text as the business community, and we'd have to have the freedom to report back to our groups," Barlow says. "That would be great. That would be wonderful."
They're not there yet.
Barlow points out that the summit's main outcome was to fix a date - 2005 - for the Americas trade pact to come into effect.
Promises to promote democracy, inclusivity, transparency and human rights were mostly rhetoric, she contends. The politicians just wanted to soothe public concern about globalization and freer trade, and to blunt 25,000 mostly peaceful demonstrators.
Still, Chrétien and the rest did invite "all citizens of the Americas to contribute to the summit process" instead of seeking to subvert it.
Argentine President Fernando de la Rua, the host in 2004, expressed the hope that a security fence won't be necessary by then.
The leaders went further than at the previous Miami and Santiago summits in committing themselves to "greater engagement and partnership... with civil society groups."
They agreed, as well, to make public not only the controversial draft text of the FTAA but also "additional information on the progress of negotiations" as they unfold.
These are serious commitments to transparency. If they are honestly meant.
Of course, the politicians may hope to enlist mostly pro-free-trade groups in the monitoring process. Or to exclude their fiercest critics.
But Canada's nationalists, union leaders, church groups, women's groups, human rights and environmental activists have the best grasp of the issues. They command public respect.
They should be brought in on the process.
Ottawa can say, No, that's not what we intended.
But there would have to be a higher fence in Buenos Aires.
So, what happens now?
That depends on what Ottawa's word is worth.
And how good Barlow and her allies are with a crowbar.
Gordon Barthos writes The Star's editorials on foreign affairs.
Copyright 1996-2001. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited
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