For immediate release November 29, 1999

CCPA releases new study on the WTO and its potential impact on British Columbia

(Vancouver) -- The BC office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a new study today entitled "Sounding the Alarm: The World Trade Organization and its Potential Impact on British Columbia."

The study, written by Murray Dobbin and Ellen Gould, notes that the WTO has already had a profound effect on Canadian public policies, and warns that the next round of negotiations has the potential to have a very harmful effect on BC.

The WTO's "millennium round" of negotiations, to be launched in Seattle on November 30, will set the stage for a new world-wide wave of economic liberalization. "For an organization that is just five years old, the WTO leaves an enormous footprint on the world community," says Dobbin. "It is arguably the most powerful institution in the world today, an order of world government that surpasses any other. With both legislative and judicial powers, it can trump the sovereignty of the 135 national governments that make up its membership."

The study concludes that the WTO poses a serious threat to the future of public services. "If the WTO is expanded to include government services such as health, education, social services and environmental protection, the public nature of these critical programs will be threatened," says Gould.

The expansion of current WTO agreements, and the launching of new ones, threaten other aspects of BC public policy: * A new forest products agreement could eliminate restrictions on raw log exports, further eroding BC's ability to tie jobs to timber harvests.
* A new agreement on "government procurement" could ban preferential purchasing by the BC government and municipalities (meaning the use of government purchasing to support local businesses and employment may be prevented).
* On-going efforts to define "illegal" subsidies threaten a whole range of policies, from job creation programs to grants to BC cultural organizations, and may result in challenges to BC's Agricultural Land Reserves and "Buy BC" food programs.
* A major initiative to get rid of tariffs, still allowed under WTO rules, could see the end of marketing boards in BC, which now offer stability to producers of dairy, eggs and poultry.
* BC's current ban on bulk water exports is threatened by the WTO as well as by NAFTA. NAFTA relies on a GATT definition of water as a "good". In addition, the WTO's Article XI explicitly prohibits the use of export controls for any purpose.

"The federal government's position on the upcoming WTO negotiations shows that it has not retreated from its support for sweeping trade and investment liberalization, despite the defeat of the MAI," says Dobbin.
"Until citizens use their democratic institutions to actually put a halt to these expanding corporate rights negotiations, we will be facing virtually endless battles on dozens of fronts. What is needed is a halt to any new round, a thorough review of the damage already done by WTO measures, and the launch of negotiations for a new international rules-based agreement that will impose conditions on the behaviour of transnational corporations world wide."

"Sounding the Alarm" was commissioned by the BC Federation of Labour and received funding for the BC Federation of Labour, the BC Teachers' Federation, the Canadian Union of Public Employees - BC Region, and the BC Government and Services Employees' Union.

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For more information, contact Shannon Daub at the CCPA (604) 801-5121 (although no one will be in the office on Nov. 30 -- we'll all be in Seattle) or Miriam Sobrino at the BC Federation of Labour, 430-1421 or (cell) 220-0739


--------------------------------------- Seth Klein
Director, BC Office
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives sethk@sfu.ca CCPA-BC
tel. (604) 801-5121 815 - 207 West Hastings St.
fax. (604) 801-5122 Vancouver, BC V6B 1H7 ccpa webpage: http://www.policyalternatives.ca caw 567