Canada – China trade deal and the lack of voter mechanisms
Tuesday, October 30, 2012 @ 3:45 AM
By Peter Ewart
The Harper government is ramming through legislation regarding the Canada-China Investment Agreement (FIPPA). It is doing so despite widespread opposition from the other parties in parliament, as well as broad sections of the Canadian people.
It appears to many that this investment agreement will further undermine national and provincial sovereignty, as well as democratic processes, and will increase the power of multinational corporations over the interests of both the people of Canada and the people of China. Indeed, in that respect, the agreement (and the pending free trade agreement with the EU) could be worse than NAFTA on a number of fronts.
But the nature of this agreement aside, the actions of the Harper government in sidelining parliament and barreling the legislation through with almost no debate, exposes a serious gap in Canadian political life. There are no established mechanisms by which the Canadian people can directly express their will about important issues like FIPPA except through voting once every four years.
At the present time, many individuals and organizations are mobilizing to stop this investment treaty from going through, or at least create a space for some debate about it in Parliament. They are doing this through circulating petitions, writing letters to MPs, and so on. But the fact is that these methods, while certainly worthwhile, do not have the power of an actual electoral mechanism that empowers the citizenry at the federal level. Under present electoral arrangements, nothing can stop Harper, as prime minister, from pushing the treaty through.
However, one province – British Columbia – actually has an electoral mechanism for its citizens that could be useful in this regard, i.e. the Initiative & Recall legislation. It was through this legislation (imperfect and difficult to use as it is presently constituted) that the unpopular Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) imposed by the Campbell government was defeated in 2011. By mounting a petition campaign that gathered 700,000 signatures, opponents of the HST were able to force a province-wide referendum on the issue (ending with a defeat of the controversial tax).
At the present time, the NDP, Liberal and Green opposition parties are criticizing the Harper government for sidelining parliament and barreling the trade agreement through in the most undemocratic way. As an alternative, they are calling for a thorough study and debate of the Canada-China trade agreement to be conducted in parliament. This, of course, should be done.
However, it is not only parliament that is being sidelined here. Even more importantly, the Canadian people as a whole are being sidelined. Besides calling for more study and debate, the opposition parties, if they are truly serious about stopping dictatorial practices, should also be proposing a voter empowerment mechanism that voters could use to trigger a national referendum on issues of national importance such as the trade agreement.
And the change should not stop there. Reform and renewal of the federal electoral process is long overdue, and at the core of this should be voter empowerment. Because of its anti-democratic and dictatorial practices, which are increasingly alienating Canadians, the Harper government is vulnerable on this front.
Yes, parliament must have its say on the Canada-China trade deal. But the people should have their say also – and there should be a definite mechanism to do so.
Peter Ewart is a columnist and writer based in Prince George, British Columbia. He can be reached at: peter.ewart@shaw.ca
Comments
You can have any kind of voter mechanism you want and it won’t change anything in regards to making the country more *politically* democratic until there is also a change to make it more *economically* democratic.
To do that, the country’s financial system has to be able to be fully ‘DISTRIBUTIVE’ in its ability to initiate production internally and move it through into final consumption internally.
NOT ‘RE-distributive’, through punitive taxation, as various left-of-centre parties continually call for, in their mistaken belief that “the poor are poor because the rich are rich”, and that if everyone were ‘equal’, and kept that way, eternal happiness would result.
Nor, as the current right-of-centre governments would have us believe, only kept functional if we can continually export more than we import, and continually put some other country into a ‘financial’ debt we can never collect on from the indebted for the difference.
The Federal Government has the right to sign trade agreements with other Countries without having these agreements approved by Parliament, and have been doing so for years. The Government is not required to have a full debate on these agreements in Parliament.
In the case of FIPPA, this agreement will be signed on November the 1st., so for all intents and purposes it is a done deal.
Its interesting to note that if in fact the opposition wanted to debate this agreement they could have put it on the agenda for one of their **Opposition Days**. They had a number of opportunities to do this over the past few months, however they chose not to.
In fact the Liberals and the NDP were approached by Elizabeth May of the Green Party who requested them to put this issue on the Opposition Day agenda, however it didnt happen.
So, whats the issue. It seems to me that the only person who made any attempt to have this issue debated was Elizabeth May.
President Harper seems intent on turning Canada into a mini USA. What next, start building for profit prisons like in the US? He is way to far to the right, no doubt he would like to see Mitt win the us election
Muclair seems intent on turning Canada into a mini Communist Russia. What next, start building gulags like in the USSR. He is way to far to the left, no doubt he would like to see Obama win the US election.
Muclair seems intent on turning Canada into a mini Communist Russia
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Thats a good one Pal. It has always been a favorite assumption of the dictators in our society. You are constantly whining on how our Ciy is governed. Well Queen Green is an understudy of the dictator known as Harper. So who’s side are you on Pal?
Cheers
For those of us who care, you may want to listen to the press conference on this matter earlier today.
http://elizabethmaymp.ca/leadnow-fipa
This is not about political parties, or even about Trade/Investment Treaties. This is about the very fundamentals of DEMOCRACY.
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini
Pal,,, obviously a right wing red neck. I was not suggesting mulcair as a replacement, the liberals are in disarray and unless Trudeau can perform magic they will remain so, not a lot to choose from is there? I agree it’s about the fundamentals of democracy. Harper ramming things through because he can tells me that we need to have less absolute power for whoever is leading the country
Oh yea, I forgot to mention… The USSR has not existed for many years now
So we have the fundamentals of Democracy being attacked, and we are making quotes from Benito Mussolini.
Fact of the matter is the Conservative’s have a majority in the house of commons. This did not happen by accident. They have a majority because they won the election, and are now implementing some of the legislation etc; that they were elected to do.
It is the job of the opposition parties to make noises if they dont like whats happening, and this is whats happening here. If you watch the tape you would see one Liberal one New Democrat, and Elizabeth May. Plus a list of approx 60,000 signatures across Canada. This is hardly representative of Canada. In fact it is not representative of anything. 60,000 signatures is approx 5000 signatures per Province and a hell of a lot less per town.
We know that most of these signatures were collected on line, so that the majority signed them without ever having to get off thier butts.
This is nothing more than a self contrived love in for Elizabeth May.
Remember the Free Trade Agreement, and how John Chretain was going to get rid of it once he was elected??? Well we elected him, however we still have the agreement.
The FIPPA deal is done. This 11th hour attempt to change things will not get any traction. Life goes on.
Yup! 39% of the vote country wide. Huuuuuge majority.
40% if you’re rounding. Compared to 30% (vast majority from Quebec) for the runner up. Yep, pick any numbers you want. Your team lost bud. Lost baaaad. Go cry to momma.
The popular vote is the number always used by those who lose the election.
If they win, then they use the number of MP’s (ridings) that they won.
Some people are having a little difficulty getting used to their new Prime Minister.
First Past the Post election system needs to evolve. Majority government is a dangerous miscalculation. Absolute power with 40% (if you’re rounding)? deMOCKracy!
So what would you have? Throw out the election results, dig up Layton’s grave and hand him a majority? Face it, your team lost a fair election. You are a babbling voice in the wilderness. Go to Quebec.
This is about treason to the country.
Nobody knew Harper was going to sellout Canada until Harper announced this investment compensation deal with China at the APEC Summit in September. Nobody even got to see what was in it until a few weeks ago. There has been no opposition day in Parliament where this could have been discussed since it has come to light.
This trade deal is about allowing China to use state enterprises to shape Canadian economic policy through threat of compensation awarded by a secretive tribunal that is unaccountable to Canadian courts or parliamentarians. This is unprecedented and turns our democratic sovereignty over to a communist nations state enterprises. It is treason that ignores the framework and intent of our constitution and is implemented by a government that was elected with only 39% of the popular vote tainted by unprecedented electoral fraud.
This is about selling out our democratic sovereignty so that multinationals with operations in Canada can get access to Chinese cheep labor and lax environmental regulations to build sweat shops and refineries that they will undermine our countries main street wealth and advantages with.
Pat Bell was the point man for BC appointed by Christy Clark on the matter because Pat Bell is religiously against corporate regulations and is fully in favor of the Gateway Pipeline. The BC liberals are ignoring the huge liability they are going to saddle BC with because of our resource sector alone, because they are all paid for and financed by their globalized corporate friends club. Make no mistake the BC liberals are not a free enterprise party of the middle class, but rather a party that masquerades as one so as to use their political influence to stab them in the back.
Harper and Christy Clark know full well that this Canada-China investment deal is aimed squarely at the Gateway Pipeline project and similar energy and resource projects in BC and the Alberta oil sands.
They intend to hide behind this investment deal when the people of BC say no to the Gateway project and elect the ndp next election to stop the travesty.
You can be sure Harper won’t be paying out the billions in damages to the communist party of China’s state enterprises for the promises he made that he can not keep, because he has already said he intends to charge the provinces for any monetary damages paid out as a result of awards made by the secret tribunals that will determine how much is owed for a province making sovereign democratic policy.
Harper will just deduct the damages owed from transfer payments and BC will once again have no further choice, but to separate from Canada in order to limit our liability to the treason that is now afoot against our democracy.
This treaty is the ‘enlightened sovereignty’ Harper was talking about at the G20 summit in Ontario a few years back. Now we are beginning to see what he meant.
RIP Canadian democracy and the constitution. November 1st 2012.
Gambler, how about a debate in Parliament and respect for how our parliamentarian system is supposed to work.
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