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Panday's secret mission to Quebec
April 30, 2001
The Prime Minister of this country went to a Summit of the Americas in Quebec Canada recently and agreed to several documets regarding the establishment of a Free Trade of the Americas area.
The most significant document of that session was dealing with the politics of the bloc that the US is setting up in the hemisphere.
While trade is an important issue, the US is more interested in getting the countries of the hemisphere to line up behing its "democracy" and to attack a "rogue state" Cuba who chooses a different path to national development and in political system.
That Summit excluded Cuba which T&T and the other Caricom countries are trying to woo into the regional trading bloc.
Did our PM who boasts about his politics of inclusion or Owen Arthur speak a word against the exclusion of Cuba from the Summit???
Did they raise that the UN has long ago recognised the right of every nation to self-determination and to choose their own political system?
I have not seen anything to suggest that they did.
In Quebec a 10 foot high fence was erected around the meeting area to keep out persons who signalled that they were going to protest the globilisation agenda and the FTAA.
For months before the Canadian police put plans in place to put Quebec under undeclared martial law. In excess of 6,000 police were brought in. Arrests were made even before the protests and people from the US and elsewhere known to be among the potential protestors were stopped at the US-Canada border.
So the Summit was making a declaration of democracy in the region in the middle of a virtual police state. What did our PM have to say about that?
The documents of the Summit were only known publicly when some of them were leaked by independent media houses in the US and Canada. Why then is such a discussion about "free trade" shrouded in such secrecy?
FTAA is an attempt not merely to widen NAFTA which did not save Mexico from fiscal collapse and economic depression and with an extra effort to impose the WTO rules to the full.
US multinationals will be allowed to compete to provide health care, education and several other services in our country protected by FTAA conditions.
Imagine to compete directly with the state to provide services that allow the poor need to maintain some basic level of existence.
US companies have sued the Canadian government on at least 15 occasions for allegedly not allowing them a free hand in investment in Canada under NAFTA.
They are expected to be in a position to do much worse to us.
So how could a treaty that has serious implications for the wellbeing, health etc of our people be kept secret from us by government?
It's time to talk about FTAA now! and to work to forestall that disaster.
HOMEPAGE
Copyright © Clyde Weatherhead
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