CETA could throw Ontarians out of work: CCPA Report
Original article by NUPGE:
September 21, 2012 A trade deal with the European
Union (EU) that’s being negotiated behind closed doors could result in as
many as 70,000 job losses in Ontario, says a new report by the Canadian
Centre for Policy Alternatives’ (CCPA) Ontario office
Straightjacket: CETA’s Constraining Effects on Ontario details the ways
in which the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) could
accelerate Ontario’s industrial decline and weaken the province’s economic
future.
“The manufacturing sector would be hard hit,” says the report’s author, John
Jacobs. “CETA locks trade partners into their current pattern which is
imbalanced."
“It would box Ontario into exporting non-renewable resources
such as gold, nickel and uranium – privileging EU’s current dominance of
value-added exports to Ontario and leaving the province in a virtual
straightjacket while bleeding jobs.”
As well as job loss, CETA would undermine independent
government decision-making. CETA blocks options to boost exports of more
sophisticated, value-added goods, forcing the province to rely on
non-renewable resource exports, which have a finite future. At the current
rate of extraction, Ontario could exhaust its gold reserves within a decade.
“The deal that’s being proposed would tie the hands of provincial and
municipal governments in unprecedented ways,” says Jacobs.
Among the report’s key findings:
* CETA is weighted in EU investors’ favour and would
worsen the trade imbalance that already exists;
* CETA would prevent provincial and municipal governments from pursuing
local economic development initiatives;
* CETA would threaten public services by entrenching investor rights and
preventing governments from bringing failed privatization and P3 schemes
back under public control;
* CETA would increase the cost of pharmaceutical drugs to the provincial
drug plan by an estimated $551 million a year; and
* CETA would expose governments to increased risk of litigation from
corporations, casting a chill on government initiatives to put
environmental sustainability and the public interest ahead of investor
profits.
Download the Report Straightjacket: CETA’s Constraining
Effects on Ontario )http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/straightjacket)
