A-Infos (en) MAI Impact on Sovereignty:::Creeping Corporatism

[Beezee Evans <bee3xxx@yahoo.com>]

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Subject: Creeping Corporatism; MAI Impact on Sovereignty
http://utl1.library.utoronto.ca/www/bulletin/latest/forum.htm


CREEPING CORPORATISM

Every cultural institution and sector is in jeopardy

By Maude Barlow

[Maude Barlow spoke at the Faculty of Information Studies, University
of Toronto, on Jan. 22, 1998, as part of the Canada by Design speaker
series. The following is from her address.]

 The combined sales of the top 200 transnational corporations are bigger
than the combined gross domestic product of all countries minus the
biggest nine; that is, they surpass the combined economies of
182countries.
Wal-Mart is bigger than 161 countries including Poland, Israel and
Greece. Mitsubishi is larger than Indonesia. General Motors is bigger
than Denmark.The Top 200, with a combined revenue of $7.1 trillion,
have almost
twice the economic clout of the poorest four-fifths of humanity, whose
combined income is only $3.9 trillion. However, in spite of their
enormous wealth and clout, the Top 200 are net job destroyers
so-called virtual corporations, all together, they employ less than a
third of one per cent of the world s people.
I don t think we can address the question of how to build a nation if we
don t first address the question of whether we are still a nation at all
in the traditional sense. Do we in fact, as citizens, hold the policy
levers with which to design our future? I have to say no. Ourgovernments
have given away these powers with abandon.
>From the mid-1930s until recently, successive Canadian governments
designed and implemented cultural policies to build a strong and dynamic
pool of Canadian artistic talent and cultural enterprises and to ensure
that Canadians  own stories were told and our values and history
preserved. These policies were created first and foremost to serve
Canadians, not to serve an international trade agenda. Living next to
the biggest superpower in the world, our ancestors knew they had to
carve out a space for our unique Canadian perspective. Public support
for Canadian culture has been crucial to our survival as a nation.
In the 1990s, however, every cultural institution and sector is in
jeopardy. The assault has been relentless. Funding to the CBC has
declined by 47 per cent in a decade and its workforce cut in half.
Funding for the Canada Council, the National Film Board and the National
Library and Museums was slashed by 30 per cent in the infamous 1995
Martin budget alone.
Between 1990 and 1992 most indirect forms of support   tax credits and
other incentives to attract investment in publishing, recording and
films   dropped from almost $1 billion to zero.
Meanwhile a handful of powerful private corporations are expanding their
control over the media. Conrad Black s Hollinger Inc. now owns or
controls 60 of Canada s 105 daily newspapers including 80 per cent ofall
the papers in Ontario and all the dailies in Saskatchewan, Newfoundland
and Prince Edward Island. Black extends his control through hisownership
of Canadian Press and CP Broadcast News which owns 425 radio and 76
television stations.
Just 10 corporations control 55 per cent of revenues in radio, an
increase of 50 per cent over the past decade. Three giant cablecompanies
have nearly 70 per cent of the market. This trend in Canada mirrors the
global trend in which a handful of players like Ted Turner, Disney,
Time-Warner and Berlusconi control not only the major entertainment
outlets but the news as well.
The Canadian government s enthusiastic promotion of free trade is the
final nail in the coffin of Canadian culture. NAFTA s so-called cultural
protection is now widely understood to be toothless. Canada has lost its
key policies to protect its magazine industry after a ruling from the
World Trade Organization. Trade experts all agree this is a
precedent-setting decision with far-reaching implications for other
cultural policies. U.S. trade representative Charlene Barshefsky was
jubilant, saying the decision would serve as a useful weapon against
other Canadian cultural practices. The Canadian Broadcasting Act has
been targeted by her office in a recent report for elimination as a
barrier to U.S. exports. WTO has scheduled negotiations for the global
deregulation of broadcasting for Jan. 1, 2000.And now we have MAI.
The Multilateral Agreement on Investment is a proposed treaty that
would dramatically reduce the capacity of national and sub-national
governments to limit the degree and nature of foreign investment (both
outgoing and incoming) or to impose standards of behaviour on investors.
Its purpose is to remove most of the remaining barriers to, and controls
on, the mobility of capital and its passage would result in the sharp
restriction of the ability of governments everywhere to shape investment
policy to promote economic, cultural, social or environmental goals.
MAI is a severely one-sided agreement that will give corporations new
rights in law to challenge government policy and new tools to limit the
power of elected officials in all the signatory countries. I call it
 NAFTA on steroids  because it takes the worst provisions of that
agreement, magnifies them and applies them to a whole new host of
countries. MAI would grant transnational corporations more power than
nation-states in international law.
Essentially MAI forbids  discriminating  between domestic and foreign
 investors  in any sector. While investors are generally understood to
be businesses, MAI considers any government regulations or practices
that interfere with the commercial interests of foreign corporations in
every sector of the economy   natural resources, health, education,
pensions, agriculture and culture included   to be discriminatory and
open for challenge.
The most egregious aspect of MAI is that foreign-based transnationals
would have rights and powers not accorded to domestic companies. If a
government brought in regulations to protect the environment or natural
resources or upgrade health or safety standards that cost the industry
involved some lost profits, domestic companies would have no choice but
to abide by the new law. Foreign companies, however, could claim
compensation for  expropriation  and sue the government under the
 investor-state  dispute system. This is the heart of MAI. Governments
would have to pay transnational corporations for the right to make law.
To protect our culture the Canadian government is relying on an
exemption lodged by the government of France. But it is badly worded,
inadequate to Canada s needs and unlikely to be granted by the U.S. in
any case. The Canadian government has not launched its own request for
a full carve-out for culture nor has it mentioned culture in its
reservations. This means that, as it stands now, only months before
final ratification of MAI, none of the practices or policies Canada
uses to promote and protect Canadian culture, including newspapers and
broadcasting, are safe from challenge by the private sector of every
other signatory country to the deal. No subsidy could be given to any
Canadian cultural sector, including the CBC, that is not offered equally
to foreign  private investors.  Canadian content law would be
challengeable as discrimination. The ban on setting performance
requirements would mean government couldn t insist that foreign
companies hire Canadian performers, filmmakers, musicians or writers.
These companies could take 100 per cent of their profits back out of the
country and we couldn t say a word.
Under MAI a U.S. book publishing giant could buy up a major Canadian
publisher and refuse to produce any creative works by Canadians butstill
qualify for industrial incentives offered by the Canadian government.
Book distribution would be open to continental competition, as would
bookstores. The government could no longer require radio stations toplay
Canadian music, television to air Canadian programs or film companies to
produce Canadian material to qualify for grants and tax breaks. Tax
measures to keep Canadian newspapers in Canadian hands would be illegal.
We must reject MAI. The world badly needs rules to control global
investment but this badly flawed, one- sided agreement is not theanswer.
Closer to the mark is the 1974 UN Charter of Economic Rights and Duties
of States which stated that member nations have the  inalienable right
to  regulate and exercise authority over foreign investment.  It granted
nations the right to  regulate and supervise the activities of
transnational corporations  in the national interest and declared that
 transnational corporations shall not intervene in the internal affairs
of the host State.
My greatest fear is that, as we lose our identity, our so-called
knowledge economy may start to reflect a society drowning in information
but starved for purpose. Canada as a knowledge nation must reflect our
history and culture, what we know and value. We must move now to protect
our culture, broadcasting, newspapers and education system not only from
transnational corporations but domination by the Canadian corporate
establishment as well. We must reject the siren call of economic
globalization based on the model of privatization and competition.
Across sectors, across countries, across race, gender and age lines,
employed and unemployed, city and rural, we must find one another and
realize that we are now a movement in opposition to corporate rule and
probably the only thing that comes between us and the global feudalismof
the new economy. We must not accept the prevailing propaganda of
inevitability. To say we have no choice is intellectual terrorism.
It will take the rest of our lives even to begin the task before us. But
not to try would betray the generations that have come before us and
fought so hard for a different world and greatly diminish the dreams of
all those who come after..........................
Maude Barlow is national volunteer chairperson of the Council
ofCanadians.




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