The New Face of Corporate Power - Council of Canadians Nanaimo Meeting

An Evening with Stuart Trew, Trade Campaigner, Council of Canadians and Brenda Sayer, Hupacasath First Nation

by Council of Canadians

The Canadian Government has signed, is negotiating and seeking to ratify a variety of new corporate rights treaties. These free trade and investment deals, like NAFTA and the WTO, promote and lock in the rights of corporations to make a profit while undermining the ability of communities to make decisions in their own best interest. Every new deal takes the corporate agenda a step further, and they are virtually impossible to cancel once ratified.

 

Saturday, May 25th, 7pm
 

 CHLY Global Headquarters

25 Front St. Nanaimo

With corporate globalization stalled in the World Trade Organization, the Harper government is engaged in both bi-lateral and multi-lateral negotiations to further their “trade agenda” and have been boasting about the number of trade agreements they have signed. These “next generation” deals include the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) with the European Union, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations which Canada joined this past December, and countless investor rights pacts called Foreign Investment Protection and Promotion Agreements (FIPA / FIPPA).

Opposition to these deals has also been building. Over 80 municipalities have passed resolutions in oppositions to the CETA negotiations, the Hupacasath First Nation has launched a constitutional challenge to the Canada-China FIPA ratification and communities are beginning to organize and inform themselves about the TPP. Brenda Sayer of the Hupacasath First Nation will be in attendance at the Nanaimo event to provide an update on the constitutional challenge to FIPA.

The Council of Canadians is hosting a speaking tour in order to build collective opposition to all of these agreements. In the spirit of the Seattle and Quebec City, which permanently wounded the WTO and stopped the Free Trade Area of the Americas, we hope to bring our vibrant movements back into the streets to derail the negotiations and dismantle the agreements.

For background information on these and other corporate rights treaties please visit:

http://www.canadians.org/trade/ and http://www.bilaterals.org/


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For Immediate release

For more information contact
Paul Manly midislandcoc@gmail.com