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 Editorials | Opinions | August 2007 
Time to Talk to Those Outside the Gates
 The Guardian
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 |  | Politicians can't stop global trade, but they can take time to address public fears. |  | |
The North American Free Trade Agreement still manages to generate a surprising amount of controversy.
Witness the crowds waiting to protest the meetings of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and U.S. President George Bush as they meet to talk about the trade deal.
Our prime minister says that when the leaders of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico gathered in Montebello this week, they talked about setting manufacturing standards.
"The rules for jelly bean contents are different in Canada than the United States. They have to maintain two separate inventories," said Harper.
"Is the sovereignty of Canada going to fall apart if we standardize the jelly bean?"
Protesters who were kept well away from the meeting talk about it as an exercise in setting secret agendas for the capitulation of national sovereignty in favour of American corporatism.
Somewhere between the global takeover conspiracies put forward by protesters and the jelly-bean-size standards offered by Stephen Harper lies the truth about international trade talks.
Protesters talk about multinational corporations as if they were voracious living things, consuming community and environment alike. Apologists talk about transnational deals as if they were innocuous and no more able to affect the average Canadian than they are to change the tide.
The fact is that multinational commerce is happening and will continue to happen. Toys are made with parts from China, software makers outsource their help-lines to call centres in Charlottetown or Calcutta, Island fish plants bring in workers from Russia and send them home when the processing season is completed.
Computerization, telecommunications and global travel have made this world a smaller place. Business people are recognizing that there are new accessible markets, and new affordable places to acquire labour and resources. That's the way business has always worked.
The question that bedevils governments, and protesters too, is how to impose some kind of order on this free flow of commerce. Government wants to be sure that it can tax profits, that it can protect investors from con artists, that it can keep industry from violating legislated standards. Protesters, or those among them with something to say, want to make sure environments are protected, that labour laws and human rights aren't reduced to the lowest common denominator, that mobile capital won't lead to waves of business closures that devastate communities.
The problem is the gap of mistrust that exists between the powerful men at the Montebello summit and the protesters locked outside. Unable or unwilling to distinguish the reasonable dissenting voices from those of troublemakers, the three leaders contented themselves with the company of their advisors and with the advice of corporate leaders.
Calderon, Bush and Harper owe it to their nations to try to sift through the anger outside Montebello's gates and identify how government can protect the vulnerable in what has become an inevitable move towards a global economy.
Whatever deals are signed or not, global trade is coming. Governments would do themselves and their citizens a service by trying harder to deal with the legitimate worries motivating anti-globalization protesters. |
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