Know The WTO

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What You Should Know About The World Trade Organization

No country can restrict trade in any goods based on how they are produced. Production and processing methods cannot be considered as part of trade rules, even if they are damaging to people or the environment.

“WTO rules run roughshod over local laws and regulations. The WTO agenda relentlessly pursues the elimination of any strictures on the free flow of trade, including how a product is made, by whom it is made, and what happens when it is made. By doing so, the WTO is eliminating the ability of countries and regions to set standards, to express values, or to determine what they do or don't support. Child labor, prison labor, forced labor, and substandard wages and working conditions cannot be used as a basis to discriminate against goods. Nor can environmental destruction, habitat loss, toxic waste production, and the presence of transgenic materials or synthetic hormones be used as the basis to screen or stop goods from entering a country. Under WTO rules, the boycott of South Africa would not have existed.”
    —Paul Hawken, director, Natural Capital Institute.

The WTO is extremely damaging to consumers and workers alike not because it promotes free trade, but because it makes deals and agreements through closed tribunals and penalizes any possibility of any economic or environmental strategy other than those proposed through corporate-managed trade.

Nearly all WTO decisions in the past 6 years have gutted any democratic restrictions on trade. The WTO has unilaterally and very effectively lowered all environmental protection, consumer protection, public health, and human rights standards. Even when reasonable standards of protection have been applied equally to all domestic and foreign producers, the WTO repeatedly struck them down deeming them as trade barriers. There are very few protections left to safeguard individuals from poor quality and harmful products.

No longer can environmental destruction, habitat loss, toxic waste production, or the presence of trans genic materials or synthetic hormones be used as the basis to screen or prohibit goods from entering a country.

“GATT dispute resolution panels have ruled that products cannot be treated differently on the basis of how they are produced or harvested. The ability to distinguish among production methods is essential to environmental protection and environmentally sensitive economic policies. A key component to setting sustainable policies is the ability to change the conditions and processes under which goods are produced and commodities grown, harvested and extracted to more environmentally friendly ones. Trade rules that forbid the differentiation between production methods make it impossible for governments to design effective environmental policies.”
    —Lori Wallach & Michelle Sforza, Public Citizen Global Trade Watch.

Am I the only one who missed the vote when we gave over our democratic rights to multi-national corporations? Sorry all you CEOs but, companies must come after and be subordinate to the collective individual sovereignty of Canadians. If not, we have no democracy.

Further Reading on Bilateral Agreements
www.bilaterals.org
The WTO – a force for good , By Felicity McMahon
What's wrong with the WTO? A guide to where the mines are buried, by Peter Costantini

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