Our motivation in petitioning Leicester City Council is that, as
various studies conducted in the UK, Europe and Canada show, CETA
represents a serious threat to the ability of local governments to
make decisions in the interests of their citizens. In
particular:
• CETA would create special corporate courts where big
business can sue elected bodies if they legislate or regulate in
ways that might curtail a corporation’s projected future
profits. In the Investor Court System (ICS) judges are appointed on
a case-by-case basis and on an hourly pay. Given that only
corporations can initiate procedures in the ICS (governments
can’t use it to sue corporations), it follows that judges
would have a vested interest in ruling in favour of corporations in
order to encourage more cases. Germany’s largest association
of judges and public prosecutors Deutsche Richterbund has said that
“neither the proposed procedure for the appointment of judges
of the ICS nor their position meet the international requirements
for the independence of courts.”
• The ICS would work as a deterrent to discourage national and
local governments from making decisions that that might attract
multi-million lawsuits from well-funded corporations.
• CETA would further remove the provision of public services
from democratic control. It is explicitly meant to reduce
regulation on business using nebulous language and elastic concepts
such as “fair and equitable treatment” and licencing
procedures that are “as simple as possible” and do not
“unduly complicate or delay” corporations’
activities. Regulations that protect the environment, employment
rights, public health, food safety, communities and public services
would be likely to land the national or local government that dares
imposing them into trouble.
• Under CETA, local governments would be subject to local
procurement commitments that would bar them from favouring local
companies and local economic development. This would substantially
restrict local governments from using public spending as a catalyst
for achieving other societal goals – from creating good jobs,
to supporting local farmers, to addressing the climate
crisis.
• CETA poses a great threat to the environment and to the
elected bodies’ ability to protect the communities they
represent: amongst the Canadian companies that have been pushing
harder for CETA are the mining, fracking and drilling companies
that have already sued other countries, under other trade deals
with provisions similar to the ICS, for passing legislation to
protect their environment and communities. For example, Gabriel
Resources is suing Romania for putting on hold the company’s
planned gold and silver mine in Rosia Montana on environmental
protection grounds, and TransCanada is suing the US for $15 billion
in damages because President Obama rejected the Keystone XL
pipeline, again on environmental protection grounds. In the UK, the
current government is ignoring local communities’ opposition
to fracking: CETA would give them an even stronger hand or prevent
other governments from reversing such policies by making such
reversal a breach of contract and therefore hideously
expensive.
• CETA would also expose the UK to lawsuits from US
subsidiaries domiciled in Canada, including Walmart, Google, IBM,
ExxonMobil, McDonald’s, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Coca Cola
and many others.
• Supporters of CETA claim that the deal will benefit
investment and trade, but they back the claim with outdated figures
from 2011 and 2013, which were generated before the deal was even
drafted. The truth is that no cost/benefit analysis has been
carried out, nor have the more recent data been used to make a
better assessment.
CETA has been negotiated in secret between Canadian and EU business
and political leaders, with no input from civic society. Liam Fox,
who claims to be working to wrest sovereignty back to the British
Parliament from the EU, has denied our Parliament any opportunity
to scrutinise
This ePetition ran from 01/02/2017 to 01/03/2017 and has now finished.
3 people signed this ePetition.