Dear Editor:
Re: Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement CETA
It is now less than one month until the municipal elections in B.C. None of our local politicians have made the CETA an election issue.
I know that the Burnaby council and the UBCM have passed resolutions and lobbied the federal government to exempt municipalities from CETA.
The effects of the CETA will be a significant threat to the concept of democracy at the local level. Decisions regarding buying locally produced goods or food, pollution control, local job creation, control over our water supply services, health care and many more will be subject to the new CETA rules.
If some European corporation thinks that it has lost future profits as result of a city decision, then that corporation can sue the city, province or Canada for those theoretically lost profits even if the decisions are in the public interest.
The suits will be decided by a non-elected "trade dispute resolution panel".
I would have expected municipal politicians of all stripes to have been raising this. But no! The federal and provincial governments have been very quiet about these negotiations with Europe and hope to complete the deal by year's end, so this may be the last chance for British Columbians to become informed and tell their local politicians to object.
Paul Bjarnson, Burnaby
