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OpEdNews Op Eds    H1'ed 10/10/15

Transnational Corporate Rights Override Human Rights And "Life Capital"

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Canada is in denial of her true self. We have been co-opted by a globalized corporatocracy.

This chosen self-negation is exacting a heavy toll. We have arguably lost our democracy, and our much of our sovereignty, in addition to cultural pluralism, biodiversity, and economic self-determination.

The facilitator of this "corporate coup" is a toxic mental landscape.

Transnational corporations and their political lobbyists wilfully co-opt the language of human rights as a subterfuge for retrograde supranational agreements that deny democracy, as well as economic and cultural self-determination. We are daily bombarded with false terms such as "free trade" and "private sector" to the point where we internalize (subliminally?) incorrect meanings.

Ubiquitous "free trade" rhetoric implies freedom and prosperity even as it delivers the opposite. Protectionist agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) enable the outsourcing of labour to authoritarian regimes where human and labour rights are much lower. The movement of capital is protected and deregulated as jobs, public health, environmental, cultural, and human rights disappear.

Investor-state laws effectively subordinate a country's economic and political self-determination when international and domestic laws or regulations are perceived to be an impediment to corporate profits. Unelected supranational arbitrators make decisions and the public is often left paying the bill. Stuart Trew, trade campaigner with Council Of Canadians, explains in John Bonnar's article, Toronto activists oppose Trans-Pacific Partnership and corporate globalization: "Within all these trade deals there is an investor rights chapter that lets companies sue countries when they feel their profits have been harmed, ... giving corporations more rights than anyone else in this country and any other country."

Trew cites Calgary's Lone Pine Resource's lawsuit against Canada as an example:

"(Lone Pine Resources) first disclosed last week that it intends to sue the Canadian government for at least $250-million under NAFTA's Chapter 11, which allows investors from the U.S. and Mexico to take government policies or actions that hurt their interests before a panel of arbitrators, (Globe and Mail, Nov. 22, 2012.)

"In its notice of intent, Lone Pine charges that the government's move, 'without a penny of compensation,' violates NAFTA's provision that companies facing expropriation should be reimbursed. Lone Pine also charges that Quebec's move unfairly preempts the conclusion of the province's ongoing study on the safety of fracking.

"The Quebec government's move to cancel a natural-gas exploration permit for deposits beneath the St. Lawrence River last year was 'arbitrary, capricious and illegal,' according to the U.S. energy company challenging the move under the North American free-trade agreement."

(Lone Pine Resources is incorporated in Delaware, U.S, a known tax haven, but has its headquarters in Calgary.)

The "private sector" rhetoric implies independence and freedom, yet it is highly socialized -- the 2008/09 bailouts would be a case in point -- by the public sector. Additionally, as public funds flow into the "private" sector, corporations return the favour by capturing legislatures and engineering self-serving laws and regulations -- or the absence thereof -- to entrench their monopolies and their anti-public behaviours. Bruce Livesy explains in "Tax Dodge: Gildan Activewear" how Canada's Gildan corporation avoids paying taxes: "By moving its factories overseas, Gildan managed to cut its Canadian tax rate down to nothing in the past four years, despite earning profits of $95 million in 2009, $196 million in 2010, $224 million in 2011 and $144 million last year."

Currently there is a host of anti-democratic corporate-power agreements being negotiated behind closed doors, including the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Foreign Investment Protection Agreement (FIPA) with China, the CETA, as well as agreements with India, Japan, Honduras, and South Korea. Each of these (largely secret) deals promises to enrich and empower foreign investors to the detriment of local economies and public spheres. Outcomes, such as those resulting from the 20-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), will likely include and exacerbate some of NAFTA's symptoms, which are:

* increased inequality between rich and poor nations

* increased inequality within rich and poor nations

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author's website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this (more...)
 

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