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free trade
The Evidence Is Indisputable: Canada Does Not Uphold International Law
It is up to us to challenge the government's dangerous misinformation and demand that the government support binding international laws that protect the well-being of people and the planet.
Jul 01, 2024
Does Canada uphold binding international law? The answer is No.
The Canadian government repeatedly tells the world that Canada upholds an international rules-based order that is the basis of democracy.
What the Canadian government says is not true. The evidence that it is not true is indisputable.
When the Canadian government says it supports the rule of international law, it is referring to its support for international "free" trade rules that override democracy, increase corporate power, and harm the environment.
There is widespread concern that social media is putting out misinformation, that this practice is dangerous and harmful and should be challenged. What about when our government puts out serious misinformation that is dangerous and harmful? Should that not be challenged? What do you think?
I'm not talking about trivial matters. I'm talking about extremely serious issues where the health and survival of people and the planet are threatened. And I'm not talking about pretty words. The Canadian government excels at that. I'm talking about our actions. When words and actions contradict one another, it is the actions that speak the truth. In fact, it makes Canada's role more destructive because it is dishonest. What do you think?
If the Canadian government told the truth, it would say that Canada does not uphold binding international laws that protect human rights and the environment. What the Canadian government means is that it upholds international trade agreements that enforce the interests of powerful private corporations, override democracy, and harm human rights and the environment.
Does that make sense to you? Does that reflect your values? Is that the world you want for your and everyone's kids and grand-kids?
Or does that trouble you like it troubles me?
Another question. If we are a democracy as we claim to be, do you think this should be talked about? It isn't. Why not? I thought democracy meant accountable government. Do you think we should require our political leaders to state where they stand on this issue and hold an open discussion with Canadians as to whether this is what we, who they supposedly represent, want—i.e. a discussion that is not held behind closed doors and under the influence of powerful vested interests and their paid lobbyists, as is the way that Canada's policy on human rights, the environment and, corporate power is typically decided?
Canada, right now, is blatantly violating binding international human rights law
Binding international human rights laws require that, no matter how much economic, military, or political power you (and your allies) have, you are legally bound to obey that law. There can be no double standards. All lives are valuable, even the most powerless, especially the most powerless. Human rights are for all. Otherwise, it is not human rights law at all. It is a sham.
The most serious binding international laws address horrific crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The International Court of Justice investigates and makes legally binding rulings against countries that have violated these laws, and the International Criminal Court makes rulings against individuals who have violated these laws.
Canada has ratified these international laws. Canada is legally bound to obey them and obey the rulings of these two top world courts. But Canada does not. Canada has sabotaged and continues to violate these laws.
For example, Canada lobbied the International Criminal Court to refuse to investigate documented allegations of war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians. This effort by Canada to prevent the rule of law failed, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) proceeded with its investigation. On the basis of overwhelming evidence, the court said it had reason to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as three Hamas leaders, had committed war crimes and that the ICC would be seeking arrest warrants for them.
After failing in its attempt to prevent the rule of law, the Canadian government now refuses to say whether it will, as it is legally required to do, obey the court's ruling. Its pretended commitment to international law is nonexistent.
Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, including Jewish organizations, have challenged the Canadian government to obey international law. The government has ignored their appeal.
Please note that binding international laws that protect human rights and the environment have no enforcement mechanisms.
Former Liberal Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy and former Liberal Attorney General Allan Rock and a group of 375 prominent former politicians and current academics have sent a letter challenging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to express clear support for the ICC ruling. The government has ignored their appeal.
Prof. Heidi Matthews of Osgoode Hall Law School notes that along with a panel of experts in international law who independently reviewed the evidence, the ICC prosecutor concluded there are reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant are criminally responsible for starvation, murder, intentional attacks against civilians, extermination, and persecution, among other crimes.
As Prof. Matthews points out, "This dramatic development marks the first time leaders of a Western allied state have been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the ICC." Apparently, Canada believes that binding international law does not apply to Western allied states.
The U.S. government, whether under President Joe Biden or President Donald Trump, believes that binding international human rights law does not apply to the US. In the past and currently Republican and Democrat politicians in the U.S. have threatened to punish and to arrest the ICC prosecutor and ICC officials if they come to the United States.
Human Rights Watch has written to Canada's Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly May 21, 2024, saying, "We urge Canada, as an ICC member committed to a rules-based international order, to protect the court's independence and publicly condemn efforts to intimidate or interfere with the court's work, its officials, and those cooperating with the institution. Canada should also robustly support the ICC's efforts to advance justice for grave international crimes."
The Canadian government stays silent and does nothing. Its proclaimed commitment to the rule of international law is nowhere to be seen.
The International Court of Justice said that South Africa's genocide case against Israel was plausibly brought. The court has ordered a number of provisional measures. Under the Genocide Convention, Canada is legally required to implement these measures and take all action possible to prevent genocide. Instead, Canada is aiding and abetting genocide by not immediately stopping the shipment of any weapons to Israel.
Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights, along with others, have filed a lawsuit against the Canadian government to stop arms exports to Israel.
Please note that, in addition to the horrific human costs, war has a devastatingly destructive environmental impact. See, for example: " Revealed: Repairing Israel's Destruction of Gaza Will Come at Huge Climate Cost."
Canada supports international "free" trade rules that enforce the interests of corporations.
When the Canadian government says it supports the rule of international law, it is referring to its support for international "free" trade rules that override democracy, increase corporate power, and harm the environment. These "free" trade rules are colonialism in a new disguise, giving "freedom" to exploit and dehumanize Indigenous peoples and populations in the Global South.
The government is providing misleading, deceptive information.
Please note that binding international laws that protect human rights and the environment have no enforcement mechanisms. International trade agreements have enforcement mechanisms, such as secretive World Trade Organization tribunals and free trade panels, which can force governments to pay billions of dollars to corporations and get rid of laws the corporations don't like, such as laws that protect the environment and the rights of Indigenous communities.
Think about that. Trade agreements that protect the huge global power and profits of corporations, such as fossil fuel corporations, mining corporations, and agro-chemical corporations, are enforceable.
Legally binding international conventions that protect the health and survival of people and the planet are not enforceable.
Does that make sense to you? Do you think that we should, if we are a democracy, at least have an open discussion about this?
Right now, for example, the Canadian government together with the U.S. government and powerful agro-chemical corporations (" Revealed: Monsanto Owner and U.S. Officials Pressured Mexico to Drop Glyphosate Ban") has threatened to take legal action against Mexico under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (formerly the North America Free Trade Agreement), if the Mexican government does not abandon its decision to place restrictions on the import of GMO corn and glyphosate.
In January 2023, the Council of Canadians and other organizations wrote to Trudeau and government ministers, stating: "We call on the Canadian Government to back Mexico's plan to phase out GMO corn and the use of glyphosate by 2024. We oppose the use of trade agreements to undermine democratic rights and prioritize corporate profit-making ahead of the needs of our communities."
Farmer associations and environmental and social justice organizations sent a petition to the Canadian government, stating: "We oppose Canada's role in the trade dispute that challenges Mexico's restrictions on the use of GM corn. We oppose the use of trade agreements to undermine democratic rights and prioritize corporate profit-making ahead of the needs of our communities." They asked Canada to withdraw from this dispute. Canada continues to act for the interests of the agro-chemical lobby.
The powerful pesticide lobby organization CropLife Canada stated: "CropLife is pleased that Canada is defending rules-based trade and holding Mexico accountable to the free trade agreement."
Contrary to what the Canadian government states, Canada is serving the vested interests of the chemical lobby, not democracy. Environmental organizations have expressed concern that Health Canada, which is supposed to regulate pesticides to protect human and environmental health, has been captured by the industry it is supposed to regulate and ignores inconvenient scientific evidence. In the same way, Health Canada was captured by the asbestos industry and supported the corrupt information of the asbestos lobby that asbestos can be safely used.
Another example of how Canada is undermining democracy, the environment, and human rights and is instead serving the interests of Canadian mining and resource extraction corporations is Canada's support for an "investor-state dispute settlement" regime (yes, this is indeed a pretty phrase intended to put you to sleep, but what it means is giving enforceable power for corporations to override democracy) in the free trade agreement Canada is currently negotiating with Ecuador.
As University of British Columbia professor of law, policy, and sustainability and former United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, David R. Boyd, stated in a report to the U.N. General Assembly in October 2023, investor-state dispute settlements have catastrophic consequences for the environment and human rights.
Boyd's report provides:
compelling evidence that a secretive international arbitration process called investor-state dispute settlement has become a major obstacle to urgent actions needed to address the planetary environmental and human rights crises. Foreign investors use the dispute settlement process to seek exorbitant compensation from states that strengthen environmental protection, with the fossil fuel and mining industries already winning over $100 billion in awards.
Amnesty International and environmental groups have called on the Canadian government to exclude this investor-state dispute settlement provision, but, as is its practice, the government is serving the financial interests of powerful corporate lobby groups and is violating binding international laws that protect the environment and human rights.
Do you support this? Do you think we should, at least, talk about whether this is the world we want? Does it bother you that the CBC and the establishment media pretend not to see this issue and choose not to challenge the government on it? Supposedly, their role is to hold power accountable, but they do not.
It is up to us to challenge the government's dangerous misinformation and demand that the government support binding international laws that protect the well-being of people and the planet.
We need to care about one another and the planet. We will be happier and safer if we do so.
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What Does the US Farm Bill Debate Need? Rotten Eggs!
To take on the harmful free trade policies that govern much of agriculture, U.S. farmers and their allies could find inspiration from what is taking place in Europe, perhaps going to D.C. to make their voices heard.
Feb 08, 2024
Dumping manure in public spaces, hurling eggs at government buildings, blocking major roads—the European farmers who have taken to the streets to challenge free trade policies sure know how to raise a ruckus.
Their public disruption also produced results.
French farmers, for instance, managed to persuade their nation’s leaders to ban food imports treated with thiacloprid, dedicate €150 million (~$163 million) annually to support livestock producers, and provide European-wide definitions for what constitutes lab-grown meat. German farmers also saw movement in their favor from their lawmakers on fuel subsidies. When protests reached Brussels—where the European Parliament was in session—European Union policymakers announced plans to cushion the blow from Ukraine grain imports and address bureaucratic red tape. Seeing such gains as only the beginning, Spanish, Italian, and Flemish farmers vow to remain in the streets.
Decades of promoting such free trade initiatives have not been kind to farmers, especially in Europe.
Thus far, the protests offer some takeaways for food and farm activists.
Specifically, not only can public disruption trigger real change, but there is room to push back against the disastrous free trade policies that have wreaked havoc on farm economies on both sides of the Atlantic. U.S. farmers and their allies should pay attention, perhaps thinking how to make protest part of our ongoing Farm Bill debate.
In Europe, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)—similar to the Farm Bill in the United States—governs most facets of the continent’s agricultural system, including financial assistance, environmental policy, and the regulation of exports and imports. Beginning in 1962 with France, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands, the arrangement has grown along with the European Union to cover all of the organization’s 27 member states.
CAP policies began to change in the 1990s with the MacSherry and Agenda 2000 Reforms to promote “efficiency.” While Reagan railed against “government cheese” to point out the assumed wasteful nature of U.S. agricultural policy in the 1980s, in Europe, “wine lakes” and “butter mountains” were made into campaign slogans to cut public assistance for farmers.
And cuts took place— from 1980 to 2021, the total E.U. budget dedicated to agriculture went from over 60% to below 25%. Many policies were also eliminated, including export subsidies, production quotas in dairy, and price supports that were coupled to farmer income.
Such changes brought European agricultural policy into alignment with the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) push for states to reduce government intervention into agricultural markets and increase production.
Decades of promoting such free trade initiatives have not been kind to farmers, especially in Europe.
In France, for instance, there were 389,000 farmers in 2020—almost 800,000 fewer than in 1980. Poland, which joined the E.U. in 2004, since 2010 has lost 13% of its producers. Overall, throughout Europe from 2005 to 2020, the continent has seen 37% of its farms go out of business. During that same time, production has grown, as only farms of over 200 hectares (approximately 400 acres) have increased in number.
Meanwhile, the ever-dwindling financial support for European farmers is made contingent on meeting various environmental and labor standards. Put simply, for assistance, farmers must do more to receive less. Aiding, not curtailing ongoing consolidation, 20% of Europe’s farmers—particularly large scale operators in terms of land and production—receive 80% of all payments.
Adding insult to injury, E.U. authorities allowed the import of cheap Ukrainian grain to assist that country in its ongoing war with Russia. This, as supply chain disruptions from that conflict drove up the prices that European farmers pay for inputs like gas and fertilizer. E.U. policymakers also are negotiating a contentious free trade deal with the South American regional trade bloc, Mercosur, which would invite agricultural export giants Argentina and Brazil to potentially undercut European producers.
U.S. farmers have experienced the same toxic mix of free trade promotion and increased concentration.
According to the 2017 Agricultural Census, the largest 4% of U.S. farms (2,000 or more acres) control 58% of all farmland. In 1987, that figure was 15%. Similarly, in 2015, 51% of the value of U.S. farm production came from farms with at least $1 million in sales, compared to 31% in 1991. From 1997 to 2017, about 200,000 farms, or 8% of operations, went out of business.
In terms of deregulation, the 1996 Farm Bill made periodic, ad hoc direct payments the primary way the U.S. government provided financial assistance for producers. Gone, but years later reintroduced in a significantly weakened form, were non-recourse loans that assured farmers a decent income if market prices dipped below a certain threshold. With such loans, decent incomes can be guaranteed without forcing farmers to increase production potentially in environmentally harmful ways as governments purchase products off the market to stock reserves. Dismissed by free traders, reserves can be drawn upon in the event of emergency and to address price volatility and speculation, as commodities can be released onto markets if prices go too high.
To take on the harmful free trade policies that govern much of agriculture, U.S. farmers and their allies could find inspiration from what is taking place in Europe, perhaps going to D.C. to make their voices heard.
In fact, U.S. farmers in the past did so. When free trade was in its infancy back in 1979, thousands of farmers drove their tractors to D.C. to demand policy changes to address rising foreclosures and increases in input costs. These actions inspired the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) to bring activists together in D.C. last year, but mainly to make climate policy part of the Farm Bill.
Now, with the Farm Bill debate continuing at least through September of this year, pricing policy reforms could take center stage. Some farm groups, such as the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) with its dozens of member organizations, have made pricing policy reform central to their Farm Bill platform. In demanding parity pricing, policy instruments such as non-recourse loans could be improved to assure farmers decent prices and dissuade them from increasing production to make ends meet. Addressing concentration is also part of NFFC’s demands, with particular attention to an increased role for the government to finance land access programs and enforce antitrust laws.
Do such proposals challenge free trade? Yes they do, without a doubt. And as European farmers have shown, protest yields results. By adding some popular mobilization into the mix of our ongoing Farm Bill debate, maybe with the occasional rotten egg or manure load, farmers and their allies could push our lawmakers to make real changes for the benefit of our food and farm system. Let’s not just stand by as the people who grow our food endure yet more financial hardship.
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Why Friends of the Earth Marched with EU Farmers
The next European Commission needs to steer the transition of our agricultural and food systems in a fair, just, and climate-friendly way.
Feb 07, 2024
As social justice and environmental activists, we joined the farmers’ protest in Brussels.
We hear the frustrations of farmers who grapple with low incomes, a lack of future prospects, and the consequences of decades of unsustainable policies.
We share their fight for a fairer agriculture system and their call to end the E.U.-Mercosur free-trade deal.
Many farmers’ anger is legitimate. But after years of it being ignored by political leaders, it is now dangerously being exploited by some conservative and far-right parties and agro-industrial lobbies, like COPA-COGECA, trying to shatter green objectives and commitments.
Many farmers are ready for change, but this is incompatible with producing at the lowest prices in a globalised and deregulated market.
Environmental legislation is not the enemy; denying the realities of the climate and biodiversity crises will only intensify the challenges farmers face, from heatwaves to floods and droughts.
The next European Commission needs to steer the transition of our agricultural and food systems in a fair, just, and climate-friendly way.
What we absolutely do not need are more quick fixes and false corporate promises which have already led us to this dead-end.
The Protest Should Not Be Instrumentalised for Backtracking
For over 60 years, European farming policies and subsidies have fuelled the industrialisation of our agriculture, relying heavily on fossil fuels, fertilizers, and pesticides.
More than 80% of subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are still going to 20% of European farms, promoting large-scale industrial production and land concentration.
This model, in addition to its devastating environmental and health toll, traps farmers in a vicious cycle of ever-increasing spending and no guarantee of proper income.
It does however largely benefit big agribusiness and food corporations.
No wonder they have been the ones to orchestrate an intense lobbying campaign against a meaningful reform of the CAP and the European Green Deal’s farming objectives in the last few years.
To now be using farmers’ protests to further backtrack on environmental measures—such as the derogation on fallow land at the E.U. level and the pause on the plan to cut pesticide use in France—is deeply cynical, to say the least.
Agreements Favouring Corporate Giants Are at the Root of the Issue
In several European countries, such as France, Spain, and Belgium, farmers are demanding to stop the E.U.-Mercosur deal and other free-trade agreements currently under negotiation by the European Union.
These agreements also favour corporate giants like BASF, Bayer, and Cargil, and undermine the viability of small-scale, family farmers and hinder the transition to sustainable food and farming systems.
An E.U.-Mercosur deal would further expose European farmers to compete with imported food that is produced with pesticides actually forbidden in the E.U.
Pesticides that the E.U itself is producing and exporting, with disastrous impacts on local populations and the environment. Free-trade agreements weaken local economies, food sovereignty, and peasants’ rights.
That is among the reasons why environmentalists have long been fighting alongside peasant movements against these unjust trade deals.
We Are in Dire Need of a Genuine Transformation
Governments need to address the real issues faced by farmers: fair incomes, workers’ rights, and the shift towards local and agroecological food systems.
Many farmers are ready for change, but this is incompatible with producing at the lowest prices in a globalised and deregulated market.
A genuine transformation of agricultural policies, placing farmers—and especially small and medium-scale farmers—at the forefront of decision-making processes, is essential for this transition to become a reality.
We joined farmers, among which our allies from La Via Campesina, on the streets of Brussels to demand an immediate end to negotiations on the E.U.-Mercosur trade agreement and public support for a real transition to more sustainable agricultural models that benefit people and farmers.
This piece was first published in Euronews.
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