This is an editorial which I wrote for our paper for the purpose of introducing readers to the issues around the Summit.

A lot of people are puzzled by the upcoming Summit of the Americas,being held in Quebec City over April 19-22, and it’s little wonder.
The complexity of the issues and the propoganda from all sides can be difficult to sort through, but I’m going to try.
The Summit of the Americas is a gathering of the Presidents and Prime Ministers from 33 out of the 34 countries in the Western hemispehere. Cuba is not being allowed to participate because it is not a democratic nation.
These leaders are gathering to negotiate a number of issues. A large part of the Summit and one that has caused the most controversy is negotation over the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a long-reaching document in the works since 1994, whose aim is to cut barriers of trade for goods and services between all of these countries. This means eliminating tariffs on imports and exports and opening up everything to free market principles.
Canada stands to gain economically from this because the high tariffs we pay when exporting or importing from countries down South would be eliminated. Nations like Jamaica however, that rely heavily on tariffs as a source of government revenue, lose out in this respect.
Eliminating trade barriers, according to trade liberalization theorists, is also supposed to encourage more investment and prosperity to poorer countries in the South but opponents argue that without human rights and labour laws in the agreement to protect workers, corporations will have more incentive to set up shop there and further exploit cheap labour and poor working conditions without recourse. It also means that local markets operating in areas of Latin America may be undercut by other countries in the Americas like Brazil, who has a great hold on the textile market.
People will be out protesting in Quebec City because they are concerned that services such as health care and education will be put up as commodities on the free market. They say there is a lack of clarity coming from government leaders in Canada and other nations as to what services will be protected in the FTAA. I’ll clarify.
When countries or provinces privatize services, like the Ontario government’s private universities legislation or the government of Newfoundland’s proposal to export water as a bulk commodity, thosegoods and services (not just in those provinces but for all of Canada) essentially become commodities on the market established under free trade agreements. That way companies within Canada and its trading zone have equal access to investment in goods and services within any partnered country.
This gets complicated because if clauses within the FTAA protect companies from unfair competitive advantages than the power and relevance of a country’s own policies will be drastically undermined. This essentially means that corporations can sue governments and win if they argue that legislation becomes a barrier to free trade. Think it wouldn’t happen? It already has.
Chapter 11 of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) specifies just that. Canada, the U.S. and Mexico signed to that agreement which has had consequences governments never expected. Since then, U.S. corporations have sued the Mexican and Canadian government, settling for millions of our tax dollars claiming that legislation on safety or health regulations on their products or services hindered their trade. Look up examples such as Metaclad in Mexico and Ethyl in Canada (to whom we gave 19.7 million tax dollars).
Besides negotiations for the FTAA, leaders at the Summit of the Americas are also negotiating a democracy clause that will set the basis for how trade, environment, labour and social protectionism will be carried out. They will be essentially defining democracy and its terms for the 800 million people (including you and I) living in the Americas. Though over-arching human rights principles exist under the U.N., they are rarely effective and many claim need to appear within the terms of these free trade agreements.
Canadian government background papers emphasize the inevitablity of globalization and stand by the notion that free trade is the way for all countries to prosper. The papers identify cooperation with the Americas over the accessibility of technology, transnational criminal activity and a collective commitment to the rule of law and human rights. They also outline a commitment to making democratic institutions “more transpaprent in their dealings with citizens.