Canadian Review of Social Policy (CRSP) / Revue canadienne de politique sociale (RCSP)

Mok, Henry T.K.

Public Pensions in South Korea and Taiwan: Coping with the Financial Burden

Girard, Claude

Le Qébec post-référendaire et l'aide sociale: Vers un droit à l'insertion respectueux du droit international?

Swanson, Jean

British Columbia

Moscovitch, Allan

English

Canada Health and Social Transfer: What Was Lost?

Dumaine, Fraçois

Follow-up to the World Summit for Social Development: Canada's Response to the UN

Clark, Tony

Round Up Tour d'Horizon 
International Tony Clark 
Polaris Institute, Ottawa 
Social Charters and Free Trade 
The Politics of Contradictions 
As the US Presidential election race heats up down south, the debate over 
free trade is suddenly being resurrected. Four years ago, Ross Perot led 
the charge with a blistering critique on the economic and social impacts of 
NAFTA. While both Bill Clinton and George Bush essentially campaigned in 
support of the NAFTA deal, the Perot challenge forced Clinton to distinguish 
his position from that of Bush by calling for the addition of labour and 
environmental side-bar accords. Although the side-bar accords proved to 
be mainly cosmetic devices, they were enough to put Clinton over the top 
in the 1992 election. 
Four years later, a similar scenario may be emerging. With Pat Buchan- 
an leading the charge in the primaries, anti-NAFTA sentiment was stirred 
up to an almost fever pitch, particularly among American workers, most of 
whom traditionally vote Democrat. Once again, this poses a dilemma for 
Bill Clinton. Both he and his Republican opponent, Bob Dole, are stalwart 
champions of NAFTA and free trade. To distinguish the Democrats from the 
Republicans (and to stave off a potential challenge from Ross Perot again), 
we may well find Clinton calling for a modest renegotiation of NAFTA to 
include some form of social charter. 
The idea of incorporating a social charter in comprehensive trade agree- 
ments has been around for some time. The European Common Market, for 
example, includes a social charter designed to protect basic labour and social 
standards in its member countries. Unfortunately, the European experiment 
has demonstrated the limitations more than the benefits of a social charter, 
largely because of the lack of built-in enforcement mechanisms. More re- 
cently, labour and citizen movements in each of the three NAFTA countries 
have begun to put increasing priority on promoting a form of social charter 
as a means for renegotiating the continental free trade regime. 
To date, the proposals for the inclusion of a social charter in NAFTA 
have been focused on ways of ensuring and protecting basic labour, so- 
cial and environmental rights and standards. In theory, a social charter 
would serve to curb the negative effects of free trade by providing basic 
standards for the operations of transnational corporations and investment 
No. 37, 1996 85 
under NAFTA. In effect, this would mean that the guarantee of free market 
access to foreign-based corporations in all NAFTA partner countries would 
be contingent upon the recognition of basic labour standards (e.g., public 
health care, education, social assistance, etc.) and environmental standards 
(e.g., pollution controls, export quotas on natural resources, etc.) 
To move in this direction, however, is to engage in the politics of con- 
tradiction. After all, free trade deals like NAFTA were, first and foremost, 
designed to be a bill of rights and freedoms for transnational corporations. 
Their prime purpose is to provide transnational corporations with free ac- 
cess to domestic markets (in this case, the Canadian market), unfettered 
by government intervention and regulation. Thus, the "national treatment" 
clause in NAFTA guarantees that foreign investors in Canada have the same 
rights and freedoms as Canadian firms while the "investment codes" en- 
sure that certain regulatory measures in Canada (e.g., foreign investment 
requirements, export quotas, job content, local procurement, and techno- 
logical specifications) will be removed. 
To incorporate a comprehensive social charter would fly in the face of 
the central core of NAFTA. Each of the main components of NAFTA- 
the investment code, national treatment clauses, the resource code, the 
cross-border services clauses, the intellectual property rights code - are all 
designed to remove restrictions to the free flow of capital. The number 
one priority here is to create a "level playing field" for the movement of 
investment, goods and services. If any labour, social and environmental 
standards are to be maintained under this model of free trade, they will 
be based on a lower rather than a higher common denominator among 
the participating countries. A social charter, without strong enforcement 
mechanism, would likely serve to enforce, rather than reverse, the trend 
towards lower labour, social and environmental standards here in Canada. 
Take, for example, our publicly funded, universal health care system. 
While the federal government maintains Canada's Medicare system is fully 
protected under the "public purposes clause" of NAFTA, the US govern- 
ment and its profit-oriented, mega-health care corporations have a different 
reading. Unless health care services are fully government-funded and op- 
erated, they are subject to the investment rules of NAFTA. In effect, this 
means that a wide range of services which have been partially privatized 
or commercialized under our public health care system here in Canada- 
including community health clinics, diagnostic services, cataract operations 
and X-ray labs- will soon be subject to takeover by US corporations under 
the provisions of NAFTA. In other words, the inclusions of a social clause to 
protect these basic health services may well prove to have been ineffective. 
It remains to be seen, of course, whether Bill Clinton tries to woo way- 
ward Democrats fired up by Pat Buchanan's anti-NAFTA attack (or Ross 
86 No. 37,1996 
Round Up/Tour d'Horizon 
Perot's subsequent challenge) through calls for the inclusion of a social char- 
ter. If so, the proposals will, more than likely, be cosmetic. After all, a 
comprehensive social charter with strong enforcement mechanisms would 
undercut the very core of NAFTA itself, namely the investor's code. More- 
over, both Clinton's and Dole's campaigns for the presidency will, in all 
likelihood, be heavily bankrolled by the same transnational corporations 
who, under the auspices of the US Business Round Table, brought us NAFTA 
in the first place. And since they, in turn, are among the 500 corporations 
which now control over 70 per cent of global trade in goods and services and 
the 350 of these that own half the total stock of direct foreign investment 
throughout the world, we can be assured that every effort will be made to 
see that any social charter proposals for the renegotiation of NAFTA are 
merely cosmetic devices. 
If labour and social movements in Canada, Mexico and the US (as well 
as Chile) want to press for a renegotiation of NAFTA based on a social 
charter strategy, the package would be a comprehensive one with strong 
enforecement mechanisms, aimed at prying open and dismantling the core 
elements of the deal. In the end, this would be a more productive use of 
the politics of contradiction. 
Disabilities Judy Lux 
Disabled Persons Community Resources 
Quality of Life for  Persons with Disabilities: 
A Building Code Issue 
In January 1996, the Harris Government released "Back to Basics: A Con- 
sultation Paper on the Focus of the Ontario Building Code". It states that 
"the Government of Ontario has made a commitment to return Ontario 
to prosperity9'.l The consultation paper proposes to do so by eliminating 
accessibility requirements in buildings in order to cut development costs. 
The recommendations in this consultation paper appear to reflect the sen- 
timents of large and small builders who have expressed concern that "the 
balance between public goals and cost-effectiveness of the Building Code 
has, in some cases, shifted" .2 These builders are concerned that some of the 
present Ontario Building Code requirements add extra expense to build- 
ing costs. 
The Ontario Building Code Act was first passed in 1974 and since then 
barrier-free access provisions have been broadened twice including changes 
in 1986 and 1990. The consultation paper "Back to Basics" proposes to set 
the clock back and eliminate more than twenty years of progress towards 
No. 37, 1996 87 


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Public Pensions in South Korea and Taiwan: Coping with the Financial Burden

Le Qébec post-référendaire et l'aide sociale: Vers un droit à l'insertion respectueux du droit international?

British Columbia

Canada Health and Social Transfer: What Was Lost?

Follow-up to the World Summit for Social Development: Canada's Response to the UN

International

Editorial/Éditorial

The Unconscious Civilization, by John Ralston Saul

Labour

Welfare Consequences of Unification for East Germans

143

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