From: Joseph Catron (joseph@mutualaid.org)
Date: Wed Oct 16 2002 - 15:04:01 EDT
In November 2002, students across North, Central and South America will be
taking action against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The FTAA
is the name given to the process of expanding the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to all other countries of the Western Hemisphere
except Cuba. With a population of 800 million and a combined GDP of $11
trillion (US), the FTAA would encompass the largest free trade zone in the
world, with a scope that will include almost every area of life for the
citizens of the Americas.
The massive protests at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec city in 2001
were successful at raising the public’s awareness about the FTAA and
particularly the “closed-door” aspects of the negotiations. Even so, much
more is needed since our governments continue to pursue the FTAA. Students
have been at the forefront of the anti-corporate globalization struggle,
we must continue taking action for positive change. Corporate
globalization is undermining students’ access to quality public education.
It’s no coincidence that since the signing of the Free Trade Area (FTA), a
free trade agreement between the US and Canada in 1989, university tuition
has skyrocketed across Canada. Between 1990/91 and 2000/01, tuition rose
126.2 per cent, or six times faster than the 20.6 per cent rise in the
rate of inflation during the same period. For Quebec residents, average
undergraduate tuition has increased by approximately 100 % from $902 in
1990/01 to 1,800 in 2000/01. Out-of- province tuition has increased much
faster and is now approaching $5000 a year.
Cuts to public spending in education, healthcare and social programs are a
direct result of the corporate globalization process.
One reason why tuition has increased since the signing of these agreements
is due to the fact that they weaken the Canadian government's ability to
tax and spend. Corporations, and wealthy individuals who own the vast
majority of company shares, demand lower taxes (such as the elimination of
a 5% surtax in 1999 on six figure salaries by then Minister of Finance
Paul Martin) to ‘compete’ for investment with lower taxed countries. One
byproduct of lower corporate and high-income earners’ taxes, is that
governments spend less money on public universities, thereby making
tuition more expensive and restricting access. These tax cuts benefit
primarily those with high income, while those of low income such as most
students, don’t have a social net to fall back upon.
Not just Students under attack
The FTAA is essentially a Corporate Charter of Rights that will negatively
impact many sectors of society. Already, since the signing of the FTA and
NAFTA, organized labour and workers in general are feeling downwards
pressure on their wages. Companies increasingly threaten to move their
capital investment to “friendlier climates” if workers unionize. Stats
Canada data recently shows that the bottom 75% of Canadian families saw a
drop in their wealth between 1990 and 2000 (the top 25% saw an increase of
14%).
Political democracy is also under attack by the FTAA. Negotiations thus
far, have not been open to public debate. Similarly, civil society groups
have not been consulted whereas over 500 large corporate representatives
in the U.S. alone have already been consulted.
The FTAA will also accelerate environmental degradation. Countries vying
for investment are already dropping their environmental standards to
attract private capital investment. The FTAA will only increase this trend
as member countries ‘race to the bottom.’ The FTAA’s dogma of profit over
people will lead to declining wages, and the errosion of democratic and
environmental standards for the vast majority of the people in the
Americas, therefore creating even more economic inequality than currently
exists.
Teachers are not tools!
Corporate globalization agreements such as NAFTA, the WTO and the FTAA are
part of a worldwide shift towards corporate domination of all sectors of
society, including education. Worldwide education expenditures now exceed
$1 trillion a year. The U.S. is currently the world's leader in exporting
education and training services, garnering $7.5 billion in revenue in 1996
for American educational exporters alone. Corporations from around the
world want to provide these services for profit and are therefore lobbying
hard to increase private sector control in the education sector.
Students are not Products!
The FTAA could turn public institutions, such as education and healthcare,
into commodities and products to be bought and sold for profit. The
‘products’ in this case are termed ‘services’ and they are labeled a
‘sector’ of the economy. Examples of such ‘products’ include: courses,
degrees, and even educational institutions. How the FTAA is currently
being negotiated would entrench one of the most harmful aspects of the
World Trade Organization (WTO), The General Agreement on Trade in Services
(GATS). The goal of the GATS is to liberalize international trade in
services, which means to gradually phase out all so-called barriers to
international competition in the services sector. A barrier can be a
‘tariff’ (border tax) or ‘non-tariff’ (any law, practice or policy deemed
to restrict competition and trade). The GATS specifically targets
subsidies and taxation measures as trade barriers.
Universities are not Factories!
The goal of the GATS is "a progressively higher level of liberalization"
through "successive rounds of negotiations." Under the GATS, public
funding and equal access to post-secondary education are in danger for two
important reasons: 1.Because education is not excluded from GATS due to
the fact that under the rules being proposed public funding falls under
the definition of a barrier. 2.In these agreements, investors from other
countries, who view the communities as numbers on a page not as living
entitites, are to be treated in the same way as local investors, this is
termed ‘National Treatment’. The principle of ‘Most-Favoured-Nation’ opens
up the resources and industries of all nations to investors, regardless of
their human rights or environmental abuses in their own countries. The
goal of the FTAA is to apply the rules of ‘National Treatment’ and
‘Most-Favoured-Nation’ to all the services that a country requires. This
extends as far as the domains of education and healthcare, domains that
are still protected in some countries. These rules will effectively
prohibit citizens from engaging in a dialogue to develop economic policies
in the public interest. The regulation or elimination of tuition fees FTAA
will destroy Public Education
Under the FTAA once for-profit universities have been established in
Canada degree-granting authority will have to be given to any private
for-profit education companies, to ensure compliance with ‘National
Treatment’ and ‘Most-Favoured-Nation’ rules. By simply following the
rules, these foreign-based corporations will have rights that limit
government policy under Canadian law. Foreign investors will have the
right to establish themselves in any FTAA country; they will have the
right to compete for public dollars with public institutions like colleges
and universities. Even worse, from the moment a public service is
privatized, the FTAA rules will make it close to impossible for citizens
to reclaim public space and retreat from privatization initiatives because
foreign investors will have the right to sue Canadians for compensation
for lost current and future profits.
Because international trade agreements require that public and privately
delivered services must be treated in the same manner by government,
public funding for higher education is in jeopardy. Either the public
‘subsidy’ would have to be removed, or both public and private
institutions would have to be funded equally. This would result in less
funding for public institutions. The regulation of tuition fees by
government is viewed as a predatory pricing practice by proponents of free
trade. The consequence will be higher user fees, as governments move to
de-regulate tuition fees in line with the binding stipulation outlined by
the WTO and other trading bodies. In essence, WTO advocates view the
principle and practice of public education as a trade barrier. Across
Canada many governments have already de-regulated tuition fees for
professional and post-diploma programs. Tuition fees for some programs
have tripled in less than three years, while fees for some programs were
hiked to over ten times the cost, over a ten year period. Studies show
that the trend towards higher tuition fees has corresponded with an
overall decrease in enrollment for women, immigrants and the poor. By
de-regulating tuition fees for certain programs, governments have set the
stage for private institutions to charge outrageous fees for these
programs.
Trade Agreements are a global manifestation of corporate power. The
external forces seeking to corporatize Canadian universities are real.
However, these forces cannot be separated from national forces, which are
pursuing trade agreements in the hopes of laying the groundwork for
expanded corporate involvement in Canadian universities. With each round
of cutbacks in post-secondary education funding, corporations move another
step towards running them for profit, as they claim there is ‘no
alternative.’ When governments under-fund higher education, institutions
must turn to the private sector to make ends meet. This phenomenon has
resulted in the corporatization of campuses throughout Canada. Examples
include everything from corporate advertising agreements to corporate
sponsorship in research. By under-funding public institutions, provincial
governments have created a niche market for the corporate benefactors.
Corporations are now being given free, or very low cost access to
state-of-the-art facilities. The corporations thus win on two fronts; they
have access to our universities and it requires very little capital
investment on their behalf as the infrastructure has already been paid for
by public monies.
Corporate globalization must be stopped!
Globalization is a word that has come to mean little. It is important that
we distinguish between the economic and the humanistic forms of
globalization. Technological sharing and expansion can be beneficial to
all humankind. Likewise, the integration of people and sharing of cultural
knowledge across national boundaries can be a progressive phenomenon.
However, the current form of globalization is an economic form
overwhelmingly dominated by the narrow spectrum of corporate interests.
For example, NAFTA allows trade and investment to cross borders freely,
yet the movement of people including those fleeing political persecution,
is restricted. A genuine globalization agreement would not restrict
students from studying anywhere in North America at the local price.
Genuine globalization should not favour profit over people.
The FTAA will have detrimental effects on students throughout the
Americas. The process of corporate globalization has already had harmful
effects on students in the south. Students there have witnessed similar
attacks against public education, and have already shown their opposition
to corporate globalization on many instances. In 2000, 200,000 students
from the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) went on strike for 8
months against a fee levy that had been pursued by the Mexican government
in compliance with the corporate globalization process. Because of our
common interests, students across the Americas will be standing up to the
FTAA and the process of corporate globalization throughout the fall
semester. Times and actions will differ throughout the hemisphere, yet we
will all be standing together saying no to the FTAA.
The current negotiations for an FTAA are another step towards entrenching
corporate globalization. Over the past 13 years, the corporate
globalization has left students with higher tuition costs and reduced
access to public education. Let’s not let this process continue. Let’s
stand in solidarity with students and peoples’ from all across the
Americas and say “NO” to the FTAA in November. Something can be done. As
students we have historically played a central role in movements for
change. This is still true today. The FTAA threatens the environment,
human rights, democracy, social programs, and promises to increase
economic inequality throughout the Americas. In Canada skyrocketing
tuition and the FTAA threaten to privatize higher education, making it
less accessible. For people across the hemisphere, it is urgent that we
take action.
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