Reply #25: I hate NAFTA. [View All]

[polly7]

Alone among the world's trade treaties, NAFTA allows foreign investors to sue the Canadian government directly if any public policy or governmental action denies them investment or profit opportunities. To date, Canada has been hit by 15 such lawsuits costing more than $18.5 million with another $533 million in claims pending. This is by far the highest among the three NAFTA partners.

Now, a group of 200 private investors led by Arizona businessman Melvin J. Howard is planning to use the NAFTA national treatment mechanism to pry open Canadian medicare -- often described by neoconservatives as "the last great uncracked oyster in the North American marketplace."

In July, Howard filed legal papers to set the suit in motion and is only awaiting the outcome of the Oct. 14 federal election to start negotiations.

Howard and his partners want to open a private surgical centre in B.C. similar to the Cambie Clinic owned by Dr. Brian Day, past-president of the Canadian Medical Association, but are facing what they call anti-American roadblocks in several municipalities.

They are demanding Ottawa reimburse them $4 million in actual costs and another $150 million in foregone profits.


http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1nS5kLKIRxsJ:www.winnipegfreepress.com/historic/33080179.html+nafta+canadian+health&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca

The exemption for health care under NAFTA, which has largely kept U.S. for-profit health corporations out of Canada, applies only to a fully publicly funded system. Once privatized, the system must give “national treatment” rights to American private hospital chains. The NAFTA exemption only applies to medicare as it stood in 1989, and doesn’t provide protection for a possible expansion of medicare into new areas like homecare and pharmacare.

http://www.canadians.org/trade/action/MP_trade.html

Every time I hear of privatization being escalated by any province, it scares the heck out of me.