Rating: NNNNN
quebec city — on thursday there’s
dread among the scribes covering the official Summit. What are we going to get out of this? On Friday afternoon we have the answer.
In a perverse way, journalists from around the world are relieved that there are riots outside, because there’s little news inside except for the daily offerings of background briefings and pre-packaged announcements that are as predictable as the luncheon and dinner buffets.
When the melee breaks out on the Summit’s opening, I’m heading back to the media centre from a meeting where citizen organizations have been discussing how to get the 34 governments assembled here to do more about human rights, the environment and social inequality.
But, it turns out, I’m not going anywhere. Buildings have been locked down. While I’ve been listening to groups like Amnesty International and Oxfam Quebec collaborate with government officials about how to get their issues on the leaders’ agenda, the air outside has filled with tear gas.
Officials fear that opening doors will allow gas to get into the ventilation system. So, nobody out, nobody in.
For two hours I sit in a windowless sports bar in the bowels of the Place Quebec shopping centre with Canadian armed forces personnel on break taking in the coverage on RDI, the French-language all-news channel. They watch three screens of action, cheer as their guys try to fend off masked attackers and “oooh” as anti-capitalist avengers haul down sections of the infamous perimeter fence.
I am not sure who to cheer for. On the one hand, it’s not hard to see the wildness in the streets as poetic justice for a politician who opposed free trade in opposition but became a fervent backer of it when he entered the office of PM, where he remains without being able to communicate any reason for being there. His only project is the continuation in office of Jean Chretien.
In a bid to ensure that some news comes out of the largest international diplomatic event ever held in Canada, the government has announced that discussion of a democracy clause will be the main event here.
But reporters are skeptical. At one briefing, a senior official explains that the punishment for any country that reverts to the bad old days of dictatorship will be exclusion from ongoing affairs of the hemisphere.
“There will be consequences,” he says. “Ministerial meetings to develop action plans to discuss environment, defence and other types of issues — you name it — will not be relevant any more to a country that prefers dictatorial rule to democracy.”
One journalist turns around and says to his colleagues, “Whoopee, they won’t be able to go to meetings.”
The issue the public has come to associate with the Quebec Summit is the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a pact between the countries of the hemisphere that would allow them to conduct business as if they were one.
On this crucial matter there are reasons for opponents of the pact to be both optimistic and pessimistic.
The opening ceremonies on Friday night — delayed for more than an hour because of the tumult in the streets — make it vividly clear that the leaders of the hemisphere come in all shapes and sizes. For example, Chilean president Ricardo Lagos, a middle-of-the-road social democrat who took over from Augusto Pinochet, keeps coming back in his speech to the phrase “social justice,” adding at one point, “Let us acknowledge that we know very little about how to achieve social justice.” Of course, there’s lots of such acknowledgement here, sympathetic nodding and gentle cooing of concern.
There’s more of it Saturday afternoon, when members of civil society organizations gather in the same room where presidents and prime ministers met earlier in the day. This gathering comes with its own baggage of controversy and expectation. Some organizations, the Canadian Labour Congress among them, have decided to boycott the meeting, concluding that it would be immoral to desert the protestors and cross the barricade to chew the fat with trade ministers.
But 60 reps have shown up. The symbols of power — the elaborate floral arrangement, the oval table that dominates the ballroom of the Hilton Hotel — give the session an air of importance. The biggest question here is who will show up with Canada’s International Trade minister, Pierre Pettigrew. Will it be only his Canuck colleagues, with whom NGOs have met many times, or have the Canucks been able to cajole colleagues from other countries to submit to a 90-minute haranguing?
Surprisingly, U.S. treasury secretary Robert Zoelleck, a member of the Bush cabinet, shows up, as does the head of the World Bank, along with 20 ministers from Central and South American countries. But it’s one thing to appear, and another to agree with the central theme of the discussion — that trade deals should be used as an opportunity to make the world a better place.
“How many people in Latin America care about a democracy clause?” asks one NGO questioner. “(Economic) growth has increased inequality. Would you be willing to add a clause outlawing inequality?”
There’s an awkward pause. No one seems to want to answer. “Minister Pettigrew, I see you have your hand on the button,” suggests Toronto MP Bill Graham, who’s chairing the meeting. It appears the minister was just stretching, not reaching for the switch on his microphone.
Alas, there are no takers. “It is not the market on its own that can redistribute wealth,” says Pettigrew. “You cannot at the hemispheric level decide what policies are adopted at the sovereign level.”
Providing political backup for Pettigrew, Zoelleck claims to be shocked that powerful countries would tell weaker ones what to do. “I’m not used to being asked for the United States to interfere in the affairs of other countries,” he says.
The minsters’ words will be cold comfort to the 50 per cent of the hemisphere who live in poverty. Many of the poor are indigenous people, notes Matthew Coon Come when I run into him the morning after the first day of protests. He’s looking for some native recognition in what he regards as the inevitable Free Trade Area of the Americas.
“Indigenous people will be directly affected by anything that happens with natural resources. That’s the last frontier.”
Coon Come sees government not as the enemy but as a potential ally when indigenous people come face to face with rapacious resource-extraction companies that have their eye on petroleum and minerals on native lands. Through regulation, our elected representatives can force corporations to be more socially responsible.
Learning to see government as an ally and not an enemy will be the biggest challenge of the post-Summit period. As the final statement of the People’s Summit states, “The democratic state should be a tool for society to use to address the economic and social problems the market cannot solve.”
So now that the Summit is over, maybe demonstrators should look for an election campaign, because government is too important to leave to the Liberals.
glennw@nowtoronto.com
Daily newspapers’ estimate of the number of protestors: 25,000
Unions’ estimate: 60,000
Number of protestors arrested: 463
Number of journalists arrested: at least 4
protest trail
Daily newspapers’ estimate of the number of protestors: 25,000
Unions’ estimate: 60,000
Number of protestors arrested: 463
Number of journalists arrested: at least 4
