Negotiations on a treaty to govern international investment have been put on hold for the next half-year as politicians try to take stock of the impact of noisy public opposition.
Negotiations on a Multilateral Agreement on Investment were supposed to be completed at a Paris meeting last week.
Instead, a number of governments expressed opposition to deadline pressure and backed away. It was agreed talks might start again in November.
Opponents of the MAI, who described the process as secret negotiations to give “big money” investment rights and to diminish government ability to set rules, celebrated the suspension of the talks.
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But an official of the National Farmers Union, which fought the MAI as part of a coalition of Canadian labor and social activist groups, said last week the fight is not over.
“I don’t think it’s truly dead,” said NFU executive secretary Darrin Qualman. “They have announced a six-month delay but even if it doesn’t come back in this form, I believe we’ll find some of the offensive parts of the MAI surfacing in other agreements.”
Alternate plan
He said groups that have fought the official agreement may start to work on a proposed alternate code for regulating the flow of investment dollars. He said it could include minimum corporate taxes and a tax on currency transactions.
“We are not against international investment rules,” he said. “But we think the MAI was bad.”
Some opponents have called the proposal a “charter of rights for capital.”
In Canada, there were concerns that such an agreement would limit the government’s ability to set rules for foreign capital and could risk the market position of such agricultural institutions as marketing boards and the Canadian Wheat Board.
Defenders, including the Reform party opposition, called this fear-mongering. They said it would be good for Canada to have rules that would attract capital.
And the proposals in the MAI would simply extend to the rest of the world the investment rules Canada already has agreed to in the North American Free Trade Agreement.
However, in recent months even the once-enthusiastic Canadian government has been backing away from the rush to a deal.
Trade minister Sergio Marchi has vowed Canada would not sign a deal that had the potential to undermine agricultural marketing boards or cultural industries, among other sensitive sectors.
Last week, he said Canada was more interested in “bottom lines than deadlines” as he supported a suspension of talks.
He acknowledged the opposition of some Canadian citizen groups to the direction MAI talks had taken.
“That is why Canada believes we must all take the time to negotiate rules that will serve our national values and interests,” he said in a statement released in Paris April 27. “Canada will only sign the right agreement at the right time.”
