Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and the Summit of the Americas, recently suffered a small PR crisis. Some observers have accused the Summit of offering multinational corporations easy access to attendees. To be fair, not just any old multinational can to jump into the game. This honor was bestowed upon those smart enough to become event sponsors. A mere $75,000 was the price tag for a coffee break, a bargain compared to the $320,000 the Bank of Nova Scotia dished out to sponsor a gala evening reception. Mr. Chretien challenged the assumption that this amounted to “privileged access” by noting that the multinationals would be “present with hundreds and hundreds of other people at the reception”. What he failed to mention was that the ‘other people’ would consist almost exclusively of trade ministers and government officials from the Western hemisphere.

The goal of the Summit (scheduled for April 18-22 in Quebec City) is to build the text for a hemispheric-wide free trade agreement, otherwise known as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The FTAA is the name given to an expansion of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) to include nearly all of the countries in the western hemisphere. The FTAA would apply the NAFTA model of increased privatization and deregulation hemisphere-wide under the guise of ‘free trade’.

FTAA talks began in 1994 when trade ministers from 34 nations began negotiations. By 1998, they had set up an oversight committee and nine working groups to tackle the areas of agriculture, services, investment, dispute settlement, intellectual property rights, subsides and anti-dumping, competition policy, government procurement and market access. Secretive negotiations have been held regularly between trade ministers from North, Central and South America and the Caribbean to hammer out disputes between countries. Text from these negotiations and meetings have never been made available to the public. The agreement is to be complete and implemented in 2005, but the Bush administration favors an earlier deadline of 2003. It is also expected that the President will ask Congress for fast track authority to negotiate free trade agreements. In fact, U.S. Trade Representative, Robert Zoellnich, called gaining fast track authority his “top goal”.

Because FTAA negotiations are occurring in secret, there is only speculation as to details of the agreement. However, NAFTA has provided some clues about what to expect:

• A series of commitments to \"liberalize\" services. This category includes education, health care, environmental services, postal services and anything else we consume but isn\'t a physical object.
• A potential \"back door\" for the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, through \"investor-to-state\" suits. These allow corporations to sue governments directly for the removal of public health and safety standards or laws, which may cost corporations more in operating costs.
• An expansion of NAFTA\'s corporate protectionism rules on patents. These rules would give pharmaceutical corporations with a patent in one country the monopoly marketing rights to the item throughout the region. With this, a corporation can block production of generic versions of drugs.

The Summit of the Americas is just the beginning. Thousands of fair-trade activists will be hosting their own receptions in Quebec City that, unlike the Summit, are open to the public. Instead of being welcomed with open arms, activists will be expected to stay outside the 4-mile long, 12-foot high fence that has been erected around Summit meeting sites to protect Summit attendees from.…what? Public debate? Scrutiny? Given the secretive nature of the negotiations, we may never get an answer to this question. What is known, however, is the estimated costs for Summit security: 45 million dollars. With no corporations ponying up to become a ‘security’ sponsor, expect this price tag to be charged to the public.

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