Corporations and corporate power

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Ottawa / Washington, D.C. / New York, NY / Mexico City, Mexico—With ratification of NAFTA 2.0 still up in the air in the U.S. and Canada, a new international report contrasts the deeply flawed agreement with proposals for a more progressive and truly fair trade regime.
With ratification of NAFTA 2.0 still up in the air, a new international report looks beyond that deeply flawed agreement to imagine a more progressive and truly fair trade regime. The report, which includes contributions by trade experts and activists from all three North American countries, critically analyzes the USMCA (known as CUSMA in Canada and T-MEC in Mexico) and sets out alternatives that would give priority to human rights and the rights of nature over corporate rights.
(VANCOUVER) What do Suncor, Encana, the Royal Bank of Canada, the Fraser Institute and 46 other companies and organizations have in common? They are among the entities that make up the most influential fossil fuel industry players in Canada. Today, the Corporate Mapping Project (CMP) is drawing attention to these powerful corporations and organizations with the release of its Fossil-Power Top 50 listing, along with a publicly accessible database of the larger Canadian fossil fuel industry that maps its connections to the wider corporate sector in Canada and globally.
REUTERS/Nick Didlick For the last decade, oil and gas industry supporters in media, civil society and government have honed a populist narrative revolving around two core arguments: 1) Fossil fuel development is vital to the national economic interest.
Illustration by Scott Shields
Canada is addicted to oil. Like all addictions, ours is debilitating. It has erased the line between state and private industry (thin as that line is in most countries), stifles our politics, and is holding back local, provincial and national preparations for a world without fossil fuels. Curing our addiction to oil and gas will take time and money, and historic levels of Indigenous–federal–provincial co-operation. But it absolutely has to happen—starting now.
This report, which is published with PowerShift e.V., examines the threat to precautionary environmental, consumer, public health and labour policy arising from regulatory co-operation and "good regulatory practices" (GRP) chapters within the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA or USMCA), and the rebooted U.S.-EU negotiations toward a transatlantic free trade deal.
Surveillance capitalism is a large undertaking. A technical one. Sensors in our homes and on our bodies connect to towers and cables running to massive computer centres doing the data processing. A built world meant to collect, command and control our habits, and vested in a few companies.