Government ministers and Canadian trade officials have avoided saying just how much the tentative deal on Buy American preferences is worth to Canadian suppliers. As the details of the agreement begin to emerge, the reasons for this reticence are becoming clear.
The agreement gives Canada fleeting access to a sliver of the U.S. stimulus package. Canadian businesses will get to compete for $US 4-5 billion worth of projects. This amounts to less than 2% of the $275 billion of procurement funded under the Recovery Act. The rest falls outside the scope of this agreement.
International trade and investment, deep integration
OTTAWA—The tentative Buy American deal fails to gain a meaningful exemption for Canadian suppliers from provisions in the U.S. stimulus package while permanently curtailing provincial and municipal procurement sovereignty, says a new analysis of the deal from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
“The agreement is highly unbalanced and provides significantly better access for U.S. suppliers to the Canadian procurement market than for Canadian suppliers to U.S. stimulus projects,” says senior CCPA trade researcher Scott Sinclair.
Affordable access to food, pharmaceuticals, and scientific advancement is essential for the well-being of Canadians and society in general. Intellectual property (IP) protection is one area or policy that has the ability to jeopardize this access. Unfortunately, the policies that govern IP—the regulations that set out how this property will be protected and for how long—are being set with corporate interests as the priority.
Despite the Conservative government’s hopes for a quick deal, prospects for an exemption from the Buy American procurement preferences in the recent U.S. stimulus legislation have faded. Unfortunately, the bad news doesn’t stop there. The deal now in the works may actually prevent Canadian provincial and municipal governments from preferring local goods or suppliers and from using government purchasing as a policy tool, while leaving Buy American policies in place.
OTTAWA—Ongoing negotiations between Ottawa and Washington over Buy American laws may give away provincial and municipal procurement sovereignty, says a new study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
According to the study, by CCPA trade researcher Scott Sinclair, the agreement now in the works would leave Buy American policies intact while permanently binding Canadian provincial and municipal governments under World Trade Organization (WTO) government procurement rules which could prevent them from preferring local goods or suppliers.
OTTAWA – Des négociations en cours entre Ottawa et Washington au sujet des lois sur l’achat américain pourraient céder la souveraineté des provinces et des municipalités sur les marchés publics, affirme-t-on dans une nouvelle étude dévoilée aujourd’hui par le Centre canadien de politiques alternatives (CCPA).