It's “the most ambitious plan of its kind in history,” boasts Canada's international trade minister Ed Fast, as Conservative cabinet ministers hit cities across the country today to market Canada's impending free trade deal with Europe. Media declared the push as a "political war."

And yet the public knows almost nothing about the secret negotiations -- except that they are in their final stages, to be completed this year. 

Failing to safeguard resource in CETA negotiations shows private firms our water is on offer.

European trade negotiators are in Ottawa this week to continue talks with their Canadian counterparts toward a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). According to most accounts, the negotiations are winding down with differences in only a few areas. In Davos last week, at the World Economic Forum, Prime Minister Harper repeated his desire to have a deal in place by the end of the year.

The world is running out of a lot of raw resources.

From fish in the sea and old-growth forests to minerals, conventional energy and freshwater, ours is a planet needing great care.

While scientists and environmentalists warn us that we have to preserve and protect the natural world with more local, sustainable food and industrial production and more local, alternative energy sources, most of our governments are pursuing free trade agreements that promote faster and bigger transportation grids, carve up more wilderness for exploitation, increase the volume of sheer "stuff" coming from ever-farther-away places, and tear through declining energy and water supplies.