Mar del Plata, Argentina — Prime Minister Paul Martin told leaders at the official Summit of the Americas recently that the key to fighting poverty and creating jobs is to expand free trade agreements throughout the hemisphere.

I was in Argentina with a Canadian Labour Congress delegation of more than 50 attending the other summit, the People’s Summit of the Americas. This meeting of community, labour and NGO leaders from the Americas was in no way eclipsed by the destructive acts of a few. At its best, the People’s Summit was a message of hope delivered by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to a crowd of 30,000 (according to La Capital newspaper in Mar del Plata).

Poverty in the Americas has skyrocketed to 200 million people in part because of policies from the World Bank and World Trade Organization led by those who now seek to expand free trade agreements. Chavez and other speakers made it clear that the way to end poverty was not more of the same, but with new independent initiatives by free and democratic governments acting in the best interests of their citizens.

I was inspired by Chavez and disappointed by Martin. Canada has been a dogged proponent of free trade agreements since the 1980s. Remember the promise of “jobs, jobs, jobs” and “more money in your pocket” that would flow with free trade? No doubt Martin will also be bragging about Canada’s low unemployment rate, now the lowest since the 1970s.

The problem, according to Statscan, is that the jobs being created are increasing part-time, low wage jobs in the service sector. Last year we lost 128,600 jobs in the manufacturing sector. A high Canadian dollar, fuelled by the rise in energy prices, is just another nail in the coffin of our manufacturing sector that free trade agreements have already substantially undermined.

Canada has one of the most open markets in the world. We encourage corporations to come in and sell in our market and put almost no obligations on them to manufacture here. If a foreign car manufacturer wants to sell in Canada without creating a single job here and erode the market share of the companies that do create jobs here, they can go right ahead.

If a municipality wants to take Canadian tax dollars for public transit, sidestep all the Canadian bus manufacturers and buy buses in Belgium, they can do so without restrictions, just like York Region did earlier this year. If Wal-Mart wants to end contracts with Canadian suppliers and stock its stores with products from China: no problem.

Canada is a trading nation, as we must be. No nation can or should be a trading island. The question is what form that trade will take, and who will it benefit. The path we are on with Martin’s free trade agreements is again turning Canada into a nation of hewers of wood and drawers of water. Even the fur trade is making a comeback.

Worse though, these unfair trade agreements lock Canada into arrangements that prevent our governments from acting in the best interests of Canadians. Chapter 11 of NAFTA locks Canada into compensating corporations for hypothetical lost profits if a government chooses to intervene in that sector of the economy. It also locks us into supplying oil and gas to the U.S. even if Canada doesn’t have enough for our domestic use. Will our water be next?

What Canada was supposed to get in exchange for all this was unfettered access to the U.S. market and a procedure for resolving trade disputes. We’ve seen how well that procedure worked with softwood lumber. The U.S. government is going to act in the best interests of their own industry, and Canada can’t do a thing about it.

Since the beginning of the free trade era, gains made in our society from medicare to unemployment insurance to public education to labour rights have been eroded. The market is primary. We are told “be competitive or die.”

Increasingly, “competitive” means to compete with the lowest wages, human rights and environmental conditions anywhere in the world. How can Canadian producers compete with Mexicans in the maquilla zones making $5 a day? Some other Latin American countries pay even less. And China is growing by leaps and bounds. No problem there with pesky human rights, labour or environmental standards.

Free trade will only increase poverty in the Americas. Just ask working people in Canada — where poverty levels have been stubbornly unchanged — the U.S. or Mexico if they are better off with free trade. They will answer with one unanimous voice: no.

The only choice we are offered by our governments is more of the trade agreements championed by George Bush.

There is an alternative — another Americas is possible.

What if we decided that economies should serve people instead of the other way around?

What if, instead of racing to the bottom in the name of “competitiveness,” we respected both social and labour rights?

What if governments found the courage to once more act in the interests of their citizens instead of just pretending to at election time?

Take the time to read and compare the platform of the Official Summit of the Americas with the platform of the People’s Summit of the Americas. Which one would you vote for?

Peggy Nash

Peggy Nash is a senior negotiator with the Canadian Auto Workers union, a former Member of Parliament and the President of the Federal New Democratic Party. She blogs on political and economic affairs....