Currently, international trade is neither free nor fair. Trade rules allow rich countries to pay large subsidies to a small number of companies to export food. These policies encourage over-production, destroy the livelihoods of millions of poor farmers in developing countries and hurt the environment.

We need trade justice so:

• Poor countries can protect small farmers and staple crops
• Governments can access affordable medicine and maintain public services
• Trade rules support, rather than undermine, human rights and environmental protection.

Canada can take action in international trade agreements:

• Press for trade and investment rules that ensure governments and their citizens can choose the best solutions to end poverty and protect the environment.
• Support measures that boost farmers' power in the marketplace and that bring an end to the dumping of goods, which damages the livelihoods of poor rural communities.

FAQs

What does trade have to do with poverty?

In a word: everything. International trade connects countries and people to global markets. This can be positive by providing new markets for business and access to goods, services and investment that contribute to jobs and growth at home. It can also overwhelm local economies with unfair competition, unwanted corporate exploitation and damage to the environment. The terms of a country’s connection to global markets make all the difference. All countries need linkages to the global economy, but they must have the power to choose, with their citizens, the terms that are appropriate for their own development needs, and chart their own development path and policies. Current negotiations on trade rules are power games that force poor countries into accepting policies that are good only for a handful of bigger countries and the commercial interests based there.

What is the World Trade Organization (WTO)?

The WTO is the international body responsible for negotiating and implementing new trade agreements, and it is in charge of policing member countries' adherence to all the WTO agreements.

There are 151 member countries that negotiate throughout the year on trade issues, but many poorer nations are excluded from key meetings and discussions. In fact, more than 30 developing nations have no representation whatsoever at the WTO. Other poor countries have only one negotiator, with the impossible task of attending over 1000 WTO meetings a year.

The WTO launched a round of negotiations in 2001 under the Doha Development Agenda that was supposed to address trade concerns of developing countries but to date has not been successful in reaching any meaningful agreements that would help poor countries.

What is Canada’s record on trade justice?

Overall Canada’s trade policies are more development-friendly than those of some other rich countries such as the United States or those in the European Union.

One example of good Canadian trade policy is that on patents. Canada was the first developed country to change its patent laws to ensure the availability of generic drugs for poor countries. But it has not followed through with regulations that would facilitate export of generic drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS.

At the beginning of 2003, Canada extended duty- and quota-free access for exports from Less Developed Countries, with the exception of dairy, poultry and eggs. In extending this access, Canada took specific steps to ensure that this access was not hampered by excessively complicated rules of origin.

Canada also has a number of schemes for enhanced market access (through lower than usual tariff rates) for specific groups of developing countries, but these schemes have generally exempted the same three products above, as well as textiles and clothing.