Here are a few recent stories regarding NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), followed by some background information.
NAFTA Toll-Highway Destroying Prime Agricultural Land
excerpt from the article: The Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) is its official name. Critics call it the NAFTA Highway. The publicized TTC is being treated as a regional story because of the disruption to Texas farmers and other property owners.
The TTC is no ordinary highway. The toll road would be four football fields wide. It includes separate lanes (up to six for automobiles, four for large trucks), plus tracks for freight trains, separate tracks for high-speed and commuter rail, also space for oil and gas pipelines, electricity wires, and broadband transmission cables.
The implications of this scheme are staggering. Some experts say that up to a million people in Texas stand to lose their homes and 584,000 acres of rich farm and ranchland are to be destroyed, all for a privately funded highway. Of course, this is not the first time property-owners did battle with highway builders. That in itself is getting lots of media attention, but almost entirely in the regional/local media. At first glance, one might say this is a local story, so why should it go national?
But suppose you were told that this “highway” (to be built largely by foreign investors) could serve as the starting point for a much larger plan whose end result would be to erase the borders (figuratively if not literally) between the United States, Mexico, and Canada? Wouldn’t you be curious, no matter where you live? The national media isn’t interested…
Mexican Food Prices Up, NAFTA at Fault
Mexico, Jan 22 (Prensa Latina) Mexican authorities and university researchers confirmed on Monday that national crisis of alleged corn supply and increased prices of other products is a hint of what s to come with NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement).
The rector of Chapingo Autonomous University, Sergio Barrales, pointed out the situation in the country is the first impact of the step toward free trade, and warned problems will worsen, because effects are already national.
Though this state of affairs had been predicted, its sudden appearance was not expected and Federal Executive measures to stop the price rise are palliative.
If the country s course is not corrected, there will be serious shortages of food, Barrales warned.
If that happens, he noted, it will certainly lead to social instability, because problems turn serious when there is hunger, and Mexico experienced that during the 1910 Mexican Revolution.
Current difficulties with corn respond to the real effects of international dependence on supplies of basic grains. However, the academic questioned a true lack of corn because the current harvest was good.
Investor uses NAFTA to sue Ottawa over landfill site
Excerpt: A Pennsylvania investor has served notice that he intends to use NAFTA to sue Canada for $355.1-million, alleging that Ontario unfairly shut down a plan to have a former provincial iron mine serve as a landfill site for Toronto garbage.
Vito G. Gallo, the U.S. investor, alleges in a notice filed with the federal government that the Ontario government’s 2004 move to ban dumping at the Adams Mine site was tantamount to expropriation.
He’s arguing Canada breached the controversial Chapter 11 of the North American free-trade agreement, a section that allows investors in Canada, Mexico and the United States to sue other NAFTA member governments if their investments have been unfairly damaged by law or regulation.
Further Reading
Background information on NAFTA at citizen.org
Detailed information and Campaign against ‘NAFTA-Plus’
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