Comment
Readers are invited to address letters to The Editors, Report on the Americas, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 454, New York, NY 10115. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Conquest of...
...These fungicides, applied by workers with leaky backpack sprayers and no protec- tive equipment, may cause birth defects and perhaps chronic damage to the nervous system, in addition to cancer...
...Because of free trade, the Canadian government brought in the GST, which has consumers paying $4 billion in taxes formerly paid by corporations...
...In three years of free trade, 65% of job losses were the result of permanent closures...
...The risk of poisoning is highest among young workers, and children under 16 years of age accounted for 15 to 20% of poisonings during the latter half of the 1980s...
...In Nicaragua, surveys conducted by the Ministry of Health in 1988 and 1989 show that 12% of small farmers in the country's principal agricultural re- gion (the departments of Leon and Chinandega) reported being poisoned at work during the previous year...
...pressure a few years ago...
...to competitive pressure from the United States...
...More disturbing, weapons, vehicles and other materiel used to "control" the local residents are often made in the United States...
...There are 22 oil companies among them, British Petroleum, U.S...
...Campbell says he is opposed to the Bank of Canada's high interest-rate policy...
...At one point, the Canadian bank interest rate was an astonishing seven points higher than the Federal Reserve rate...
...Well, job losses in the lumber industry means to me that we are chopping down our forests more slowly, not necessarily a bad thing...
...Office of Occupational Health Le6n and Chinandega, Nicaragua Rob McConnell, M.D...
...A lower dollar would presumably increase those as well...
...University of Washington, Seattle Free Trade Bruce Campbell's "Beggar Thy Neighbor" in your May report [Vol...
...3) A tort suit brought in Texas by Costa Rican banana workers sterilized by the nematocide DBCP may encourage Shell, Dow and others to quit marketing pesticides banned in the United States, because they are known to harm workers...
...The Governor of the Bank of Canada is appointed by, but not answerable to, the government of the day...
...Feliciano Pacheco Antdn, M.D...
...Campbell complains that the FTA leads to lowering of environmental standards...
...And that keeps the price of imports down...
...By comparison, manufacturing employment in the United States has dropped a mere 6.3...
...His main instrument is interest rates, which he keeps up...
...A largely forgotten 1985 Conservative government document anticipated a dislocation of up to 900,000jobs...
...The softwood lumber case underscores the potentially adverse effects on environmental regulation of adjustment pressures stemming from U.S...
...4) CARE requires that alternatives to hazardous pesticides be used in its international agricultural development projects in Nicaragua and elsewhere...
...However, the article hardly mentioned the present-day impact of oil development in Latin America, particularly in the Amazon...
...dollar is inherently more popular than the Canadian dollar, interest rates are normally higher here than there anyway...
...The pesticide chlorodimeform, used widely in cotton cultivation throughout Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, is metabolized in the body to a chemical which causes the risk of bladder cancer in workers to increase by 73-fold...
...XXIV, No...
...Matthew Keifer, M.D...
...Conference on Environment and Development to be held in Rio de Janeiro in June will only be successful if it goes beyond "discussions of environmental problems" to "a profound reflection on the international model of development...
...Ontario and Quebec governments both predicted potential losses of 280,000 and 350,000 jobs respectively...
...Since the beginning of the free trade era, 461,000 jobs, 23% of the manufacturing work force, have disappeared, according to Statistics Canada...
...But the Canadian government persuaded the United States to let it collect the tax, in the form of an export duty, instead...
...The World Bank and other development agencies which have helped promote chemicalintensive agriculture should be required to follow CARE's initiative...
...Finally, regardless of whether one accepts the strong circumstantial evidence that indicates a backroom deal to keep the dollar high, this policy is supported, contrary to Dale's contention, by Canada's premier business lobby, and is reinforcing free trade pressures...
...But there are certainly many other reasons for this unpopularity, foremost among them the federal goods and services tax (GST), and particularly the iron-fisted way that it was rammed through Parliament...
...firms, workers, communities, taxes, government environmental and social standards, etc...
...In this, he is at one with the business community...
...In my view, this is one case where the United States raised our environmental standards for us...
...There is no doubt that environmentalism can be a powerful tool of analysis...
...So the FTA and the high dollar-mutually reinforcing policy instruments in the Conservative government's arsenal-have the same goal: the restructuring and harmonization of the Canadian economy and society in the image of their neoconservative brethren in the United States...
...Nor should this come as a surprise...
...Although the prospect for significant improvement in pesticide policy in the short term is bleak in Nicaragua and throughout Central America, several international initiatives to reduce the use of the most hazardous pesticides deserve our support: 1) The Pesticide Action Network has organized a campaign to ban international trade in 12 of the most toxic pesticides...
...Campbell blames his bete-noire for everything from the Canadian recession (which has happened in the United States too, let us not forget, and in other parts of the world as well) to governmental efforts to trim the deficit on the backs of the poor...
...As evidence of how unpopular the Free Trade Agreement is among Canadians, Campbell points to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's unpopularity...
...But since the U.S...
...trade legislation...
...And what about the Meech Lake Accord, high interest rates and the recession itself...
...As Daniel Faber points out in "A Sea of Poison," the abuse of pesticides in cotton cultivation in the Pacific coastal plains of Central America has exacted a heavy ecological and human toll...
...now we have to figure out what to do, locally and globally...
...An estimated 5,000 workers of the region's 650,000 people required medical treat- ment...
...Sinai Medical Center, N.Y...
...Linda Rabben Rainforest Foundation Washington, D.C...
...21, gave an excellent history of mining and its impact on the environment up to the present...
...If the previous tax, the manufacturer's sales tax (MST) on Canadian-made inputs, had been left intact under free trade, transnationals, most of whose trade is intra-firm, could simply have evaded the tax...
...The war we are currently waging against indigenous people and the rain forest ecosystem for oil is no less atrocious than the Persian Gulf War...
...In Latin America, even elite politicians are making this point...
...Before free trade, the Canadian government could offset these ill effects with tariffs and content requirements...
...It seems inevitable that political activists will try to make alliances with environmentalists as the connections between systematic impoverishment and environmental degradation become more stark and overwhelming...
...And he quotes lumber industry sources (hardly,I would think, reliable ones under the circumstances) alleging that this tax ("as well as the rise in the Canadian dollar") is the cause of what they claim is a high number of job losses in the industry...
...The collapse of employment is most dramatic in manufacturing...
...The U.S...
...And then there is the government's ham-fisted attack on the deficit at the very time (in the midst of a recession) that this should not be on the agenda...
...The current governor, John Crowe, is keen on keeping inflation down...
...Thirdly, during the 1981-1982 recession, 22% of jobs lost were due to permanent closures...
...With respect to Dales's bizarre contention on softwood lumber, that blatant U.S...
...A PrudentialBache Securities document noted the importance of bringing in the GST in a free-trade environment dominated by transnationals...
...In addition, many pesticides which do not result in immediate poisoning may cause a wide variety of chronic diseases...
...What is surprising is the speed at which the restructuring is taking place...
...XXV, No...
...High interest rates bring foreign money into the country from places with lower interest rates and consequently keep the dollar higher than it would otherwise be...
...Secondly, manufacturing lost 150,000 jobs in 1989 alone, long before the formal onset of the recession...
...This would have raised the price of Canadian-made inputs relative to inputs imported from the United States, and consequently the cost of production would have risen...
...control over provincial forest management plans and the weakening of reforestation efforts...
...Their operations are protected by the military...
...These facts indicate a restructuring driven by free trade, superimposed on a cyclical downturn...
...Shell, Arco and Unocal in the Ecuadorian Amazon alone...
...The president of Brazil, a neo-liberal trapped by the system he is trying to reform, recently declared that the upcoming U.N...
...Dale attributes the government's unpopularity to the GST, not free trade, but is unaware that this tax was clearly linked to the trade deal...
...Conquest of Nature Elizabeth Dore's article, "Open Wounds," in your September report [Vol...
...The United States, which charges lumber companies hefty "stumpage fees," saw the provincial government policy as an unfair subsidy, and threatened to impose a countervailing duty...
...6] is a particularly good example of the low level of political discussion on free trade that we endure these days...
...Near Lago Agrio in Ecuador, contamination of the watershed area from oil waste and spills has damaged more than seven million acres...
...Campbell complains about the 15% softwood lumber export tax, which our government imposed under U.S...
...But he also complains vehemently against foreign takeovers of Canadian companies...
...It is an agenda which Dale, despite his pretense of value neutrality, apparently supports...
...The author is against high interest rates and the high dollar because he thinks that a lower dollar would increase exports...
...lan Dale Ottawa, Ontario Bruce Campbell replies: The current Canadian economic crisis cannot be dismissed as simply the result of international recession...
...The construction of roads in previously inaccessible areas of rain forest resulted in colonization and deforestation that has destroyed another 13 million acres...
...In "The Conquest of Nature," the scholars have provided a framework for action...
...Environmental Protection Agency has proposed severely restricting use in the United States of maneb and mancozeb, two fungicides used in vegetable cultivation throughout Latin America, because food residues pose an unacceptable risk of cancer to consumers...
...2) Senator Patrick Leahy has introduced the"Circle of Poison" legislation, which would prohibit the export (and subsequent reimportation as residues on imported food) of pesticides which cannot be used in the United States...
...Indeed, I think it was precisely the FTA that got the Conservatives elected to their second term, however erroneous the expectation among ordinary Canadians that this agreement would allow them togo shopping in the United States without problems at the border on their return...
...But just because he doesn't like this policy doesn't mean that it is extraordinary or inexplicable, or that "a backroom deal with the United States may be responsible...
...The high dollar and the FTA both force fundamental economic and social restructuring by exposing the Canadianeconomy (i.e...
...Susan Meeker-Lowry Catalyst Montpellier, Vermont With the end of the Cold War, environmentalism may be the new paradigm that will replace "economism" in both national and international political arenas...
...It seems dishonest to imply that all those people who are against Mulroney are against him because of the FTA...
...The issue arose because provincial governments, especially the one in British Columbia, charged the lumber companies nothing, or next to nothing, for cutting down trees, feeling apparently CON TINUED ON PAGE 14 VOLUME XXV, NUMBER 4 (FEBRUARY 1992) that the forests are an unlimited resource which should be provided free to any company that wishes to knock them down...
...New evidence indicates chronic injury to the brain results from poisoning with organophosphate insecticides (chemical cousins to nerve gases used in chemical weapons), which cause most poisonings in Latin America...
...infringement of Canadian sovereignty was somehow good for Canada and good for the environment, let me quote the Canadian Environmental Law Association: "The provision in...the softwood lumber memorandum for 'replacement measures' leads, in British Columbia and Quebec, to U.S...
Vol. 25 • February 1992 • No. 4
