The Council of Canadians, Winnipeg Chapter, is spearheading a local campaign to keep Manitoba out of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). The final round of negotiations finished in mid-October in Ottawa, and there is a big push from proponents to get the agreement signed. Nationally, the focus is on Manitoba as the best hope to withdraw from CETA and thereby prevent its completion.

CETA must be stopped because if signed, it will:

• threaten our democracy by putting corporate rights first
• encourage privatization of Canada’s drinking water and wastewater services
• threaten local job creation and buy-local policies
• cause Canadian prescription drug costs to skyrocket by at least $2.8 billion each year
• open public services to bids by huge multinationals and lead to privatization
• allow big corporations to challenge environmental regulations

You can help stop CETA! Please call, email, write or visit your MLA and City Councillor. Tell them you want Manitoba kept out of CETA. Even if you don’t know very much about it yet (it’s been negotiated in secret so you’re not the only one), you can check out a document produced by Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Manitoba Office, that explains it very well. If you have specific questions about CETA, you can email them to canadianswinnipeg@gmail.com for more information.

CETA will change everything – and once it is signed, we can never go back.