The Summit of the Americas

One of the biggest news stories on the Canadian and World scene has been the Summit of the Americas which will take place later this week in Québec, PQ. Thirty-four heads of state or government will be there from: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, St. Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, United States of America, Uruguay and Venezuela.

What about Cuba? Well due to "their current government" they were excluded from any OAS meeting. Is it really about democracy or the country's views on Freer Trade or is it their relationship with the US Government?

Whereas free trade would help corporations for sure, the opinion on weather it would help the little people is divided. Those that believe it doesn't are amongst the 30,000 protesters at Quebec. They point to the fact that free-trade would put corporations above the government as it does in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Liberal government we have now, is a pro-NAFTA government but is against the clause which permits corporations to sue governments if ELECTED-governments pass laws which could hurt corporations financially or might have made more profits if a certain regulation wasn't in place. The organisers of the Summit have put fences kilometres away from the meeting place (at the Citadel) to prevent demonstrators from getting too close to the summit. This precaution is actually the reason many protesters are actually going, it violates their constitutional rights.

Now, back to the summit, its goal is to create, as the official site (www.americascanada.org) says "a gran familia of intererelated states" which means that the Americas will become, in a sense, something ressembling the European Union, where there will be Economic and social prosperity in the entirety of the Continents (with the exception of Cuba).

The Summit's site shows the issues at hand, politically such as the role of the democratic prossess, human rights, poverty and Corruption to Health and Education, as well as on an economic level, looking at the final touches of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a document similar to the FTA or NAFTA but with all of the Americas.

Anyway, the information on the site may be more than I've written about here, but it appears to be no more than political blah blah, saying that yes there is poverty and yeah its bad that there is but we'll get rid of it after we talk about it, yet we can't really tell you how.

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