|
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Mexico City, Montreal, Ottawa, Washington, June 18, 2009
CIVIL
SOCIETY NETWORKS FROM NORTH AMERICA APPLAUD LETTER TO PRESIDENTS
FROM LEGISLATORS’ TASK FORCE ON RENEGOTIATING NAFTA
The four civil
society networks from North America promoting fair trade over ‘free
trade’ – the Alliance for Responsible Trade (United
States), Common Frontiers (Canada), the Mexican Network of Free
Trade and the Quebec Network on Continental Integration - welcome
the initiative taken by Legislators who are part of the Task Force
on Renegotiating NAFTA, to send a letter to Prime Minister Harper
and Presidents Obama and Caldéron. In this letter the Legislators
state “Fifteen years since the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) entered into effect, it has become obvious that many of
the promised benefits of the agreement have not come to be”.
The civil society networks support the call by the Task Force on
Renegotiating NAFTA for a “new, people-centered fair trade
model”.
The four North
American networks have been collaborating for several years in advancing
proposals for the renegotiation, or outright abrogation, of the
failed NAFTA. A recent example of these joint efforts can be found
in the document “NAFTA Must be Renegotiated; A Proposal from
North American Civil Society Networks” (http://art-us.org/node/334.).
We intend to
continue collaborating with the Legislators who make up the Task
Force on Renegotiating NAFTA because it is very important to engage
the Congresses in Mexico and the United States and the Parliament
in Canada in a thorough evaluation of the impacts of NAFTA 15 years
after it was implemented. We also intend to continue working on
alternative trade models designed, as the Legislators state in their
letter, to “safeguard sovereignty in the three countries”
and to “bring widespread prosperity and development to our
continent”.
The letter sent
to Harper, Obama, and Calderon by the Task Force on Renegotiating
NAFTA is an excellent step in building a different North America,
where “free” trade is not placed above peoples’
social, economic, cultural, and environmental rights.
For further
information please contact:
Rick Arnold, Common Frontiers: Tel. (905)-352-2430; comfront@web.ca
Normand Pepin, RQIC: Tel. (514) 292-9973; pepinn@csd.qc.ca
Marco Antonio Velásquez, RMALC : Tel. 011 (52) (55) 5356-0599;
rmalc@laneta.apc.org
Tom Loudon, ART-USA: Tel. (301) 699-0042; toml@quixote.org
The letter from
the Legislators can be found at www.commonfrontiers.ca
|
