Globalization debate

I want to close the external context of this introduction by moving away from internal Canadian issues, and addressing the pressures that globalization is putting on our membership and the society in which we all live.

It is not something that the PSAC has paid a lot of attention to since the Free Trade Agreement—and even then, we were far removed from the cutting edge—but it’s an issue that we need to address, because while the effects of globalization on our members are hard to identify, and even harder to explain, globalization has had, is having, and will continue to have exceedingly negative implications for our members.

As I see it, there are two levels of globalization that are of considerable concern to us.

The first level, the formal structures, the MAI, the GATS, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, are easy to identify. They are visible, command news, inspire demonstrations and have the look and feel of an organized offensive. Collectively they are a threat to everything from third world development to public health care. We had members and staff in the streets of Seattle last fall—that’s great. But we were not in the game nationally. The opportunity still exists, and we need to seize it because the international bureaucracy, and the policies that it is championing pose a serious risk to the services that many of our members provide, and all of them use.

The second level is less visible, but no less insidious. Like it or not, we are living in a world where borders have evaporated at least for—to borrow a phase from the 60’s—the ruling class. Our proximity to the United States ensures that political campaigns, right to work campaigns and the like cross the border at a fairly fast rate. In a few short days, we will find out if the Republicans re-capture the White House. If Bush wins the election, we can expect to see more of the pro-business, anti-labour agenda that defines his home state work its way across the border.

And it’s not just the United States that we have to fear. Diseases like individual contracts and other workplace experiments from New Zealand, Australia, Europe, and elsewhere find their way to Canada like zebra mussels, Dutch elm and other diseases from the physical realm. This is not surprising, if you go through the government phone directory, you would find a substantial list of Directors General, ADMs and the like who have spent a few years on secondment to other governments. So the cycle never ends. They go to observe, and what they bring back is seldom anything but problematic for working people.

Earlier this week, the AEC approved a research project with CUPE and NUPGE on the implication of the GATS on health care services. It’s a start to a process designed to reintegrate the PSAC into the globalization debate. And let there be no mistake, we need to be reintegrated, because while it may appear that globalization is focused on the private sector, part of the agenda, a large part of the agenda, is reducing, restricting, and perhaps eliminating sovereignty, and the government’s ability to act. In concrete terms, it will almost assuredly increase privatization. It’s an outrage and undemocratic, and as a representative body of public sector workers and as a socially progressive organization, we need to be involved.

As luck would have it, the next Summit of the Americas is in Québec City in the spring of 2001, and I would very much like it if the PSAC were a significant player in the international opposition to what they are trying to do. Make no mistake, GATS represents an attack on public services the world over, and it is destined to have a pronounced and long lasting impact on our members.

So I would like us to do more on the globalization front. It is one of the items on the NBoD agenda for next year, either January or May depending on what we can do vis-à-vis the next government, so again, all staff at the regional and national levels who can take a look at the impact of globalization on the work they do will be doing us a great service.