Special Summit of the Americas: Multi-stakeholder Meeting Ottawa, December 16, 2003

On December 16, 2003, the Department of Foreign Affairs held a multi-stakeholder meeting in order to:

• provide civil society organizations with updated information on the preparations for the Special Summit;
• debrief participants on the Hemispheric Trade Ministerial Meeting, held in Miami, November 20, 2003,
• and provide a space for dialogue on the three themes of the Special Summit.

Bill Graham, Minister of Foreign Affairs, received the recommendations and conclusions of the participants and responded to questions and concerns raised. The day-long event was co-chaired by Marc Lortie, Assistant Deputy Minister, Americas, and Guillermo Rishchynski, Vice-President, Americas, Canadian International Development Agency.

Approximately 50 non-governmental experts attended this event, along with government officials from the various departments involved in the implementation of the Summit mandates. Marc Lortie opened the discussions by providing an overview of what has been accomplished in the hemisphere since the Quebec City Summit, in April 2001.

Governments of the hemisphere have made significant advances in implementing Summit mandates, such as the negotiation of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, different sectoral processes overseen at the Ministerial level, important progress in the fight against corruption, strengthening of political parties, and so forth. However, many challenges have arisen in the region since the Quebec City Summit: political uncertainty, serious challenges to democracy, financial and economic crises, all of which pose obstacles to the encouragement of growth, investment and social development.

It is because of these new challenges that Canada proposed to the countries of the hemisphere that leaders regroup at an extraordinary session of the Summit of the Americas, to reinject momentum and direction in hemispheric integration. Guillermo Rishchynski, recently appointed Vice-President, Americas, at CIDA, said a few words on the role of CIDA in implementing Summit mandates. It was also an occasion for him to meet with many of these experts and groups for the first time.

Free-Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)

Following this introduction, Claude Carrière, Associate Assistant Deputy Minister for Trade, Economic and Environmental Policy, offered a debriefing on the 8th Hemispheric Trade Ministerial Meeting held in Miami on November 20, 2003. Mr. Carrière pointed out that Miami had been successful, mentioning that Ministers reaffirmed their commitment to conclude by January 2005 a comprehensive and balanced agreement that will expand prosperity and foster economic growth throughout the hemisphere, but also on a more flexible approach to the negotiations. The proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), while progressing on its own track, is an integral part of the Summit process because it can generate the growth necessary for governments to address key issues such as employment, good governance and the improvement of social safety nets. Canada strongly believes that all countries will benefit to the extent that we succeed in negotiating an agreement which is balanced, comprehensive and high quality in nature.

After this intervention, the discussion was launched and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) outlined some of the main results of Inter-American Conference of Ministers of Labour and inquired about the inclusion of labour rights into a Free-Trade Area of the Americas. CLC also presented a document prepared under the auspice of the Trade Union Technical Advisory Council (COSATE). They argued that market liberalisation has resulted in as many job losses as they were gains and that the results of the Miami meeting could provide useful ground to review the FTAA project and ensure the establishment of programmes aimed at providing assistance to workers adversely affected by trade liberalisation.

The Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL) gave a brief summary of an on-going project to follow-up on some of the Summit mandates (Americas-wide Summit Follow-up Project). The project, undertaken among 21 countries, is currently assessing progress made by the region's governments in the areas of access to justice, freedom of expression, access to information, civil society participation and strengthening local governments since the 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City.

Discussion groups and roundtable with Minister Graham

Three discussion groups were organized in order to generate an exchange among the participants and provide concrete and realistic recommendations on each of the Summit themes. Minister Graham received the conclusions/recommendations of each of the discussion group.

Discussion Group 1: democratic governance. Discussions focussed on the issues of corruption, the Inter-American human rights system, political parties, and funding issues. The group presented the following conclusions/recommendations:

Corruption:

• Strengthening the Follow-up Mechanism to the Inter-American Convention on Corruption. Short-comings of the mechanism include: slow pace of review; limited access to information by non-governmental experts; limited civil society participation in the review phase; limited financial and human resources.
• Promoting greater transparency by creating internal and external incentives for countries and by supporting the creation and strengthening of legislation on access to information across the hemisphere.
• Better addressing issues of impunity relating to corrupt activities. There is not enough information circulating on measures and projects in place to deal with these issues.

Human Rights:

• Strengthening of the Inter-American human rights system. Currently, the level of compliance with judgements from the Inter-American Human Rights Court is very low and a reliable mechanism should be developed to enforce it.
• Canada should support groups working for children rights in their efforts to strengthen current laws protecting children.
• Canada has an opportunity to be a leader in the protection of the rights of indigenous peoples across the region. However, we need to address short-comings in the area of self-determination, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.
• Canada should re-examine its decision on the ratification of the American Convention on Human Rights. (See below for the section on the ratification of the Convention.)

Political Parties:

• Providing more attention to the disintegration of political parties, in particular in Latin America. One of the key issues is that of campaign financing and political party funding.
• Promoting policies which will support the monitoring and increasing of participation of women in politics and in position of power.

Funding:

• The participants noted that there was a serious lack of financial resources both within the Organization of American States (OAS) and within the Inter-American human rights system. While Canada supported a resolution last year to increase the budget transferred to Inter-American Human Rights Commission and Court, it is still insufficient to put adequate programs in place to respond to proposed Summit mandates.
• In light of increased responsibility given to the OAS for the implementation of Summit mandates, the Organization is in need of a budget increase. This issue needs to be addressed.

Minister Graham noted that these were issues that the Department is continuously looking at. As for the ratification of the American Convention on Human Rights, the Department is continuing to study the issue with interest, but Minister Graham restated that it would not be credible for Canada to join the Convention with various reservations. Some language problems have therefore to be addressed first. As for the lack of compliance with international law, the Department is exploring ways to work with the OAS on enforcement mechanisms and agrees that an important part of it lays in education. In terms of corruption, parliamentarians also have a key role in developing proper legislation and ensuring that they are respected. There are many fora where this issue is been discussed, such as the Inter-Parliamentary Forum of the Americas (FIPA) and the Global Organization of Parliamentarians against Corruption (GOPAC). The important part is to ensure that legislation are implemented and enforced.

Discussion Group 2: economic growth with equity. This group discussed issues of equity in general, with a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), property rights, and sustainable development. The group agreed that these issues were important for equitable economic growth and made the following recommendations:

SMEs:

• Need to expand market access for products by SMEs, and to address restrictive rules of origin.
• Need to include a focus on technical education, emphasizing both labour market preparation and lifelong learning.
• Expand services available to SMEs - especially those relating to financing and credit, and environmentally sustainable production methods.
• Need to expand opportunities for SMEs run by indigenous peoples.
• Need to alter the psychology of access to banking institutions (i.e. change attitudes towards the poor, small business owners and indigenous people, so they are treated as equally valuable customers).

Property rights:

• Important to focus on productive assets such as land and water, especially for most vulnerable groups
• Need to ensure well defined legal and regulatory property rights for both women and men
• Need to ensure that a system - accessible to the poor - exists to enforce property rights and contracts

Sustainable development:

• Expand discussions to include the inter-generational link between sustainable development and economic growth, i.e. must consider flow of resources over time, as opposed to pursuing current growth at expense of future sustainable development.
• Discussion needs to move beyond bio-diversity, to include greater emphasis on social/economic issues.
• Need to consider sustainable development impacts of trade rules and trade agreements.

Other:

• Remittances are crucial for equity. Efforts should be made to reduce costs of money transfers in the region.
• Respect for labour rights are important - there should be an emphasis on promoting compliance with ILO declarations.
• Include a research agenda to deepen understanding of equity impacts of trade integration, with a focus on the links to domestic equity mechanisms.

Minister Graham confirmed that, as a follow-up to the Quebec City Summit, the Inter-American Development Bank is looking at ways to improve credit access and limit the bureaucratic steps currently necessary to create new companies. The Minister then linked the promotion of sustainable development to SMEs and gave as an example the Sustainable Cities Program implemented in Argentina. He indicated his awareness that it is much more difficult for SMEs to develop export markets, unless there is a local community of foreigners exporting to their country of origin.

Discussion Group 3: social development. The discussions focussed on health, education and connectivity. The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada presented a separate set of recommendations. The group's report included the following recommendations:

Education:

• Strengthening higher education. There should be more emphasis on post-secondary education, which is essential in order to have an adequate supply of scientists, engineers, etc.
• Look for qualitative instead of quantitative studies (for example, what is the use of a poll if 95% say they consider themselves educated, when for them a 4th-5th grade is educated).

Connectivity:

• Address basic communication needs. It is good to promote connectivity, however, many communities in the Americas, including some First Nations in Canada, only have access to one or two phone lines for the entire community.
• Make better use of indigenous-indigenous partnerships. Indigenous groups want to be included in the agenda to promote connectivity with other indigenous groups in the Americas.

Health:

• Stress the need to engage in a dialogue with women groups, in particular in terms of abortion, access to contraceptives, education on HIV/AIDS.
• Diabetes should be of special concern and is not very much talked about. In the long run, countries could waste millions in lost productivity. It was also noted that aboriginal groups are hit twice as badly as the rest of the population.

After hearing this presentation, the Minister agreed that sharing experience between indigenous groups in different countries and within Canada would be beneficial. He agreed that we should be better promoting the experience of indigenous peoples. A good example is the success of the North Atlantic Council who have empowered themselves through connectivity. In terms of health education, the Minister mentioned the sensitivity of the issue due to the fact that both education and health fall under provincial jurisdiction. The Minister also acknowledged that diabetes is a growing problem.

American Convention on Human Rights

Many participants raised the issue of Canada's ratification of the American Convention on Human Rights, saying that the Inter-American human rights system would benefit from this type of Canadian commitment.

Minister Graham mentioned that Canada already contributes greatly to the human rights system. Last year, Canada supported a resolution of the OAS to increase the annual budget allocated to the Inter-American Human Rights Court and Commission. We have also funded a variety of projects, such as the creation of a network of ombudsmen, and we have had an elected member on the Inter-American Judicial Committee since 1992. Therefore, the fact that Canada is not yet party to the Convention is not impeding our leadership on human rights issues. However, Minister Graham agreed that our voice could have more weight if we were party to the Convention.

Currently, the Department is re-examining the different possibilities for signing the Convention, but there is still a large number of caveats and we would need to have five reservations and seven statements of understanding in order to sign and/or ratify. Many of the provisions of the Convention fall under provincial/territorial jurisdiction and there are ongoing consultations with them on this issue.

Furthermore, there is no consensus among the various interest groups in Canada as to ratification. In particular, the notion of life beginning at conception is problematic for some women's associations and contradicts existing domestic laws on abortion. The National Association of Women and Law proposed that a comprehensive dialogue take place with the federal, provincial and territorial governments and interests groups in order to arrive at a solution that would be acceptable for all. In addition, they proposed a conditional statement of understanding, by which Canada's signature of the Convention would become null should the interpretation of some of the language change over time.