Trade

Energy 

T here are some aspects of Atlantica that appear to be already in place, such as infrastructure around the oil and natural gas resources in Atlantic Canada. Energy resources from such oilfields as Newfoundland’s Terra Nova oilfield and Nova Scotia’s Sable Island are currently Atlantic Canada’s biggest exports to the United States. The Atlantica initiative aims to accelerate such exports to the ravenous energy market of the United States on terms favorable to large oil and gas multinationals. 

Such initiatives are not new for Canada. Currently, it stands as the biggest energy supplier to the United States, due largely to oil and gas resources from the Alberta tar sands. Yet, despite its enormous oil and gas resources, Atlantic Canada and Quebec rely on imports for 90 percent of the petroleum they consume. In addition, the main electric utilities in the region import and burn coal, one of the most environmentally damaging sources of energy on earth. Most of the natural gas reserves produced in Atlantic Canada are currently piped to markets in large urban centers such as Boston, which falls outside of the borders of the “Atlantica” region. By contrast, there is no current infrastructure linking natural gas terminals in New Brunswick with the rest of the Canadian Maritime region. NAFTA’s proportionality clause effectively locks Canada  in place as an energy colony to the U.S., by requiring that the Canadian industry cater to U.S. energy “needs” before those of Canada. 

However, Charles Cirtwell, president of AIMS, argues that the current policy of shipping natural gas southward from Atlantic Canada is contributing to environmental sustainability. He believes that the supply of Canadian natural gas to New England has allowed the region to use liquid natural gas as an energy “transition” while New England utilities adjust to using more sustainable energy sources. He argues that without U.S. investment in natural gas projects in New Brunswick, the resources would still be untapped and New England consumers “would be burning oil.” 

“From a green perspective,” says Cirtwell, “this kind of symbiotic relationship has worked out quite nicely for everybody.” 

But not everybody agrees that this energy strategy is environmentally sound. According to Matt Schlobohm, a coordinator with the Maine Fair Trade Campaign, “There’s very little recognition” among the proponents of the Atlan- tica energy corridor of “the ecological crisis we’re in.” Schlobohm argues that Atlantica fails to address the immediate need for a move to “a different energy paradigm that’s based on much more sustainable energy production, local energy production.” He sees little hope for the recognition of this immediacy without more of a public role in determining the energy policy on both sides of the border. 

“What we’ve seen in Atlantica is a process that’s been entirely sha- ped by the largest corporations in the region,” Schlobohm argues. “It’s been a very exclusive process that hasn’t included labor unions, community organizations, environmental groups, [or] indigenous organizations.” 

Worker Tradeoffs 

T he key sponsors of the first “Reaching Atlantica: Business Without Borders” conference in June 2006 were largely Canadian corporations such as JD Irving limited and the Bank of Montreal. Atlantica’s critics outside the conference far outnumbered its proponents. A coalition of environmental, labor, and community organizations held a counter-summit and a demonstration of 400 people in the small harbor town of St. John drew key leaders, as well as rank-and-file workers, from large unions such as the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, and the Canadian Labour Congress. Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians, spoke at the opening event of the counter-summit to a packed audience. Atlantica, which had previously maintained a low media profile, became news headlines in Canada after a group of 35 protestors attempted to interrupt a speech by conference keynote speaker J.D. Irving. 

Aside from the elite nature of the decision-making behind the Atlantica process, much of the controversy around the initiative has focused on the free-market zeal expressed by Atlantica’s backers. The Atlantica website lists “minimum wage legislation,” “union density,” “government employment as percentage of total state/province employment,” and “size of government” as “public policy distress factors.” Such displays of unabashed dislike for progressive social policy have served as a stark reminder to many people of the dismal effects that the NAFTA agreement has had on New England and Atlantic Canada. While the state of Maine lost close to 20,000 manufacturing jobs between 1995 and 2003, Canadian workers have experienced stagnating real wages, a decline in union protection, and an increase in the gap between rich and poor since 1994. In Atlantic Canada and New England, small family farms, once a staple of the local economy of the region, are facing a crisis point. 

When asked whether the political program of Atlantica included a lowering of minimum wages, Cirtwell responded that such talk was a “red herring” designed to be a “scare tactic” of Atlantica’s opponents. However, when I spoke to Cirtwell’s predecessor, former AIMS Director Brian Lee Crowley last May, his response was somewhat less definite. Crowley, who has since been appointed a key economic advisor in Canada’s Department of Finance, argued for the need to “ask the questions” about social policies such as union density and minimum wage legislation, noting that “all of these things involve trade-offs.” 

The “trade-offs” for workers in North America as a result of globalization in Atlantic Canada and New England reveal a cruel irony. The advent of globalization in these two regions has seen the migration of manufacturing and textile jobs to third world “export processing zones” where workers are paid a tiny fraction of the wages in North America. Under Altantica, goods produced in these sweatshops, particularly in China and Vietnam, are now to be shipped back across the Atlantic, only to bypass the entire New England-Atlantic Canadian region via large highway “corridors” en route to the U.S. “heartland.” 

For Sean Donahue of the Bangor-based Peace through Inter- American Community Action, a grassroots community economic justice organization, this logic reflects a continuation of the destructive process of corporate globalization. For Donahue, this vision “undermines the idea of building from local regional economies and makes us just another piece of infrastructure in a global machine for moving goods from countries where production can be done cheaply to consumers in the wealthiest parts of the world.” 

Recognition of such trade-offs perhaps explains why opposition to the Atlantica proposal has served as a focal point for coalition building and coordination between environmental organizations, labor unions, NGOs, and community organizations on Canada’s east coast. Such coalition building has not been seen in this region since the run-up to the anti-Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) mobilizations in Quebec City in 2001.  National organizations such as the Canadian Labour Congress, Canada’s biggest trade union federation, and the Council of Canadians, a 100,000- member citizen’s advocacy coalition, have both weighed in against Atlantica and are also involved in the planning for a large mobilization against an upcoming confer- ence on Atlantica in Halifax in mid-June of this year. 

Although Atlantica has yet to galvanize the same degree of public opposition in the New England states, such organizing efforts are a clear indication that the Atlantica “gateway” is far from a done deal. 

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Stuart Neatby is a community activist and independent journalist based in Halifax. (For more on Atlantica mobilizations see www.stopatlantica.org.)