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Tony Clarke (born 1944) is a Canadian activist.
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Tony Clarke (born 1944) is a Canadian activist.
Clarke grew up in Chilliwack, British Columbia, graduating from Chilliwack Senior Secondary School in 1962. He was class president. He studied at the University of British Columbia and did graduate work at the University of Chicago, obtaining a PhD in the history of religion. He presented a dissertation titled The Color Line and the American Metropolis: A Search for a Form of Ministry in the Aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago (1974). After Chicago, he worked for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops for 21 years, serving as Director of Social Policy.
Clarke was the chair of the Action Canada Network, a coalition of labor groups and activists that led the battle against the 1987 Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement. The activists joined forces with anti-free traders from Mexico and the United States to oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement. As a result of his leadership role in the anti-free trade movement, Clarke was fired from the Conference of Bishops. Clarke then wrote Behind the Mitre: The Moral Leadership Crisis in the Canadian Catholic Church (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1995), analyzing the role of the Catholic Church and church-state relations in the previous two decades.
Clarke has continued his activism, working closely with Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians. In 1997 he formed the Polaris Institute. [1] and led the campaigns against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and the World Trade Organization.
As a result of his activist work, he and Maude Barlow were awarded the 2005 Right Livelihood Award "for their exemplary and longstanding worldwide work for trade justice and the recognition of the fundamental human right to water". [2]
As of December 2011 [update] Clarke sits on the board of directors of the International Forum on Globalization. [3] His daughter is actor and artist Tanya Clarke. [4]
Clarke has authored several books:
Clarke stars in the feature documentary Blue Gold: World Water Wars by Sam Bozzo. He is also featured in a documentary on the tar sands, H2OIL by Shannon Walsh.
The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was a proposed agreement to eliminate or reduce the trade barriers among all countries in the Americas, excluding Cuba. Negotiations to establish the FTAA ended in failure, however, with all parties unable to reach an agreement by the 2005 deadline they had set for themselves.
The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is a treaty of the World Trade Organization (WTO) which entered into force in January 1995 as a result of the Uruguay Round negotiations. The treaty was created to extend the multilateral trading system to service sector, in the same way the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) provides such a system for merchandise trade.
A trade agreement is a wide-ranging taxes, tariff and trade treaty that often includes investment guarantees. It exists when two or more countries agree on terms that help them trade with each other. The most common trade agreements are of the preferential and free trade types, which are concluded in order to reduce tariffs, quotas and other trade restrictions on items traded between the signatories.
Bilateralism is the conduct of political, economic, or cultural relations between two sovereign states. It is in contrast to unilateralism or multilateralism, which is activity by a single state or jointly by multiple states, respectively. When states recognize one another as sovereign states and agree to diplomatic relations, they create a bilateral relationship. States with bilateral ties will exchange diplomatic agents such as ambassadors to facilitate dialogues and cooperations.
The Polaris Institute is a Canadian think tank based in Ottawa, Ontario. Its stated goal is "to help empower citizen movements towards democratic social change". It was formed in 1997 in response to its view that citizens were becoming politically disenfranchised in an age of corporate driven globalization.
Patrick Cyril "Sid" Ryan is a Canadian labour union leader and politician. Ryan is the former president of the Ontario Federation of Labour.
Maude Victoria Barlow is a Canadian author and activist. She is a founding member of the Council of Canadians, a citizens' advocacy organization with members and chapters across Canada. She is also the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, which works internationally for the human right to water. Barlow chairs the board of Washington-based Food & Water Watch, is a founding member of the San Francisco–based International Forum on Globalization, and a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. In 2008/2009, she served as Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the United Nations General Assembly and was a leader in the campaign to have water recognized as a human right by the UN.
An international environmental agreement or sometimes environmental protocol, is a type of treaty binding in international law, allowing them to reach an environmental goal. In other words, it is "an intergovernmental document intended as legally binding with a primary stated purpose of preventing or managing human impacts on natural resources."
The Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) was a draft agreement negotiated in secret between members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) between 1995 and 1998. It sought to establish a new body of universal investment laws that would grant corporations unconditional rights to engage in financial operations around the world, without any regard to national laws and citizens' rights. The draft gave corporations a right to sue governments if national health, labor or environment legislation threatened their interests. When its draft became public in 1997, it drew widespread criticism from civil society groups and developing countries, particularly over the possibility that the agreement would make it difficult to regulate foreign investors. After an intense global campaign was waged against the MAI by the treaty's critics, the host nation France announced in October 1998 that it would not support the agreement, effectively preventing its adoption due to the OECD's consensus procedures.
Cultural exception is a political concept introduced by France in General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations in 1993 to treat culture differently from other commercial products. In other words, its purpose is to consider cultural goods and services as exceptions in international treaties and agreements especially with the World Trade Organization (WTO). Its goals are to point out that States are sovereign as far as limitation of culture free trade is concerned in order to protect and promote their artists and other elements of their culture. Concretely, it can be seen through protectionist measures limiting the diffusion of foreign artistic work (quotas) or through subsidies distributed according to the country's cultural policy.
The Council of Canadians is a non-profit organization that advocates for clean water, fair trade, green energy, public health care, and a vibrant democracy. The organization is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario with regional offices in Halifax, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver and a network of local chapters across the country.
The Rideau Institute is a non-profit independent research and advocacy group based in Ottawa. It focusses on foreign policy and defence policy issues.
A hot stain is a region of the world where safe drinking water has been depleted. The term may have been coined by Goldman Environmental Prize winning hydrologist Michal Kravcik. Hot stains can be found on every continent, except for Antarctica. The biggest reason for a hot stain to develop is population pressure. As the population grows, water demand increases. Although the earth is covered in 97% water, only 1% of that water is available for human consumption. Hot stains can cause great harm to a regions agricultural ability and can lead to food scarcity, famine, and even the abandonment of the region.
An International Investment Agreement (IIA) is a type of treaty between countries that addresses issues relevant to cross-border investments, usually for the purpose of protection, promotion and liberalization of such investments. Most IIAs cover foreign direct investment (FDI) and portfolio investment, but some exclude the latter. Countries concluding IIAs commit themselves to adhere to specific standards on the treatment of foreign investments within their territory. IIAs further define procedures for the resolution of disputes should these commitments not be met. The most common types of IIAs are Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) and Preferential Trade and Investment Agreements (PTIAs). International Taxation Agreements and Double Taxation Treaties (DTTs) are also considered as IIAs, as taxation commonly has an important impact on foreign investment.
Water on the Table is a Canadian documentary film directed, produced and written by filmmaker Liz Marshall. The film explores Canada's relationship to its freshwater resources and features Canadian activist Maude Barlow in her pursuit to protect water from privatization. Counterbalancing Barlow's views are those of policy and economic experts who assert that water is a resource and a commodity like any other.
The free trade agreements of Canada represents Canada's cooperation in multinational trade pacts and plays a large role in the Canadian economy. Canada is regularly described as a trading nation, considering its total trade is worth more than two-thirds of its GDP. Of that total trade, roughly 75% is done with countries that are part of free-trade agreements with Canada—primarily the United States through the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), and its predecessor the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). By the end of 2014, Canadas bilateral trade hit C$1 trillion for the first time.
The Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) is a reporting service providing daily coverage on a variety of global environmental and sustainable development negotiations.
The anti-globalization movement, or counter-globalization movement, is a social movement critical of economic globalization. The movement is also commonly referred to as the global justice movement, alter-globalization movement, anti-globalist movement, anti-corporate globalization movement, or movement against neoliberal globalization.
The Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) was a proposed international trade treaty between 23 Parties, including the European Union, United Kingdom and the United States. The agreement aimed at liberalizing the worldwide trade of services such as banking, healthcare, and transport. Criticism about the secrecy of the agreement arose in June 2014, after WikiLeaks released a classified draft of the proposal's financial services annex, dated the previous April. Another release took place in June 2015, and another took place in May 2016. As 2021, no such agreement has ever been reached.
The Canada–Peru Free Trade Agreement (CPFTA) is a free trade agreement between Peru and Canada. It was signed on 29 May 2008 and entered into force on 1 August 2009.
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