Public services are a right!

Public services are a right!

Canadians depend on the quality of life that comes
from public services. Across Canada, CUPE members
deliver and use the services that keep our communities
safe and healthy. We work in hospitals, schools
and universities; on the ground with communitybased
services and in the skies as flight attendants.
We provide safe water, clean streets, reliable emergency
services. We are the glue that holds communities
together. We help make the
world a better place.

But negotiations underway at the
World Trade Organization (WTO)
seriously threaten our communities
– and quality of life.

Governments and corporations
see Canada’s public services as a
missed business opportunity. To
cash in, they are using the WTO’s
General Agreement on Trade in
Services (GATS) to lock in corporate
profits over community rights.

In fact, the Canadian government
is leading the way to define
every possible public service as a
moneymaking opportunity that’s
governed by trade rules, not
public need.

The vast majority of Canadians
want to keep public services off
the table in the GATS or any other
trade deal. But the Canadian
government is using the GATS to divert public spending to private gain, and to push
privatization of vital public services.

If governments and corporate lobbyists at the
unelected WTO get their way, health care, education,
social services, municipal services, utilities and
many other public services will be run as for-profit
businesses. Access to services as well as accountability
and quality will decline. Good jobs will disappear
and the environment will suffer.

Our Jobs, Our Communities, Our Future
The WTO wants to:

• Set new rules for trade and investment in all services – education,
  health, social services, libraries, recreation and culture, architecture
  and engineering, sewer and water, construction, retail and
  many other sectors that fall partly or wholly under local government control.
• Guarantee foreign corporations the right to turn our hospitals,
  schools, social service agencies and water services into commercial ventures.
• Deny governments the right to favour local or not-for-profit service
  providers over foreign suppliers.
• Severely limit the ability of governments to maintain or create
  standards to protect the environment, public health, consumers
  and other public interests.
• Control measures taken by governments and their agencies at all
  levels – national, provincial and local. Even a municipal zoning
  decision could be subject to trade sanctions, if it’s seen to be
  interfering with a company’s profits.
• Lock in future governments and limit their ability to regulate,
  change or end this market-driven, anti-union trade regime.

No to the WTO

The GATS negotiations will open up public services to an all-out corporate takeover. This new, wideranging
trade deal has far-reaching rules that will:

• Introduce private, for-profit hospitals run on a pay-per-use basis and staffed cheaply by less qualified,
  contracted-out or “imported” non-unionized workers.
• Force Canadian public schools to compete with for-profit educational institutions for scarce resources.
• Divert public tax dollars into foreign-owned for-profit corporations instead of publicly owned and
  operated services.
• Prevent governments at all levels from favouring Canadian, local, or not-for-profit municipal services
  and utilities over foreign for-profit corporations.

Build Better Communities: Stick up for Public Services

Get informed

• Copy and distribute CUPE’s WTO fact sheets (available on our web site, cupe.ca).
• Look at your workplace and community. Identify which jobs and services are affected. Talk with your
  union and local politicians.
• Attend one of the public events in your community that is opposed to the WTO, FTAA or GATS.
• Follow the news, including the alternative press; ask for information at the public library.

Get involved

• Help mobilize public opposition.
• Talk to co-workers, neighbours and friends about
  the WTO’s threat to public services.
• Write a letter to your local paper and give a copy to
  your union’s newsletter.
• Declare your workplace and community a GATS-free zone.
• Sign or start a petition or contact your elected local, provincial and federal representative asking
  them to adopt a resolution opposing new trade deals at the WTO. A sample resolution is available on
  the web site.

For the name and phone number of your MP, call 1-800-267-7360. Or fax your MP
at no cost through CUPE’s web site. Visit cupe.ca and register your views today.