THE HERALD Wednesday Decembers UNPage Opinion Region garbage problem just wont go away The garbage problem just wont go away Its this ever present problem that Regional council fac for the umpteenth time head on last Wednesday and out of the debate came three options The first and the one council finally adopted was to press on in its at tempts to find alternatives to garbage The second was to put the issue aside for a while and only support the Regions existing reuse reduction and recycling projects Burlington Mayor Bird advocated this option saying he was too tired of the garbage issue to consider ideas need a break the mayor told coun cillors He suggested council not consider new initiatives until at least the new year The third option was to defer the adoption of any new proposals until the province has specified its environmental plan Its this option I think council should have adopted The adopted waste manage ment system calls for six internationallybased waste management firms to submit openended proposals to the Region That means the can be anything as long as they ensure certain defined material does not end up in a dump This is fine and dandy ex cept the real possibility exists the Bens Banter By Ben Dummotl proposals will not reflect the pro vinces policy on the waste issue The only clear point the pro vinces Minister of Environment Ruth Gner made in an otherwise vague policy announcement last week was the province is ultimately responsible for how municipalities deal with garbage Under the previous government municipalities had final say over garbage It makes no sense for the Region to start considering new waste management systems until it has an idea of what it is allowed to consider To do so is a waste of time not for the Region but also for the companies making the submissions Id find it hard to believe the firms dont expect the Region to give serious con sideration to their ideas Under the worst possible scenario the Region could end up alienating the very people they may need in the future to help it implement the eventual specifics of the pro vince waste management policy The Region was correct in not following Mayor Birds sugges tion that the waste issue be put on the shelf for a while has made definite strides in its recycling programs but there is no time to take a break Provincial and municipal of ficials still say the greater Toron to area is facing a garbage crisis When confronted with a crisis situation action instead of pro crastination should be the operative word At the same time however Region should not act blindly Free trade with Mexico has many fatal flaws By MAUDE BARLOW Get ready Free trade the se quel is here The United States and Mexico are about to embark on a free trade agreement that will forge the largest trading block the world has ever known Depending on American cor porate capital and technology Canadian resources and the abundant cheap labour of Mex ico and Central America North American free trade is an at tempt to offset the deep decline American productivity and the poor competitive showing of the United States in comparison with the emerging economies of Europe and Japan Canadian boosters are cheering from the sidelines as usual content to wait and hope to be invited to the table knowing full well that the price of admission is reopemng the S deal to give over any remaining protections we re tained over intellectual property culture and subsidies parroting their American corporate elders who sanctimoniously cloak their interest in Mexico in the promise that free trade will bring it into the North American economic or bit and with it badly needed jobs and eventual prosperity Herein however lies the fatal flaw in this plan For unlike the European Community which has drawn up an advanced social charter the United States did not negotiate any standards to pro tect social programs wages working conditions or en safeguards in the agreement with Canada and is not preparing to include them in the Mexican deal either Without protections built right into these agreements standards are being pulled down to the lowest com mon denominator allowing the transnational corporations to play countries and their workforces off against each other Already workers in Canada are being warned that if they dont pull their wages and other demands down workers in Mexico will be only too glad to take their jobs However nothing Canadian workers can do is likely to save our battered manufactur ing sector which is moving en masse to the low wage States in the S or more recently to Mexico Even a cursory ex animation of the current situation in Mexico explains why Two weeks ago a delegation of Canadians of which I was one travelled to Mexico to see for ourselves just how the corpora tions were operating and what effect free trade would have on the population of the country We met with human rights leaders who told us about widespread fraud in the Mexican elections of 1988 and repated human rights violations by the current Salinas government against its political opponents We heard about the corporate restructuring of Mex icos agricultural sector where former farmers are now just employees on foreign owned cor porate farms producing for ex port to the S and no longer able to feed themselves In fact the more Mexico shifts to an exporting nation the more underdeveloped it is becoming as the transnational control de mand supply and prices We learned that seventeen million Mexicans live in extreme pover ty and that over sixty per cent earn less than the minimum wage We listened shocked silence to tales of the en vironmental devastation of Mex ico that the country has lost half its forested areas and three- quarters of its rainforests in Just forty years and there is not a body of water unpolluted some to the point of exhaustion But it Is the images I saw in Ti juana that will stay with me for the rest of my life and will re main for me the embodiment of unfettered uncontrolled cor porate free trade For all along the Mexican border hundreds of component assembly plants call ed are being built by Fortune 500 companies to take advantage of a people Although the legal work ing age is eighteen we saw lories full of teenage girls some as young as fourteen working at eyedamaging repetitive work for 25 a day a wage well below what is required for even a minimal standard of living Many corporations send their dangerous work here such as the manufacturing of pesticides fungicides her bicides and work involving close contact with dangerous chemicals because the stan dards are lax or non existent In one plant we all headaches and nausea from just spending an hour on the assembly line and saw young girls working beside open vats of toxic waste with no protective face covering No union organizing is tolerated and if these employees arent happy or they fall behind in quotas or they become ill or pregnant there are one million new job seekers every year in Mexico ready to take their places The argument that these jobs will lead to Mexican prosperity is a lie These companies give nothing back to the country or its people Real wages have fallen every year for eight years No maqulladora profits go back into the communities for sewage treatment education health care or toxic waste disposal We saw state of the art marbletiled turned landscaped plants sitting in the center of as bad as third world slums anywhere no electricity runn ing water or sewage disposal and where drinking water is held in discarded toxic chemical drums brought in from the U S West Germany and Japan We took pictures of a lagoon of black bub bling toxic waste created from direct dumping by a group of cor porations in an industrial park and followed it where it met up with untreated raw sewage and ran into what was now a small river past squatters camps where children covered in sores sat by its bank drinking Pepsi Cola out of baby bottles before finally emptying into the Tijuana River The companies are here for one reason and one reason only there is no where else on earth where they can make the kind of profits they are earning here and be required to give nothing back to the country or its people The Mexican government is being pressured to amend its constitu tion to allow these companies to own the land they now lease which will give them even greater control over the economic future of the country Corporate taxes have been dropp ing dramatically and even the Mexican wealthy are transferr ing their money to safer pastures They have invested more than billion out of Mexico in the last decade alone North American free trade is a corporate bill of rights and Is not at all concerned with the needs of the peoples of the countries involved Perhaps for me no image was stronger than the nightly ritual of thousands of young Mexicans try ing to escape to the United States of America across a deep gully over a high fence under the glare of football stadium lights while dodging helicopters and police vans To get there they have to traverse a river of toxic sewage and there are entrepreneurs who walk this wasteland every night selling plastic bags to wouldbe escapees to protect their feet from this poison I asked one woman who was homeless and who carried her two small babies in her arms why she wasnt stay ing to work in a and she laughed at me I felt it was the first laugh she had had in a long time Maude Barlow is the Chairper son of the Council of Canadians and the author of a recent book Parcel of Rogues- How Free Trade is Failing Canada Mulroney protected by cumbersome review system OTTAWA Well just have to take Prime Minister Brian Mulroney at his word that he came home from Europe with a flu bug and had spend a day in bed But it wouldnt come as a shock to discover he was actually beside the bed on his knees thanks that the Canadian Tory party has never adopted the British system of replacing leaders What a frightening pro spect that would be for our un popular prime minister When he thinks about the quick almost painless to the party political execution of Margaret Thatcher it must send shivers down Mr Mulroney spine The British Tones decided that Mag must go after her popularity fell to a dismal per cent in the opinion polls At last report Mr Mulroney was supported by only 14 per cent of Canadians a drop of one point from the previous month Where it will stop nobody knows Fortunately for our yearold prime minister he enjoys the protection of a very cumbersome leadership review system And he can also take comfort from the fact there is no obvious heir ap parent In fact there isnt anyone who even seems interested in belling the cat on behalf of so meone else Mounting a campaign against a serving party leader in Canada can be as Mr Mulroney knows better than most a very messy business He one of the few to do it successfully when he the Tory leadership away from Joe Clark in 1983 Even in this success the prune minister required a bit of help from his predecessor It was Mr Clarks decision to call a leader ship convention after he was sup ported by twothirds of delegates at a national convention He could have just as easily declared that to be a resounding vote of confidence and earned on No doubt Mr Clark expected to win again but thats another story Under the Conservative con stitution members of the party are given an opportunity to pass judgement on the leader only at the first national convention following an electoral defeat At any other time unless the leader Stewart MacLeod Mm voluntarily resigns the replace ment process usually involves a form of internecine warfare Actually up until 1966 when John was beginning to wear out his welcome as Tory leader there wasnt any provi sion for reviewing leadership even after an electoral defeat Little wonder the Tones spilled so much blood in public In on the other hand the matter can be decided by caucus as was the case with Mrs Thatcher All it took was a challenge by one MP in this case Michael and presto Tory MPs became voting delegates at a leadership convention They didnt even have to move their chairs Anyone can enter the race as did John Major and Douglas and the whole business is over in days Not even time for first class hatreds to develop In Canada it s often never done Even now there are those in caucus who are Clark loyalists still resenting Mr Mulroneys ar rival And there are Mulroney loyalists who still worry about a Clark comeback If you dig deeply enough you can probably find an MP who still worries about a Diefenbaker resurrection NO HEIR The review process must be of great comfort to someone like He knows full well that despite being the most unpopular minister since polling was invented his tors cannot mount an offensive against him without dealing a near mortal blow to party unity Its In no ones interest to do that particularly when its already in dismal shape Things would be somewhat dif ferent if a perceived savior were on the someone with a national following who could save not only the party but the coun try Such potential candidates are few and far between these days One would be hard pressed to name one possible successor who could convince Canadians that he or she would gain ground in English Canada while also holding onto Quebec seats And besides this is no time to dump a prime minister from Quebec It would be different if the Tories had the system If say a challenge were mounted immediately after publication of another disastrous opinion poll at a time when Joe Clark or Bar bara or Kim Camp bell was looking particularly good its difficult to predict what might happen in a sudden runoff There could even be one every month I suspect that Mr Mulroney astute politician that he is paus ed to give prayerful thanks Tor the Canadian system even if he really did have the flu