On January 24, CUPW (Canadian Union of Postal Workers) and the Council of Canadians began the legal fight against corporate rule over national law. It took a few years to prepare the arguments, but the case rests on actions taken in 2000 by United Parcel Service against the Canadian government. UPS feels that a publically funded postal system discourages the company from making more money than it currently receives doing business in this country. To repair this business impasse, UPS is seeking $160 million from Canada under Chapter 11 of NAFTA, a provision which allows corporations to sue governments who maintain legislation which allegedly limits their return on investments made in a country.
What that amounts to is UPS suing every Canadian for about $5 for not using UPS to deliver parcels, and instead choosing Canada Post to provide the service more cheaply. The Federal government would likely respond by halting Canada Post’s courier service in order to avoid incurring further financial penalties, thus leaving UPS and FedEx as the default couriers for the country.
CUPW and the Council of Canadians premise their defence on the fact that Chapter 11 of NAFTA not only violates the jurisdiction of Canadian legal practise, but also violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the UN Charter, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The legal defence against UPS rests on the fact that the postal service was mandated to the government as it was deemed an essential national service. This law was put in place when Canada Post was incorporated in 1981 to ensure universal postal coverage and full accessibility by the public. Our tax dollars built the infrastructure required to send mail around the country, and that this infrastructure is still owned by the public ensures cheaper rates than the private sector can provide. Profits, which from 1990 to 2001 were about $300 million, were paid to its shareholder, the Government of Canada, and used for the post as well as other social initiatives.
UPS feels that this subsidy limits their investment, or, in other words, their ability to make even more money than they are currently making from the many Canadian individuals and businesses who currently utilize their services. Again: because we decided that it was in everyone’s interest to keep our delivery services cheap and use the profits to build other elements of our society, UPS is suing every Canadian for a collective $160 million – part of the $300 million of profits which helped fund education, health care, and in general our society as a whole. There is little question as to whether UPS would be so generous with its capital. UPS cannot compete with Canada Post because the private sector does not want to do things “for free”, but must provide dividends to share holders who get to spend the money in their own interests.
From this one case, we can see that corporations are in fact finding it difficult to compete against the public sector. Public sector institutions such as the postal service, social security, education, health care, law and policing, and (ostensibly) power and water are intended to monopolize or otherwise dominate their respective markets, keeping profits internal to ensure technological development and a low price for consumers. This allowable hegemony ensures the most universal application of the service by reaching as many individuals as it can, mostly regardless of geographical or socioeconomic situation. Furthermore, while certainly not impervious to scandal, the public sector provides a degree of economic and ethical accountability which the once-a-decade Enron scandals cannot match.
And maybe this is a bit of a hypothetical aside, but if profits from every important sector of our industries were tied to general governmental revenues, then all kinds of social programs could be realized as the fruits of our productivity. Maybe the big Canadian banks could use their $7 billion in profits from just one year to fund the construction of subsidized housing for poor Canadians, and that would just be asking the Banks for a one-time investment. Some of the profits from Nike, Coke, and McDonalds could be used to improve recycling programs, for example.
Corporations are seeking their own monopolies against the monopoly which is owned by the public and representing the well-being of the public. This is in fact the most emerging market in corporate ideology today. All sectors of government are currently being privatized in America, from payment of residential bills and tickets to water service, and from the military to the voting process itself. The sense of market legitimacy which has indeed allowed a great deal of business expansion is being imposed on the last remaining non-corporate revenue streams.
The most recent wave of this attack on the public purse in the US is the Bush government’s desire to release the vast monetary holdings of the country’s social security as marketplace investments. Financial hawks in Washington believe this to be the only manner in which the pool of money representing social security will grow to meet the current and future demands of the nation’s population. This is not to say that the current pool of wealth in social security is just sitting there doing nothing; in fact, Social Security is invested in the US treasury, which ensures a slow and steady growth. The working people of the country, apparently, are not paying enough into the system to keep it afloat, and thus gaps in the bottom line will be filled by rising stock prices. This assumes of course that the market will continue to rise steadily and not burst like it has done many times over the past few decades.
Something as important to a society’s future as a reliable social security program should not be invested in the whims of the marketplace, an area of virtual economics where the slightest flutter of absurd gossip about a company can affect actual material wealth. Slow growth is reasonable growth, just like your RRSP salesman will tell you. It seems more reasonable to assume that the financial hawks in Washington want access to the pool of wealth in social security in order to keep other companies afloat by injecting outside cash into them, thus focussing the governments interests on the needs of those other companies rather than the needs of the social security process itself. Microsoft, IBM, Standard Oil, Halliburton, et al will surely be the largest recipients of these investments, and tying the future welfare of a country’s workers to corporate concerns is a good way to sway a population’s ideologies closer towards those of corporations.
The public purse in Canada is the next logical step for many in Washington who see the billions in yearly expenditures on health care, postal service, and education, as a vast untapped market ready for expansion. The Missile Defence project can be interpreted as a means to divert taxpayer money into the coffers of American defence contractors. And yet, this market of “untapped public money” is indeed being fully utilized, since it is controlled by the government representing the people and using such funds to ensure fundamental rights are enjoyed by all who utilize the service. The legal process defending Canadian citizens from the legal team of UPS is one step among many required to ensure that corporations do not get to foster their agendas against the interests of the population. The money which they are after is owned and controlled by the public and invested in the public, and we should interpret this case, like most others involving the use of Chapter 11, as the imposition of an extra-national taxation upon a national citizenry.
Privatization transfers funds from the public coffers to companies which are legally obligated to make money without regard for any other consideration. In the case of Canada Post, you can be guaranteed that if UPS takes over services in Canada then Canadians will pay the company more for service equal to what is currently legally mandated for all Canadians. More important than higher prices for postal service and a $160 million hit to the national economy, a win for UPS will mean that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – which ensures things like health care, education, and personal security – will have less legal standing than a corporation’s ability to make a buck in whichever manner it is able.
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