CONWAY DALY
27th May 1998
MONTREAL (CP) - Brushing off a protest, the secretary-general of the Paris-based OECD said Monday that ratification of the multilateral agreement on investment will go ahead.
Donald Johnston said approval of the MAI is a matter of when, not if, and those opposed to it should "raise their sights a little" and consider the deal's long-term benefits.
"I think they've been given a lot of misinformation," he said of more than 300 people who tried to block access to a hotel and a conference on globalization of the world's economy.
Riot squad police, carrying batons and wearing helmets and flak jackets, made about 100 arrests outside the hotel on charges of mischief and interfering with a police officer's work.
Later, in another downtown hotel, Johnston told a Canadian Club audience the MAI is "a modest first step" towards global development and will have a generally beneficial effect.
"It's a time to seize remarkable opportunities," said Johnston, who has been pushing for Canada to sign the MAI. However, last month the 29 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development missed a second deadline to endorse the agreement, which was three years in the making.
The MAI will allow countries to get the best from the global economy, said the former cabinet minister, flanked at the lunch by his old boss, ex-prime minister Pierre Trudeau.
Johnston said anti-MAI forces have misrepresented the agreement as a program that will help only multinational corporations at the expense of large parts of the world's population.
"That's nonsense," said Johnston, who defended the MAI as "an attempt to establish rule-based systems."
The protesters demanded that Canada withdraw from all negotiations on the MAI, which is meant to create an equal playing field for corporations to seek international contracts. Opponents say the deal would limit the power of locally elected officials.
Johnston dismissed criticism that the proposal should have been negotiated more openly. "I think that's a very odd charge," said Johnston, noting talks began before he went to Paris in 1996 to head the OECD.
Johnston said when briefings were held "nobody ever showed up. The media wasn't interested in the MAI.
"It seemed like a very benign agreement after the Uruguay Round. There were 1630 bilateral investment agreements and they all have provisions like the MAI. The question is, Where were all these people when those agreements were signed?" Johnston asked.
He said it's wrong to call the MAI a hidden deal. "I've never detected any concern by anybody about making every part of it public. But you don't conduct negotiations of any agreement in public."