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The Saskatchewan government took a public stand against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment earlier this month. But after meeting with the federal government, provincial minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Berny Wiens says he is confident Saskatchewan's concerns will be met. In a letter Feb. 18, he had urged the federal government to reject the MAI, which has been the topic of much debate and controversy since it was leaked last year. According to Wiens' letter, the current text form of the MAI agreement does not adequately address issues related to labour and the environment. "No responsible government should agree to curtail its legislative sovereignty in that way without a very clear sense that the public interest will be best served by it," wrote Wiens. "No such clarity currently exists around the terms of the MAI." In a response letter to Wiens, Marchi reassures him that his concerns are "premature" since Canada has not agreed to nor signed any contract regarding the MAI. "A deal that meets Canada's interests and requirements would be a good thing for Canada," wrote Marchi, "but if these negotiations do not produce such a deal, we can live without it, for however long it takes." Wiens, accompanied | by his counterpart ministers throughout the country, met with Sergio Marchi, Federal Minister for International Trade, Feb. 19. Wiens' goal for the meeting was to advise the federal government as to changes needed to the MAI text before it could ever be considered. "There has to be clear expressions of the expectations of investors in terms of labor and environmental standards," says Wiens. "I think that Saskatchewan has a large dependency on trade and investment but more than that Saskatchewan and Saskatchewan people want to push [labor] standards higher." For Len Usiskin, Activist with the Saskatoon Chapter of the Council of Canadians, Wiens' stance has been long-awaited, but Usiskin remains wary of Wiens' position. "[It is] a good first step, but we want to continue to press the government to completely disengage from MAI negotiations," says Usiskin. "We're really concerned that the [provincial] government is not following through." In the letter Wiens wrote to Marchi, he expressed a concern for the Saskatchewan economy if the MAI were to be passed in its current text form. "Virtually every aspect of provincial jurisdiction over local economic and social management will be directly affected by | an MAI," writes Wiens. "No such agreement should apply to Saskatchewan without its explicit consent," adds Wiens. However, after his meeting with Marchi, Wiens is more optimistic about the agreement. "If we agree on objectives like the increase in standards then we are bound to them. They are a reflection of our value system here," he says. Usiskin believes that Wiens' stance in the letter was the result of a rally in Saskatoon where approximately 150 people expressed concern about the MAI to Wiens. According to Usiskin the participants of the rally expressed MAI concerns "in no uncertain terms." But now Usiskin's main concern is that Wiens has "flip-flopped" his views since his meeting with Marchi. "We think we were pressuring him hard to take that [anti-MAI] position but two days after his trip to Ottawa he flip-flopped," says Usiskin. According to Dexter Fisher of the Media Relations office for the federal department of Foreign Affairs, all concerns, including those from Saskatchewan, were taken seriously. "The consensus seems to be that the provinces are satisfied with Marchi's response," says Fisher. "When the trade ministers came out of their meeting on Thursday there was no one saying no."" |