On second thought...

>> Former NDP leader Ed Broadbent says it's time to come to grips with globalization

by PHILIP PREVILLE

"Being against globalization is crazy. That's like saying you're against the industrial revolution. It makes no sense at all."

This kind of cheery, pro-globalization blather will fill the Renaissance Hotel on Parc ave. this Friday and Saturday, June 4 and 5, the site of a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. (The Agreement was signed in 1988, but did not come into effect until 1989.) The conference, entitled Free Trade at Ten, will feature such former politi-cos as Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, cabinet ministers Michael Wilson and John Crosbie and hot-tempered trade negotiator Simon Reisman, not to mention former U.S. President George Bush and his longtime hench-man, Secretary of State James Baker.

But the quote above was not spoken by any of conservatism's poster boys. Rather, it was uttered by Ed Broadbent, the former leader of the NDP. Broadbent, whose party opposed the free trade deal during the 1988 election, has not been invited to the conference. (Nor has former Liberal leader John Turner, who declined to be interviewed on the subject.) But Broadbent sounds as though he would fit right in at the class reunion.

"The truth is: we overestimated the negative impact of the free trade deal back in '88," Broadbent admits. "We believed that free trade would result in massive job losses. But at this point, economists seem to agree that it's had a positive impact on jobs. If we're going to be intellectually honest, we have to admit it."

And in the interest of intellectual honesty, Broadbent says that even back in '88 he supported many aspects of free trade. "What we said at the time was that we wanted clauses in the deal that addressed things like culture, the environment and labour rights," Broadbent says. And he feels he's been proven right: when Mexico joined the talks, U.S. President Bill Clinton insisted that the expanded agreement include those same clauses. "In terms of content, the NAFTA clauses that deal with labour rights and environmental protection are pretty vapid," says Broadbent, "but at least they exist now."

Broadbent's other remaining concern about free trade: international financial markets. "Am I in favour of free trade in goods and services? Yes. Am I in favour of the unregulated flow of capital? No." According to him, everyone knows that short-term financial traders can destroy national currencies and economies overnight, just as they did in many Asian countries last year; it's time everyone faced up to it.

"Traders always defend themselves by saying that, in the long run, these 'adjustments' will be to everybody's benefit. But in the long run, everybody's dead. Nobel economists have proposed a number of solutions to this problem. It's time for the international community to choose a solution and stick with it."

But while he favours regulating the global economy, he says there's no point in trying to stop globalization in its tracks. His advice to globalization's detractors: "You have to be selective, decide what you like and dislike about a particular agreement. But you can't bury your head in the sand and pretend it's not going to happen."