[news] CLC says free trade ain't so bad after all

[Jamie Kneen]

He doth protest an awful lot...



September 22, 2004

TO: Members of the Executive Council, Ranking Officers of Affiliated
Organizations and Presidents of Labour Councils

Greetings:

Re: National Post Story and Free Trade

The CanWest chain (publishers of the National Post), in a front page 
story this morning, alleged that, in a speech I was to deliver at the 
Canadian Labour Congress "Industrial Policy Conference", I said that 
we were wrong about free trade and were not opposed to the free trade 
agreements.

The story is a deliberate and malicious falsification of what I said. 
The actual speech that I delivered, which is identical to the copy 
the National Post had, is posted on the CLC website 
(http://www.clc-ctc.ca). I encourage you to go to the website and 
read the speech.

We are not going to allow the National Post to get away with this 
misrepresentation of the position of the CLC or its Officers.

The CLC has instructed its legal counsel to immediately initiate 
legal action against National Post and other newspapers in the 
CanWest chain, which continues to propagate these lies.

This is also the newspaper chain that has been criticized by Reuters 
and Associated Press for altering the text of their stories to 
reflect the political ideology of the papers' owners.

We continue to oppose NAFTA and other similar trade deals. And we 
continue to call for government action to protect Canadian jobs, 
develop a healthy manufacturing sector and invest in needed public 
services.

In solidarity,

Kenneth V. Georgetti

President.

cc: All CLC Staff

LAEB\COPE-225\G:\NATIONAL POST-1.wpd

-- 
Venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus: The last day has come, and 
the inevitable doom.