Topic
It's a mug's game. Late to the negotiations, we're set up to lose big.
Cartoon by Greg Perry.
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The Harper government's frantic efforts to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations came to fruition last week, with the announcement that Canada will be admitted to the talks.
The TPP is a nine-member, U.S.-led effort to create a "21st century" trade and investment agreement. The U.S. is seeking a tough, far-reaching agreement favouring U.S. commercial interests that China, Japan and other trading rivals will have little choice but to join. China, however, appears to view the TPP as little more than an American plot.
Canada already has free trade deals with four of the current TPP members (the U.S., Chile, Peru and Mexico). As economist Jim Stanford has noted, the other six (Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and Vietnam) combined account for less than one per cent of Canada's exports. The United Steelworkers points out that, "any conceivable increase in exports to these markets would be almost insignificant in terms of total Canadian output and employment."
While claiming that it made no substantive concessions to get in, the Harper government almost certainly signalled its flexibility on key stumbling blocks such as agricultural supply management and intellectual property rights protection.
The high costs to dairy, poultry and egg farmers, our artists and cultural industries, internet freedom and a wide range of other public interests will eventually become all too obvious.
One hand tied behind our back
Canada's terms of entry to the talks can only be described as demeaning. The United States Trade Representative (USTR) set out the conditions for entry in a letter to both Canada and Mexico. The letter has not been released, but its contents and the conditions governing Canadian and Mexican participation have been reported in a Washington trade policy publication.
For two years, Canada has been lobbying heavily to get into the talks. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade balked at the onerous demands coming from Washington, but in the final days the file was taken over by the PM's chief of staff who was dispatched to Washington to secure Canada's entry, apparently at any cost.
Sight unseen, the government of Canada has agreed to accept any negotiating text on which the nine current members have already reached consensus. According to the USTR, this includes all agreed ("unbracketed") text within chapters that are still open, not just completed chapters. To date, only one chapter has been completed.
It is almost unbelievable that Canada accepted this condition. The 12 rounds of TPP negotiations have been wrapped in unusually tight secrecy, though draft versions of two chapters (investment and intellectual property) have been leaked.
Free hand for lobbyists
What's more, the Canadian government apparently accepted a further condition that it will not reopen any text that is agreed upon during the period before it gains full negotiating status. Canada and Mexico will not be able to formally join the negotiations until after other TPP countries complete their domestic consultations on the new partners' entry. The USTR will soon notify the U.S. Congress of Canada's impending entry, which will trigger a 90-day consultation process.
Canada will probably not be a full participant at the negotiating table until the fifteenth round, which will be held in December. In the meantime, two more full rounds in July and September will have been completed. Playing hardball, the USTR has brazenly stated that Canada and Mexico will not even be granted observer status at the July or September rounds. Presumably, they will not be granted access to the text either, until after the internal U.S. review period is over.
This means that during the next two rounds, the nine current members will have the opportunity to reach consensus on areas where they know that Canada has sensitivities, notably agricultural market access, drug pricing, cultural industries, and copyright protection. It also means that U.S. lobbyists, representing everything from brand-name drugs, agricultural exports, motion pictures and softwood lumber, will have a free hand to try to insert their own poison pills ahead of Canada's entry.
Second-class participants
By agreeing to these unprecedented and humiliating restrictions on Canada's ability to negotiate freely, the Harper government has also clearly telegraphed its desperation to be part of this agreement, whatever the ultimate cost to Canadians.
Despite official claims to the contrary, it is very clear that both Canada and Mexico have entered these high-stakes negotiations as second-class participants. The USTR is firmly in charge, and the Americans have once again confirmed their well-deserved reputation as ruthless negotiators. They have exacted a high procedural price for Canadian entry.
In its desperate bid to be part of these talks, the Harper government has left Canadians with a clear choice -- to take an agreement shoved down our throats by the U.S. and its powerful corporate lobbies or to leave it. Given the obvious costs, the only dignified option is clear. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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Fiat lux
47 weeks ago
First of all, I wish we
First of all, I wish we wouldn't have to be insulted with the constant repetition of Clinton's photo, day after day.
The whole TTP racket is a clear proof of an insane, I'm using the word out politeness, government selling off citizen and human rights for absolutely no benefits to the public.
As we, the ordinary, unwashed public has only been hurt and damaged beyond control by the FTA, and our and the economy of Mexico totally ruined by the crooked NAFTA rackets.
What right does any government have, anywhere on Earth, with the exception of total dictatorships, to make secret treaties with foreign powers, that not only influence, but destroy the lives of citizens?
This is the one and most important question nobody dares to ask ? What the hell is going on ?
The Mexican drug wars, caused by the NAFTA, are the best example of what will happen here if these crooks can get away with their criminal conspiracies to defraud and steal.
Ed Deak.
macsasquatch
47 weeks ago
Buffalos me...
I have read these articles, and a couple of others on this thing. I see the present gvt (like most of our gvts, I suppose) doing what inside lobbyists and party owners want, but I just cannot figure who in Canada gains from this thing. Maybe, like a lot of our resource extraction industries, it is being driven by foreign shareholders in our governing party.
I just cannot figure out where the drive for this might be coming from.
Fiat lux
47 weeks ago
mac....The bloody fools and
mac....The bloody fools and crooks are counting everything with imaginary GDP figures.
As long as the GDP goes up we have "growth", even if people are homeless and starving in the streets and the money goes out of the out of the country into the pockets of our "wealth creating foreign investors".
The GDP is God and the end and be all for and of everything. Apart from being the biggest fraud to mislead the sucker public.
This crap is taught in our universities as a "science", while people blame the pimp politicians, who are only following the ideas of our so called "economists".
Ed Deak.
pwlg
47 weeks ago
Obama Trade Document Leaked
Further reading on this topic from Huffington Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/13/obama-trade-document-leak_n_1592593.html
Seems someone leaked a document from the talks. Nothing that we already don't know from the previous so called "free trade" deals we have signed on to, an outside tribunal will have more authority than our internal governments (local, provincial and federal) laws and regulations.
From what I have read why would Canada want any part of this deal? Whose benefit? Who is pushing Harper to become part of this deal?
Get this: Outside tribunals have already ruled that "anti-teen smoking efforts are unfair barriers to trade".
The Fraser Institute would be pleased.
David Beers
47 weeks ago
Ed Deak
There's no Clinton photo with this story? What are you talking about?
cdn
47 weeks ago
The TPP is much worse than articulated here
Please see:
Leaked Trade Doc Shows Obama Wants to Help Corporations Avoid Regulations
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/6/14/breaking_08_pledge_leaked_trade_doc
RockyRacoon
47 weeks ago
This is Harper's way of deregulating in the continued race to
the bottom and right now Harper is touring Canada telling everyone how great his policies are. Well, let's see if he recieves any challanges from the press during his scripted photo ops-let's see how much the press gives away to Harper just so they can get a few quotes that they call acess. The press should boycott Harper. Why not start a boycott on Harper and his press announcements get others to do it until he accepts conditions from reporters.
They can ask two questions and don't have to submit them ahead of time.
RR
RR
hg
47 weeks ago
The Press
Rocky, the press is owned by the same bunch, that owns Mr. Harper, his government and his party.
Hakuin
47 weeks ago
click on the bold
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/ownership/eng/title_org.htm
Cravin Moorehead
47 weeks ago
I am an American
But, we have much in common with Canadians. We both are being sold out by multi-national corporations. They are rushing us into a "race to the bottom", economically. They want to wring every last cent out of our economies and devastate the middle class while moving the assets of the middle class to their CEO's and stockholders. These corporations are cancers that have metastasized and are controlling our governments.
Sadly, I see little hope without and eventual physical conflict. For these corporations do not understand charity, compassion or civility. They have no shame.
Sask Resident
47 weeks ago
Chretien
Chretien then Martin turned down entry into the TPP in 2003 then 2005, although they never explained why (maybe interfered with Chretien's Vietnamese casino). Singapore, although small is an important gateway to Asian markets (kind of like Hong Kong is a gateway to China). Canada should have negotiated free trade or economic cooperation agreements with each countries. Where is the agreement with South Korea?
Fiat lux
47 weeks ago
Sorry David but that guy in
Sorry David but that guy in the photo that was on this morning sure looked like Clinton.
As far the neoclassical market economic theory, the TPP and the rest of these treasonous treaties are concerned, deregulated money creation caused an over 1,000% inflation here, which, using the economists own language, "priced us out of the market" and now we have to sell the land from under our feet to buy products we used to and still could make right here.
Harper and the rest are constantly using the word "prosperity", made famous by Mulroney, while living standards are going to hell and poverty numbers are rising.
No wonder they are keeping the details secret and will sign in secret, fearing a revolution.
Ed Deak.
DonValley
47 weeks ago
Selling Canada by the Loonie
Selling Canada by the Loonie
Hakuin
47 weeks ago
well well:
"Calling the proposed trade deal an “Internet trap,” OpenMedia said in a statement Tuesday that the deal would also “force service providers to collect and hand over your private data without privacy safeguards, and give media conglomerates more power to send you fines in the mail, remove online content -- including entire websites -- and even terminate your access to the Internet.”
gadrogeek
47 weeks ago
TPP and CETA
And this contains a very insightful, if disturbing, video.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/New-World-Order-Blueprint-by-Rudy-Avizius-120621-56.html
They are trying to destroy us on two sides, TPP in the west and CETA in the east.
Congratulations to Victoria! I hope other municipalities follow suit.
http://canadians.org/blog/?p=15051
Greg Shea (Lake Cowichan)
Mogs
47 weeks ago
@ SCOTT WHY IS THIS DEAL "SECRET" ?
Don't proliferate harper's hidden agenda to me and try to explain it away, with Herr harpers economic bull shit; the truth lies here in a secret document:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/97678261/Trans-Pacific-Partnership-ATIP
Why is this secret Scott?
Now a dose of reality this document means 'New World Order Blueprint Leaked' equals 'corporate global governance'
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article35265.html?all=true
And Stephen Harper made this part of his personal hidden agenda. Crusty Clark is in on this too and they both have a vast personal fortune to gain from TPP and hid it from us, Scott Sinclair wake up!
Ed Deak we have been sold into slavery of the 21'st century kind; while foreign mega corps like the red chinese sinopec strip our land bare and capitalize billions in profit, while polluting our land air and sea we will pay for the clean-up due to the TPP and we will be forced into slave labor because of the new Bill C-38 that forces us to work at 70% of provincial minimum wage laws to help the red chinese destroy Alberta and BC and create the Enbridge red chinese northern gateway pipeline. The red's have already said to heck with environmental concerns and first nations because they have invested billions and you butcher harper had better produce Alberta crude to the red chinese dude, screw BC. Stephen and Crispy sold our Canadian soul to the red chinese dude, ain't it rude?
You snooze you lose!
"While claiming that it made no substantive concessions to get in, the Harper government almost certainly signaled its flexibility' Scott you misspeak:
"…our Prime Minister is instructing Louis Lévesque to tell the United States (and possibly the other partners of the would-be Trans-Pacific Partnership) that Canada's doors are wide open, nothing's off the table and 'our Majority government is ready and willing to work for you…"
In other words our pants are down and we will bow and grovel to the new corporate world order as long as Stephen has the reins of power.
http://aboyandhistvshow.blogspot.ca/
Stephen just flexed his muscle in an alpha demonstration to his corporate overlords.
Harper knows that his majority government can well do as it pleases and will appease a corporate world takeover that robs us but lines his pockets. Scott open your eyes>
Mogs
47 weeks ago
1. Canadians ask the Canadian
1. Canadians ask the Canadian Federal Government for a clear, permanent exemption for all Canadians from the Canada-European Union (EU) Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA); Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP): or any other agreements with foreign or corporate powers; including but not limited to the International Monetary Fund (IMF); World Bank (WB); World Trade Organization (WTO)
2. Canadians ask the Federal Government to protect the autonomous powers of the individual Canadians - to create local jobs, protect the environment, and provide services and programs as they see fit for the local environment – free from any restrictions to those powers in the above named
3. Canadians further ask the Federal Government to exempt us from corporate powers and we encourage and support the end to global corporate tyranny.
Fiat lux
47 weeks ago
Mogs....I`ve been writing and
Mogs....I`ve been writing and warning about the slavery intentions of the "neoclassical market economic theory" using imaginary monetary figures for colonization and enslavement, for over 25 years.
Copyrighted my "Principle for the application of physical efficiency to economics" in 1991, therefore nothing what some of these goofball crooks are doing surprises me .
What does surprise me is that people still put up with this crime wave and keep voting for them , while everything is collapsing around their necks, while calling it "growth".
Ed Deak.
lynn
47 weeks ago
Demolishing Canada's Sturdy House of Bricks
The Little Pig of Big Ego running things into the ground here is intentionally re-making Canada's house out of straw.
All the easier for his accomplices, The Big Pigs, largely Piggy Banksters (in wolf disguise, of course), to barely have to huff, and to barely have to puff, in order to blow Canada's house down.