It would be nice if there was a website breaking down what exactly is bad about the TPP, complete with links back to the draft text and if people just replied back with that. I think something like genius.com would be useful for this purpose, but I don't have the knowledge to highlight what is bad.
Update 10:47 AM EST:
I put up chapters 0-30. I still have the annexes from chapter 2, 12, and 15 to do (I am doing them next). I made a few mistakes with chapter 20 (Environment), and I cannot delete them. I used the "Contact Us" link to ask to have those pages deleted. Here are the links to be deleted in case someone with links to genius.com is reading:
Edit: Initially, I had the chapters categorized as X (other), but I started changing them to Law. genius.com doesn't seem to let me change it after the fact.
Update 11:37 AM EST: It seems like I have hit a limit as to how many "songs" (chapters) an album ("document") can have. Any new ones I make do not appear in the album. I am going to have to stop for now since it will be hard to keep track. These are the two I made before I noticed:
Update 12:38 PM EST: No word yet on the issue with genius.com . I did find the contact information for Minister Freeland [1], and search page for Canadian Members of Parliament (you can search by postal code) [2].
Update 4:53 PM EST: I only managed to reformat the Preamble and Chapter 1. Still no word from genius.com about the issues I am having. I tweeted for the first time: https://twitter.com/TeeAyKay/status/663830955971338240 . I kept the language of the tweet neutral to see who participates. I know I am potentially opening the flood gates to abuse on genius, but hopefully the dry subject matter will keep the trolls away and attract people who can bring insight and foresee potential consequences. I am biased towards lawyers in this regard, but they might just be like too much of "I am not your lawyer" to participate.
Thanks, to genius.com for providing the platform for this endeavour (I hope you get in touch with me!).
If your in the US, I heard about this[1] site over the weekend. I haven't looked too far in to the details myself but skimming over it, it looks legitimate. In their analysis, they don't reference the section being vetted but it is rather simple analysis.
It might be worth trying to get in touch with Balsillie - he may be willing to spend a couple of dollars to get something like you describe up & running - if he hasn't already started on it.
> contains “troubling” rules on intellectual property that threaten to make Canada a “permanent underclass” in the economy of selling ideas
Why?
> He fears it would give American firms an edge and cost Canadian companies more money because they would have to pay for someone else’s ideas instead their own.
What?
> On top of that, Balsillie believes the structure could prevent Canadian firms from growing as it would also limit how much money they can make from their own products and services.
Again why?
I don't think this article ever specifically explains why TPP is bad for Canada.
I'm just starting to watch it and it's already trying to manipulate me by talking about child labour and slavery, and giving an example of the terrible things enabled by NAFTA: a lawsuit that it's not even been decided on yet.
It's not even good propaganda, let alone an informative case against trade agreements.
It did raise some issues I was not aware of, for example Canada is one of the most sued countries. Also, some pending cases and the arbitration involved is quite appalling.
I don't think it is unbiased, but it certainly does shed some light on important issues (to Canadians anyway).
But those agreements all have a common agenda -- don't think about geography, but about the common agenda behind it. We are living in the era of globalization and one of the reasons for such treaties is, that the geographical differences should vanish.
Of course it is not about the same agreement -- but this video sheds a light about all those agreements.
Ok, lets just never have another trade agreement in the history of the world. That should do it. Clearly all of them are bad. We can prove it because some of them are bad.
Shit, that video is not available in my country (Netherlands) While a dutch publicly funded broadcasting agency created it.
There are other means of viewing this documentary, but why bar the international version for dutch viewers :S
>I don't think this article ever specifically explains why TPP is bad for Canada.
Does any TPP article do more than fearmongering? Its clear there are people who are against low barriers to trade by principle. They believe in strict isolationist protectionism as being economically superior. Historically they've been wrong, but they have an activist voice on the web. Stuff like this should give people pause on how things get popular on the web and who is selling you what message.
From a larger perspective, I feel that TV and print media had guys like Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan, but the web doesn't really have anyone giving a critical message about how untrustworthy and unreliable communication like this is.
Of course, it's the people against convoluted, multipronged trade agreements who are the neo-mercantilists! The Ludwig von Mises Institute are all a bunch of reds!
And by definition omnibus bills like "free trade agreements" are a central instrument in curtailing it. Micromanagement of every detail is the antithesis of freedom. You don't seem to be well versed in what free trade is.
Funny that you should mention Marshall McLuhan, because the TPP changes to Copyright law in Canada would mean his works don't enter the public domain for another 20 years, which would be a shame.
> Nyhan is apparently deeply confused, however, since he equates the Trans Pacific Partnership with “trade liberalization.” In fact, the TPP is not about any type of liberalization, but is about centralizing political power.
> "We're an export-driven sector, so we love free trade", Taylor said. "However this can't come at the cost of the future of the technology industry, and that's what it will be if New Zealand's current law banning software patents is traded away in the TPP."
> In any case, the Pacific trade deal isn’t really about trade. Some already low tariffs would come down, but the main thrust of the proposed deal involves strengthening intellectual property rights — things like drug patents and movie copyrights — and changing the way companies and countries settle disputes. And it’s by no means clear that either of those changes is good for America.
> William Daley’s pro-TPP op-ed in today’s Times is just awful, on multiple levels. No acknowledgment that the real arguments are not about trade but about intellectual property and dispute settlement; on top of that a crude mercantilist claim that trade liberalization is good because it means more exports; some Dean Baker bait with numbers — $31 billion in trade surplus! All of 0.2 percent of GDP!
> So in the United States, there are really protective rules around this: Any maker of a biologic gets 12 years of data exclusivity. The FDA can't approve a similar drug that relies on the original data during this time. ... By contrast, in other countries, there are looser rules — or no rules — around such data exclusivity. Japan offers eight years, for instance. Brunei offers zero.
> At the moment, it's up to countries to decide whether things like a small change in a drug molecule should warrant a patent extension. But the final TPP creates patent-related obligations in countries that never had them before, explained Rius Sanjuan. To put it simply, this would directly target a country's ability to define its own patent law and put a higher standard on when generics can become available.
Are you for real? You imagine there's something good in any of the TP* treaties? It's not fearmongering when it's real hahaha.
"Historically they've been wrong" REALLY? your claim for that is what? The only reason we have income taxes, is because of the first world war. It was sold to people as a temporary measure to pay for the war. Before that, government was paid for with import duties. You think people are better off giving up half their income and in some places, more than that? That's just income tax. Add all the other taxes up and it's getting to be a 100%. Those taxes will be going up further as a result of this 'free' trade. The lost duties have to be made up somehow and it's not like anyone is straining to balance a budget.
"but they have an activist voice on the web."
Accusing someone of doing what you've done, is one of the oldest tricks there is. You see shithead politicians do that everyday. YOU, what you preeching is the commie I'm sorry, 'activist' nonsense. YOU WANT to be impoverished. Because that's what it's the globalization of, poverty.
With the collapse in commodities, Canada is considered a third world economy by most investment banks now.
Jeffrey Sachs commented yesterday about the U.S. fast-track requirement for a bundled all-or-nothing vote, http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/11/08/jeffrey-sachs-..., "TPP is too flawed for a simple ‘yes’ vote" … the 12 signatories should slow down, take the pieces of this complex trade agreement in turn, and work harder for a set of international standards that will truly support global sustainable development … The agreement, with its 30 chapters, is really four complex deals in one.
The first is a free-trade deal among the signatories. That part could be signed today. Tariff rates would come down to zero; quotas would drop; trade would expand; and protectionism would be held at bay. The second is a set of regulatory standards for trade. Most of these are useful, requiring that regulations that limit trade should be based on evidence, not on political whims or hidden protectionism.
The third is a set of regulations governing investor rights, intellectual property, and regulations in key service sectors, including financial services, telecommunications, e-commerce, and pharmaceuticals. These chapters are a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Their common denominator is that they enshrine the power of corporate capital above all other parts of society, including labor and even governments.
The fourth is a set of standards on labor and environment that purport to advance the cause of social fairness and environmental sustainability. But the agreements are thin, unenforceable, and generally unimaginative. For example, climate change is not even mentioned, much less addressed boldly and creatively.
… The up-or-down vote therefore raises two questions. First, are the bad parts indeed bad enough to vote down the package, thereby jeopardizing the undoubted good of other chapters? Second, do we truly face an all-or-nothing proposition, or rather could we agree with our negotiating counterparts on certain chapters while reconsidering others? … Congress should vote “no’’ on the current TPP, while simultaneously endorsing its trade provisions as well as continuing the work with our counterparts on the other chapters. Globalization is indeed so important for our common good that it’s of overriding significance to get it right."
The reason all these things are glued together into one deal is that they will not pass on their own, because international trade is not symmetrical.
Consider a wealthy post-industrial nation A trading with a poor industrial nation B. Raw materials and simple goods flow from B to A, so tariffs will be the primary concern. Capital, complex goods, services, and IP flow from A to B, so investment, IP, and regulatory issues will be of concern in that direction. A tariffs-only deal will not be balanced and therefore not succeed. Likewise a regulations-only deal.
Trade issues are not even balanced between industries. A tariffs-dropping deal will find support from manufacturers, but opposition from materials companies.
So to succeed, a trade deal must balance the various interests of many stakeholders. That means gluing a bunch of stuff together so that to any given person, some parts will look good and some parts will look bad.
The reason Congress created fast track is that different people will see different parts as good and bad. Fast track ensures a simple vote on the balance as a whole. If enough people see more good than bad--overall--it passes.
A trade deal will never look ideal to anyone. The question is whether it's a net gain for most.
"When Richard Nixon was president, he cooked up Fast Track to seize power from Congress. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress exclusive authority to “regulate commerce with foreign nations” (Art. I-8). Fast Track was a mechanism that delegated away to the executive branch Congress’ authority to control the contents of U.S. trade pacts, as well as other important powers.
Fast Track empowered executive branch trade negotiators, advised by more than 600 official trade advisors who mostly represent large corporations, to choose trade partners and negotiate and sign trade pacts, all before Congress voted. Once signed, Fast Track put such deals on a legislative luge run: no matter how many domestic non-trade policies were implicated or threatened by the deal, Fast Tracked agreements hurtled through Congress within a set number of days, with normal democratic checks and balances iced over.
Fast Track ensured that Congress’ role came too late to influence trade pacts’ contents: Congress only got a yes or no vote after a pact was signed and “entered into.” That vote also OK’d hundreds of changes to U.S. non-trade law to conform our policies to “trade” deal terms. Federalism was also flattened by Fast Track via a form of international pre-emption: state officials had to conform local laws to expansive non-trade domestic policy restrictions in Fast Tracked “trade” pacts. State officials did not even get Congress’ cursory role.
… Fast Track should be relegated to a museum of inappropriate technology. Congress, state officials and the public need a new modern procedure for developing U.S. trade policy, one that takes into account the realities of 21st-century globalization agreements."
The first president to bend the Constitution to reduce Congress's role in making trade deals and treaties was... George Washington, of all people.
Note that the Constitution says "[The president] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur." At the time this was written, the intent was clearly to have the Senate be as intimately involved in the treaty negotiation process as the president. George Washington started his first treaty by basically asking the Senate what the negotiators should be aiming for. Neither the Senate nor Washington was happy with the process, and so Washington (nor any subsequent president) attempted a repeat.
(See <http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/congress/treaties_senate...).
These days, revolving doors and web-based access to TPP drafts give corporate lawyers many advantages over the legislative branch, as members of Congress are restricted to reading TPP drafts in a locked room, without taking notes, without their trade/legal staff, without a phone.
The executive branch delegated trade negotiations to former bankers, e.g. the lead TPP negotiator is ex-Citibank, http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/05/28/us-trade-rep-wal..., "Noting deep ties between the country's top trade negotiator and Wall Street banks, ten groups representing millions of Americans are calling on the White House to make public all communications between U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and the massive financial institutions that stand to benefit from proposed trade deals."
For more on lobbyists, see http://www.ip-watch.org/2015/06/05/confidential-ustr-emails-..., ".. Many of the industry representatives are themselves former USTR officials ... Jim DeLisi of Fanwood Chemical said he had just seen the text on rules of origin, and remarked, 'Someone owes USTR a royalty payment. These are our rules … This is a very pleasant surprise.'"
It's perfectly possible that a trade agreement is bad for all the signatory countries and ideal for other third parties that have co-opted the process.
> requiring that regulations that limit trade should be based on evidence, not on political whims
That would be "sovereign democracy".
It's remarkable what cowards so-called free trade advocates are. If the benefits are so manifest, then they should survive just fine in the free market of ideas, and be voted for.
But we never get actual free trade. We get "no tariffs on imports and exports" with a laundry list of concessions to get it. By itself, of course free trade is better - it expands your markets for competitiveness and as long as neither country can exploit its people to unnaturally favor their production it just broadens your competition pool.
That never happens. But it doesn't happen because free trade does not work. It doesn't happen because any free trade law is inherently the stage to gain concessions - both sides are poised to benefit, so you barter off your sovereignty and economic position as best you can to maximize your gains, even at catastrophic loss to the participant nations, or even your own people.
Its not pretty to acknowledge that to raise the entirety of humanity to a modern standard of living we need to endure the short term ramifications of equalizing our economies amongst each other. But its a pill worth swallowing for all of us. We just keep trying to take the pill in tiny pieces smeared in the rancid butter of short term exploitation and profit.
TPP should be opposed already for the single fact that it's an undemocratic backdoor agreement that attempts to circumvent proper legislative process to shape law.
Barbara Weisel, chief negotiator for the US, works in the USTR, which answers to the President, who was democratically elected.
Koji Tsuruoka, chief negotiator for Japan, answers to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who is appointed by the Prime Minister, who is designated by the Diet, which is democratically elected.
For most parties involved (cough Vietnam cough Brunei) negotiators ultimately answer to democratically elected officials, and approval follows the respective constitution of the involved party. If I had not wanted a President who supports free trade agreements, I would have voted for someone other than Obama in 2012.
This may be a "backdoor agreement," but it is not an undemocratic backdoor agreement.
They are from executive branch. TPP is clearly a legislative effort (of monstrous proportions), so it should be controlled by the legislative branch, including ability to amend and discuss the agreement in advance in transparent and public fashion.
It is clearly undemocratic, because executive branch here usurps the power to create law.
How do you propose coordinating the amendment processes between a dozen or more legislatures?
It doesn't really make sense to let any legislature amend a treaty under the current system, where the President and his designated functionaries do the negotiating - then you have Congress modifying a negotiated agreement which would make treaties wildly impractical, especially when multiplied by all the member-legislatures.
It doesn't make sense under an imaginary primary-legislature system either. The US Congress has different rules for amendments and debate than say, the Japanese Diet.
If Congress doesn't like the TPP, it is entirely in their power to refuse to ratify the treaty and send it back to the negotiating table. And it was entirely in their power to not grant the President the Trade Promotion Authority.
> It doesn't really make sense to let any legislature amend a treaty under the current system
Not just amend - they have to be involved in designing it (that would avoid the problem you described). And of course in the public fashion. If they aren't - it's already undemocratic corrupted farce.
How could multiple legislatures design a treaty together?
You have the same problem, it can't be done. Each legislature has different rules and completely different cultures. What would happen is each legislature would appoint individual legislators to negotiate for them and you'd have exactly the same system you have now, except with the negotiators being members of the legislative branch instead of the executive branch.
Even on the microscale, the US House and the US Senate have the same problem, for which they invented conference committees, which is where the House and the Senate appoint a couple representatives and senators to negotiate for their interests. [1] The results of the committee are sent to both houses for an up-or-down no-amendments vote.
> except with the negotiators being members of the legislative branch instead of the executive branch.
That's already better in a case when agreement involves laws. As long as those negotiations are transparent, and legislative branch can weigh in during the process - things can be fixed in timely manner. When they are completely opaque and results are shown post factum - that's where potential for corruption grows.
To put it shortly - evil things like to lurk in the dark.
> That's already better in a case when agreement involves laws.
Why on Earth would it be better to have Jeff Sessions (R-AL) representing US interests during the TPP negotiations rather than a US trade rep? Actually that seems exactly the _opposite_ of a good thing, since any individual Congressman or set of Congressman is going to favor their state(s) over the country as a whole; they are directly accountable to the people in their state who elected them. At least a US trade representative is accountable to an elected official who represents the entire country.
> When they are completely opaque and results are shown post factum - that's where potential for corruption grows.
That's how Congress already works. Staffers and legislators produce the text of a bill and the results are shown after the deed is already done. All that enters the public record is some of the amendment history and the conference report, if there is one. And often amendments change huge portions of a bill, and you again see only the after-the-fact result. It's not a write-commit-write-commit cycle, it's a write-write-write-write-write-commit.
> To put it shortly - evil things like to lurk in the dark.
A lot of effective governance also works in the dark. The reality of life is that completely transparent, open negotiations are very difficult and close to impossible except for small, very tight-knit communities.
The executive branch can't pass the agreement, so there's no usurpation. If the legislative branch decides to sign-off on a fait accompli, you should blame them.
Executive branch creates it and gives to the legislative to rubberstramp. I.e. they aren't involved in the design process. Of course formally legislative branch can reject it based on various poisonous parts in the agreement, but they'll be pressured under pretense that it's "valuable as a whole". I.e. it's a complete farce, and not a democratic process.
The issue is that vocal minorities fuck up trade deals. American corn interests can't compete with Brazilian sugar on a cost basis, and you and I might not care too much about sugar tariffs, but guaranteed lobbyists for these minor interests are going to bloat up the trade bill to the point where it isn't even readable by a single person.
I am surprised by this line, Alternatively, the treaty can also take effect if it’s ratified by half the countries representing 85 per cent of the zone’s economy. Is this something that the negotiators really had the power to agree and bind their countries to???
The US constitution is very clear that the negotiators lack that power. However the question can't come up because the USA is about 16% of the world economy, so you can't get to the 85% of the economy figure without the USA.
But Canadian law is not entirely dissimilar. Specifically Canada may have signed it, but according to http://www.parl.gc.ca/content/lop/researchpublications/2008-..., Canada is not bound by the agreement until it is ratified. And even then it does not have any force in Canadian domestic law until Parliament has passed specific bills to implement it. So Canada shouldn't be bound by this, and the negotiators were in the wrong to promise what they had no authority to promise.
I'm sure that the US and Canada are not the only two countries where the negotiators did not rightly have power to bind their countries to that term. So why is this term considered binding rather than being pointed to as a clear example of overreach??
> I am surprised by this line, Alternatively, the treaty can also take effect if it’s ratified by half the countries representing 85 per cent of the zone’s economy. Is this something that the negotiators really had the power to agree and bind their countries to???
Of course the negotiators don't, only the ratifying authorities have the power to bind, but that's true of all of the rest of the treaty (and every treaty) as well: note that, in that case, in comes into effect between those who ratified it. So, only for those for whom those with the power to bind the country did so (including agreeing to that condition for it going into effect.)
NOTE: This type of minimum threshold clause is common in agreements (many multilateral treaties have something like it.) The idea being that the prospective parties don't think that the restrictions are worthwhile unless there is a sufficiently-large group joining the arrangement.
Of course it doesn't bind people who haven't ratified it yet. Rather, that clause is to make clear that the agreement will become binding for those who have ratified it once 85% have ratified (preventing a holdout from slowing down the majority).
Notably, a similar protocol was used for the adoption of the US Constitution (see Article VII).
My interpretation of that has been to safeguard against a smaller country or two dropping out:
For example, if NZ bailed at the last minute, the agreement would still hold between the other 11 countries to whatever extent is applicable. However, if some critical mass of countries all drop out, the whole agreement is invalidated.
In this sense, the negotiators didn't bind their countries to anything; they just set some terms regarding what does and does not invalidate the entire agreement.
The US is 23% of global GDP per the IMF's 2015 projections, which take into account the rather significant shift in currencies globally in the last year.
Going by 2014 IMF numbers, the US was 22%. The World Bank and UN both have similar figures.
A very smart friend of mine on Facebook with lots of ties in the tech industry described Balsillie as "Canada's Donald Trump."
He says "I’m not a partisan actor, but I actually think this is the worst thing that the Harper government has done for Canada." The worst?
He says "It’s a treaty that structures everything forever – and we can’t get out of it." Forever?
Later in the article we find out,
"The deal must be ratified by all 12 countries, and then it would come into force six months later. It would require a parliamentary vote in Canada. Alternatively, the treaty can also take effect if it’s ratified by half the countries representing 85 per cent of the zone’s economy. A country can withdraw any time, on six months’ notice."
So not only can we get out, but it's not forever if you can get out. So Balsillie is full of $hit, alarmist, and possibly still butthurt over losing out to a patent troll that RIM never took seriously enough.
Part of the problem of any trade deal is that you'll end up pissing off one group at home to make another one more happy. Trade negotiators argue they need to have the deals be negotiated in secret or special interest groups will cause too much noise and trade deals will never get done.
Have you looked at who is going to benefit from the TPP?
The legislators are forcing this pact specifically because it promotes certain interests of various corporations. The group that will end up getting pissed off is the public at large when their quality of living is reduced. Novartis et al will get their rapacious drug profiteering enforced onto countries that currently aren't under their dominion, and the people who live in those countries will suffer through high prices for medicine because their politicians got a fat kickback.
Special interest groups are driving this entire partnership from start to finish.
This is true of legislation in general. Any significant bill brought to the floor of a legislature for a vote has already been negotiated by the bill sponsors and leadership, and usually they even have a good idea of how many votes it's going to get.
It's true of business deals too. Typically the managers will negotiate the deal in private, and then present it their board and/or shareholders to be ratified.
It's just really hard to make significant decisions in a large group of people. Anyone who has been in a huge meeting, or on a big committee, will understand that.
Yes -- the problem with negotiating the trade deal in public is the people you intend to screw over have time to use the democratic process to stop it before you can put it into law.
No, the problem is that you end up handcuffed by various interests in the process of negotiating.
If you try to give up one thing (e.g. free trade) in exchange for another (anti-counterfeiting provisions) and you get jumped on as soon as you suggest the first you never get a chance to broach the second.
Maybe the solution is to have a mandatory waiting period after the full text is released. 90 days before any votes can take place, something like that. Gives people time to go through and actually evaluate the proposal as a whole.
That's not how this works. The TPP is public before it is implemented, it is secret before it is finalized. If a country has the democratic means to stop it, it can do so after it is finalized but before it is implemented. I'm not saying that I like the TPP as a whole or that some countries aren't getting screwed over, but the negotiation process would be fucktarded if it was public all the way through.
Countries aren't getting screwed over, citizens are, certain industries or interests in each country are. These trade deals throw certain sectors of the country under the bus in favor of other sectors as they must.
And the ability to rubber stamp a 6,000 page monolithic treaty which has already been agreed to is a complete joke. It's about as democratic as a parent asking a child, "would you like to go to boarding school or boot camp?" The democracy happened during the negotiations and amendments -- at that point the needs of each constituent were considered, included or excluded, compromised. Unfortunately the citizens of these countries or their elected representatives or anyone willing to represent their interests weren't invited to that party.
The negotiation would be harder, sure if it were public but that's because making an agreement that is fair is a lot harder than asking corporate lobbyists to narrate a wishlist and typing it up. All they had to do was reconcile the many, many different wishlists (still very hard), not put forth an agreement that actual citizens would approve of (much harder but what they should actually be doing).
Yes, sometimes secret negotiations are needed to get things done. Look at the recent budget deal in the US Congress. [1] The media and the public had no idea what was going on behind the scenes when Boehner announced his resignation. If Obama or key Republicans had talked about the negotiations, no deal could have been made.
That already happens. Bills are written in mostly private negotiations between legislators. They are made public before they get voted on. They can amend the bills in Congress because amendments are voted by the same people who will approve or reject. If legislators in America, Canada, Japan, Vietnam all offere amendments, it's essentially going back to the drawing board of international negotiations.
So candidates are absolutely free (and do) keep their proposals secret until they are finalized and ready to present. The problem with the TPP is fast trackign it through. Candidates don't present all their ideas 12 hours before a vote, they do it months in advance and people have time to analyze and debate the merits.
All international agreements are generally discussed in secrecy. In most democracies even laws are discussed for the most part in secrecy.
This prevents unexpected surprises, allows for a straight forward process, more honest discussion and makes it possible to reach compromises without appearing weak to constituients. It also acts as a filter for bad ideas and makes it easier to figure out, if something has any chance at suceeding without it becoming a public failure.
> All international agreements are generally discussed in secrecy.
People keep repeating this line with no evidence. I've been around for a number of international treaties and this is the first one I recall where the #1 issue is how secretive and un-democratic the process is.
Of course there are always backchannel discussions but with the TPP there has be little indication that ANY of the initiatives are actually being driven by the needs of the electorate.
When my elected official couldn't even see a copy for years (even in secret) and then was only able to when it was basically an all-or-nothing done deal about to signed something is very, very wrong.
I'm not sure which treaties you are referring to but certainly all trade agreements have always been negotiated in secret. And people who were against them have always complained.[1] Are you against climate agreements because they was mostly negotiated in secret?[2] How about US-USSR nuclear disarmament treaties (SALT I, SALT II, ABM)? The Iran nuclear talks?[3]
Do you not understand why they need to be negotiated in public? I guess you don't because you didn't even know they were always negotiated in secret.
Despite your single article, I followed NAFTA and secrecy was not the dominant talking point. Specifics about industries affected were the focal point. Elected officials were actually involved.
Your other two examples are from last year and involve the same president driving TPP.
You should actually watch parliamentary debates sometime. For the most part they are completely boring and debates in name only.
It's rare for parliaments to have actual passionate debates. That usually only happens on controversial and dividing issues, where it's worth it to make a stand to appeal to voters or where public support might help.
Most of the time these debates are just a formality to pass through a compromise everyone already has agreed to pass through beforehand. Accordingly you'll see that parliamentary debates and even votes are attented often only by a small number of representatives, not because they're not doing they're job it's because they've already done theirs at that point and have better things to do.
This also has the added bonus of being functionally an oligarchy (oligarchies are MUCH more efficient even when the oligarchs disagree!) and really has no relationship to any kind of democracy, representative or otherwise.
> According to that, all parliamentary debates should be secret, too.
Not as unreasonable as it sounds. The parliamentary system was devised when hardly anyone could read, and they certainly couldn't see debates on the TV.
By the time something has reached the debate level, which is just theater for the most part, the big decisions have been made. No one is changing their minds or votes at that point, unless something previously unknown and exceptional is revealed, which is rare.
Well, the big decisions often are made in committees, sometimes in parliament, too, though.
The whole process starts with a committee being started, they writing and working on several compromises, and then giving parliament the ability to vote on these.
But the work of the committees – except for the TTIP committee – is also public.
A way to satisfy both sides might be to allow the discussions in private but have them recorded by independent parties who are in turn watched by public watchdogs. Then on conclusion of negotiations and before a law is ratified the entire debate could be made available.
You could have your private negotiations and laws could only be ratified when private compromises that negatively effect the demos hadn't been made.
No, secrecy of this type has no place in a democratic society.
This trade deal will change the lives of millions, if not a few billion people. There is no room for governments to claim the need for secrecy when their true intention is to mask the transfer of wealth from the public to a few megacorps.
The reason why it was negotiated in secret is because there never would have been a consensus. It's literally a learned best practice of trade diplomacy.
Isn't "we can't negotiate in public because the public won't agree to this" pretty much the most anti-democratic thing the USA[?] could push on the rest of the world.
Land of the Free ...
How about instead saying: we believe in open democracy and so despite it slightly weakening our position we'll require negotiations to be open and require those ratifying the treaty to first have a free vote in their parliamentary houses [wherein one option will be to ratify following a referendum].
Now that would be spreading democracy.
A cynic might think that this was the first best option to secure the world against change following the 1%-protests to ensure rich capitalists maintain their position of power because "oh we can't tax this damaging activity because it makes these people poorer and they made us sign a treaty".
The problem is you would never reach the point of a vote. You could never reach the needed compromises with hundreds of people trying to serve their own interests at every step.
In Constitutional structure, the US is both a (democratic, federal) republic and a (representative) democracy, it is not, by design, "a republic and not a democracy".
Cynically, one might argue that it is, in practice, a (plutocratic) republic and not a democracy, I suppose.
The problem is that if you negotiate in public, pressure groups have the ability to influence or sabotage and sabotage the deal before it's even complete. This can happen even if the the deal would overall be good for the public.
Keeping the negotiation process secret allows it to be analyzed as a package.
I and a lot of others have been talking about the dispute resolution processes and how they shift power to corporations over and above all sectors of government. In the domain name space they are called Rapid Dispute Resolution Processes (DRRPs) and around, in particular, intellectual property, they are fraught with danger. They allow corporations to overrule national laws around environment, climate, working conditions, you name it.
I hope we can slow this train down enough so that people can understand what is on the table here. At almost 6 thousand pages there are also a lot of devils in the details.
I think what you meant to say was, "no wonder it's 6000 pages long due to this being a very large and complex project. The length of this document is reasonably commensurate with the intended scale of such a deal."
Kind of the same thing with Obamacare.. Nearly all the politicians who voted for it didn't even read it.. By their own admission. John Conyers of MI comes immediately to mind.
Politicans generally won't read most of the laws they sign and why would they? There are many laws on incredible wide range of different topics and you only have so many representatives. You can't possibly expect every lawmaker to be an expert on every of these topics. That's why they have experts and colleagues that they can talk to and why lobbying exists and is not an entirely bad thing.
This is far bigger than merely a trade agreement. It contains provisions that replace existing laws and may hinder democratic decision making. There are a lot of things in it that have nothing to do with trade, and everything with the rights of citizens.
Wasn't the fast track legislation and such part of the cause of the worry? The idea being that it is negotiated in secret then pushed through before people can really create informed opinions.
Canada's already lost at innovation. Almost everyone I know who graduated with a STEM degree moved to the US immediately upon graduation.
My favorite example: Apoorva Mehta invented Instacart in Waterloo, Canada because it was too cold to go grocery shopping and too expensive to own a car. Then he immediately went to San Francisco (a city with warm weather and cheap cars?!) to start his unicorn.
Waterloo students still go shopping in the snow. #fail.
I don't know how you can dismiss an entire country because of one person's move. Toronto and Montreal both have big tech scenes and plenty of investors (albeit a bit on the bearish side). As much as we lose talent to the states, we also pull a lot up as well.
Waterloo itself has a pretty big tech scene. There's a number of incubators and a few big companies have opened local offices (e.g., Google and Shopify).
I lived there for 19 years and saw first-hand the total lack of capital, vision, appetite for risk, and ability to hire and retain top talent.
Unless, of course, your business revolved around digging things up from the ground and selling them to the US. Thankfully (hopefully?) that era is coming to an end too.
Your experiences are in stark contrast to mine. Keep in mind that we're a country of 35 mil. people and that we compete with countries ten and twenty times our size. Sure we're risk-averse, but I'd prefer that over crapping out off-the-shelf delivery apps every 6 months like SF.
Honestly, from being in the industry in Toronto for 5 years now, the "top talent" that leaves is anything but. Just title-chasers waving expensive degrees. My director just left for SF to build "spotify, but for food. It'll totally be great man." Yeah, great talent there!
> Keep in mind that we're a country of 35 mil. people and that we compete with countries ten and twenty times our size. Sure we're risk-averse, but I'd prefer that over crapping out off-the-shelf delivery apps every 6 months like SF.
I don't really see size of the country as en excuse in this case. We have the same or better ability to pull talent from overseas, and free trade visas with the US work both ways. SF produces a ton of shit, but they also end up with actually impressive tech companies. Canada has really no answer to that.
> Honestly, from being in the industry in Toronto for 5 years now, the "top talent" that leaves is anything but. Just title-chasers waving expensive degrees.
um okay. Apparently going to work on interesting stuff for a big tech company for 50% more money (more now, the dollar is tanking again) makes me a title chaser.
That's funny because Grocery Gateway was founded in the 90s and delivers groceries in Waterloo. It's not the same day, but you can often get it the next day. I use it because I don't drive and it's simple to get one big delivery at the start of the month and have most of my groceries aside from a few perishables like fruits and vegetables.
Just, anecdotally, I knew a startup in northwest Arkansas (the walmart region) that won seed funding of about $100,000. They squandered the money relatively quickly, and immediately decided the only way to salvage their business was to head to SF. It only took a few months after renting a house to keep everyone in, and they managed to secure another ≈$1.3M. To this day they swear up and down, the only way to turn a business idea into reality is to live in SF/the valley. Seems to be a very common concept, regardless of the realities.
Getting funded outside the Valley is an order of magnitude harder, so it makes sense to move to the Valley I guess (even temporarily).
A local company raised 25.000 dollars here in Uruguay, got accepted into 500 Startups and got over a million dollars in funding (which is basically impossible here), they have a very cool idea and innovative tech but had little traction at the time.
I suspect Mr. Balsillie still owns a chunk of BBRY stock, which in turn claims ownership of a massive (multi-billion dollar)[1] patent portfolio. Some might argue that these patents represent the majority of the residual value of his former company, hence the alarmist rhetoric. The absence of any concrete info on how this will harm innovation is laughable.
[1]: Patent buy in 2011: "Apple, RIM and their bidding partners control over more than 6,000 patents and applications that cover wireless and Internet technologies" which cost $4.5 Billion. www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-07-01/nortel-sells-patent-portfolio-for-4-5-billion-to-group
You took the time to look for something about Blackberry patents, you could have also taken a moment to confirm that he has long since sold off his Blackberry shares.
Here is her tweet about it: https://twitter.com/CanadaTrade/status/662397645722361856
It would be nice if there was a website breaking down what exactly is bad about the TPP, complete with links back to the draft text and if people just replied back with that. I think something like genius.com would be useful for this purpose, but I don't have the knowledge to highlight what is bad.
Edit: Well, I'm getting started putting stuff up on Genius.com: http://genius.com/albums/Transpacific-partnership-tpp-negoti... .
Here is where the PDFs are: http://www.mfat.govt.nz/Treaties-and-International-Law/01-Tr...
Another edit: I am just dumping the text for now. Not sure if I will get to formatting it nicely.