Balsillie fears TPP will cost Canada billions

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!).

Hmmm, I wonder if under TPP this Supreme Court ruling would be overruled?

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.

The article is about TPP, and this video is about TTIP.

Slightly different, as one covers the Pacific, the other the Atlantic.

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

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!

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.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2015/11/official-release-of-tpp-t...

> Does any TPP article do more than fearmongering? Its clear there are people who are against low barriers to trade by principle.

Yes. Mises is made of people who are against low trade barriers on principles. /s

https://mises.org/library/we-need-actual-free-trade-not-tpp

> We Need Actual Free Trade, Not the TPP

> 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.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/nz-it-industry-mobilises-to-fig...

> "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."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/22/opinion/paul-krugman-trade...

> 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.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/the-mis-selling-...

> 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!

http://www.vox.com/2015/10/5/9454511/tpp-cost-medicine

> 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.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-02/money-floo...

  > The reason Congress created fast track is that different
  > people will see different parts as good and bad.

That's one perspective. Public Citizen has another, http://www.citizen.org/documents/fast-track-chart.pdf

"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."

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.

Just saying. I don't know if this is the case.

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.

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.

That sounds very reasonable.

OK, TPP doesn't. But that term does.

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.

Maybe we should democratically vote for representatives that keep their policies secret until we've voted for them.

> 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.

> makes it possible to reach compromises without appearing weak to constituients

Why?

According to that, all parliamentary debates should be secret, too. 90% of it are finding a compromise between two parties.

Appearing "weak" is a virtue, not a weakness.

>This prevents unexpected surprises //

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.

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 reason why it was negotiated in secret was primarily to avoid public opposition to parts of it that will hurt the public.

It wasn't secret to the entities benefiting from it, only to the entities being hurt by it.

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.

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 don't know how you can dismiss an entire country because of one person's move.

You can't, at least not without appearing foolish.

You can certainly discuss trends in education and work crossing that border, but they aren't simple or one sided.

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.

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.

SV can disrupt anything ... except geography.