The Trans Pacific Partnership is awaiting Canada's ratification. Framing his position in terms of "getting resources to market," Mr. Trudeau seems quite content to sign on the dotted line. After all, the benefits of trade are obvious and Canada is party to a number of bilateral trade agreements made in recent years. However, he must know that large multi-lateral agreements require close scrutiny and cannot be dismissed with blandishments about goods-crossing-borders. Driven by transnational corporations these agreements are genuflections by sovereign states to the "rights and privileges" of global capital: capitulations wherein money is put before citizens. Unfortunately, when it comes to foreign control over wide swaths of the economy, Canada has a long history of this "solution" for everything.
Mr. Trudeau should ask his old-guard why the Chretien government granted U.S. corporations "Most Favored Nation Status" under NAFTA. Why was Ethyl Corporation, using their "investor status," able to sue the government, forcing upon Canadians a cancerous gasoline additive banned in the U.S.? Why are foreign corporations allowed to buy existing Canadian businesses (foreign "investors" prefer easy set-ups), learn their technology, then, after laying off workers, move the operations to Mexico, from which we have to import the finished products? Since the 1980s, through shenanigans such as this, hundreds of thousands of Canadian manufacturing jobs have been lost. For decades, British Columbians have been saddled with high energy prices merely in order to appease U.S. customers - who desperately need our energy.
All of the above would have been a mere footnote to the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (the MAI), proposed by the Liberals in the late 1990s. We easily forget that Canadian sovereignty would have been emasculated by that agreement had it not been abandoned following major public outcry. (In B.C., the NDP government held regional forums to confront the MAI's threats to Canada's economic, social, environmental, to say nothing of democratic, rights.) If NAFTA is dead, the TPP is very much alive. But its scope, and the closet negotiations surrounding it point in one direction only: a rebranding of the MAI. What's in a name, anyway?
Today, global capital is out for blood. TPP protesters stand with arms outstretched to their counterparts in Europe who are fighting yet another secret, hegemonic, "trade" deal. This transnational stew no doubt leaves Mr. Harper all warm and fuzzy. But what does history tell us about the Liberals?
Dereck Sale
Prince George
