The Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound (BGOS) NDP has submitted a paper on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement to the federal consultation. We found that, while the TPP might benefit large livestock farmers in Bruce-Grey (hog, beef, sheep), it will not benefit workers here, principally because its sweeping rules on Intellectual Property will dampen our own attempts to start an innovative economy.
In our submission we come to the following conclusion:
It is perhaps time to pivot from international trade agreements that lock us into unhelpful economic and political straight-jackets and move toward national policies that will build an innovative economy. ...
The first step in this process would be to refuse to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The second step would be for the federal government to create an ecosystem in which Canadian innovation can mature and bear fruit. — one that will make goods and provide services the rest of the world will want to buy.
"The TPP is a massive trade agreement involving 12 countries with over 36% of the world's Gross Domestic Product (GDP)," said David McLaren who wrote the paper. "It will set the rules for a number of sectors including financial services, electronic commerce (and therefore the Internet) and intellectual property — things like drug patents, the use of GMOs, computer software."
Like any community in Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound (including other political communities) we are concerned with the health and economic well-being of the people here. We noted the following from our research:
Jobs in this area have become more precarious as manufacturing has been replaced by low wage, part time work in the service and tourism sectors.
Before NAFTA took effect, Canada posted a trade surplus of $14 billion; we now have a deficit of $10 billion and we have dropped from first to third (behind China and Mexico) in trade to the US.
Canada has not fared well in the secretive trade dispute 'courts' that corporations (but not countries) can access if they feel a nation's policies and legislation are hurting profits.
"We are most worried about Chapter 18 which deals with intellectual property, or IP," said McLaren. Every economist I've read is pessimistic about the return of manufacturing. If we are not to be doomed to a service and commodity economy, we will have to jump-start an innovative economy. Given the right economic 'ecosystem' we can do that nationally and we can do it locally. But if we are locked into the American way of doing innovation, as the TPP seems to do, then it will be much harder, if not impossible to make that transition.
The paper notes that this concern is shared by Jim Balsillie, who gave us the Blackberry, and quotes studies that indicate the "right economic ecosystem" is nowhere close to being in place for Canada to succeed under the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The 9-page report can be accessed here.
