Canada is the most sued country in the ‘developed’ world, that should sound alarm bells in the EU

[polly7]

Maude Barlow

30 October 2015 Trade

Several weeks ago, hundreds of thousands of people across Europe and the UK marched to protest the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a massive planned new trade deal between Europe and the US. They were rightly sounding the alarm as TTIP will greatly reduce the ability of local governments to spend public money for local development, impose new limits on the right of governments of all levels to regulate on behalf of their citizens and environment, endanger public services and jeopardize Europe’s higher standards on labour, food safety and social security.

TTIP also includes Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), a provision that will allow American corporations to sue European governments for laws and practices that threaten their bottom line. There are now over 3,200 bilateral ISDS agreements in the world, and foreign corporations have used them to sue governments over health, safety and environmental laws.

Cigarette maker Phillip Morris used ISDS to challenge Australian rules around cigarette packaging intended to promote public health. A Swedish company, Vattenfall, is suing Germany for a reported €4.7 billion relating to Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear power. ISDS is profoundly anti-democratic and threatens the human rights of people everywhere.

But people in the UK and Europe should be paying attention to another deal that has had way less attention. CETA – the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada – is equally disturbing and way further along in the process. I’m coming on a speaking tour of the UK to share a powerful story of Canada’s experience that is relevant for two reasons.

The first is that we Canadians have lived with ISDS for twenty years. It was first included in NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the US and Mexico, and has been used extensively by the corporations of North America to get their way. As a result of NAFTA, Canada is now the most sued developed country in the world.

Full article: http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/blog/2015/oct/30/canada-most-sued-country-developed-world-and-should-sound-alarm-bells-eu

[polly7]

1. Why Canada is one of the most sued countries in the world

Maude Barlow

23 October 2015

Canada has paid American corporations more than $200 million (approximately €135 million) in the seven cases it has lost and foreign investors are now seeking over €1.75 bn from the Canadian government in new cases. Even defending cases that may not be successful is expensive. Canada has spent over $65 million (approximately €45 million) defending itself from NAFTA challenges to date.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reports that almost two-thirds of claims against Canada involved challenges to environmental protection or resources management that allegedly interfered with the profit of American corporations.

Cases include:

Ethyl, a U.S. chemical corporation, successfully challenged a Canadian ban on imports of its gasoline that contained MMT, an additive that is a suspected neurotoxin. The Canadian government repealed the ban and paid the company $13 million (approximately €8.8 million) for its loss of revenue.
S.D. Myers, a U.S. waste disposal firm, challenged a similar ban on the export of toxic PCB waste. Canada paid the company over $6 million (approximately €4 million).
A NAFTA panel ordered the Canadian government to pay Exxon-Mobil, the world’s largest oil and gas company, $17.3 million (approximately €11.6 million) when the company challenged government guidelines that investors in offshore exploration in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador – where the company is heavily involved – must invest in local research and development.
New Jersey-based Bilcon Construction is demanding $300,000 (approximately €200,000) in damages from the Canadian government after winning a NAFTA challenge when its plan to build a massive quarry and marine terminal in an environmentally sensitive area of Nova Scotia and ship basalt aggregate through the Bay of Fundy, site of the highest tides in the world, was rejected by an environmental assessment panel.
Chemical giant Dow AgroSciences used NAFTA to force the province of Quebec, after it banned 2,4-D, a pesticide that the Natural Resources Defence Council says has been linked in many studies to cancer and cell damage, to publicly acknowledge that the chemical does not pose an “unacceptable risk” to human health, a position the government had previously held.
The Canadian government paid American pulp and paper giant AbitibiBowater $130 million (approximately €88 million) after the company successfully used NAFTA to claim compensation for the “water and timber rights” it left behind when it abandoned its operations in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador after 100 years, leaving the workers with unpaid pensions. This challenge is particularly disturbing because it gives a foreign investor the right to claim compensation for the actual resources it used while operating in another jurisdiction.
Mesa Power Group, an energy company owned by Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, is claiming $775 million (approximately €523 million) in a challenge to the province of Ontario’s Green Energy Act, which gives preferential access to local wind farm operators.
Lone Pine, a Canadian energy company, is suing the Canadian government through its American affiliate for $250 million (approximately €152 million) because the province of Quebec introduced a temporary moratorium on all fracking activities under the St. Lawrence River until further studies are completed. This challenge is concerning because it involves a domestic company using a foreign subsidiary to sue its own government.
Eli Lilly, a U.S. pharmaceutical giant, is suing Canada for $500 million (approximately €337 million) after three levels of courts in Canada denied it a patent extension on one of its products. This case is particularly disturbing because it challenges Canadian laws as interpreted by Canadian courts and represents a new frontier for ISDS challenges

http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/blog/2015/oct/23/why-canada-one-most-sued-countries-world

[Hoyt]

2. After 3000+ of these agreements since 1959, countries still want the agreements because they bring

investment, jobs, tax revenues.

I like that people use the Phillip Morris example so often. After 4 years Phillip Morris has gotten nowhere in their suit against Australia, and they will not get their way. The laws on labeling requirements are in full force. That's the way it is in most of these investor suits, unless it can be shown the government is treating foreign companies differently from domestic companies.

[polly7]

3. Oh not again.

NAFTA has devastated—and still is devastating!—the American economy. It has impacted the lives of American workers in catastrophic ways and has all but destroyed manufacturing in the United States. As a result, some of our best companies have left to enjoy the non-existent environmental standards, “free trade” without restrictions, and lower wage rates elsewhere!

Despite the fact that NAFTA has outsourced and continues to outsource U.S. jobs beyond our borders, President Obama has shown no indication of ending U.S. ties with the agreement. Quite the contrary. He is instead signing us up for even more “free trade” agreements!

NAFTA has resulted in the decimation of our manufacturing base because, when it costs more to produce here in the United States than it does in Mexico, why would businesses choose to manufacture in the U.S.? With even more “free trade” agreements like the TPP and TTIP, Americans can expect to see further destruction to our manufacturing sector, which translates to even more job losses!

NAFTA actually encourages manufacturers to operate outside of the United States, and they take our jobs with them. It uses the enticement of lower wage rates, non-existent environmental standards, and “free trade” without restrictions as bait. As a result, there are fewer jobs and an American market drowning in foreign-made goods.

http://economyincrisis.org/content/35820

As well as:

http://cwf.ca/pdf-docs/publications/Our_Water_and_NAFTA_July_2011.pdf

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blogs/science-matters/2015/01/canada-is-trading-away-its-environmental-rights/

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/14/canada-sued-investor-state-dispute-ccpa_n_6471460.html

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/01/13/canada_being_sued_for_billions_under_nafta_investor_protections.html



After 20 Years, NAFTA Leaves Mexico’s Economy in Ruins

from truthdig:

Posted on Jan 9, 2014
By Sonali Kolhatkar

Twenty years ago, on Jan. 1, 1994, a trade deal championed by Democratic President Bill Clinton went into effect. The North American Free Trade Agreement was meant to integrate the economies of the United States, Canada and Mexico by breaking down trade barriers among them, creating jobs and closing the wage gap between the U.S. and Mexico.

What in fact happened under NAFTA was that heavily subsidized U.S. corn flooded the Mexican market, putting millions of farmers out of work. Multinational corporations opened up factories creating low-wage jobs at the expense of organized labor and the environment. This, in turn, drove waves of migration north.

Meanwhile, corporate profits soared, and Mexico boasted the richest man in the world, Carlos Slim. Walmart and Krispy Kreme conquered Mexico, and ordinary Mexicans had access to the same consumer goods as their neighbors to the north. The economies of all three nations, measured only by GDP rather than jobs or wages, were pronounced grand successes, even though the U.S. and Canada disproportionately reaped more financial benefits.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., manufacturing jobs fell dramatically and organized labor lost even more clout. The Great Recession of 2008 worsened the downward trend, especially for Mexicans. Mexico’s economy, tied intimately to the U.S.’ because of NAFTA, suffered more than any other country in Latin America. .........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/after_20_years_nafta_leaves_mexicos_economy_in_ruins_20140109

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024317810


How NAFTA Unleashed the Violence in Mexico

By Victor M. Quintana | 7 / February / 2014

The Mexican countryside is not the same twenty years after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Rural Mexico is on fire, and not just because of the “bad guys”–the drug cartels and groups of hit men and thugs.


Criminal violence is not the only kind of violence, nor is it the factor that unleashed the humanitarian crisis in so many parts of rural Mexico. The drastic transformation of public agricultural policies–brought about by structural adjustment programs and the trade opening whose crowning moment was the passage of NAFTA–generated the conditions for the emergence of multiple forms of violence in the Mexican countryside.

Mexican presidents since 1983 pushed through a series of economic adjustment polices, including the expulsion of all seasonal farmers from the rural credit system. The price of fuel shot up: in 1983, a liter of gas cost 1.36 pesos; now it is more than 12 pesos. Prices began to drip for crops produced by small farmers since guarantee prices were eliminated. New subsidies were created, like Procampo, but these went mostly to large producers.

In spite of many warnings from farmer organization and researchers, NAFTA was signed when Mexican basic grains producers, especially peasants and medium-sized producers, could not compete–in terms of climatic conditions or subsidies or technology or governmental support program–with the most powerful agriculture in the world.

Without being able to compete with U.S. agriculture under the terms of the trade opening, hundreds of thousands of peasant groups went broke. Migration to the cities and the United States shot up. According to the Ministry of Labor, since 1994 1,780,000 people left the countryside. The Ministry of Social Development found that each day an average of 600 peasant farmers leave the countryside. Rural communities are being left without young men, converted into populations of women, children and old people. Community life has broken down; many town organizations have closed down. This is violence. Silent, but real.

More:
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/11427

http://www.democraticunderground.com/110832763

These agreements are garbage, and I have no idea why our gov'ts keep creating new ones that allow overruling laws, except that corporations must be valued above all else. People are just tools now to keep them running.


NAFTA Is Starving Mexico

Free trade has starved Mexico and stuffed transnational corporations.

Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) became the law of the land, millions of Mexicans have joined the ranks of the hungry. Malnutrition is highest among the country’s farm families, who used to produce enough food to feed the nation.

As the blood-spattered violence of the drug war takes over the headlines, many Mexican men, women, and children confront the slow and silent violence of starvation. The latest reports show that the number of people living in “food poverty” (the inability to purchase the basic food basket) rose from 18 million in 2008 to 20 million by late 2010.

About one-fifth of Mexican children currently suffer from malnutrition. An innovative measurement applied by the National Institute for Nutrition registers a daily count of 728,909 malnourished children under five for October 18, 2011. Government statistics report that 25 percent of the population does not have access to basic food.

Seventeen years after NAFTA, some two million farmers have been forced off their land by low prices and the dismantling of government supports. They did not find jobs in industry. Instead most of them became part of a mass exodus as the number of Mexican migrants to the United States rose to half a million a year. In the first few years of NAFTA, corn imports tripled and the producer price fell by half.

Take the case of Corn Products International (CPI). The transnational filed a NAFTA claim against the Mexican government in 2003, claiming a loss to its business due to a tax levied on high fructose corn syrup in beverages. Mexico’s reason for imposing the tax was to save a sugarcane industry that provided jobs for thousands of citizens and played a crucial economic role in many regions. The government was also frustrated by its failure under NAFTA to access the highly protected U.S. sugar market.

A 2008 NAFTA tribunal ruled that Mexico had to pay $58.4 million to CPI. The government paid up on January 25, 2011. CPI posted $3.7 billion dollars in net sales the year of the decision. The fine paid by the Mexican government could have provided a year’s worth of the basic food basket to more than 50,000 poor families.

http://fpif.org/nafta_is_starving_mexico/



How NAFTA Drove Mexicans into Poverty and Sparked the Zapatista Revolt

By EDELO, Creative Time Reports

The North American Free Trade Agreement, passed 20 years ago, has resulted in increased emigration, hunger and poverty (with Video)

December 30, 2013

Mexico was said to be one step away from entering the “First World.” It was December 1992, and Mexico’s then-president, Carlos Salinas, signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The global treaty came with major promises of economic development, driven by increased farm production and foreign investment, that would end emigration and eliminate poverty. But, as the environmentalist Gustavo Castro attests in our video, the results have been the complete opposite—increased emigration, hunger and poverty.

While the world was entertaining the idea of the end of times supposedly predicted by the Mayan calendar, on December 21, 2012, over 40,000 Mayan Zapatis . tas took to the streets to make their presence known in a March of Silence. The indigenous communities of Chiapas—Tzeltales, Tzotziles, Tojolobales, Choles, Zoques and Mames—began their mobilization from their five centers of government, which are called Caracoles. In silence they entered the fog of a December winter and occupied the same squares, in the same cities, that they had descended upon as ill-equipped rebels on January 1, 1994, the day NAFTA came into effect.

In light of the 20th anniversary of NAFTA’s implementation and the Zapatista uprising, we set out to explore both the positive and negative effects of the international treaty. The poverty caused by NAFTA, and the waves of violence, forced migration and environmental disasters it has precipitated, should not be understated. The republic of Mexico is under threat from multinational corporations like the Canadian mining company Blackfire Explorations, which is threatening to sue the state of Chiapas for $800 million under NAFTA Chapter 11 because its government closed a Blackfire barite mine after pressure from local environmental activists like Mariano Abarca Roblero, who was murdered in 2009.

Still, one result of the corporate extraction of Mexico’s natural resources and displacement of its people that has followed the treaty has been the organization and strengthening of initiatives by indigenous communities to construct autonomy from the bottom up. Seeing that their own governments cannot respond to popular demands without retribution from corporations, the people of Mexico are asking about alternatives: “What is it that we do want?” The Zapatista revolution reminds us that not only another world, but many other worlds, are possible

Full Article: http://www.alternet.org/world/how-nafta-drove-mexicans-poverty-and-sparked-zapatista-revolt?akid=11347.44541.RWB6aQ&rd=1&src=newsletter941851&t=19



NAFTA's Chapter 11 Makes Canada Most-Sued Country Under Free Trade Tribunals

Canada is the most-sued country under the North American Free Trade Agreement and a majority of the disputes involve investors challenging the country’s environmental laws, according to a new study.

The study from the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) found that more than 70 per cent of claims since 2005 have been brought against Canada, and the number of challenges under a controversial settlement clause is rising sharply.

snip~

“Thanks to NAFTA chapter 11, Canada has now been sued more times through investor-state dispute settlement than any other developed country in the world,” said Scott Sinclair, who authored the study.

snip~

There are currently eight cases against the Canadian government asking for a total of $6 billion in damages. All of them were brought by U.S. companies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/14/canada-sued-investor-state-dispute-ccpa_n_6471460.html

The study notes that although NAFTA proponents claimed that ISDS was needed to address concerns about corruption in the Mexican court system, most investor-state challenges involve public policy and regulatory matters. Sixty three per cent of claims against Canada involve challenges to environmental protection or resource management measures.

Currently, Canada faces nine active ISDS claims challenging a wide range of government measures that allegedly interfere with the expected profitability of foreign investments. Foreign investors are seeking over $6 billion in damages from the Canadian government.

These include challenges to a ban on fracking by the Quebec provincial government (Lone Pine); a decision by a Canadian federal court to invalidate a pharmaceutical patent on the basis that it was not sufficiently innovative or useful (Eli Lilly); provisions to promote the rapid adoption of renewable energies (Mesa); a moratorium on offshore wind projects in Lake Ontario (Windstream); and the decision to block a controversial mega-quarry in Nova Scotia (Clayton/Bilcon).

Canada has already lost or settled six claims, paid out damages totaling over $170 million and incurred tens of millions more in legal costs. Mexico has lost five cases and paid damages of US$204 million. The U.S. has never lost a NAFTA investor-state case.

More: https://www.policyalternatives.ca/newsroom/news-releases/nafta-investor-state-claims-against-canada-are-out-control-study


http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023210314

Even though Canada enjoyed a healthy and mutually beneficial free trade with the US, Mulroney was duped into the Canada/US Free Trade Agreement, later to become NAFTA. In the wink of an eye Canada went from being a branch plant economy to a captive economy and resource slave to the US. NAFTA has really nothing to do with free trade. It is really a constitutional bill of rights for corporate exploitation. It was a huge step forward in formalizing the corporate welfare state and marked the death knell of the social welfare state. While many Canadians saw from the outset the NAFTA was an economic Trojan horse, Americans on their side of the border were only later to have similar concerns.

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article/235930947-the-deplorable-legacy-of-brian-mulroney

FOUR REASONS WHY NAFTA IS A BAD DEAL FOR CANADA:

NAFTA undermines democracy. Foreign corporations use Chapter 11 to challenge environmental laws, municipal land-use controls, water protection measures, the activities of Canada Post, and even the decisions of judges and juries. While no Canadian citizen or corporation could bring forward these challenges, NAFTA grants corporations of member countries the right to challenge any federal rule or law that they perceive as a barrier to their ability to make a profit. The result is millions of tax dollars being spent to either fight or settle with these corporations.

NAFTA threatens health care and other public services. The exemption for health care under NAFTA, which has largely kept U.S. for-profit health corporations out of Canada, applies only to a fully publicly funded system. Once privatized, the system must give “national treatment” rights to American private hospital chains. The NAFTA exemption only applies to medicare as it stood in 1989, and doesn’t provide protection for a possible expansion of medicare into new areas like homecare and pharmacare.

NAFTA strips Canada of control over our energy resources. Canada now produces about 40 per cent more oil than it consumes, but has to rely heavily on imported oil from offshore. Thanks to NAFTA, Canada now exports 70 percent of the oil and 61 per cent of the natural gas we produce each year to the United States. NAFTA prevents us from selling our energy resources to Canadians at rates lower than we sell them in the U.S. And because of NAFTA’s proportional sharing clause, we can’t ever cut back on the amount of energy we produce and sell to the United States, even in times when our country runs short.

NAFTA could put our water up for sale. Canadian water is defined as a “service” and an “investment” under NAFTA. The agreement’s so-called water exemption is inadequate. After British Columbia banned bulk exports of lake and river water, the California-based Sun Belt Corporation launched a Chapter 11 challenge, seeking $10 billion in damages. The case is still outstanding, and has profound implications for the future of Canada’s water.

http://pushedleft.blogspot.ca/2009/11/nafta-and-teh-selling-of-canada-we-got.html


Ten Reasons Why the TPP Must Be Defeated

byBernie Sanders

Published on
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
by Common Dreams

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a disastrous trade agreement designed to protect the interests of the largest multi-national corporations at the expense of workers, consumers, the environment and the foundations of American democracy. It will also negatively impact some of the poorest people in the world.

The TPP is a treaty that has been written behind closed doors by the corporate world. Incredibly, while Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry and major media companies have full knowledge as to what is in this treaty, the American people and members of Congress do not. They have been locked out of the process. Further, all Americans, regardless of political ideology, should be opposed to the “fast track” process which would deny Congress the right to amend the treaty and represent their constituents’ interests.

The TPP follows in the footsteps of other unfettered "free trade" agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA and the Permanent Normalized Trade Agreement with China (PNTR). These treaties have forced American workers to compete against desperate and low-wage labor around the world. The result has been massive job losses in the United States and the shutting down of tens of thousands of factories. These corporately backed trade agreements have significantly contributed to the race to the bottom, the collapse of the American middle class and increased wealth and income inequality. The TPP is more of the same, but even worse.

During my 23 years in Congress, I helped lead the fight against NAFTA and PNTR with China. During the coming session of Congress, I will be working with organized labor, environmentalists, religious organizations, Democrats, and Republicans against the secretive TPP trade deal.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/12/31/ten-reasons-why-tpp-must-be-defeated

TPP Trade Deal Will Be Devastating for Access to Affordable Medicines

By Doctors Without borders
Source: Doctors Without Borders
February 2, 2015

Many countries and treatment providers, including Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), rely on affordable quality generic medicines to treat life-threatening diseases. We need to keep prices low so our patients — and millions of others still waiting for treatment in the developing world — can get the medicines they need.

But right now the U.S. government is advocating for trade terms with eleven other Pacific Rim nations that could restrict access to generic medicines, making life-saving treatments unaffordable to millions.

Damaging intellectual property rules in the U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) would give pharmaceutical companies longer monopolies over brand name drugs. Companies would be able to charge high prices for longer periods of time. And it would be much harder for generic companies to produce cheaper drugs that are vital to people’s health.

“The TPP is the most damaging trade agreement we have ever seen in terms of access to medicines for poor people,” said Malpani. “With USTR [Office of the United States Trade Representative] publicly stating that these negotiations are winding down, it is now more urgent than ever that concerns about access to medicines be addressed.”

https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/tpp-trade-deal-will-be-devastating-for-access-to-affordable-medicines/

Trans-Pacific Partnership and Monsanto

By Barbara Chicherio

Source: Nation of Change

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

The labeling of foods containing GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) will not be allowed. Japan currently has labeling laws for GMOs in food. Under the TPP Japan would no longer be able to label GMOs. This situation is the same for New Zealand and Australia. In the US we are just beginning to see some progress towards labeling GMOs. Under the TPP GMO labels for US food would not be allowed.

In April 2013, Peru placed a 10-year moratorium on GMO foods and plants. This prohibits the import, production and use of GMOs in foods and GMO plants and is aimed at safeguarding Peru's agricultural diversity. The hope is to prevent cross-pollination with non-GMO crops and to ban GMO crops like Bt corn. What will become of Peru's moratorium if the TPP is passed?

There is a growing resistance to Monsanto's agricultural plans in Vietnam. Monsanto (the US corporation controlling an estimated 90% of the world seed genetics) has a dark history with Vietnam. Many believe that Monsanto has no right to do business in a country where Monsanto's product Agent Orange is estimated to have killed 400,000 Vietnamese, deformed another 500,000 and stricken another 2 million with various diseases.

Legacies of other trade agreements that serve as a warning about the TPP have a history of displacing small farmers and destroying local food economies. Ten years following the passage of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) 1.5 million Mexican farmers became bankrupt because they could not compete with the highly subsidized US corn entering the Mexican market.

Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/trans-pacific-partnership-and-monsanto-by-barbara-chicherio



“As usual, in every scheme that worsens the position of the poor, it is the poor who are invoked as beneficiaries.”
― Vandana Shiva


Monsanto, the TPP, and Global Food Dominance

by Ellen Hodgson Brown / November 27th, 2013

“Control oil and you control nations,” said US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. ”Control food and you control the people.”

Global food control has nearly been achieved, by reducing seed diversity with GMO (genetically modified) seeds that are distributed by only a few transnational corporations. But this agenda has been implemented at grave cost to our health; and if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) passes, control over not just our food but our health, our environment and our financial system will be in the hands of transnational corporations.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/11/monsanto-the-tpp-and-global-food-dominance/


Making the World Safe for Big Business

By Sean Starrs
Source: Jacobin Magazine
May 15, 2015

After five years of intense negotiations, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) may come to fruition by the end of this year. Much has been written (and rightly so) about the negative consequences of the TPP for American labor. But what are the international implications of the TPP, and in a world awash with bilateral and multilateral trade and investment treaties (there are over 3,200 international investment treaties alone), how is this one different?

The architects of the TPP are structuring the agreement to serve their own interests: protection of intellectual property rights and investor arbitration facilitate the continued dominance of the world’s top corporations, which remain European, Japanese, and most of all American.

Protection of IP rights ensures that advanced knowledge sectors, like the pharmaceuticals industry, maintain their healthy profit margins (and the poor continue to be denied life-saving drugs). US agribusiness will profit from the opening of Japan’s agricultural sector, and Nike will benefit from the further liberalization of Vietnam (where most of its shoes are manufactured).

To understand whose interests are being served, one simply has to note that US trade representatives are accompanied by over six hundred “corporate advisers” to the negotiations, which are shrouded in secrecy. Labor advisers? Zero.

The TPP will also make it easier for transnational corporations to sue governments for labor, environmental, health, safety, and other regulations, in order to gain taxpayer compensation for “loss of future returns” due to “expropriation.” Investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms — already in place in many existing international investment treaties — will be consolidated and strengthened in the TPP to ensure a single, more predictable, standard for the record-breaking number of new cases.

Full article: https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/making-the-world-safe-for-big-business/


A Corporate Coup in Disguise (TPP)

By Jim Hightower

Source: Alternet

Wednesday, October 02, 2013

What if our national leaders told us that communities across America had to eliminate such local programs as Buy Local, Buy American, Buy Green, etc. to allow foreign corporations to have the right to make the sale on any products purchased with our tax dollars? This nullification of our people's right to direct expenditures is just one of the horror stories in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

This is a super-sized NAFTA, the 1994 trade scam rammed through Congress by the entire corporate establishment. NAFTA promised the "glories of globalization": prosperity across our land. Unfortunately, corporations got the gold. We got the shaft -- thousands of factories closed, millions of middle-class jobs went south, and the economies of hundreds of towns and cities were shattered.

Twenty years later, the gang that gave us NAFTA is back with the TPP, a "trade deal" that mostly does not deal with trade. Of the 29 chapters in this document, only five cover traditional trade matters! The other chapters amount to a devilish "partnership" for corporate protectionism:

—Public services. TPP rules would limit how governments regulate such public services as utilities, transportation and education -- including restricting policies meant to ensure broad or universal access to those essential needs. One insidious rule says that member countries must open their service sectors to private competitors, which would allow the corporate provider to cherry-pick the profitable customers and sink the public service.

Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/a-corporate-coup-in-disguise-by-jim-hightower.html


Canada, and the U.S. - all those other countries involved and set to lose with privatization and loss of control of safeguards for the environment, public safety nets, health services and pharmaceuticals, the ability to save and use seed, and on and on with every one of these agreements. I have a lot of learning to do about it all too, but I know they're all NAFTA on steroids, and all you have to do is look at the devastation in Mexico and the loss of jobs here in NA to understand what more is at stake. Corporations will control all of it, these agreements are spreading that ability like a cancer.

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership

The Council of Canadians outside the Delta Ottawa City Centre on July 7, 2014 to draw attention to the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership talks taking place inside. Photo: Ben Powless

Across Canada and around the world, people are speaking out about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement (TPP). They are rallying against the secrecy of the 12-country negotiations and the corporate agenda behind the deal.

On February 12, legislators in seven of the 12 TPP countries issued the following joint statement about the negotiations:

We, the undersigned legislators from countries involved in the negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, call on the Parties to the negotiation to publish the draft text of the Agreement before any final agreement is signed with sufficient time to enable effective legislative scrutiny and public debate

In Canada, the statement was endorsed by the federal NDP and the Green Party of Canada. It is the simplest of demands for democracy on a “trade” deal that threatens to undermine the very notion of the public good, by giving corporations more power to undermine public policy.

http://www.tppmpsfortransparency.org/


Trans-Pacific Partnership: Canada Should Be Evicted From Trade Talks, Congress Members Say

The Huffington Post Canada | By Daniel Tencer

Canada should be tossed out of negotiations on a major multinational free trade deal if its government doesn’t agree to open up the agricultural sector to greater competition, U.S. Congress members have told President Barack Obama.

In a letter sent to the president last week, 140 members of Congress urged the president to cut Canada, as well as Japan, out of talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership if the countries refuse to open up their agricultural industries to competition under the deal.

The letter said the lawmakers were “troubled by Canada’s lack of ambition, which is threatening a robust outcome for U.S. farmers.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/08/06/tpp-canada-supply-management_n_5654130.html




TTIP

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership


Germany rejects CETA and TTIP; Council of Canadians applauds Germany's decision

July 26, 2014

The Council of Canadians applauds Germany's rejection of the Canada-EU and EU-US trade deals reported in Reuters today. The German government decided to reject these trade deals because of provisions that allow companies to sue governments for infringing on their profits.

"This is a victory for democracy. We are pleased that the German government has listened to critics of the investor-state dispute settlement provisions of the deal that give foreign corporations the right to dictate domestic policy," said Maude Barlow, national chairperson of the Council of Canadians.

"We've worked to educate European politicians on just how harmful allowing companies to sue you can be," said Scott Harris, trade campaigner with the Council of Canadians. "We've told them about all the lawsuits Canada has faced under NAFTA for legitimate regulations that protect our health and environment."

The Council of Canadians was a major player in this battle and the first to challenge it. The Council is available for further comment on this breaking story.

http://www.canadians.org/media/germany-rejects-ceta-and-ttip-council-canadians-applauds-germanys-decision


EU-Canada trade deal leak ‘ridicules’ TTIP consultation, campaigners say

Published: 14/08/2014 - 18:03 | Updated: 18/08/2014 - 10:556

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The leaked text of an EU-Canada free trade deal confirms fears that multinationals may sue EU states in special tribunals for enacting laws that upset their profit forecasts, and now campaigners question the public consultation on a free trade deal with the US.

The leaked EU-Canada Trade Agreement (CETA), signed last November and due to be unveiled on 25 September, contains a controversial chapter on Investor-State Disputes Settlement (ISDS) that is substantially unchanged from previous drafts.

These were used by the EU in March to get stakeholder responses to negotiations for a similar TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the US. At the time, the Commission said that it would seriously consider all 150,000 responses.

But the use of the draft’s unamended wording in the final CETA treaty - before the results of the public consultation have even been analysed - show that it was little more than a PR stunt, according to Kenneth Haar, a spokesman for Corporate Europe Observatory.



CETA

Why is CETA bad for Canadians?

1. CETA threatens our public services!

We count on our governments to run a broad range of public services which help society and the economy function — from health care and education to water treatment, social programs, and everything in between. By making sure that everyone has fair access, we ensure a good quality of life for Canadians. But international big business doesn’t like publicly-run services, or the regulations that protect them. To them, public services are just one more thing to make money on. The CETA threatens to privatize and deregulate many of our public services. In fact, everything could be up for grabs, including municipal water systems, electrical utilities — even our mail delivery!

.....

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http://stopceta.ca/bad-deal-for-canada


Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Economic_and_Trade_Agreement


Canada-EU (CETA)

On September 26, 2014 Prime Minister Harper, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy signed a joint declaration to “celebrate the end of negotiations of the Canada-EU Trade Agreement.”

http://www.canadians.org/ceta


Ratification of CETA not likely until late 2015, early 2016

Apr 24, 2014. April 24, 2014 - 8:28am

The Council of Canadians has been campaigning against the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) since it was first proposed in October 2008. There is news today that a "handful of thorny issues" may mean that we still have two more years to derail its ratification.

The Toronto Star reports, "Six months after Prime Minister Stephen Harper travelled to Brussels to announce Canada’s largest-ever free-trade pact with Europe, Canada and the European Union are still negotiating key aspects of the deal, with implementation possibly as much as two years away. ...Canadian officials estimated (in October 2013) that finalizing the deal, fixing all the legal language, translating the agreement and obtaining approval in Europe and Canada would take until the spring of 2015. But negotiators have yet to resolve a handful of thorny trade issues and the EU now doesn’t expect the pact to be put in place until late 2015 or early 2016."

"On the table are proposed rules related to import quotas for beef and pork, provision of services by business, investment rules and guidelines for determining, for instance, whether Canadian-exported cars with a mix of Canadian and United States parts are eligible for tariff reductions under CETA. ...Another factor that is raising questions about how the final approval of CETA will go is the recently initiated talks between the EU and the United States on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).These negotiations appear to have sparked increased concern in Europe over a controversial feature of current trade negotiations — investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms. These measures allow corporations to go before an independent tribunal and sue governments that allegedly discriminate against foreign companies. CETA contains an ISDS clause and any EU-United States agreement is expected to have one as well. But, reflecting complaints by NGOs that corporations are abusing these measures, the European Commission called a temporary halt in ISDS discussions with Washington to hold a public consultation on the measures."

"Jason Langrish, executive director of the Canada Europe Roundtable for Business, which has supported CETA, (says) Canada now must deal with an EU in flux. A new European Parliament is being elected next month by voters in 28 member states and a European Commission president will be chosen to replace [European Commission President Jose Manuel] Barroso in the fall. In the wake of the political and social turmoil caused by the deep recession in Europe, parties on the far right and far left of the political spectrum may play a greater role after the election, raising questions about what policies are likely to be supported by the next set of EU authorities."
Both the European Parliament and "all 28 member states of the EU must also ratify the pact".

If ratified, CETA could unfairly restrict how local governments spend money and ban 'buy local' policies, add hundreds of millions of dollars to the price of drugs, create pressure to increase privatization of local water systems, transit and energy, and much more. The secret negotiating process, as well as the overall corporate agenda behind these next generation deals, are an affront to democracy on both sides of the Atlantic.

https://monctonfreepress.ca/post/35999


http://www.dw.de/with-ttip-eu-and-us-promise-a-transatlantic-trade-miracle/a-17935749

DW: It seems like we live in a period of major international trade pacts with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA), the Trade In Services Agreement (TISA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) all being negotiated or finalized right now. What is behind this trend?

Saskia Sassen: I think they are crucial elements, starting with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) rounds, for creating a global operational space that is an advantage for the multinationals. The truth of the matter is that when you look at the data the gains go to the firms operating globally. The notion of losing or gaining jobs like countries in Europe or the United States might try to look at, is just not an issue for them. So what they want is the capacity to access the particular labor supply or regulatory environment that works to their advantage. For the United States the data is quite clear: The United States has basically lost jobs. That affects workers, but it has nothing to do with big corporations. For them this is not important for their operation.

I am not against international trade. We absolutely need it. I am not against the Ricardian model [whereby two countries produce two goods using one factor of production and are competitively equal - the ed.], producing different things in different countries, but we also have to factor in another increasingly important vector - the environment.

And a final issue I have with all these new generation treaties is that corporations gain rights. If you stand back and ask yourself who gains rights, it is not the citizens. Citizens in many of our countries have lost rights. Little rights that are sort of encased in technical aspects and most citizens don't even realize it until it happens to them. And with TTIP and TTP they gain even more rights and so a lot of critical analysts are stunned by these two treaties.

Spread the Word: TPP is Toxic Political Poison that Politicians should Avoid

by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers / October 24th, 2015

At its root, the TPP is about modern colonialism. It is the way that Western governments and their transnational corporations, including Wall Street banks, can dominate the economies of developing nations. And it’s not too late to stop it.

The TPP is a bad deal. Just like every other similar agreement, it is going to outsource jobs, lower wages globally, increase the wealth divide, increase the U.S. trade deficit, undermine democracy, weaken the federal court system, degrade the environment and undermine sovereignty at every level of government. The more people who learn about this deal, the worse it will look, and if we resist it, the likelihood of passage in Congress will shrink.

And, similar to the TPP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is having troubles in Europe. Europeans see TTIP either not advancing or going in the wrong direction because of the heavy handedness of the U.S. The French negotiator said: “France is considering all options including an outright termination of negotiations.” More than 3 million people across Europe signed a petition calling on the European Commission to scrap the agreement and hundreds of thousands marched in Berlin on October 10 opposing the TTIP. People realize that rather than opening up new markets, since the U.S. and EU countries already trade a great deal, it will privatize public services for corporate profits.

At its root, the TPP is about modern colonialism. It is the way that Western governments and their transnational corporations, including Wall Street banks, can dominate the economies of developing nations. To be part of the TPP, governments are required to allow foreign ownership of property, including buying land in signatory countries. The TPP allows corporate trade tribunals to overrule their laws, acquire resources cheaply and provide slave wages to workers. And, if all else fails, the U.S. and allied militaries will be there to enforce agreements.

The TPP gives incredible power to foreign banks to move money in and out of countries without restrictions. It minimizes regulation of big finance to allow risk-tasking that endangers the world economy. Countries that need money will be enslaved by loans from big finance like Citigroup, and once they are in debt, they will be unable to stand up to the demands of banksters who threaten them as we witnessed recently in Greece.

The reality is that without trade justice there cannot be climate justice, food justice; there cannot be health justice or wage justice. Injustice in trade undermines all the issues the social movement is working to correct.

Full article: http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/10/spread-the-word-tpp-is-toxic-political-poison-that-politicians-should-avoid/#more-60210


Secretive Deal Isn’t about Trade, but Corporate Control

Julian Assange on the TPP

by Democracy Now! / May 27th, 2015

As negotiations continue, WikiLeaks has published leaked chapters of the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership — a global trade deal between the United States and 11 other countries. The TPP would cover 40 percent of the global economy, but details have been concealed from the public.

Published on May 27, 2015

http://democracynow.org

A recently disclosed "Investment Chapter" highlights the intent of U.S.-led negotiators to create a tribunal where corporations can sue governments if their laws interfere with a company’s claimed future profits.

BBM


http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027307311

Phlem (4,751 posts)

Leaked! TPP Intellectual Property Chapter.

Anybody see this yet. Sorry if it's a dupe.

https://wikileaks.org/tpp-ip3/

The IP Chapter of the TPP has perhaps been the most controversial chapter due to its wide-ranging effects on internet services, medicines, publishers, civil liberties and biological patents. “If TPP is ratified, people in the Pacific-Rim countries would have to live by the rules in this leaked text,” said Peter Maybarduk, Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program Director. “The new monopoly rights for big pharmaceutical firms would compromise access to medicines in TPP countries. The TPP would cost lives.”

FAIR TRADE

[Hoyt]

4. That's kind of what I say every time I see one of these posts. At least you realize there are 3000+

of these agreements worldwide since 1959 with these investment dispute mechanisms, so they aren't new and appear to be well received by all countries interested in trade, including Denmark.

[polly7]

5. yeah whatever ..................... nt.