The TPP and Canada

[polly7]

Playing the Fool

by Binoy Kampmark / September 29th, 2015

The very fact that Stephen Harper is still in with a chance come the Canadian election is a summary of political survival and grand deception. The recent debates have seen him come back from the dead and showing signs of considerable life. His treatment of the Syrian refugee situation has proven miserly and calculating. Like his counterparts in the Commonwealth (Australia and the UK), taking in refugees is a matter of a few spaces rather to satisfy temporary moral outrage. The hope is that consciences will be salved, allowing for the general business of government to go on.

Then comes the issue of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement which is being sold by various trade ministers within the group of 12 negotiating delegations as reaching the final stages for the September 30 meeting in Atlanta.

The negotiating patterns show time and again that overall capitulation will take place if, in the broader assessment, it is deemed appropriate, however erroneous that assessment is. Ex post facto justifications will be provided, suggesting that the negotiators were being realistic, when, in truth, they were bulldozed without a prayer. Bouchard does herself concede that any such access, on such a scale, without appropriate trade-offs, will be “catastrophic” for the Canadian dairy industry. Belief will have to be the not so worthy substitute.

Effectively, such concessions imply acts of negotiated suicide. This is the grand act of hegemonic victory, and should it succeed, the vassalised states will only have themselves to blame. Accommodation, in such cases, tends to be a form of mild economic servitude.

Full article: http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/09/the-tpp-and-canada/