Balsillie blasts TPP and parties in Parliament
Prince George, B.C. – Jim Balsillie, former co-director of the high tech firm Research In Motion (RIM), has issued some stinging words regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal which the Harper government signed on to before being voted out of office.
According to Balsillie, signing the TPP will be “the worst public policy decision in the country’s history” and result in Canada losing hundreds of billions of dollars. The TPP enshrines bad and discriminatory rules for Canada regarding intellectual property, and will stifle innovation in the country, making Canada a “permanent underclass in the selling of ideas” (1).
In particular, if the new Liberal government decides to go ahead with the TPP, Canadian innovators will be forced to play by U.S. defined rules, giving U.S. companies an edge and costing Canadian companies “more money because they would have to pay for someone else’s ideas instead of their own.”
He further argues that our trade negotiators “have profoundly failed Canadians and our future innovators” and allowed us to be systemically encircled by the Americans. In Basillie’s view, we needed a more sophisticated negotiating team, but the Canadian government didn’t dispatch one.
Simply put, he says, “we’ve been outfoxed.”
These comments follow others that Balsillie has made on the issue of innovation in Canada. According to him, all three main parties – Conservatives, Liberals and NDP – have failed in terms of developing strategies to foster innovation in terms of technology, inventions and ideas. “Canada must establish its own rules for innovation,” he says, “rather than allowing others to tell us what to do.”
Unfortunately, of those innovative companies that have been able to develop, it seems they have only done so in spite of government policy, which remains stuck in old models of innovation that are not consistent with the times.
According to Balsillie, the TPP seems more focused on “potential resource markets than on writing new rules that will allow Canadian high-tech firms to commercialize emerging technologies.”
This latter comment is of particular interest. Is the sharp decline in Canadian manufacturing over the last dozen years, as well as the stagnation of research & development and the neglect of science, a harbinger of things to come regarding the Canadian economy?
With the TPP and other trade deals, is Canada being relegated to the status of a natural resource warehouse for North American and global corporate interests? One that is reduced to exporting raw or semi-processed materials and has no manufacturing or high tech sector to speak of?
If so, the implications are huge for Canadians, their jobs, and our future as a sovereign country.
Peter Ewart is a columnist and writer based in Prince George, British Columbia. He can be reached at: peter.ewart@shaw.ca
Comments
We should never have signed on to NAFTA. How do you compete with employees that will work for 2/hour?
Yes to your questions Peter. Of course our country is being transferred to the corporate entities of monopoly capital globalization.
Jeff Sessions a republican senator, one of the most senior senators in the United States sitting on many important committees including the Judiciary as well as the National Interests… Senator Sessions wants the American fast track process stopped on TPP, and says this about TPP.
“The most dangerous part of it to me is the long-term establishment of an international committee that overrides American will,” Sessions reiterated about the commission.
He goes to great lengths to say that this treaty is a surrender of national governance to governance by corporate sponsored global committees that are unaccountable to any elected bodies. How these internationally appointed committees will set the laws for everything from environment to immigration in the form of temporary foreign worker regulations. Sessions calls the TPP deal nothing less then a surrender of national sovereignty for global governance akin to the EU in Europe.
Smart people everywhere see what the TPP is about, but somehow it keeps moving ahead.
$.50 cents an hour in Brunei. But this isn’t about trade, its about global governance. The 1% profit greatly and everyone else loses out.
Ask yourself if this TPP deal covers every aspect of trade law, copyright law, trademark law, environmental law, labor standards (or lack there of); and even extends into the rights of free speech with extrajudicial internet take down provisions on a complaint basis, rather than a rule of law process basis… an agreement that covers all the new world order type controls for a population, yet it says nothing of currency controls or currency manipulations, which is the basis of the central banking families economic control of the economy.
TPP is about controlling populations for global governance for the benefit of monopoly capitalism and has nothing in it that ensures a representative future for democracy and a sovereign rule of law based economy.
“Provisions of Canada’s new Pacific Rim trade deal are prompting concerns over credential recognition in light of a section that says there will be no limits and no testing of foreign skilled workers.”
TPP text raises concerns over regulation of temporary foreign workers
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tpp-text-raises-concerns-over-control-of-temporary-foreign-workers/article27165905/
“Instead, agreements such as the TPP are about implementing policies that have nothing to do with comparative advantage, policies that are often designed to lead to higher consumer costs and concentrated corporate power. Treated as marginal issues, these policies are “free-trade free-riders,” coasting along on an unearned legitimacy.”
TPP is about many things, but free trade? Not so much
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/tpp-is-about-many-things-but-free-trade-not-so-much/article27169740/
Further to Eagleone’s post about U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions’ views on the TPP:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/05/jeff-sessions-kill-the-anti-democratic-trans-pacific-partnership-in-the-crib-repeal-fast-track-authority-now/
They should just rename TPP as just the TP. The world wipes their rear end with us anyway, and the politicians of all levels allow it.
But…but.. Toad Doherty said it was a good deal. He read it all.
OK, so what happened to RIM, did they stay in the forefront of high technology? Hmmm
Hey but we have new high tech companies that are working on the new jet – oh wait….
Hey Comrade Ewert. You’re quoting the gospel as written by a loser who drove RIM into the ground after receiving tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer dough in ‘loans’ and subsidies. Of course he doesn’t support the free market economy – why compete internationally when you can just stick your greasy palm out and the federal and provincial governments give you free (taxpayers’) money?
And Comrade, do a straw pole – ask around your politburo to see how many of your pals still use a Blackberry. That’s how the free market works Karl.
Yep that’s how capitalism works, however it seems Comrade Ewart and Balsillie don’t think that capitalism and competition work anymore…
Wanna bet that if RIM was still riding the high wave that Basillie would be on a mountain singing the praises of the TPP deal, kissing the Feds butt, and talking about the multi billion dollar market that will be opening up for them.
Comrade Ewart at least has stuck to his regular socialist rant, so no surprises there, however Basillie should deserves the “HYPOCRITE” of the year award, while still thanking the Feds for all the money they poured to Rim over the years, that even now enable them to stay in business while their competitors cut their grass on a daily basis..
I’d love to see the contents of those plain brown envelopes that will be handed out after this deal is done.
Posted on Thursday, November 12, 2015 @ 4:57 AM by findme with a score of 9
We should never have signed on to NAFTA. How do you compete with employees that will work for 2/hour?
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What can be done to stop this sort of thing when those with the ability to ink these deals are also benefitting from them?
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