As I write this, there are 16 days left for Canadian citizens to express to the federal government their opinions and concerns in regard to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, which has already been negotiated and is awaiting parliamentary approval. Few Canadians have read the pact; many disprove of it. Maud Barlow and the Council of Canadians have studied every sentence in the trade pact. What they say of it is not contaminated by misstatements. Out of the morass of words and terms three objectionable provisions, in my opinion, loom large.
If the Trudeau government accepts this pact in its present form, it will approve of dangerous limitations to the sovereignty of Canada as a nation state. In this pact, as in NAFTA and as proposed in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (with Europe), corporations will be able to sue governments, from largest to smallest, if the legislation they enact reduces or eliminates corporate profits. Corporate is derived from the Latin word corpus, which means body. You are a body, I am a body, a corporation is the biggest body of all. Its needs and greed can override any or all of our legitimate concerns. .
It is incomprehensible to me that central governments should enter into treaties that limit their powers to enact legislation that is of innocent benefit to their citizens and the environments in which they live. If the TPP passes in its present form, Canadians will again be consuming dairy products that contain bovine growth hormones. This is both a health and environmental threat.
If either the TPP or CETA passes in their present forms the profits of transnational drug companies will glory in greater profits and health care systems and needy individuals will bear the cost.
Yesterday I received a letter from an organization that believes human beings should not kill seals. There were photographs of seal pups. They are appealing but they are not an argument. If the seal population is allowed to proliferate unchecked, the once plentiful population of codfish may never regenerate.
Before transnational corporations began to take over the food industry, people ate the food that was available locally. Life forms preyed on life forms, until, at the top of the food chain, human beings made use of anything necessary for survival. Predation was an essential part of humankind’s genius for survival in harsh environments. It was a visible process.
The most dangerous predators now are invisible, or else they are made to seem benign by their publicity departments. They don’t really care about seal pups or any other animal unless the caring returns a profit. While environmentalists agonize over dead seal pups, they do not see the vicious predators that live in trade pacts.
Anyone who follows the political scene in the United States should know the next administration, whether Republican or Democrat, will reject the TPP. This will remove the biggest building block in the multi-national partnership. Perhaps, when Justin Trudeau went to Japan, he was making the first steps in a nation-to-nation agreement. Perhaps he already believes the TPP will end up in the dustbin of history. And so it should.
