Canada Presses US for Inclusion of Controversial TPP Agreement

Yesterday, we found reports surfacing that corporate lobbyists working on behalf of foreign corporate entities were pressuring to adopt ACTA, SOPA and a host of other failed policies that are crumbling in other places in the world today. While the TPP might not currently match the laundry list of policies the lobbyists demanded, they might get a good portion of what they asked for through the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership).

You could call it clever policy-making. While C-11 (the current copyright reform bill in Canada) has been touted by the government as a compromise where everyone has a little water in their wine, the Canadian government seems to be singing a completely different tune on the international stage. While the TPP has numerous components to it, one of the most controversial components is the copyright policies that have been bundled into it. Some of the controversial components of the agreement, as we covered last month, include endless copyright terms, requirements to turn ISPs into copyright cops (possibly a three strikes law) and turning non-commercial copyright infringement into a criminal offense to name a few.

The Tyee reports that Canada has been pressuring the US for inclusion on this:

Twice this week, senior Obama administration officials have been pressed publicly about whether Canada will be allowed to join the negotiations on TPP, a trade deal many believe will have more economic might than the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Canada, Japan and Mexico have spent months attempting to convince the White House to grant them admission to the talks.

Mike Froman, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, said the U.S. has yet to determine whether to consider all three countries at once, or to decide if they should be admitted separately.

[...]

“It is a no-brainer that Canada should be in on the negotiations in partnership with the U.S. because our economies are so integrated; our supply chains feed off each other,” Sam Boutziouvis, a top official at the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, said Friday.

“We depend upon each other right now for so much trade, and there are so many jobs dependent upon that trade…. Canada, within the TPP, will mean jobs in both the U.S. and Canada and the stimulation of growth for both countries.”

Of course, if you have been paying any attention to the TPP without glossy eyes and believing everything that proponents say about it, there has been little to no proof that the TPP has any economic benefit or creates any jobs. As we reported late last month, the Australian Pirate Party recently railed against the TPP, saying that the agreement has no economic benefit at all. We haven’t seen any evidence that TPP would create new jobs either. So the natural question would be: Where’s the evidence that this agreement creates jobs?

In any event, this is a clever move by the Canadian government. Say that they listened to Canadians and created a “reasonable” copyright bill, jump on board with the TPP and adopt the copyright provisions in the agreement, then come back to Canada and blame the agreement and say it was out of their hands all the while appeasing numerous lobbyists.

Perhapse the only comforting thought in all of this is knowing that the TPP is a long way off from being finalized. With more countries getting in on the agreement, it’s very easy to see that things will get delayed for a little while as all sides try and negotiate their way through the process.

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