Dear Prime Minister:
I have just re-read Casandra Fletcher’s Facebook post on Oct. 19 last year to which you gracefully responded. Casandra’s ninth point, dealing with listening and communicating, mentions a number of issues in passing, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
It is hard to believe that your government would agree to participate in the nation-destroying TPP. It allows corporations to sue us (Canada) for “lost potential profits” if the federal or any provincial government passes legislation that curbs their business efforts in any way, including the provision of safeguards against oil spillage and other nefarious substances, which could affect their profit margins.
It would be nothing less than astounding if your government ratified the TPP, thus negating good future laws that are needed in Canada, especially those that would protect us from pollution of the air, water and land and their ecosystems. It is as if corporations would be the de facto government of Canada, not the government that the people democratically elected.
It is a foregone conclusion that judges will decide in favour of the corporations, not in favour of us. (Our loss against Bilcon in Nova Scotia, and Lone Pine’s probable win in Quebec are only two examples of the ISDS mechanism within NAFTA which favours corporations.) We will be liable to pay out billions of our very hard-earned dollars (in U.S. currency, of course) to the corporations as punitive compensation for the losses that they have not even incurred yet. Such payments will make us poor as a nation, poor as citizens, poor as people. B.C.’s premier, Christy Clark, speaking on CBC Radio’s The House Feb. 6 said, “We do 60 per cent of our trade with TPP countries in British Columbia, if we are not signed on to that deal [the TPP] we are going to be shut out.” So we already have bilateral trade agreements with most of the 12 countries. We don’t need the TPP.
Allowing the TPP to pass is something I would have expected from a Harper government, not from yours. If your government passes it, we might as well have voted for him.
You cannot allow that to happen! Refer to Casandra’s third point. Canada will not be a proud name to sew on a backpack if we have to kow-tow to the huge corporations. Her fourth point, “Please don’t be bought,” is very pertinent. Allowing the TPP to pass will ruin Canada, and it will go down in history as your responsibility. I cannot believe, prime minister, after all you have said during the election campaign, that you would even think of allowing this outrage to be perpetrated on us. Can we not trust you to do the right thing? Or do we need a different kind of government?
Manuel Erickson
Mill Bay