Another step forward in implementing controversial trade agreement
Canada’s international trade minister, Chrystia Freeland, made a visit to New Zealand on Feb. 3, 2016 to sign the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Canada is one of a dozen countries that is included in the Pacific Rim trade agreement, and currently sits as one of the countries that’s taking the biggest gamble through its involvement in the deal.
The TPP is an economic trade agreement that has drawn ire from many critics. Perhaps one of the loudest critics of the TPP is Jim Balsillie, a philanthropist and former CEO of Research in Motion.
Balsillie has criticized the TPP for limiting Canada’s ability to push forward and innovate in a global market.
“We’re in an innovation deficit in this country, and when you find yourself in a hole, the first rule is stop digging,” said Balsillie, in a Feb. 6, 2016 interview with CBC Radio. “What [the] TPP does is it locks in that competitive advantage [for other countries] which makes it much, much harder for Canada to become an innovation nation. When we look at this 10 years from now, we’ll see how we’ve locked ourselves in and how this was such a poor strategy.”
Balsillie’s criticisms come from the fact that the TPP greatly favours the United States in terms of securing patents and keeping innovation central to our neighbours south of the border.
“If you look at it, Canada comes into TPP with an innovation deficit in commercializing our ideas. What TPP does is enshrine the in-club and the out-club of innovators, because it advantages those with pre-existing positions of owning [intellectual property] and sophisticated capacities both in their economy and companies,” said Balsillie, in the same interview.
Even though the trade agreement has had its share of critics, others, like Premier of British Columbia Christy Clark have warned the federal government about the dangers of stepping away from the TPP.
“In every trade deal there are downsides, but you think about what NAFTA has done for Canada in terms of growing jobs,” said Clark in a separate interview with CBC Radio. “We do 60 per cent of our trade with TPP countries in British Columbia; if we are not signed on to that deal we are going to be shut out.”
Though the agreement has been signed, Canada is not required to follow through on the guidelines outlined in the TPP.
Trade minister Freeland has likened the current signing with the idea that Canada, as a nation, is at least willing to stay at the negotiation table, and that the move is more symbolic than it is a full commitment.
The TPP still has to be ratified by the federal government—a process that can take up to two years to accomplish. The signing of the agreement merely allows Canada to stay involved in the deal as it stands. The federal government will have to take into account how the TPP will affect Canada’s already tenuous economic future going forward, while carefully weighing the costs and the benefits of the new trade agreement.