[All] Harper's at it again

[Neil E Taylor]

We have just 4 days to flood the Canada Trade Agreements Secretariat's
public consultation process on a NEW secretive trade deal Harper's trying to
sneak through -- the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Click through to use our talking points and form to submit your comment --
and then make sure all your friends and family do too.

 <http://act.sumofus.org/go/1160?t=1&akid=1250.896239.V-YLQf> Send your
public comment now.

In just four days the Government of Canada will close its environmental
assessment into the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal.
Surprised you haven't heard about it? Harper knows that if the assessment
doesn't find significant environmental impacts, they can just skip producing
a draft report altogether and move to the final report, so he's done
everything he can to keep this bad deal out of the press.

This deal is just another in a list of predatory trade deals the Harper
government is trying to ram through to protect tar sands development and
safeguard corporate profits at the expense of the rest of us. Harper thinks
he can sneak this deal past us, but if we flood the process with comments,
we can show we're paying attention.

We've made it fast and easy to submit your comment through our form, and
there are even talking points on the page to get you started. We need as
many of us as possible to write in now, before the comment period closes on
Wednesday.

 <http://act.sumofus.org/go/1160?t=2&akid=1250.896239.V-YLQf> Click here to
submit an email to the Canada Trade Agreements Secretariat, and then make
sure all your friends and family do too.

Right now corporate lawyers are busy drafting a treaty that Canadians and
our own MPs can't even read! The Harper government is hoping to be able to
point to this public consultation as proof the process has been transparent
-- he will argue that no one is worried about environmental impacts of the
TPP and just move forward with no more opportunities for public comment.

The TPP trade deal contains at least 26 chapters that would have a
fundamental impact on the environment, the economy, jobs, access to
affordable medicines, and much more. The deal will give corporations the
right to acquire land, natural resources, and factories without government
review, and will allow corporations to be compensated for environmental laws
that damage profits. 

With just four days to go before the environmental assessment ends, we have
a key moment to show the Harper government we're paying attention.

 <http://act.sumofus.org/go/1160?t=3&akid=1250.896239.V-YLQf> Can you add
your comment now to the Canadian government's environmental assessment on
TPP? We've got everything you need to get started.

Look, no one thought we could keep Harper from ratifying the secretive and
extreme Canada-China FIPA deal. But so far we have, because nearly 20,000
people from the SumOfUs.org community submitted comments to the
environmental assessment. Now the TPP is coming, and in many respects, it
could be even worse than FIPA. So let's use our power to raise the profile
of the TPP, like we did FIPA, and stop it in its tracks by flooding the
environmental assessment with our comments.

Thanks for all you do,

Emma, Ivan, Kaytee, Rob and the rest of us at SumOfUs.org 

 

**********
More Information

What is the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Who is participating?
The Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership is a multilateral free
trade agreement that aims to further liberalize the economies of the
Asia-Pacific region. Currently, 13 countries are party to the negotiations
including the Canada, the United States, Mexico, Australia, Brunei
Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. 

What provisions are in the treaty?
Under the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) "free trade" agreement,
corporations would gain an array of privileges:

*	Rights to acquire land, natural resources, factories without
government review
*	Elimination of risks and costs of off-shoring to low wage countries 
*	Compensation for loss of "expected future profits" from
environmental laws
*	Right to move capital without limits

The TPP will impose a set of extreme foreign investor privileges and rights
and their private enforcement through the notorious "investor-state" system.
Under this regime, foreign investors can skirt domestic courts and laws, and
sue governments directly before tribunals of three private sector lawyers
operating under World Bank and UN rules to demand taxpayer compensation for
any domestic law that investors believe will diminish their "expected future
profits".

 

**********
Further Reading

Notice of <http://act.sumofus.org/go/1161?t=4&akid=1250.896239.V-YLQf>
Intent to Conduct an Environmental Assessment of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership Free Trade Agreement, Foreign Affairs and International Trade
Canada.

TPP: <http://act.sumofus.org/go/1162?t=5&akid=1250.896239.V-YLQf>  Another
Flawed, Hush Hush Trade Deal Secrecy the standard as Canada enters Pacific
treaty talks. The Tyee. 

  <http://act.sumofus.org/o.gif?akid=1250.896239.V-YLQf>
<http://list.sumofus.org/wf/open?upn=7bPAA19htfoiX7pFAbrqf4kmVJshlB4cQRogcY-
2FnnEsK5IfQWyL7eRuwiJJKf1cyXNARS0h485VNdg6wvDM7U7iBTni8sNE-2BRDbMuzgfhGhzYGx
85pTiRbIajfr-2FE7w7mQR-2B7nVNC-2F0Om-2B8eDOFnlHAe-2BYYZB3yxvkW7N37UxG6UBiZ9o
KK4vzcBcm5NnaKlvjgM4Kwrosn2CV-2BNWtmOrOvxLIlfyMaSVbhjMLYrvG8B422R-2BJJrEcRR4
W7AfixKOaoqmTf4lTLF8Lg0LlsBRw-3D-3D> 

 <http://www.sumofus.org>  SumOfUs is a world-wide movement of people like
you, working together to hold corporations accountable for their actions and
forge a new, sustainable path for our global economy. You can follow us on
Twitter <http://www.twitter.com/sum_of_us> , and like us on Facebook
<http://www.facebook.com/pages/SumOfUs/181924628560212> . 

If you don't want to receive emails from us anymore, you can remove yourself
neiletaylor at sympatico.ca from our list by clicking here
<http://sumofus.org/unsubscribe?email=neiletaylor@sympatico.ca&t=6&akid=1250
.896239.V-YLQf> . But just know, we'll miss you! 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gren.ca/pipermail/all_gren.ca/attachments/20130128/14a01438/attachment.html>