Monday, October 05, 2015

On uncosted liabilities

So even from the sketchy details made public so far, and even leaving aside the more general harm done by limiting government action and entrenching corporate monopolies, the Trans-Pacific Partnership will cost Canada:
Naturally, none of those costs were taken into account in the budgets being relied on by any of Canada's political parties in developing their platforms. But now that we know they'll come with the TPP (while any supposed benefits tend to be longer-term to the extent they materialize at all), can we agree that any party open to ratifying the deal has to account for the price in its platform for the next four years?

2 comments:

  1. Aside from the unnecessary cost, it's unclear to me that these subsidies will even be do-able under the agreement. The ISDS would allow competing foreign companies to sue us if the subsidies might reduce their potential profits. Such a subsidy is a "non-tariff barrier", innit?

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    1. Good question. I thought the deals were normally treated as allowing for subsidies (or at least the tendency was not to challenge those as opposed to regulations).

      But I wouldn't be surprised if the Cons are perfectly happy to pay 5 billion in compensation and anticipate paying another 5 billion toward a future challenge - in their eyes, all the better to make sure the federal government's fiscal capacity is locked into corporate payouts rather than being available to improve anybody's life.

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