- $4.3 billion in compensation to dairy, chicken and egg farmers
- Up to 20,000 lost jobs in the auto sector - meaning both lower revenues and higher costs for the affected communities [update: together with another $1 billion to paper over the damage]
- Job losses in other industries which are supposed to "adapt", again resulting in both higher costs and lower revenues
- A higher price for prescription drugs funded both publicly and privately
All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
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:
Labels:
agriculture,
auto industry,
canada 2015,
cons,
free trade agreements,
libs,
ndp,
prescription drugs,
tpp
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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?
ReplyDeleteGood 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).
DeleteBut 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.