TPP Rally – Thursday August 29th from 4:30 to 6:00pm outside MP James Lunney's constituency office in Nanaimo at 6-6894 Island Highway North (in the Canadian Tire plaza)
Do you know about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)? Most people don’t. Yet this huge 12-country corporate rights deal is a cornerstone of the Harper government’s neoliberal economic agenda for Canada. And it’s almost done deal! As is typical with this government, the TPP is being negotiated in secret, as quickly as possible, so that we, the people, cannot affect the outcome in any way.
There have been 18 rounds of TPP negotiations. This week the 19th round in Brunei, from August 22 to 31, could be the last. We won’t let it be the last word. On August 29, we will begin to Flush the TPP out of the shadows. It is time to speak out against excessive TPP secrecy, and against another corporate power grab that threatens our public health, our access to knowledge and affordable medicines, our local democracy, and the Earth itself. These agreements encourage corporations to extract resources from Indigenous lands, displace people, exploit migrants, transfer wealth from the poor to the rich and commodify the planet. Such broad-based impacts require a united response.
I have sent an open letter to James Lunney and the local media and copied it below for you to see. Please write a letter to the editor and express your concern and if you live in Mr. Lunneys' constituency please send him a similar message "release the text!" "Lets have a democratic discussion!" http://www.jameslunneymp.ca/english/?page_id=24
We will be rallying outside Mr. Lunney's constituency office in Nanaimo at 6-6894 Island Highway North (in the Canadian Tire plaza) Thursday August 29th from 4:30 to 6:00 – Drop by when you can and bring a sign a pot, pan or a drum.
Facebook event page https://www.facebook.com/events/706917449322090/?context=create
For more information please visit:
This call to action is endorsed by Canadian Union of Public Employees, Common Frontiers, the Council of Canadians, OpenMedia and Universities Allied for Essential Medicines. We encourage other organizations and groups to add their endorsement to this call to action and circulate it to their members. Endorsements can be forwarded to hgrewal (at) canadians.org
cheers
Paul Manly
250 729-1254
Dear Editor:
Open letter to James Lunney, M.P.,
Nanaimo Alberni
Regarding the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP):
Dear Mr. Lunney:
We write to urge you to release information about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a proposed "trade agreement" about which most Canadians know nothing because of the secrecy with which the negotiations have taken place. We request that you facilitate a process whereby your constituents may have a chance to comment on it before it is too late.
From what we do know, this agreement, entering its 19th round of negotiations, is a 12-country corporate rights deal led by the U.S., which includes Canada, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. This round began on August 22nd and continues to August 31st in Brunei. Although the proposed agreement is called a trade agreement, only two of the 26 chapters under negotiation have to do with trade. The other 24 include how a government regulates corporate activity, what Crown corporations can and can not do, how long pharmaceutical patents or copyright terms should be, how the Internet is governed, the sharing of personal information across borders, banking and taxation rules and when a company or investor should be compensated when environmental or public health policies interfere with profits.
From information that has been leaked, it has been revealed that public health and access to medicines are threatened under this agreement. The U.S. is using the TPP to push for excessive patent protections that would guarantee making medication much more expensive and even inaccessible to the poorest countries involved in the negotiations. Health advocates are saying that it is a matter of life or death that people say "no" to such changes.
The TPP would also threaten community-led public policy in that it would include an investor rights' chapter and investor-state dispute process that would let companies sue governments in secret tribunals when public policies get in the way of profits. The public policy could be legal, fair and indiscriminate and still face corporate lawsuits demanding hundreds of millions and sometimes billions of dollars in compensation.
In light of this, we feel that the public should be given an opportunity to give feed back and encourage you to facilitate such a process.
We await your reply. Thank you.
Yours truly,
Paul Manly
Chapter Contact
Mid Island Chapter Council of Canadians
MP James Lunney's office 6-6894 Island Highway North – Nanaimo (in the Canadian Tire plaza)