While visiting Britain and France this week, prime minister Stephen Harper pointed out that Canada and the European Union do approximately $8 billion worth of trade annually, and that the much -touted Canada -EU trade deal (CETA) will expand this trade as much as 20%. What could be better than that?
Well, excuse me if I am not so easily impressed. As is increasingly the case in all so-called trade deals nowadays , market access for Canadian beef and manufactures and services has to be purchased at the cost of things that having nothing to do with "free trade " as such. In the case of CETA, that something else is higher drug prices. A group of large European pharmaceutical companies, including Bayer, Sanofi-Aventis, Novartis, Hoffmann La-Roche and GlaxoSmithKline, have successfully lobbied to make stronger protection of drug patents a key deal-breaker.
The best estimates of the impact of higher drug prices stemming from the CETA deal range between $1 billion and $3 billion--the best guess is about $2 billion per annum. Is it worth paying $2 billion per year in higher drug prices in order to have a greater overall volume of trade worth $1.6 billion? Aren't trade agreements supposed to be better for consumers as well as for drug companies?
For puzzled citizens , some historical perspective may be helpful. For about three decades, trade agreements were actually trade agreements. The standard pattern--the social contract, as it were--was that tariffs (import duties) were imposed on commodities in order to protect domestic producers (usually manufacturers) from foreign competition. Five successive rounds of negotiations conducted under the auspices of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) between 1947 and 1967 only involved about 60 countries, mostly in the developed capitalist world, but they did a great job of negotiating thousands of tariff reductions that had the effect of making products cheaper for consumers and forcing inefficient producers to become more competitive. The basic deal was--consumers benefitted first, and foremost in a clear transparent fashion. Transition costs from inefficient industries going under would be offset by consumer gains and overall gains in employment and economic growth.
But then the trade agenda expanded , and the number of countries greatly expanded and then the process was slowed down, and then we began to see a proliferation of regional and bilateral trade deals that reflected the asymmetrical power relations of the parties and which contained provisions like the energy security provisions of NAFTA and stronger protection of intellectual property rights, stronger protection of rights of capital, including even a right of those corporations to sue democratically elected governments if social or environmental policies interfere with their business?
My question is: who are the real protectionists here? Am I to be criticized as a "protectionist" because I only want an agreement in which the earliest and clearest beneficiaries are ordinary consumers and the least advantaged among us? Because I want a CETA that either doesn't include pharmaceuticals or which does include pharmaceuticals but only if it has the effect of making drugs cheaper? I say: the real protectionists are the ones who promote this corporate-driven agenda.
I'm all for increasing exports of Alberta beef, and it would be nice to create more wealth. But this is not an obviously great deal. We should follow the lead of the Ontario government and make the deletion of stronger drug patents a condition of our support for this highly questionable trade agreement.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Monday, June 10, 2013
N.D.P.= No Dix Please
I told you so, sort of. Okay, Okay, I was as gullible as everyone else in assuming the public media opinon polls would translate into an NDP victory on May 17. But I did say this a year and a half ago, on January 28, 2012, on this blog: "[in the unlikely event that Dix's bubble bursts and the electoral chips fall in such a way as to sustain the Liberals for another term, don't worry: that could be a blessing in disguise."
I had at least three reasons for thinking so, spelled out in a dozen different blog postings and newspaper columns stretching back to late 2010.
1. First, I argued against dumping Carole James in favour of Adrian Dix in late 2010 and early 2011, because even though Dix's toughness and media-savviness counted in his favour, his record as Glen Clark's best friend , roommate and closest advisor did not--especially his roles in the fast ferry and casino application files. The way he clinched the leadership race by drawing upon his Clark and Sihota connections to deliver a magic busload of invisible instant members from Surrey was a reminder of the same old Dix, and of his fundamental nature as a hard core political operative. As I put it back on March 20, 2011: "To paraphrase Clemenceau,[who once said that war was too important to be left to the generals] , democratic politics is too important to be left to the ultra-politicians."
2. Win or lose, Dix would be hard to get rid of , because of his personality, his safe seat and the position of his support group within the party. That could block the path for a more attractive leader without close ties to the Clark government to come to the fore---such as Gregor Robertson.
3. On the level of policy, I had argued that the best policies came from leaders who brought some form of excellence from outside of politics, and who could channel the deep roots the party has in both the labour and environmental movements.. not from "someone like Geoff Meggs or Adrian Dix reading opinon polls." In other words, the "purest political animal and most professional politician in the Legislature" would probably not make the best premier. When Dix looked at (misleading) opinion polls early in the campaign, he made the mistake of cautiously sitting on the lead. And when he looked at polls late in the campaign, he tried to capture Green votes with his Kinder Morgan announcement--which was not a good policy and not made according to a good policy process (i.e. one that was widely consultative of both workers and party activists).
Vaughn Palmer's column a week or so ago warning that Adrian Dix might not step down voluntarily as leader of the B.C. NDP was a reminder to me that we should not make the same mistake with him as he made with the Liberals, i.e. we should not let our collective foot off of his neck.
Here is an excerpt from that Palmer column of May 22, 2013:
I had at least three reasons for thinking so, spelled out in a dozen different blog postings and newspaper columns stretching back to late 2010.
1. First, I argued against dumping Carole James in favour of Adrian Dix in late 2010 and early 2011, because even though Dix's toughness and media-savviness counted in his favour, his record as Glen Clark's best friend , roommate and closest advisor did not--especially his roles in the fast ferry and casino application files. The way he clinched the leadership race by drawing upon his Clark and Sihota connections to deliver a magic busload of invisible instant members from Surrey was a reminder of the same old Dix, and of his fundamental nature as a hard core political operative. As I put it back on March 20, 2011: "To paraphrase Clemenceau,[who once said that war was too important to be left to the generals] , democratic politics is too important to be left to the ultra-politicians."
2. Win or lose, Dix would be hard to get rid of , because of his personality, his safe seat and the position of his support group within the party. That could block the path for a more attractive leader without close ties to the Clark government to come to the fore---such as Gregor Robertson.
3. On the level of policy, I had argued that the best policies came from leaders who brought some form of excellence from outside of politics, and who could channel the deep roots the party has in both the labour and environmental movements.. not from "someone like Geoff Meggs or Adrian Dix reading opinon polls." In other words, the "purest political animal and most professional politician in the Legislature" would probably not make the best premier. When Dix looked at (misleading) opinion polls early in the campaign, he made the mistake of cautiously sitting on the lead. And when he looked at polls late in the campaign, he tried to capture Green votes with his Kinder Morgan announcement--which was not a good policy and not made according to a good policy process (i.e. one that was widely consultative of both workers and party activists).
Vaughn Palmer's column a week or so ago warning that Adrian Dix might not step down voluntarily as leader of the B.C. NDP was a reminder to me that we should not make the same mistake with him as he made with the Liberals, i.e. we should not let our collective foot off of his neck.
Here is an excerpt from that Palmer column of May 22, 2013:
"His dramatic reversal — opposing the pipeline 11 days after saying that as “a matter of principle” he would not take a stand until it was in the formal application stage — cost the party support in the north, Interior and even the Metro Vancouver suburbs.
The flip-flop substantiated the message in the Liberal attack ads, that the Dix-led NDP was the party of “no.” It set the stage for an effective follow up spot, the one that portrayed him as weather vane.
The Dix-authored change of position also blindsided his own party and candidates. “I heard it that day, like everyone else,” as co-chair of the party platform committee Carole James confided in a mid-campaign interview with Justine Hunter of the Globe and Mail.
Former leader of the party. Forced out in a bitter showdown in the fall of 2010. Still, she put aside ego, stuck with the party and helped Dix heal the wounds.
For all that loyalty and dedication, she had to learn about “our position” (as Dix persists in describing his solo venture into policy-making on Kinder Morgan) through the news media, same as everyone else.
Nor was that the only measure of accountability that he ducked Wednesday. He made no mention whatsoever of an issue that dogged the party throughout his leadership, namely the memo-to-file that he fabricated during his time as chief of staff to the premier."
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