Low balling the TPP past a complacent Canadian public.
There can be little doubt many Canadians are complacently holding their fire on opposing the TPP until the final Parliamentary ratification two years from now. This is a wrong-headed notion and assures it will be passed. Stopping the TPP can only happen in the here and now!
Unfortunately we live in a time when all-powerful corporations hold sway over our duly elected governments. Governments have yielded too much power to them and they have come to expect blind obedience from legislatures whether they are our Parliament or the US Congress. This is the history of trade agreements and too much other pernicious legislation indolent politicians have let pass.
Low balling the TPP past Canadians is well under way. The TPP has been misrepresented to the country. It has been signed. It has had scant coverage in the mainstream media. It was intentionally left out of the Throne Speech. Most of the research I have done comes from American independent media where the TPP has received the rigorous scrutiny it deserves.
It is not uncommon to read coverage making claims just how difficult the ratification of the TPP is going to be. Such claims should be regarded with great skepticism as the corporate juggernaut that drives these agreements has great coercive powers and a proven ability to bend national governments to their will. This can be regarded as part of the low balling process intended to foster complacency among the public.
Many of the articles in the TPP are already in effect under existing agreements like NAFTA and with time only become more entrenched. The TPP, TTIP and TISA are massive expansions of the NAFTA and once in place are permanent and national governments become even more hobbled than they are now.
It is an unfortunate state of affairs that if we want to practice true democracy we must do an end run around our sorely corrupted legislature. This means resorting to and insisting on referenda- as direct and fundamental as democracy can get.
There was a time when government could be trusted as the custodian of the public interest but in the last thirty years it has sold it soul to corporatism, and in too many cases betraying democracy and the public it is elected to serve.
There is a balance to be corrected.
Where democracy becomes a mere pretense we must step forward and insist on the real thing. If we do not preempt the lowballing of the TPP it is a done deal here and now. It is simply too important to be left to politicians.
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http://you.leadnow.ca/p/natref-rjb2