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2013-04-17  |  Janet Eaton

Interview conducted by April Cashin-Garbutt, BA Hons (Cantab)

Please can you give an introduction to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement? Which countries are in negotiation?

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade deal currently being negotiated between eleven countries of the Asia-Pacific region: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, United States, Singapore and Vietnam.

But the scope of the TPP is potentially much broader than the current eleven countries. Negotiators have said that they are structuring the agreement in such a way that would allow more countries to join, and the TPP could eventually include all twenty-one APEC nations. Thailand has already announced its intention to join, and Japan and the Philippines are actively considering it.

Even more alarming, U.S. negotiators have said the TPP...

2013-04-17  |  Janet Eaton

By Dana Gabriel

Pressure is mounting on Canada to finish up a long-delayed trade deal with the EU. Despite outstanding issues that still must be settled, there is a final push to try and complete an agreement this summer. If both sides are able to secure a deal, it would lay the groundwork for the proposed U.S.-EU trade pact. There is the possibility that the U.S.-EU transatlantic trade talks could also include the other NAFTA partners and maybe even other countries. Mexico has already shown interest in joining and if Canada can’t put the final touches on their own agreement with the EU, they might also be part of the negotiations. This would facilitate plans for a coming NAFTA-EU free trade zone and the formation of a transatlantic economic union.

After almost four years, negotiations between Canada and the European Union (EU) on a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) are bogged down in the final stages. Both sides have missed numerous deadlines to...

2013-04-15  |  John Bennett

By John Bennett

I want to alert you to the most recent attack on environmental protection and democracy in this country and share with you a letter I wrote to Gaetain Caron, Chair and CEO, National Energy Board of Canada (NEB). I was spurred to write after a frustrating experience last week.

The NEB is now operating under NEW rules created by last June’s omnibus bill and, as predicted, democratic participation has suffered – in this case regarding the environmental review process concerning Enbridge’s proposal to reverse its old “Line 9” pipeline (that has been transporting light oil from Montreal to Sarnia for decades). Enbridge wants to use Line 9 in reverse to pump corrosive Tar Sands bitumen from Sarnia to Montreal and beyond eastward (exactly where we don’t know).

Line 9 passes through some of the most populated areas in Canada. Remember the oil spill we witnessed earlier this month, running through the middle of...

2013-03-30  |  Janet Eaton

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Truthout | News Analysis 

Our country's democratic values could be under threat if President Obama fast tracks the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

On critical issues, the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) being negotiated in secret by the Obama administration will undermine democracy in the United States and around the world and further empower transnational corporations. It will circumvent protections for health care, wages, labor rights, consumers' rights and the environment, and decrease regulation of big finance and risky investment practices.

The only way this treaty, which will be very unpopular with the American people once they are aware of it, can be approved...

2013-03-28  |  Janet Eaton

So concludes an expert analyst of the natural gas boom. Brace for bust.. By Andrew Nikiforuk, Yesterday, TheTyee.ca

Photo: Natural gas: After the boom killed prices, expect the flame to diminish as production declines, says energy consultant Arthur Berman.

Every day a government agency or industry group in North America still hails natural gas mined from deep shale rock formations as "the bridging fuel" that will power a brighter if not cleaner energy tomorrow. Cheap natural gas, goes the mantra, will solve our energy woes and build a new energy foundation.

The government of British Columbia, for example, dutifully salutes the ancient hydrocarbon as "a transition fuel to a low carbon global economy...

            

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