What’s Wrong With ‘Partnership’?

What’s Wrong With ‘Partnership’?

An Asian Perspective To The Trans-Pacific Partnership

BAYAN Canada and the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) invite you to join us.

Tuesday, March 31, 2015, 6:30-9:00 pm
Ontario Public Service
Employees Union Membership Centre
31 Wellesley Street East, Toronto

Guest: Amy Padilla, Deputy General Secretary
IBON International (Philippines)*

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is 12-nation free trade and corporate rights deal that is being led by the United States and includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Thailand, The Philippines and South Korea are interested in joining the talks. Leaked information from the highly secretive negotiations are causing alarm about its severely harmful impact on peoples in participating countries.

“The TPPA’s main provisions are expected to require member-countries to remove any remaining barriers to investments, to strictly enforce intellectual property laws that would raise pharmaceutical costs and stifle digital innovation and freedom of expression, and to allow private corporations to sue states before an international tribunal. In effect, countries joining the TPPA will have to surrender big chunks of their national sovereignty to the trade pact’s imperialist masterminds.” (International League of People’s Struggles)

“The TPP is also considered a geopolitical weapon of the U.S. government, which is trying to isolate China in the Asia-Pacific region, and to block alternative, and more successful, forms of development than the “free trade” model has to offer. But the TPP is being resisted by people across all participating countries because of how it will lock-in a myopic type of corporate globalization that is the main cause of runaway climate change and which has done little to create good, sustainable jobs or reduce poverty worldwide.” (Council of Canadians)

Co-sponsors: York Centre for Asian Research (YCAR), the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), Philippine Advocacy Through Arts and Culture (PATAC), Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Free School
*IBON International is a not for profit international non-government organisation that provides capacity building to grassroots groups, social movements, NGOs and advocates especially in the global south. IBON provides trainings and workshops, researches and policy analyses and support for social-movement building. It promotes democracy and human rights by advocating for a people-centred development framework.