How fucking more obvious does Stevie have to make it that we’re living in a dictatorship now?
Dammit China, don’t you know that only America is allowed to pull this backdoor free trade shit?
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uh, you realize that the petition is being sent to the government, right?
they sort of need some validating information in order to audit the petitions for ballot-stuffing (if that proves necessary).
Well, that settles it for me. I will no longer abide Canadian friends lecturing me on how the United States has gone off the rails. Welcome to the global train wreck, Canucks!
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There are plenty, the big one right now is the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) that European leaders are currently trying to force on their constituents, along with its Canadian cousin CETA.
Instead of repealing laws they usually involve suing for damages caused by new or changed regulations, as in 2012 when a ICSID tribunal determined that the Republic of Ecuador had breached the US-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty (“BIT”), and awarded damages of US$1.77 billion (US$2.3 billion with interest applied) to Occidental Petroleum Corp. A similar dispute is currently taking place between Germany and Vattenfall, for the amount of €3.7 billion.
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This looks like the worst deal since that thing about Manhattan and the $24 of glass beads. This could be construed both as imperialism on the part of the Chinese and treason on the part of Harper and any who approved of it. There has been no play in the media down here as athletes being violent seems to be considered more important.
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Seriously?! JFC. When your vote doesn’t even cover the ground you’re standing on, that’s a major, major issue.
Is there a forum / site that goes into this further? Somewhere I can get my teeth into?
Cheers
As a long-suffering American (The US really needs a better residential name…), I sadly admit to an amount of schadenfreude over Mr. Harper’s antics, though I’m also sad because I always thought Canada was rational, and a good place to escape to once our government falls under the weight of its own stupidity.
It seems that the trend of voting for authoritarian, autocratic, despots isn’t just an American trend in the English speaking world.
How the hell is this guy still in power?
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The problem with this is that all the negotiations were held in secret. Despite people warning about the consequences, ie. some small countries like Belgium are being sued by Chinese investors for billions as a consequence.
By the way for US citizens, one of the reasons you can’t bring back the Glass - Steagal law is because that would be a violation of foreign trade treaties just like this.
A government should not be allowed to secretly sign agreements like this that can have serious repercussions down the line. And the CRAP party complained about the former Liberals signing Kyoto.
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It’d be a little easier to stay on track if a certain neighbour wasn’t pushing us around so much.
/allingoodfun
I’m pissed off about everything but the part where the Chinese have to sign off on even a constitutional challenge. I just don’t even understand what that means, really. The treaty might get past the public initially, but what’s going to happen the moment we get “Constitutional Challenge Fails Because China” headlines? That should trigger a WTF reflex in just about anyone. At that point, it seems unlikely we’d politely back down rather than simply tell China, “Yeah, about the FIPA thing. We’re just gonna go ahead and… not do that anymore.”
Also: Maybe put up a link for the Green Party’s petition page, too? There could be others like me who would prefer not to go through the Power Trio for anything.
www.greenparty.ca/stop-the-sellout/online-petition
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Over here in Blighty, we usually use “Septic” when referring to the inhabitants of the USA; maybe you could take ownership of that. 
What is it with politicians these days? Are the ALL crap?
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Shit floats. No wonder it gets to the top.
He wins a consistent 35% of votes from the 60% of adults who bother to vote. That’s all he needs, and that’s how broken our electoral system is. And he gets his 35% with the help of illegal vote-suppression tactics, and there’s apparently nothing we can do about it.
HE LEARNED THIS FROM YOU, USA. HE LEARNED IT FROM YOU. BAWWWwwwwwahahwwhwwwhwasob
I must of missed the mandate from Canadians to sign over these rights to China, odd…
Same in the UK, 2005 being a particularly shitty example. Even Cameron has more of a popular mandate than Blair did.
Actually, the biggest problem is that the small-“l” liberal vote is split between two parties, and we have a first-past-the-post riding system. The Tories got 39%-and-change of the popular vote and a majority government, as opposed to 50%-and-change split between the Liberals and New Democrats. It used to be that the vote on the right was equally split (between PCs and Social Credit, then PCs and Reform).
A riding system that tends to be weighted towards rural ridings doesn’t help. We used to see an extreme example of this in Quebec, where there was pretty much a two-party system in place: the PQ would form a majority government with less of the popular vote than the PLQ. Montreal would vote solidly red, but, even with half the province’s population, Montreal couldn’t swing an election by itself.
Cory, here is some more info on this outrageous agreement. Thanks for getting the word out! http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/council-canadians/2014/09/harper-sneaks-through-canada-china-fipa-locks-canada-31-yea
I suppose I should be happy that the US is contributing something these days… :-\
