Cooperation in the Pacific Rim by Jakob Polacsek, World Economic Forum (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/48179628441

Digital Trade

What’s Behind Canada’s Entry to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Talks?

Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama formally extended an invitation to Canada to join the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations, a proposed trade deal that includes the U.S., Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam (Mexico was also added last week). Supporters have lauded the TPP as potentially the world’s most important trade pact and the Canadian government spent months crossing the globe to lobby for an invitation.

Yet dig beneath the heady promises and my weekly technology law column (homepage version, Toronto Star version) notes that the benefits for Canada are hard to identify. The price of admission was very steep – Canada appears to have agreed to conditions that grant it second-tier status – and the economic benefits from improved access to TPP economies are likely to be relatively minor since we already have free trade agreements with four of the ten participants.

Given those conditions, why aggressively pursue entry into the negotiations?

June 28, 2012 — 10 comments — Columns

What’s Behind Canada’s Entry to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Talks?

Appeared in the Toronto Star on June 24, 2012 as What’s Behind Canada’s Entry to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Talks? Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama formally extended an invitation to Canada to join the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations, a proposed trade deal that includes the U.S., Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, […]

June 28, 2012 — Comments are Disabled — Columns Archive

Australian Parliamentary Committee Warns Against ACTA Ratification (For Now)

Australia should be added to the growing list of countries that are either rejecting the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement or expressing serious doubts about it. The Australian Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, which conducted an extensive review of ACTA, has just released its report and it is cautioning against ratification for now, noting that “there appears a very real possibility that ACTA will not be ratified by sufficient countries in order to come into existence.” The committee found many shortcomings with the treaty. For example, on secrecy and the lack of transparency:

The most troubling aspect throughout the development of ACTA has been the opaque nature of the process. Whilst DFAT has stated that a certain level of confidentiality is required for trade negotiations, and while there is ground to enable a certain degree of secrecy where complex issues warrant negotiations in confidence, there is no valid rationale for the level of secrecy that DFAT has maintained for what is essentially a copyright treaty.

June 26, 2012 — 3 comments — News

Transparency: WIPO vs. TPP & ACTA

The World Intellectual Property Organization has just concluded the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances. KEI notes that WIPO is now providing webcasts and video on demand of its sessions and diplomatic conferences. Contrast that with the TPP and ACTA, where discussions are shrouded in secrecy. In fact, four U.S. senators […]

June 26, 2012 — Comments are Disabled — News

Big Pharma Spending Ratio on Canadian R&D Continues To Decline As IP Demands Increase

The large international pharmaceutical companies continue their campaign for new patent rules that the provinces fear will cost taxpayers billions of dollars in additional costs. The lead lobby for the companies, RxD, brought former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to Ottawa earlier this month to praise reforms from the 1980s that he argued have worked well for Canada. Yet those reforms came with a condition: in return for reforms that granted the companies far stronger patent rights, RxD companies promised to increase their spending on research and development in Canada so that it would rise to 10% of total sales by 1996.

Now the same companies are lobbying relentlessly for a new round of patent reforms that they say will lead to further growth in research and development. However, a new report from government’s Patented Medicines Prices Review Board shows that RxD spending to sales ratio continues a decade-long decline, hitting its lowest level since the 1987 reforms.

June 21, 2012 — 6 comments — News