VIDEO about SolidarityMediaEnvironmentpublié le Juin 20, 2013 by edoherty

Spotlight on Secret TPP Meeting in Vancouver BC - 3.5 min

Interviewed outside the offices of Pacific Rim Mining, Kristen Beifus of the Washington Fair Trade Coalition and Arthur Stamoulis of the Citizens Trade Campaign describe why we should be concerned about the Trans-Pacific Partnership corporate rights pact negotiations in Vancouver.

Negotiators from 12 Pacific Rim countries met in secret in Vancouver over the weekend of June 15 -- 17th to set new investment rules within the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). No announcement of this "intersessional" on investment has been made to the public or the media. People in Canada first learned about this TPP 'mini' negotiation from an article in the Peruvian media Friday. It was later confirmed by iPolitics.ca with no other details.

Activists from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, under the banner of the TPPxBorder network, gathered in Vancouver to challenge the TPP investment talks. They held an emergency teach-in on Saturday night and staged a night-time light projection aimed at TPP negotiators in the city.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership involves 12 countries around the Pacific (Canada, US, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan) and 600 international corporations which also participate in the talks. In addition to new investor rights rules, the TPP aims to extend patents for brand-name pharmaceuticals thereby driving up drug prices, put new restrictions on and even criminalize routine Internet activities such as file-sharing, and poses a threat to environmental and public health laws.

For more information see www.Canadians.org/TPP and www.tppxborder.org