[LINK] "Why Stephen Harper’s ‘trade’ deals are losing their cachet"

[rfmcdonald]

Thomas Walkom argued last Friday, drawing on a new book, that Canadian free-trade initiatives are failing because of the origins of free-trade agreements with exploitative arrangements. I don't agree with the argument, but I think it merits rebuttals.

The already-signed Canada-European Union pact, known as CETA, has hit a buzz saw in Europe. The as yet unfinished Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would link Canada to 11 other nations, including Japan and the United States, faces stiff headwinds in Washington.

A new book by lawyer and Osgoode Hall professor Gus Van Harten helps explain why.

Van Harten’s book is not about either the European or the Pacific pacts. Sold Down the Yangtze is about another deal — the 2014 Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement that Canada’s Conservative government quietly signed with China.

But Van Harten’s analysis of this deal casts some light on why other countries are beginning to question the free-trade orthodoxy that Canada so blithely accepts.