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Former BlackBerry Chief on TPP: ‘We’ve Been Outfoxed’
Former BlackBerry Chief on TPP: ‘We’ve Been Outfoxed’
Jim Balsillie says treaty could cost Canada billions and become our worst-ever policy move.
Canada’s innovation sector could suffer billions in losses if the Trans-Pacific Partnership is ratified, warns Jim Balsillie, former co-chief executive of BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion Ltd.
After poring over the treaty’s final text, the businessman who helped build Research In Motion Ltd. into a $20-billion global player said the deal contains “troubling” rules on intellectual property that threaten to make Canada a “permanent underclass” in the economy of selling ideas.
Last month, in the middle of the election campaign, the Conservative government put Canada’s signature on the controversial 12-country pact. The Pacific Rim agreement, which includes the massive American and Japanese economies, has been described as the world’s largest-ever trade zone.
But Balsillie said parts of the deal will harm Canadian innovators by forcing them to play by rules set by the treaty’s most-dominant partner: the United States.
The fallout could prove costly for Canada because technologies created by these entrepreneurs have the potential to create huge amounts of wealth for the economy, he says.
“I’m not a partisan actor, but I actually think this is the worst thing that the Harper government has done for Canada,” the former co-chief executive of RIM said in an interview after studying large sections of the 6,000-page document, released to the public last week.
“I think in 10 years from now, we’ll call that signature the worst thing in policy that Canada’s ever done…
“It’s a treaty that structures everything forever — and we can’t get out of it.”
‘Iron-clad’ dispute mechanisms
Balsillie’s concerns about the deal include how it would impose intellectual property standards set by the U.S., the biggest partner in the treaty.
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Why Big Tech May Be Getting Too Big
Why Big Tech May Be Getting Too Big
Conservatives and liberals interminably debate the merits of “the free market” versus “the government.” Which one you trust more delineates the main ideological divide in America.
In reality, they aren’t two separate things and there can’t be a market without government. Legislators, agency heads and judges decide the rules of the game. And, over time, they change the rules.
The important question, too rarely discussed, is who has the most influence over these decisions and in that way wins the game.
Two centuries ago slaves were among the nation’s most valuable assets, and a century ago, perhaps the most valuable asset was land. Then came another shift as factories, machines, railroads and oil transformed America. By the 1920s most Americans were employees, and the most contested property issue was their freedom to organize into unions.
In more recent years, information and ideas have become the most valuable forms of property. This property can’t be concretely weighed or measured, and most of the cost of producing it goes into discovering it or making the first copy. After that, the additional production cost is often zero.
Such “intellectual property” is the key building block of the new economy. Without government decisions over what it is, and who can own it and on what terms, the new economy could not exist.
But as has happened before with other forms of property, the most politically influential owners of the new property are doing their utmost to increase their profits by creating monopolies that must eventually be broken up.
The most valuable intellectual property are platforms so widely used that everyone else has to use them, too. Think of standard operating systems like Microsoft’s Windows or Google’s Android; Google’s search engine; Amazon’s shopping system; and Facebooks’ communication network.
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