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Former BlackBerry Chief on TPP: ‘We’ve Been Outfoxed’

November 11, 2015

Former BlackBerry Chief on TPP: ‘We’ve Been Outfoxed’

Jim Balsillie says treaty could cost Canada billions and become our worst-ever policy move.

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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.

Jim Balsillie warns that provisions tucked into the Trans-Pacific Partnership could cost Canada hundreds of billions of dollars — and eventually make signing it the worst public policy decision in the country’s history.

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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