{"id":10799,"date":"2015-08-06T06:57:18","date_gmt":"2015-08-06T11:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10799"},"modified":"2015-08-06T06:57:18","modified_gmt":"2015-08-06T11:57:18","slug":"federal-election-2015-choosing-the-best-negotiator-for-the-trans-pacific-partnership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10799","title":{"rendered":"Federal election 2015: Choosing the best negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"story-headline\">\n<h3 class=\"story-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/business\/federal-election-2015-choosing-the-best-negotiator-for-the-trans-pacific-partnership-1.3178991\" target=\"_blank\">Federal election 2015: Choosing the best negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"story-deck\"><strong>As politicians score point with loaded sound bites, does it matter if they avoid details?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t have a debate on such a key issue as the modernization of social programs in 47 days,&#8221; Conservative Leader Kim Campbell said during\u00a0her unsuccessful 1993 election campaign.<\/p>\n<p>The quote, widely interpreted\u00a0to mean elections are no\u00a0time for serious issues, was ill-advised. But\u00a0it seems obvious that Campbell was trying and failing to articulate an absolute truth:\u00a0that in election campaigns, complexity is washed away in waves of superficial, and often misleading,\u00a0sound bites.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/business\/canada-s-trade-deficit-narrows-dramatically-as-exports-surge-1.3179713\">Canada&#8217;s trade deficit narrows dramatically as exports surge<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/canada-election-2015-tom-mulcair-says-stephen-harper-is-weak-and-vulnerable-on-tpp-talks-1.3178689\">Election 215: Mulcair says Harper is &#8220;weak and vulnerable&#8221; on TPP talks<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/trans-pacific-partnership-talks-hit-snag-no-deal-reached-1.3176078\">Trans-Pacific Partnership hits snag, no deal reached<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s why\u00a0in our current election, one of the most\u00a0crucial issues facing Canadians \u2014\u00a0trade \u2014\u00a0is being reduced to\u00a0caricature. The danger is that instead of a discussion of serious and complex issues, we will end up with a cartoon debate.<\/p>\n<h2>&#8216;Oh, yeah?&#8217;<\/h2>\n<p>We don&#8217;t just want\u00a0Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny taking turns shouting &#8220;Oh, yeah?&#8221; at each other.\u00a0But neither do we need to be dragged through the detail of the trade deal. Campbell was right.<\/p>\n<p>Negotiations among\u00a012 nations bordering the Pacific Ocean\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/trans-pacific-partnership-talks-hit-snag-no-deal-reached-1.3176078\">ended on Friday without a deal<\/a>, but more meetings are scheduled.<\/p>\n<p>As a regional radio news reporter in Saskatchewan in the 1980s,\u00a0tasked with making the original\u00a0Canada-U.S. trade deal comprehensible, I can attest to the fact that sparking interest in the\u00a0details of a trade deal is a hard sell.<\/p>\n<p>The fact is trade deals are complex, affecting us decades into the future, and not\u00a0even experts can\u00a0foresee exactly how. Some of the things that will affect us the\u00a0most are so nuanced, not to say boring, to<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Federal election 2015: Choosing the best negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership As politicians score point with loaded sound bites, does it matter if they avoid details? &#8220;You can&#8217;t have a debate on such a key issue as the modernization of social programs in 47 days,&#8221; Conservative Leader Kim Campbell said during\u00a0her unsuccessful 1993 election campaign. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7902,3544,3000,4936,804,808],"class_list":["post-10799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-canadian-federal-election","tag-cbc","tag-cbc-news","tag-don-pittis","tag-tpp","tag-trans-pacific-partnership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10800,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10799\/revisions\/10800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}