Leaked TiSA text as bad as imagined for public services | What's Left
The Trade in Services Agreement text has been released by Wikileaks. If implemented, it would be very destructive to public services for all countries around the world.
The Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) is an extremely complex and far reaching trade agreement and trade researchers have written extensively on the threat it poses to public services like water, healthcare, energy, pharmacare, child care and more. (See below for some detailed analysis)
The take home message is that the TiSA promotes and entrenches deregulation, increases precarious work, income inequality, and is a direct threat to democratic control over all our public services. In the Canadian context, state owned enterprises (SOEs) like our Crown Corporations are under direct attack over their ability to provide a non-profit market alternative to private monopoly companies.
Most countries have had broader public services excluded from trade agreements allowing for their expansion. This has also allowed unions and social movements to fight against outsourcing, bad labour and environmental practices, and for a public non-profit option within the broader public sector. TiSA, if signed, destroys all these protections we have had.
TiSA promises to do to our public sector what NAFTA and other agreements facilitated in our manufacturing sector: loss of needed quality services and jobs.
• Wikileaks releases full secret text of TiSA
• Canada, the Trade in Services Agreement and the Corporate Agenda | CCPA