Article content continued

Recent events — the Liberals’ dramatic surge in the opinion polls to within striking distance of a majority victory in Monday’s federal election, and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s abrupt 11th-hour rejection of a deal she had long championed — have sharply upped the odds that the TPP will never see the light of day.

“It may be dead because of Hillary Clinton’s abandonment of the TPP. The only reason the TPP came about … was the idea of gaining access to the U.S. market, and gaining NAFTA-like access to the U.S. is something that got everyone’s attention,” says Carlo Dade, director of the centre for trade and investment policy at the Canada West Foundation.

“Hillary Clinton (as U.S. secretary of state) was the architect of the U.S. joining the TPP. It was the ‘Pacific pivot’ — the new U.S. foreign policy — and it was her doctrine. So for her to walk away from the agreement now really pulls the rug out from under it in the U.S.,” he says.

In Dade’s view, the only way the TPP survives intact is if the current lame duck U.S. Congress approves it during President Barack Obama’s final year in office. And that’s still a long shot.

“That’s the only scenario I see where the TPP is going to pass, and we should know soon whether Obama is going to be able to do that,” he says.

As for Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, whose party has a mixed record (to put it generously) on negotiating new trade agreements, he has stubbornly dragged his feet, refusing to take a clear position on the TPP. Voters don’t seem to care though, even as they obsess over marginal issues like the niqab.