International Trade committee  Thank you. I think it comes back to the substantive obligations in the treaty. It is the obligation to provide national treatment once an investment is established, but certainly there's an MFN obligation in establishing an investment. There is an obligation not to expropriate C

International Trade committee  I think you would be on safe ground in saying that with FIPA they would have substantially greater protection than they do now.

International Trade committee  Yes. The reciprocity in the agreement is that we've undertaken reciprocal obligations. China has not granted national treatment on establishing investment to anybody. What we have in this agreement, which is significant, is a most-favoured-nation clause. To the extent that the

International Trade committee  About 100.

International Trade committee  It would depend on how you define that agreement. Does that include—

International Trade committee  Are you talking about a free trade agreement?

International Trade committee  There are more. I would say roughly 10 free trade agreements.

International Trade committee  The short answer to that question is no, we don't have a list. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, a key feature of this treaty, which does not appear in very many of China's agreements whatsoever, is the ratchet mechanism. That means every time a change is made in China, it ca

International Trade committee  I think the key point is that this FIPA is not an instrument pertaining to market access in terms of investment. It's not intended to open up sectors on either side that are currently not open—and we have ours, too. This is an agreement to basically protect investment, by and lar

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  I'll defer to my colleagues to speak specifically on China.

International Trade committee  The great value of this agreement for Canadian investors is that China has accepted legally binding obligations not to discriminate against them, to provide a minimum standard of treatment, not to expropriate their investments without compensation, and to refrain from prohibited

International Trade committee  It comes down to your assessment of the extent to which the two legal systems are comparable. The FIPA has the greatest value where the legal system is less developed or may be subject to political influence. I'm not going to be making characterizations about the systems in China

International Trade committee  No. There is no substantive provision in this FIPA that is different from the FIPA model that we have. If you're asking for a comparison between this FIPA and others, the answer to that part of the question would be no.

International Trade committee  An arbitration could be undertaken if an investor thinks that the obligations to the agreement have been violated, but the basic obligations of the agreement are that we not discriminate against foreign investors. The Canadian policy regime now is not to discriminate against for