Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much for your interventions this morning.
The principle of chapter 11, of national treatment and inherent investor-state provisions, is one that I think most of us understand: the notion that a Canadian company doing business in another country with whom we have a free trade agreement could not be discriminated against by that government or a subnational government in that country. By the same token, we would respect the same principle in terms of a foreign company doing business here. The principle of chapter 11 is as much to defend Canadian companies doing business abroad as it is to defend the rights of American companies, or Mexican in this case through NAFTA, doing business in Canada.
We've seen cases in which chapter 11 yielded what seems to have been a just result. Based on your analysis, Methanex was one. Other cases were resolved differently. If you go back to MMT, you would allege that it was different in terms of how it was resolved.
It strikes me that legislators, whether provincial or state or federal, national or subnational, face a significant challenge in terms of designing legislation that, by nature, is not seen or demonstrably proven to be in some ways discriminatory.
For instance, with 2,4-D, if the ban had been on pesticides broadly as opposed to being on 2,4-D specifically, would it have been more tenable under chapter 11 than it is if you ban a specific chemical?