Just briefly, I would recommend, as I did in the presentation, that there is no need for it. This was the original intent in NAFTA chapter 11, which was that in Mexico, where the legal situation was not the same as it was in the United States and Canada, perhaps this would be a benefit for Canadian corporations, and perhaps it would encourage them to invest in Mexico if they had these assurances. They would have a means outside of Mexican courts with which to assert their rights as they would see them under the negotiations.
But what we've found over the last little while, over the last five years, is that increasingly companies are using this process in ways that weren't intended. This was the summary of the UNCTAD report that came out a couple months ago, that this is something that really does need to be looked at, and maybe at the very least we should be going back to what was the original intent of investor-state protections in the trade agreements and how they have gotten out of hand. So Canadian firms frequently do now use this to challenge decisions, whether it's in America or Ecuador. We've had some feedback challenges under way related to resource extraction there and certain decisions by local governments.
The El Salvador case with Pacific Rim is another one where a Canadian firm went treaty-shopping and moved a subsidiary into Nevada so it could use the CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, to sue the government of El Salvador for $77 million—which is 1% of the country's GDP—simply because Pacific Rim can't get a mine started because of impacts that mine would have on water and other human rights in the country.
In the Japanese case, I'm not sure if it's something Canada would even consider. Maybe this committee could bring it up that we don't need to go in that direction.