Well, I guess I've always considered myself an academic activist. I've done some teaching on globalization issues and community political power and on environment and sustainable society and those types of courses. I've also worked for the last 20 years in the global justice movement. I've worked with Sierra Club Canada for years, and I actually represent Sierra Club Canada on the Common Frontiers group, whose brief was submitted to this committee.
Common Frontiers, as the brief indicated, is a network of many groups across the country from environment, faith-based, union, and international development groups. I've been working in that group for probably 15 years now. This group works across the Americas. It's always had concerns about neo-liberalism. It does research and education work and it works in Latin America on the social, economic, and environmental impacts of neo-liberalism.
In our brief, we begin by commenting on our concerns with neo-liberalism and the existing free trade model because of its impact on democracy, sovereignty, environment and sustainability, equity, and a number of other issues.
We view the issues stemming from the TPP and the mega trade agreements within the broader context of neo-liberalism, as I said, under which free trade agreements are one of several tools that seek to shift power away from citizens in a democratic society. We actually have recommended in our brief against the signing of the TPP as it is. We're particularly very concerned about the investor state agreement, which I'm sure you've heard much about from other groups as well. As you would know, our government is concerned about it because they have done something to help ameliorate that condition in regard to the CETA agreement with Europe, but not so with the TPP. We feel it has many aspects that really need to be reconsidered.
We also believe that within the whole area of neo-liberalism, we see constantly from day to day, week to week, the analyses coming out that it is a failed system and that it has not worked well. Even yesterday there was a report from the IMF suggesting that neo-liberalism has failed.
The way we approached the subject was to consider some of the impacts on what you might call the different sectors, and I'm sure you've heard from all those sectors at this point. We were concerned about the impact on local governance because, if we're looking to a future where perhaps there is some kind of financial, economic, or environmental collapse, we're going to have to be working from the bottom up. We're going to need our local economies.
If you've looked at the analysis of Professor Jane Kelsey from Australia, who's one of the top-notch lawyers in this field, she points out all of the areas where this agreement has impacts on the ability of municipalities and municipal governments to legislate and also suggests that it will have a severe impact on local economic development strategies. That is a concern, particularly in some parts of Canada. We know that local agriculture, for example, is absolutely crucial, but we know that within this agreement, if you're over the $300,000 benchmark, it could inhibit local farmers, for example in this province, from being able to supply certain larger public institutions, and that's just one example that I'm aware of locally.