The Canada-U.K. trade continuity agreement is about a five-page document. Article V is the article that deals with the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism and represents about 20% of the work done in order to conclude the agreement. Am I really to believe that if we charge out all the hours people on both sides of the pond spent negotiating this full page of text that represents, as I say, about 20% of the agreement.... It sounds to me like taxpayers in Canada and Britain will have paid thousands of dollars to keep the door open to being sued for millions of dollars just because of the inertia of a previous agreement, when neither government sitting at the table wanted investor-state dispute settlement clauses in the agreement. Does that sound like good value for money?
On February 5th, 2021. See this statement in context.