Mr. Speaker, this gives me an opportunity to explore this issue in greater depth, because too few people are talking about it. Civil society is fairly well informed on this topic; there were protests in the 1990s against the worst cases of misuse of this clause in agreements. However, it sounds very abstract and legal when people talk about “investor-state dispute settlements”. People think they need to be a lawyer or a negotiator to understand what it is, yet it has real consequences.
Earlier, I mentioned the real consequences of lawsuits and the fact that they have caused governments to back down, but now I would like to talk about another effect, one that cannot be quantified: the upstream impact of ISDS. It certainly creates a climate of self-censorship among public decision-makers. Public decision-makers often decide not to implement a particular policy because they fear ending up in court. They fear losing the case. This is the kind of slippery slope that is not quantifiable, that is difficult to assess, but that nevertheless comes with the territory.