International Trade committee  I will ask one of my experts from the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development to respond to that question. Mark.

International Trade committee  Mr. Chairman, member states will all have to individually ratify the agreement before those remaining sections come into effect.

International Trade committee  It doesn't come into effect as each member state ratifies it. They have to wait for all of them to have completed it.

International Trade committee  That's right.

International Trade committee  I'm sorry. I couldn't [Inaudible—Editor]

International Trade committee  No, there is not.

International Trade committee  With respect to the interpretive instrument, there is a reference, in paragraph 6(a), on the protection of investments, that: CETA includes modern rules on investment that preserve the right of governments to regulate in the public interest including when such regulations affec

International Trade committee  Sure. To start with a bit of context, you mentioned the economic crisis and said that this was coming out of that. I think one of the driving forces we've had to help negotiate CETA—and I think this has cut across all governments—has been that we do have a very strong reliance on

International Trade committee  Obviously, we do have a strong interest in TTIP and how that's developing. I've talked to the EU TTIP negotiator on a number of occasions about how things are going. We've certainly been looking at information coming from various other sources. There are large gaps between the E

International Trade committee  I think that's good advice, particularly from the investment side, because I think we can expect further investment in Canada because of the notion that we now have access to the two largest markets in the world: the U.S. and the EU. Very few others have free access to both of th

International Trade committee  Well, it's really not so much a question of the ratchet clause, if you're doing that. If you're deciding that something is going to be moved to the private sector and, as you say, the experiment is attempted, doesn't work, and you want to bring it back in—

International Trade committee  —the real barrier to that is whether you have to expropriate the private company that's doing the contract in the meantime. If you wait for the end of a contract, or if you provide payment on expropriation—which would not necessarily be a requirement of CETA, but there are domest

International Trade committee  Under the ratchet clause, I think it would be highly unlikely, because the ratchet clause isn't going to come into effect so much in investment dispute. They're going to be looking at whether anything was expropriated in that kind of action and whether the investor was being trea

International Trade committee  There's not really a provision for them to do that. There are provisions related to national treatment, most-favoured-nation treatment, and performance requirements. There are requirements for fair and equitable treatment. There are requirements against expropriation. Those are t

International Trade committee  Right. It really goes back to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. I'm going to put this fairly simply.