International Trade committee  I wouldn't. Of course they aren't part of the TPP deal yet, but as I mentioned in my presentation, the overarching principle of the environment chapter is that parties have the sovereign right to establish their own levels of domestic environmental protection and environmental p

International Trade committee  First of all, just as an aside, we disagree with the analysis of nuclear power being a clean energy source.

International Trade committee  That's a different issue. There's another case in Germany where a coal fire plant had some requirements placed on their permit to make it cleaner, and that was challenged and the case settled. What they ended up settling on was to take out some of the requirements for cleaner en

International Trade committee  No, it did not.

International Trade committee  Another good example is when Quebec decided to put a moratorium on fracking. A lot of people in the environmental community and others are very concerned about the environmental implications of fracking, and that's also been challenged.

International Trade committee  That's fine in theory. That's the theory of the terms, but we have to look at how these terms have been interpreted. I'm sorry to harp on the Bilcon case, but what they said there was that they were treated differently. It was a specific environmental assessment process, so the

International Trade committee  Can you explain your question?

International Trade committee  One of the issues that I didn't raise in my presentation that's also important is in terms of looking at the TPP and how you can enforce the environment chapter and what we've all agreed to. One of the main issues is that the environmental breaches or the actions that are underm

International Trade committee  I don't think the terms of this agreement are going to encourage that. I think there's a much bigger risk of a race to the bottom.

International Trade committee  I think there's a much higher risk here of environmental standards being undermined in countries that have stronger environmental records than the opposite.

International Trade committee  No, I haven't been to China.

International Trade committee  It's not about whether the country has signed on to the Paris accord. All these countries have, to my knowledge. It's about whether it can be challenged by a company when we take an action to implement it. The ISDS we're talking about involves a foreign company, not a foreign go

International Trade committee  That analysis doesn't take into account how this will really work. Saying you're a company from a country that signed on to the Paris agreement doesn't mean that you won't—in fact, you probably will—use the ISDS provisions to challenge other governments' specific actions that you

International Trade committee  Okay. It could be something like that, though. A regulatory change is something that could be challenged, right? Unless we're staying with the status quo, it can be challenged under these provisions.

International Trade committee  I think it's very likely, because it's an opportunity available to foreign companies not available to Canadian companies. They have the opportunity to get huge amounts of damages, which aren't available. My example of the Bilcon case is a good one. If it was a Canadian company t