International Trade committee  Thank you for that question. It's very important, not just for people who believe in the values of the Council of Canadians, but this is a process that makes our trade agreements better. We can all agree that the more people are involved, and the more democratic and transparent

International Trade committee  I think that's a very good way of summing up what we believe should be the next step going forward and how we make the next deal better.

International Trade committee  Yes. I believe that, fortunately, reforming the investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, system will ensure that corporations have little opportunity to weaken state policies and regulations. However, in the wake of the agreement, committees have been established. Their member

International Trade committee  Yes. We talk about having international standards that are the same for everyone. But the decision makers, those who determine these standards, do not come from civil society. They are neither us nor parliamentarians. These are people who work on rather technical aspects. In a wa

International Trade committee  Okay.

International Trade committee  Good afternoon. My name is Sujata Dey, and I am responsible for the Council of Canadians' international trade campaign. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you about the Canada—United States—Mexico Agreement, or CUSMA, from outside the country. As you said, I am

International Trade committee  This is what we were talking about, that most of the trade agreements have very little now to do with tariffs. Traditional trade agreements are going more into the regulatory space. You see that with ISDS, the investor-state dispute settlement, which is in quite a number of trade

International Trade committee  We are not the economic modelers. We're relying on information from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who has modelled that information and has looked at what that would do to biosimilars and how that would act in the market, and what those costs would be to pharmacare. I urge pe

International Trade committee  There's quite a lot of research on how—

International Trade committee  It's an irony, because the first thing President Trump did in office was to say that he hated the TPP and he was going to rip it up. However, what has happened is that a lot of the provisions that were originally in the TPP made themselves into the new NAFTA. One of those is the

International Trade committee  Good morning. I am the head of the international trade campaign at the Council of Canadians. I will make my presentation in English, but it will be my pleasure to answer questions in French. The Council of Canadians has been keenly interested in issues of free trade since the

International Trade committee  It's very much so. That's an interesting question, because you have to remember that water is becoming a multi-billion dollar industry. There is even trade right now on futures of water. It has become an investment vehicle. Those are very important. In NAFTA's annex, water is a

International Trade committee  We're the most sued developed country in the world, with 39 suits, and a lot of them over our environmental policies. We have to remember that we are a resource economy. We have a lot of resources, so as we try to protect our resources, we will get more and more suits as we chang

International Trade committee  One of the things that's really important is that a lot of what happens in trade agreements can often be more symbolic. The most important thing I would put on the top of my list is “binding and enforceable”. For example, having the Paris climate agreement within the environment

International Trade committee  Good afternoon. My name is Sujata Dey, and I am in charge of the international trade campaign at the Council of Canadians. I will make my presentation in English, but I could answer your questions in French. Today we are coming full circle. The Council of Canadians was founded