International Trade committee  Very briefly, they will be able to review a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, by the Parliament of Canada, or by any provincial legislature to make a judicial decision, in the case of the Supreme Court, obviously, or to pass a law, in the case of Parliament or a legislatur

International Trade committee  I don't think there's a clear answer to that question, but I think the best answer is that it depends on what the federal government is saying to the Europeans outside of the legislative process, because the federal government has the right under the agreement to not apply parts

International Trade committee  If I were a betting man, I would say the ISDS and ICS provisions in CETA are probably dead in Europe for political reasons, not to mention the other hurdles at the European Court of Justice. At the very least, I think it's highly likely that the current provisions in CETA are g

International Trade committee  Thank you. It looks as though the Europeans are going to adopt a broader process, so it won't just be DG trade at the commission. They'll be bringing in member states, or possibly other DGs, so you could look at it being a joint decision of more than one minister, or even, I th

International Trade committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I want to apologize in advance because I will have to leave at 12:20, since I will have a roomful of students waiting for me at 12:30. I'd like to thank you very much for the opportunity to present to you. I'm going to make five very quick points

International Trade committee  Thank you for raising that question because, first, we need to be clear. When we talk about dispute settlement, the standard approach is state-to-state dispute settlement. That's what we have in the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. That's what Australia got with the United State

International Trade committee  I don't want to take too much time to get into the details of specific clauses, but you could think of the entire ISDS as a ratchet, because you are locking in your space to pass laws and make regulations, without this looming risk of a potentially very significant financial cost

International Trade committee  I'm not against lawyers making money either, because I still am a lawyer. It's more about the so-called judge, who sits working on the side as a lawyer, not having a set salary, not having security of tenure, and not having the conventional safeguards of institutional independen

International Trade committee  ISDS exploded onto the scene in the late 1990s. It's probably been the biggest bonanza for large international law firms that we've seen in international law, because you can get access to public money in ways you just can't elsewhere in international law. Canada's the fifth most

International Trade committee  I'll wrap up with my last point. Foreign investors obtain very powerful international rights in ISDS without any actionable responsibilities. It's a fundamentally imbalanced system, and for that reason, I suggest it's a very powerful reason to not commit Canada to the Trans-Pac

International Trade committee  Thank you very much for the opportunity to present. I'll be speaking about the TPP's investment and financial services chapters, and in particular the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism or foreign investor protection system. The acronym is typically ISDS these days. I'd