International Trade committee  Yes, it is a big question, and I think there's one aspect here that hasn't been considered and which I was alluding to earlier, which is that there are two different dominant paradigms that we're looking at here. If we are talking about limits to growth and any possibility of c

International Trade committee  It is a hard argument, and you can't do it unless you look at the literature and the analysis and the modelling. It is coming from economists and others who are working under the assumption that we have reached the end of growth and who are looking at alternate models such as pla

International Trade committee  They do.

International Trade committee  Right. If you have a look at our recommendations, many of them do go to not moving forward as long as there is an ISDS segment. We cite the UN expert, Alfred de Zayas, who has done a 40-some-page report for the UN General Assembly. He's an expert on international order and democ

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  Exactly. There's conflict of interest as well. That's been highly identified in reports in Europe.

International Trade committee  Well, thank you.

International Trade committee  Thank you. Yes, globally you've mentioned that many countries in the world now are starting to look to renegotiate their investor state agreements, their BITs—their bilaterals—and their free trade agreements that have this chapter in them, and that's for obvious reasons. What we

International Trade committee  Yes. Sorry about that.

International Trade committee  One of the things we talk about in the brief is that free trade as it was envisioned years ago, in terms of comparative advantage and whatnot, was defined by Ricardo within certain constraints, such as a national economy and a balance in trade and so on, and that is not able to h

International Trade committee  Well, we see poverty even in developed societies, and we see the democratic and sovereignty aspect being set aside, as we've experienced right here in Nova Scotia with the Digby Neck quarry investor state issue. We find that is really unacceptable at this point. Just to say more

International Trade committee  Did you want some background on me?

International Trade committee  Well, I guess I've always considered myself an academic activist. I've done some teaching on globalization issues and community political power and on environment and sustainable society and those types of courses. I've also worked for the last 20 years in the global justice move

International Trade committee  We go through some of the issues with free trade in general, some of the theoretical issues, and cite some of the literature, and then we look at some of the concerns around the global economy and whether it could be at this point in a sort of a downward nosedive. We really need

International Trade committee  Just a little.