Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States committee  Thank you. I would agree on the supply chains, but I think what we need to do as a government is to prepare our industry to be able to meet those types of sustainability criteria, to be able to help them show where they have clean energy supply chains and where they're using Can

Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States committee  Sure. I definitely think more transparency, more information, and more consultation are always better, so yes.

Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States committee  Absolutely. Community benefit agreements take a little bit longer to set up, but they generally have a number of benefits, in that the investment is sure to meet the needs of their community, because the community is involved in planning it. You can often target more concretely t

Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States committee  I actually have no idea. I am not a lawyer, but Canada should engage with the United States on reforming the GPA. The Americans are interested in doing that, and we should be too.

Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States committee  But how can we amend what we've given up in terms of procurement in the schedule where we said that subnational governments are subject to it? Can we withdraw and take it back?

Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States committee  Thank you for inviting me to appear on behalf of the Trade Justice Network. We are a coalition of environmental, civil society, student, indigenous, cultural, farming, labour and social justice organizations. We came together in 2010 to call for a new global trade regime focused

International Trade committee  That question highlights a gap in my presentation when I spoke about our international obligations through the climate accord or through the ILO. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is something we have signed on to internationally; that we have com

International Trade committee  I think the first example that everybody knows about is that Ontario tried to do a climate response where they bought locally. That was struck down internationally. They didn't do it the right way. I maintain that they could have done it in a way that would have been consistent,

International Trade committee  Absolutely. That is the central problem with investor-state dispute mechanisms: the imbalance that it gives large foreign investors against states. The only reason you would need an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism for investment in India would be your not trusting the

International Trade committee  Sure. I can just tell you factually that, because it is an old case.... ISDS is not completely out of CUSMA. It's being slowly weaned out, so investments like that one would still be covered by ISDS. Whether I think that's a good idea or not is a different matter.

International Trade committee  Absolutely. My argument there would not be with the specific investors. It would be with the government for not providing clear direction and guidance ahead of time when it was clear that the investment would likely not go forward. To be fair to the government, they were trying

International Trade committee  Yes. You raise a good point. The major vaccines were actually funded mostly through public money. The innovation behind the Moderna vaccine was created by publicly funded scientists in the United States, and they have the patent for it. But still, somehow, Moderna and the other c

International Trade committee  TRIPS is a treaty on intellectual property rights at the World Trade Organization and there's a TRIPS council that meets regularly. They have, in the past, allowed waivers of intellectual property in certain circumstances. And so, in the middle of the pandemic, India and South Af

International Trade committee  There is the Columbia Institute that I mentioned, and other legal organizations in Europe have definitely made lists of potential cases. I can share that with the committee. There was a lot of concern at the beginning of the pandemic that these would be coming. What we saw were

International Trade committee  These trade agreements that we find...for example, with the one with Europe where we have an investor court system in place, the investor protections are guaranteed at this tribunal or at this court, but the environmental protections don't have the same weight. We mentioned envir