Photo: Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow raises concerns about CETA and ISDS in the British Parliament, Nov. 2015.
On Dec. 10, 2015, the Council of Canadians reported in this blog that the European Commission has approached the Trudeau government about renegotiating the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision in the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).
At that time, Reuters noted, “Canada is open to rethinking the contentious issue of investor protection in its free-trade accord with the European Union… Steve Verheul, Canada’s chief trade negotiator with the European Union, [said] ‘I am going to be exploring potential paths forward on this issue, but I should flag that we do have concerns about reopening any part of the negotiations’…”
Now, Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells comments on a recent interview the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita did with Verheul.
In that interview, Verheul says, “We do not think the agreement needs to be renegotiated. We would like to avoid this. However, we are aware of the fact that ISDS is being debated in Europe. We are open to dialogue on this matter, including some amendments to the contents of CETA, provided that this does not cause the ratification process to be considerably delayed.”
Wells then notes ratification will happen in Europe “first at the community level, and then by national parliaments” and adds, “That’s where this ISDS business could cause real trouble. Benefits from enhanced trade are diffuse and not always easy for citizens to notice. Concerns about national sovereignty are localized and easy for NGOs to provoke. A bottleneck in, say, the German or Greek or Hungarian parliament could spell trouble for the whole treaty.” Wells is right. More than 3.38 million Europeans have signed a petition against CETA and TTIP (the United States-EU free trade agreement now being negotiated) and several national governments have expressed opposition to ISDS in CETA.
The Maclean’s article adds, “Verheul [says] the heated debate over ISDS in CETA—and especially in TTIP… – ‘comes as a significant surprise to me’.”
And now Embassy reports that David Lametti, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of trade, says it’s a top priority for the Trudeau government to get CETA signed and ratified. In fact, Trudeau has directed trade minister Chrystia Freeland to “implement” CETA. Lametti says that includes “making sure the Europeans ratify too”.
Embassy notes, “Completion of the CETA has been held up for months by what Mr. Lametti described as ‘serious concerns’ by politicians, advocacy groups and some members of the public in Europe over [ISDS] clauses in the negotiated text. …Canada’s government is ‘willing to address those concerns’, said Mr. Lametti.” Lametti adds, “We know that ISDS is an issue. We have, I think, a pretty reasonable approach, an open-minded approach to ISDS. So I think it’s fair to say we like the agreement as is, but we’ll continue to engage our European partners and we’ll get this deal to work.”
To counter the Liberal government on this, the Council of Canadians will also continue to engage with our European partners, Members of the European Parliament and members of national parliaments in Europe to build opposition there to CETA. We reject both the ISDS provision and the so-called reform being proposed by the European Commission, namely the Investment Court System. For more on that, please click here.
It’s expected that CETA will go before the European Parliament for a ratification vote in late 2016 or early 2017.
For more on our campaign to stop CETA, please click here.
Further reading
Fighting TTIP, CETA and ISDS: Lessons from Canada (a report by Maude Barlow)
