This document responds to a Global Affairs Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada consultation on the functioning to date of the environment chapter in the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). It was prepared by Gavin Fridell and Cristi Jerez Campos of Saint Mary’s University, with assistance from Stuart Trew, director of the CCPA’s Trade and Investment Research Project, drawing the CCPA report on the mandatory six-year review of CUSMA published in May 2024.
The submission urges the Canadian government to use all the leverage it has to negotiate much stronger protections for the environment than what was agreed in NAFTA or the renegotiated agreement—and to include obligations on CUSMA parties with respect to addressing the climate emergency. The main recommendations are as follows.
1. Strengthen enforcement of environmental obligations by establishing a rapid-response mechanism for environmental complaints, inspired by the facility-specific rapid response labour mechanism in CUSMA’s labour chapter.
2. Expand the list of multilateral environmental agreements that can be enforced through CUSMA’s binding state-to-state dispute settlement process.
3. Negotiate a climate peace clause that shields measures aimed at reducing emissions or responding to the climate emergency from both state-to-state and investor-state dispute settlement in CUSMA.
4. Rethink and reorganize the current activities associated with the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) to allow for genuine, expanded and robust inclusion of stakeholders and civil society organizations in commission meetings, activities and workshops, while providing a collaborative forum for environmental groups and communities across the region.
About the authors
Gavin Fridell
Gavin Fridell is a University Research Professor in Global Development Studies at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax and a member of the CCPA’s Trade and Investment Research Project (TIRP). He is co-editor, with Zack Gross and Sean McHugh, of The Fair Trade Handbook: Building a Better World, Together.
Cristi Jerez Campos
Stuart Trew
Stuart serves as director of the CCPA’s Trade and Investment Research Project (TIRP), which pools the expertise of academic, labour and non-governmental organization researchers to understand the impacts of trade and investment treaties and policy on the Canadian economy, public services, human rights and international relations.
