On March 18, Brampton city council voted in principle to become an Apartheid Free Community. The pledge—a campaign of the Canadian Boycott, Divest and Sanction coalition—commits the city to “working to end all support to Israel’s apartheid regime, settler colonialism, and military occupation” of the Palestinian Territories.
Prior to formally taking the pledge, councillors asked city staff to review Brampton’s contracts and investments to determine if any were supporting companies complicit in Israeli apartheid. On April 8, a report from the city’s assistant commissioner of corporate support services recommended the city “not proceed with the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge due to the legal and financial risks arising from the pledge’s numerous principles.”
One of the main reasons the report cites is Canada’s supposed commitments under a variety of free trade agreements, which would apparently be violated by the municipal government taking such a stand. In particular, the report cites provisions under the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Canada-US-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), and the internal Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA). It claims that these agreements contain provisions which ban governments from “discriminating” against specific countries using procurement restrictions.
Those supposed problems do not line up with reality. The report contains a number of factual errors about Brampton’s procurement obligations and allowances in domestic law and international trade agreements. These inaccuracies discouraged elected officials from taking an action they felt morally compelled to take and for which there would be no serious financial or legal repercussions.
Late last year, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs sent a letter to Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown urging city council not to sign the pledge. That letter also erroneously states that the pledge asks cities and communities to take actions “far beyond municipal jurisdiction.”
As other Canadian municipalities see campaigns to endorse the Apartheid Free Communities pledge, elected officials are likely hearing similar misinformation about their trade-related obligations with respect to public procurement. To clear the hot air, we sent a letter containing the following information to Brampton’s mayor and councillors and hope that it can be useful to other cities looking to become Apartheid Free Communities.
Israeli firms not covered by procurement commitments
Canadian municipalities have no public procurement obligations to Israeli suppliers. Israel is not a party to any of the three trade agreements referenced in the report (the CETA, CUSMA, and CFTA). Israel and Canada are both parties to the Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) at the World Trade Organization, but this agreement does not cover municipal public procurement. Thus, Israeli suppliers have no reasonable expectation that they will be included in any municipality’s procurement and no recourse to dispute settlement under any trade agreement.
Brampton’s public procurement obligations
The Brampton report states that “the Purchasing By-law does not allow the City to impose restrictions on procurements based on the vendor’s location or the place where the goods or services are produced.” However, the by-law’s non-discrimination clause (Article 2.1) is tied to “the requirements of any applicable trade agreements.” In other words, if there are circumstances in the applicable trade agreements in which the non-discrimination rules do not apply to certain procurements, those exceptions would cover procurement by the City of Brampton.
In his report, the Commissioner lists the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) and the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) as relevant applicable trade agreements. These agreements all contain exceptions that would safely shield procurement policies that directly or indirectly discriminate against firms profiting from Israel’s international law and human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as could be aspired to under the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge.
Canada-EU CETA
The Canada-EU CETA contains the most extensive procurement commitments Canada has made in a trade agreement. Despite widespread municipal opposition, the federal government agreed to European demands to cover public spending down to the municipal, school board and hospital level. CETA prohibits covered public agencies from discriminating against EU firms or in favour of domestic firms in public tenders for goods, services and construction. The agreement also prohibits “any condition or undertaking that encourages local development … such as the use of domestic content.”
Notwithstanding these onerous terms, which frustrate governmental efforts to foster domestic economies of scale to withstand the U.S. trade war, CETA includes exceptions to these rules that should allow for the novel use of public spending to support local causes. Article 19.9 allows procurement agencies, including municipalities, to set “technical specifications to promote the conservation of natural resources or protect the environment,” for example.
More relevantly, while CETA is silent on social or environmental procurement (i.e., public spending that takes into account working conditions, human rights or the environmental impact of bidding companies), the European Court of Justice has determined that such policies are acceptable under EU procurement directives derived largely from the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), on which the procurement chapter in CETA is based.
CETA contains further safeguards for the kind of procurement restrictions that could align with the aspirations of the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge. In language drawn from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), Article 19.3.2 of the procurement chapter grants public entities the right to take any measure necessary to protect public morals, order or safety, or necessary to protect human life or health.
Article 19.3.2
Subject to the requirement that such measures are not applied in a manner that would constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between Parties where the same conditions prevail or a disguised restriction on international trade, nothing in this Chapter shall be construed to prevent a Party from imposing or enforcing measures:
a. necessary to protect public morals, order or safety;
b. necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health;
c. necessary to protect intellectual property; or
d. relating to goods or services of persons with disabilities, of philanthropic institutions or of prison labour.
A similar public morals exception in Article 28.3 of the CETA covers much of the rest of the agreement. States can rely on these exceptions in state-to-state disputes where a dispute panel finds that a policy has violated some aspect of the trade agreement. However, for two reasons, it is highly unlikely that a procurement policy at the City of Brampton would generate an international trade dispute of this kind.
First, European countries, including Spain and Slovenia, are taking much more trade-restrictive measures—including import bans on goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements—to exert pressure on Israel to end its violent occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. States have non-derogable obligations under the Genocide Convention to prevent further loss of life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Dozens of European municipalities already have procurement policies that restrict bids from companies identified by the international Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement as being complicit in Israel’s occupation, apartheid and genocide against Palestinians. Among the priority companies listed by the BDS movement are Dell, Reebok, Re/Max, Chevron and Teva Pharmaceuticals, while pressure targets include Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Siemens and Cisco.
Second, under the procurement rules in CETA, Canada is only obligated to provide EU-based firms with an administrative or judicial means to dispute procurement tendering decisions they believe violate the terms of the agreement. Such a process exists in Brampton under the procurement by-law. Trade-related procurement disputes at the Canadian International Trade Tribunal rarely lead to fines against federal agencies.
Canadian Free Trade Agreement
The CFTA does not have a public morals exception, but the agreement allows provinces (and their cities) to deviate from its terms, including the procurement chapter, in the pursuit of legitimate objectives, which include “protection of human, animal, or plant life or health” and “protection of health, safety, and well-being of workers.” As the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge is concerned with stopping harms to people and protecting workers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, procurement restrictions emanating from the pledge should easily pass this test.
Canada-US-Mexico Agreement
Contrary to the report, Canada is not covered by the procurement rules in the CUSMA. Canada’s procurement obligations to the United States are covered in the Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) at the World Trade Organization, which does not apply to Canadian municipalities. This is how the City of Brampton itself was able to safely pass a “Buy Canadian” procurement policy in March 2025 to prevent U.S. firms from participating in city procurements while U.S. tariffs on Canadian imports remain in place.
However, even if Canada had agreed to cover municipal procurement under the GPA or CUSMA, both allow plenty of room for the kinds of procurement restrictions that could align with the aspirations of the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge. As mentioned already, the WTO procurement agreement includes a public morals exception almost identical to Article 19.3.2 in the CETA. As opposition to genocide is a nearly universal moral belief and international law obligation on states, municipal actions aimed at ending genocide would likely survive a trade challenge.
Final comments
Brampton’s report grossly exaggerates the legal and financial risks to the city—and, by extension, all other Canadian municipalities—from signing the Apartheid Free Communities Pledge or from excluding bids from firms profiting from Israeli apartheid. The pledge does not ask the city to take actions that would be illegal or impossible under Ontario or Canadian legislation. Rather the pledge is aspirational in nature. As such, the assertion in the report that the city “does not have the authority to direct OMERS investment decisions or require divestment from specific countries, companies, or sectors,” while true, is beside the point.
The report asserts that discriminating against companies that enable apartheid or Israeli violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories will “reduce the pool of qualified vendors” as well as “reduce quality” and “lead to service disruptions.” There is no data to support this claim. At the federal level, Israeli firms account for a fraction of contracts. Specific to 2025, only 29 of 56,092 contracts went to Israeli firms. This is one-twentieth of a percentage point. This number is likely much lower in provincial and municipal procurement where auctions are generally lower in value and salience. If the city has data that proves that the exclusion of Israeli suppliers and suppliers that profit from apartheid would meaningfully raise its procurement spending, it should supply that data to the public.
As it happens, the staff report’s line of critique contradicts both the city’s and Ontario’s own local procurement strategies. As mentioned above, Brampton excludes U.S. vendors under its “Made in Canada” preference. The city also has a local social returns policy (the “Community Benefits Policy”) that could potentially be challenged as a prohibited offset under the CETA or the GPA procurement rules. Meanwhile, Ontario purposefully restricts municipal procurement competition through the Buy Ontario Act.
Finally, the report raises the potential of “reputational harm” in dropping Israeli suppliers from its procurement auctions. This is a baseless scare tactic that ignores the reputational harm of inaction in the face of apartheid and genocide.
In municipalities across the country, residents are pressuring their municipal governments to adopt policies that ensure local governments are not materially supporting Israel’s crimes. If municipal elected officials aren’t interested in doing so, they should say so explicitly and defend their position, rather than hiding behind false interpretations of trade agreements.
