International trade and investment, deep integration

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Canadian trade deals are holding back progressive procurement strategies. Recent trade agreements are holding back provincial and federal efforts to get the most bang out of public bucks spent on infrastructure, goods, and services, claims a new report from Noah Fry for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Between March 25 and May 9, the federal government consulted the public on Canada’s participation in a U.S.-led trade negotiation called the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (APEP). The hemispheric scope of APEP has naturally drawn parellels with the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a failed attempt between 1994 and 2005 to extend NAFTA to the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. But in this case, it’s not clear what kinds of trade and investment disciplines APEP will include or if they will be enforceable through state-to-state dispute settlement.
In early 2023, the federal government held a public consultation on the possibility of creating a free trade agreement between Canada and Ecuador. The following text is a submission to that consultation by Stuart Trew, director of the CCPA’s Trade and Investment Research Project. The submission focuses on the possibility for the trade deal to include an Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism.
The 1980s were an era of great debate over the right’s push for a “free trade” agenda that the CCPA, among many other progressive organizations, warned would cost jobs, weaken environmental standards, and lock in neoliberal austerity.
This spring, Global Affairs Canada sought advice on the development of a reciprocal procurement policy that would “reduce access to Canadian federal procurement opportunities for foreign suppliers, goods, and services from countries that do not provide a comparable level of access to Canadian suppliers.” The department frames the policy as a means of ensuring fairness and mutual benefit in Canada’s international trade relationships. 
Investor-state dispute settlements are a lesser known but significantly harmful mechanism that allows large corporations to target environmental policy and resource management decisions in developing nations.
OTTAWA—Canadian mining companies continue to target environmental policy and resource management decisions in developing nations through increasingly costly investor-state lawsuits that threaten human rights, sustainable development and action on climate change, according to new analysis released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
This week, Canada and Indonesia, the largest palm oil producer and exporter in the world, are completing the first round of negotiations on a proposed C
The removal of investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) from the renegotiated NAFTA was a critical victory for democratic sovereignty over investor power. Within three years, the Canada–U.S.–Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) will eliminate ISDS between Canada and the U.S. and significantly scale it back between the U.S. and Mexico.

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