Will Canada get sued under CETA as much as NAFTA chapter 11?

Owing to NAFTA’s chapter 11, Canada is already the sixth most common respondent in investor-state dispute settlement cases, but it could move up the list if the Harper government does as expected and includes an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism in the Canada-EU Trade Agreement.

That seems to be a reasonable inference to make from a new report by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), anyway.

Behind three countries with a penchant for nationalization — Argentina, Venezuela, and Ecuador — as well as Mexico and the Czech Republic, the report shows Canada to be one of the world leader’s in getting sued by foreign investors.

Though by foreign investors, that really means American investors making use of NAFTA Chapter 11, because no claim has ever been brought against Canada under any of its existing twenty-something Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements (FIPA).

As the report notes, investor-state “arbitrations have been initiated most frequently by claimants from the United States.”

They lead the way with 123 cases, or 24 per cent of all known disputes.

The next three most frequent users, however, are investors from the Netherlands (50 cases), the United Kingdom (30 cases), and Germany (27 cases) — all members of the European Union — for a total of 107.

At first glance, therefore, that would seem to suggest the Canadian government will be almost as apt to be sued by European investors under CETA as they are to find Americans taking them to arbitration under NAFTA.

Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca
Author: BJ Siekierski