General Discussion

I'd sure like to know how this aspect is being negotiated in our trade agrements, as it does have very serious implications

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131126/04150225376/resistance-grows-to-inclusion-corporate-sovereignty-canada-eu-trade-agreement-ceta.shtml

Excerpt

"Although the CBC post claims "the most contentious points have been settled", that's not true for one of the most controversial areas: corporate sovereignty, officially known as investor-state dispute settlement -- and resistance is building. For example, the European Trade Union Confederation, which claims to represent more than 60 million workers in Europe, "strongly opposes the inclusion of ISDS in CETA." And as negotiations on the ISDS chapter begin, over 80 organizations have put together a "transatlantic statement" calling for the corporate sovereignty chapter to be withdrawn from CETA completely:

As European and Canadian trade officials meet again in Brussels today to continue negotiating an investment protection chapter in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), transatlantic civil society groups are demanding that this chapter be removed entirely as an affront to democracy, an attack on the independent judiciary, and a threat to climate change and our shared environment.

The CETA "will include a controversial and unnecessary investment protection chapter and investor-to-state dispute settlement process (ISDS) that a growing number of countries are rejecting for good reasons," says the transatlantic statement, which is endorsed by more than 80 organizations in the European Union, Canada and Quebec. "These excessive corporate protections, built into thousands of investment treaties and free trade agreements, serve no social or economic purpose other than to undermine our democratic rights to decide public policy and public interest regulation."....