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. Similar mechanisms in other trade deals, including a bilateral investment treaty with Canada that Ecuador cancelled in 2017, have been used by corporations to circumvent human rights and environmental regulations. Trew submitted the text on February 21, 2023. Read it in full here.
The CCPA contributed to and endorses the Americas Policy Group submission to the same consultation, which can be read here.