As part of the #StopISDS Global Days of Action, Common Frontiers launches A Call to Action Against Canadian Corporate Bullying: In Defense of Peoples’ Self-Determination and Our Collective Future.
This is a primer to motivate Canadians to action against a powerful legal tool that Canadian investors frequently use to strong-arm governments – Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). It presents eight case studies from Latin America that illustrate Canada’s disturbing ISDS footprint in the region and calls on Canada to stop prioritizing investor rights over people and the planet.
Included in many free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties, as well as some national laws and contracts, ISDS enables investors to sue governments for millions and even billions of dollars over decisions that they believe affect the value of their investments and future profits. Investors may bring claims even when their investments negatively impact people and the environment or their permits are rife with irregularities.
ISDS has become a powerful mechanism that discourages governments from taking climate action, implementing environmental protections, respecting Indigenous self-determination, renegotiating contracts in the public interest, or bringing privatized activities back into the public realm.
This primer documents 45 ISDS suits that Canadian investors have brought against Latin American governments. Canadian investors have been awarded at least CAD$4.1 billion dollars, with outstanding claims of over CAD$45 billion dollars. Two thirds of the suits arise from Canada’s globalized mining sector.
The primer includes:
- a brief history of the colonialist and extractivist roots of ISDS;
- an overview of why it is important to pay attention to ISDS today given the rise of the ultra-right across the hemisphere;
- seven case studies of Canadian ISDS claims against Latin American governments and one against Canada over a socio-environmental dispute in Alberta;
- a call to action in line with the growing global movement against ISDS, given the serious obstacle that this investor protection system poses to climate and environmental justice, Indigenous sovereignty, corporate accountability, and efforts to defend the public interest;
- an appendix listing Canadian ISDS claims and threatened claims against governments in Latin America
Read the full primer here
Read more about the #StopISDS Global Days of Action
Photo: March in Panama City, late 2023. Credit: Olmedo Carrasquilla, Ecological Voices
Collective (COVEC)
