ISDS Case Map
investment | BITs
investment | bilateral investment treaties
Canada’s Conservative government is taking heat after Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet quietly ratified a Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) with China after sitting on it for two years during which it was strongly criticized and protested.
Despite public outcry, Stephen Harper, Canada’s prime minister, ratified a controversial treaty on Friday that will allow China to sue Canada in secret tribunals to repeal Canadian laws that interfere with Chinese investments.
‘A Call for the Building of an Alternative Legal Framework to the International Investment Treaties. Favoring the Public Interest while doing away with Transnational Corporate Impunity.’
Sources tell CBC the federal government will quietly announce it is ratifying the investment treaty later this afternoon.
The US-China Business Council, a corporate lobby group, outlines what a US-China BIT might amount to.
India has signed the free trade agreement (FTA) in services and investments with 10-member ASEAN, paving the way for freer movement of professionals and further opening opportunities for investments.
A US-India BIT could provide "a layer of much-needed protection that can lure US companies into India," especially to develop infrastructure, a US expert says
India, which did not attend the ASEAN ministers meeting this week, will propose a circulation process for signing the India-ASEAN trade pact in services and investments.
While Indonesia intends to renegotiate its BITs to provide greater capacity to regulate in the public interest, the current Australian government has indicated it will consider the inclusion of ISDS on a case-by-case basis.
Despite the failure of the OECD's MAI negotiations and the lack of agreement to put investment on the WTO's negotiating agenda, the major source countries of FDI will eventually get close to their objective of a comprehensive web of investment agreements with increasingly stricter investment provisions with those developing countries that compete with each other as hosts of their FDI.
