How would negotiations on investment affect the right to protect the environment and labour issues?
• The principles upon which investment obligations are based (e.g., non-discrimination, no unlawful expropriation) do not prevent governments to regulate in the public interest, (e.g., to set their own environmental and labour standards/policies). • Canada will ensure that FTAA investment rules do not prevent governments from setting environmental and labour standards in the public interest. • Canada tabled a proposal on general exceptions by which measures necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health, and necessary for the conservation of living or non-living exhaustible natural resources would be explicitly excluded, provided such measures are not arbitrary and do not constitute a disguised restriction on international trade or investment.
