Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In that case, can you explain how Canadian and European legal systems are insufficient for seeking legal recourse for legitimate grievances? That's the wrong question to ask even though there is a very simple answer to it: that the state is not impartial. The better question to ask is why ISDS exists in the first place and this is something that the states and governments came up with and not the companies. > The a…
> That's the wrong question to ask even though there is a very simple answer to it: that the state is not impartial. The judiciary is what is in question, not the state per se. But even if they're not impartial, is that necessarily bad here? Shouldn't the health of a country's citizens take priority over the interests of shareholders? Why should foreign businesses have greater rights than local businesses? (this is t…
It is in CETA.
> The nature of how trade deals are negotiated means we don't necessarily know who came up with it.
Arbitral tribunals predate modern day FTAs by 150 years or more. If you have an interest in this you can easily read up on why they exist.
> Plenty of these cases have been lost by governments.
I am aware since I read about all of them in the last few months but this is going into details. Out of the ones that have been lost, the initial NAFTA case has even been controversial among the signatories. However there are plenty of other court decisions in traditional courts that I would argue are not any less controversial.
> It's because of existing ISDS provisions that we know of their problems. Why do we need even more?
I am not sure about Canada, but the EU does not want more, they want better ISDS provisions since the current ones are quite defective in many ways.
> “All the way up to the highest European courts”? That's not how the EU's legal system works. You can't just appeal cases to the EU level.
You can definitely drag cases in front of the ECHR. Case in point: Yukos.
Anyways. This entire conversation is something that is completely removed from the original point of the article which was moving goalposts. I do not actually see a value having a conversation about CETA, particularly now.