Blog

Bay St. at King St., in the heart of Toronto’s financial district [Wikimedia]

Canada has approached its recent trade negotiations with the goal of forming treaties that both benefit Canadians and advance its progressive trade agenda (hereafter, the “Agenda”). The Agenda integrates gender equality, labour standards, environmental protections, and human rights more broadly into Canada’s trade agreements.[1] Despite its potential human rights advantages, critics say the Agenda has presented a significant hurdle to Canada’s trade negotiations. It has been partly blamed for crippling trade negotiations with China, and for stalling the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP, formerly the TPP).[2] The Agenda is also becoming a contentious issue in the North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiation.[3] Critics have suggested that if Canada wishes to successfully negotiate trade deals, it will need to either abandon or loosen the requirements set forth in the Agenda.[4]

Pictured: Khaleda, a survivor of the Rana Plaza collapse, in her new job as dressmaker. [Wikicommons]

On April 24, 2013, Rana Plaza, an eight-storey garment factory in Bangladesh, collapsed, killing an astonishing 1,138 people. Aid workers searching through the wreckage found labels for Canadian brand names, including Joe Fresh apparel linked to the Canadian company Loblaw’s. Five years on, the collapse ranks as the deadliest garment factory accident ever, and one of the deadliest industrial accidents of the 21st century.

Since Rana Plaza, companies have scrambled to improve the transparency of supply chains with mixed results. For example, Canadian Tire still refuses to publish information on its supply chain. While there has been intense public pressure for greater transparency from Canadian companies, activist groups such as Amnesty International have demanded a government response.

Pictured: the future of legal access?

By Katherine Golobic, JD candidate, University of Toronto

Cody (not her real name) is a PhD student renting a basement apartment in Toronto. She struggles to balance her academic workload with two jobs and endless personal obligations. One evening in early December, her landlord came over to complete some repairs. During the visit, Cody introduced the landlord to her fiancée, Ellen. Cody could immediately tell that the landlord was not comfortable with their relationship, and he left soon after the introduction.

By Cassandra Knapman, J.D. candidate, University of Western Ontario

In late 2016, long-running negotiations on the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) came to a shuddering halt when a small French-speaking region inside Belgium refused to add its signature to the deal. Wallonia, which for complex political reasons needed to sign off on CETA in order for Belgium – the lone holdout – to join, had objected to the inclusion of an Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism. Such mechanisms permit companies to sue states for alleged discrimination against foreign investors, although in practice they have long been criticised for undermining domestic regulations.

Wallonia’s reluctance about the mechanism reflected, in part, the criticism that these mechanisms cause states to trade human rights protections for investor money, a concern that has been echoed by UN Special Rapporteurs and scholars.[2] After a flurry of negotiations, Wallonia extracted an agreement to exclude the relevant ISDS sections from the provisional application, pending an opinion from the European Court of Justice as to their compatibility with existing European treaties.[3]

By Gregory Ringkamp, J.D. candidate, University of Toronto Faculty of Law

As genetic information becomes increasingly easy to access, new questions have arisen as to how society should permit the information to be used. When the United States adopted the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act in 2008, Senator Ted Kennedy couched it in terms of human rights, referring to it as the “the first civil rights bill of the new century of life sciences.”^[1] The Genetic Non-Discrimination Act, which became law in May 2017, is set to bring similar protections against genetic discrimination to Canada.