[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by Buster

The complaint that it supports corporate capital above government intervention is an odd one.

That's what de-regulating trade barriers actually does. It's the intent that government intervention is generally a negative intervention, leading to mal-investment and market distortions. Private capital and market price discovery should be allowed to determine competitive advantages, etc.

It is, as they say, a feature and not a bug.

If we let governments be the arbiter of trade in a free-trade arrangement, then we wouldn't have a free trade arrangement.

Strange complaint.

The thing is when trade agreements allow private companies to dictate our health and environment laws, we lose a part of our sovereignty.

In early April, 1997 the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien, for one of the few times since its election in 1993, acted to "err", as the government put it, on the side of human health and the environment. Invoking its trade powers, Parliament passed a law restricting the import and interprovincial transport of the neuro-toxic MMT (methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl), a gasoline additive that contains the heavy metal, manganese.




Within days, the US multinational Ethyl Corp., the sole supplier of MMT in Canada, invoked the "expropriation" clause (article 1110) of the investment chapter of NAFTA to sue the government for $350 million Canadian for damages and lost income. With the NAFTA agreement working exactly as it was designed to, the pressure of significant potential public liability mounted on the federal government and on July 20th, 1998 it backed down, settling out of court before the NAFTA arbitral panel could rule.

In a final cruel irony the $13 million US ($19.5 million Canadian) compensation payment to Ethyl for lost profits and legal costs exceeds the total 1998 Environment Canada budget for enforcement and compliance programmes ($16.9 million Canadian). The government will also issue a statement to the effect that the manganese-based additive is neither an environmental nor a health risk which, or course, Ethyl will use to market MMT internationally.


With all we know about lead, manganese and other heavy metal poisoning why are we running one more collective experiment on our kids when safer alternatives to MMT exist and are widely used in the US? How did we end up in this sorry situation? The answer to that question is a long and involved, but ultimately very instructive, little Canadian vignette.

http://www.cela.ca/article/internati...ill-ethyl-corp