💥 Climate win! No corporate courts in Canada trade deal

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Hi John,

I’ve got some really good news. Last year, thousands of us took action to call on the government to drop corporate courts (aka ISDS) from the UK-Canada trade deal. We’ve just learned that we’ve won - corporate courts will not be in the Canada deal!

The government has finally published its plans for the trade talks with Canada. And buried in the trade jargon is a single sentence that says the UK wants to “ensure” that ISDS will not be in the deal.(1) While we’ve been campaigning here, our allies in Canada have been doing the same over there, and they've succeeded in getting Canada to change its position also. So corporate courts will be dropped.

This is an amazing turnaround from a year ago. It is thanks to everyone who wrote to the trade minister, fed in to the government’s consultation, signed the petition, held campaign stalls and went on protests. It really made a difference and it shows what we can achieve when we come together to take action.

Getting rid of corporate courts in the Canada trade deal really matters. Canada is a hub for fossil fuel and mining corporations, and at the moment fossil fuel companies are increasingly using corporate courts to sue governments over climate action. That includes the Canadian owners of the Keystone tar sands pipeline who are suing the US, after Biden cancelled the pipeline on his first day in office, for an astronomical $15 billion.(2)

We can’t allow big corporations to make it harder to tackle the climate crisis. If you can, please join as a member today and help continue this fight.

Join us!

This isn’t the end. It’s a real victory to have kept corporate courts out of this deal, as we also succeeded in keeping it out of the UK-Australia trade deal. But we’ve won a battle, not the whole war.

The UK is doing more trade deals where corporate courts are also a risk, including trying to join the high-risk Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) which already has corporate courts in it. And we need your support to keep up the pressure for the UK and other countries to exit the Energy Charter Treaty.

Each win strengthens our case for the next battle. And ultimately, together with allies across the world, we want to scrap the unjust corporate court system altogether. We know it can be done - other countries around the world have already started like India, South Africa, Tanzania, New Zealand, Bolivia and even the US.(3)

We’re in this for the long haul, for the big picture, for the real radical change. Will you join us?

Join us!

In solidarity,

Jean Blaylock
Trade campaigner at Global Justice Now

More info
1. Department for International Trade, UK-Canada free trade agreement: the UK’s strategic approach, p23: “Ensure the agreement does not contain an investor state dispute mechanism (ISDS).”

2. Read more about the case in our booklet, Corporate Courts versus The Climate

3. We recently heard from the former South African trade minister, Rob Davies, about how he cancelled trade deals with corporate courts - you can read more in his blog.