20 years ago I heard this anti-NAFTA "Cautionary Tale" directly from a then-"recent" (recorded) by by Harvard University's Prof.Elaine Bernard. Not sure how many anti-TPP today are familiar with this...from my memory I searched for her name and the word "no-fault" and found online.

What's the point? When we warn people that TPP *could* let corporations "potential future profits" overrule existing laws of those promised by elected representatives of the people, that's one thing. To hear examples - the more the better - of how this ALREADY HAS HAPPENED as an attack on sovereignty and democracy, in the past, helps people wake up - hence a nice (I use the word loosely) example to share w/people, and TPP is an even Bigger trojan horse...-Harel

Key Example:

"What's the matter with NAFTA?"by Elaine Bernard (1994)
Excepted from
http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/lwp/nafta.pdf

NAFTA also includes provisions which require that companies be compensated financially [the ideas is: for loss of potential/expected "future profits"!] when government action results in actions "tantamount to expropriation." Although NAFTA permits "state monopolies," in other words, the provisions of services such as fire [Fire Department,Police, etc] services, or in the case of Canada, health insurance , through a monopoly government entity, recent experience with the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement raises some grave concerns about the future viability of these provisions.

A CAUTIONARY TALE

Here is what happened in Ontario. In 1990 the people of Ontario, which is the most populous province and the industrial heartland of Canada, elected a social democratic New Democratic Party government in this province for the first time.

A part of their election platform, [after years of big rip-offs by for profit auto insurers] included the proposed setting up a government run, universal, single payer, no-fault auto insurance plan. Although this might sound like a major reform in the US, this is no big deal in Canadian public policy.

It's a modest and popular reform which the NDP has already introduced in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, prior to the passage of the "free trade agreement." But early in its proposed reform, the provincial government was stopped in its tracks.

The provincial auto insurance companies claimed that according to the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, (Article 2010 Monopolies) the action would create a government monopoly. This in turn would have an "adverse affect" [Can't have that!Can't ever have "adverse effect" on future corporate capitalist profits of huge multinationals!] on US insurance companies operating in the province and would constitute an action "tantamount to an expropriation" (Article 1605 Expropriation). Under the FTA, such action required "effective compensation at fair market value." The insurance companies demanded billions of dollars in compensation if the government went ahead with its election promise of a provincial auto insurance scheme.

The provincial government of the largest and most powerful province in Canada, shamefully, backed off and walked away from its proposal [and promise made to voters]

Could the government of Ontario challenge this interpretation of the NAFTA? Yes , unquestionably . But sometimes governments find it convenient to say their hands are tied through an international agreement... Rest is at: Excepted from http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/lwp/nafta.pdf

[See also http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/lwp/elaine_cv.html listing "What's the Matter with NAFTA," Economic Integration and Public Policy:w NAFTA, the EC and Beyond, York University, North York, Ontario, May 27-29, 1994.]