Yup, anything with the potential to reduce the expected maximized profits of involved corporations is at risk, this to be fully inclusive under the TPP and others to go through afterward. But NAFTA and other 'trade bills' also unconstitutionally claimed an ability for whoever had happened to be in public office at the time to allow corporations to sue the public as they pleased for such reasons.

So if I was hired and paid to run a family estate for a limited period, could I sign away the rights of the actual owners in a private agreement (in which they had no involvement) between myself and multiple outside self-interests to personally not only allow outside corporate profiteering and pollution of said estate, but create and give 3rd party 'rights' for the actual property owners to have to obey and submit to whatever was done to them and their property by these 3rd parties or be sued into bankruptcy?

Would this stand as 'legal' in any uncorrupted law court, if I was not a Clinton or otherwise suitably billionaire/corporate-backed and employed, as with any other (barring Bernie) potential Dem/Republican candidates?

But for this to set a precedent, (which can then be used everywhere,) one dirty judge could cause an awful lot of Canadians to suffer and die at, I may add, horrendously increased expense as a direct result of this, with little or no return, as happens to people in America - and shouldn't. And our taxes will naturally not be reduced with the further reduction of even more public services we happily paid them for in order to receive such cost-effective and once-universal overall benefits, but will go to fatten the corporations and billionaires while anyone here still has money to be drained up to the top.

Annoyingly, the wait times complained of (not quoted) were created with/for NAFTA, the beginning of the systematic starvation of the once-admirable Canadian health-care system toward privatization. Typically, the Greeds create the conditions they need to make a case for pirating the lot.

http://thetyee.ca/News/2014/04/17/Clinic-Lawsuit-May-Transform-Canada-He...

For-Profit Clinic Lawsuit May Transform Health Care
'Hard to overstate' impact of Brian Day's extra-billing challenge, doctors say.
By Andrew MacLeod 17 Apr 2014 | TheTyee.ca

... The case between Brian Day's Cambie Surgery Clinic and the B.C. government will test whether Canada running a public health care system that restricts extra billing is constitutional, Brcic said. A win for the clinics would spell the end of a system where services are based on need rather than ability to pay, she said.

With a few exceptions, the Medicare Protection Act prohibits doctors and other care providers from charging patients directly for services that are insured through the public system. The law says people should have "reasonable access" to care that is universal and unimpeded by user fees or extra billing.

In 2012, a B.C. Medical Services Commission audit found Cambie Surgeries Corporation and the closely related Specialist Referral Clinic (Vancouver) Inc. were guilty of extra billing on a "recurring basis" and had broken the act.

The Cambie clinic offers a variety of surgical procedures, including orthopaedic, eye and dental, with fees ranging into the neighbourhood of $15,000. The audit found nearly $500,000 in extra billing, and $66,000 in double billing within a 30-day period.

Day responded to the audit and the MSC's steps to stop extra billing at his clinic by launching the constitutional challenge. In a phone interview, he said there's no doubt the case is enormously important. ...

As can be seen, the lawsuit mentioned below was initiated under NAFTA. (Bolding mine) Under the new 'trade deals' beginning with TPP, the corporations have their own offshored law conducted in a corporate/billionaire 'trade court' where the maximization of corporate/billionaire profits is all that can be considered, while the public/environmental interest has no standing.

Ironically, their postulated profit base will be rapidly destroyed while, with totalitarian corporate control, skyrocketing pollution and ecological die-off rates will radically increase as the oxygen/potable water supply diminishes so that within a very few decades, there will be no outdoors there in which life can actually survive. What are they going to buy and sell to each other for fun and profit - or will the relative few simply predate on each other, as seems to be alreday occuring, beginning with investors.

http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/conflicts-of-interest-in-international-...

Conflicts of Interest in International Arbitration
3/5/2010
by
Melvin J. Howard

Ms Meg Kinnear was the original lawyer representing the Government of Canada in the proceedings between my companies and the Government of Canada. Over the course of these proceedings, she was granted the position of the Secretary General of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (“ICSID”). Ironically enough, in this position she is the appointing authority of these particular NAFTA proceedings. That means she decides who the arbitrators for my case, if there is a challenge.Of the appointed arbitrators for the case, one was Mr Henri Alvarez.Prior to accepting his appointment, Mr Alvarez did a conflict of interest search on the parties involved in the case to ensure there was none. After performing the search, he claimed there was not conflict of interest.One thing he forgot to mention was that his law firm was involved a lawsuit between Canadian Independent Medical Clinics Association, Cambie Surgeries Corporation, Delbrook Surgical Centre Inc., False Creek Surgical Centre Inc., Okanagan Health Surgical Centre Inc., and Ultima Medical Services Inc. as the Plaintiffs and Medical Services Commission of British Columbia, Minister of Health Services of British Columbia and Attorney General of British Columbia as the Defendants. It is true, Fasken Martineau is a large law firm, and it has offices all across Canada and in other countries in the world. It is reasonable to assume that if Mr Alvarez was from the Paris law office, perhaps he was unaware of this case within his firm. However, that is not the case in this instance. He works out of the Vancouver law office, the very same office that this case was represented from.

http://www.canadiandoctorsformedicare.ca/Commentary/cdm-s-report-on-the-...

... Trans-Pacific Partnership Report Outline

Canadian Doctors for Medicare (CDM) calls on the federal government to undertake a comprehensive and transparent health impact analysis of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement during the consultative period leading to the ratification deadline. Such an analysis should include but not limit itself to the potential impacts the TPP could have on the development of a national pharmacare program, which is currently receiving support from academics, organizations, and governments across the country, as well as three additional public health implications. These are:

1. Extension of patents to medical procedures

In its current form, the TPP agreement allows for the application of patents to medical procedures, including surgical techniques, medical tests, and other treatments. This represents an unprecedented development in Canadian health care, and would dramatically reduce the availability of medical innovations in crucial areas for other health care providers. The result would be less collaboration and knowledge-sharing both nationally and globally, with many patients blocked from accessing procedures with life-saving potential.

2. Strengthening of patents for pharmaceuticals

If ratified, the TPP will allow drug companies to extend patent terms under certain conditions. The resulting extensions will delay the development of generic alternatives to expensive, patent-protected brands, prolonging cost barriers to access for many patients, especially those without drug insurance plans.

3. Weakening of state regulatory powers

The TPP includes provisions that enable corporations to challenge foreign government policies that diminish their actual or potential earnings through investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunals. As has been shown under NAFTA and other agreements, ISDS tribunals empower multinationals to seek legal action when faced with regulation, thereby curtailing a regulator’s ability to act for the public’s benefit in the arena of public health. ISDS tribunals are not new to the TPP, but the agreement has the potential to diminish state regulatory powers beyond what has been experienced under previous trade partnerships. ...

http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/01/29/canada-trading-away-its-environment...

Canada is Trading Away its Environmental Rights

By Guest • Thursday, January 29, 2015

This is a guest post by David Suzuki.

In 1997, Canada restricted import and transfer of the gasoline additive MMT because it was a suspected neurotoxin that had already been banned in Europe. Ethyl Corp., the U.S. multinational that supplied the chemical, sued the government for $350 million under the North American Free Trade Agreement and won! Canada was forced to repeal the ban, apologize to the company and pay an out-of-court settlement of US$13 million.

The free trade agreement between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico was never designed to raise labour and environmental standards to the highest level. In fact, NAFTA and other trade agreements Canada has signed — including the recent Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement with China — often take labour standards to the lowest denominator while increasing environmental risk. The agreements are more about facilitating corporate flexibility and profit than creating good working conditions and protecting the air, water, land and diverse ecosystems that keep us alive and healthy.

Canada’s environment appears to be taking the brunt of NAFTA-enabled corporate attacks. And when NAFTA environmental-protection provisions do kick in, the government often rejects them.

According to a study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, more than 70 per cent of NAFTA claims since 2005 have been against Canada, with nine active cases totalling $6 billion outstanding. These challenge “a wide range of government measures that allegedly interfere with the expected profitability of foreign investments,” including the Quebec government’s moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Quebec imposed the moratorium in 2011 pending an environmental review of the controversial gas-and-oil drilling practice. A U.S. company headquartered in Calgary, Lone Pine Resources Inc., is suing the federal government under NAFTA for $250 million. A preliminary assessment by Quebec’s Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement found fracking would have “major impacts,” including air and water pollution, acrid odours and increased traffic and noise. Fracking can also cause seismic activity.

According to the CCPA, Canada has been sued more often than any other developed nation through investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms in trade agreements. Under NAFTA, “Canada has already lost or settled six claims, paid out damages totaling over $170 million and incurred tens of millions more in legal costs. Mexico has lost five cases and paid damages of US$204 million. The U.S. has never lost a NAFTA investor-state case.” ...

The US corporations never have lost, that is, but Americans in general are not intended to benefit, but be additional victims of corporate greed.

Do read this in full at source, as an example. (Doesn't copy well.) Especially the part about the Trade Act of 2002 stating that foreign investors should not have greater rights than any ordinary US citizen under US law - when, as I must point out, under the TPP, all citizens involved (over the objections of those aware of the atrocious and rapidly literally fatal-to-all terms within such secretive and unconstitutional private agreements) are to be unconstitutionally deprived of their own democracy and domestic law to be ruled by off-shored corporate law court for corporate use and abuse to maximize their own profits.

https://www.citizen.org/documents/CAFTAInvestmentFactsheet.pdf