Canada-China FIPA: The Facts

If you’re visiting this site, you’re probably concerned about Canada’s newest international trade deal - the secretive and extreme Canada-China FIPA investor deal. So are we.

Since more than 75,000 Canadians across political lines signed a petition opposing the Canada-China FIPA, the government has started pushing out misleading and false talking points to make it seem like this deal is a good one for our country. Do not be mislead - this FIPA is not in the best interests of our democracy or our economy.

We created this site for two simple reasons:

1. To give Canadians the real facts about this FIPA
2. To share resources so you can spread these facts in your community, on the internet and in traditional media.

Here are the three most effective ways you can help fight FIPA right now:

1. Help spread the facts about FIPA online as part of our amplify network. We’ll send you key content to share using social media or email.

Click HERE to volunteer to share the facts about FIPA online. Then take a look at the visuals, articles and videos we have on this site and share them with your networks.

2. Help counter misinformation in traditional media. We’ll send you info on how to write to your local paper and call in to key talk radio shows.

Click HERE to volunteer to spread the facts about FIPA in traditional media.

3. Deliver a powerful counter-spin document to Conservative MP offices or spread the word in your community with posters and other materials.

Click HERE to volunteer to spread the word offline in your community.

(Want to help in more than one way - click both links and we’ll add you to both teams!)

There’s so much momentum building right now. In days, Prime Minister Harper will return from a trip to India, and could ratify FIPA at any point. We want to make sure that Canadians are equipped with the facts about FIPA. They say that knowledge is power — and right now more than ever we need to spread good facts to counter misinformation from Prime Minister Harper’s office currently being sent out by Conservative MPs.

Thank you for all you do,

Jamie, Matthew, Emma, Heather and the teams from Leadnow.ca and SumofUs.org

Thank you for offering to help spread the facts about FIPA in your community. Let’s get started right away with two things you can do…

1. Visiting MPs to counter Prime Minister Harper’s FIPA spin

On Fridays MPs are home in their communities. We’d like you to pay them a visit to let them know their constituents have the facts about FIPA, and we’re not buying into Prime Minister Harper’s spin — especially if you live in riding with a Conservative MP.

Visiting an MPs constituency office is easy. Here’s how:

(a) Find the address for their constituency office here.

(b) Print off these three key documents to take with you

• Professor Gus Van Harten’s point-by-point rebuttal of Prime Minister Harper’s spin
• Our FIPA fact-sheet
• A copy of The Hill Times ad we ran on Monday

(c) Head over to their office - with a friend if you can so it’s more fun - and deliver the documents to your MP. Hopefully they’ll be there in person if you go on Friday, but if not give them to their staff and ask them to make sure they pass it on to your MP, so they can learn the facts about FIPA.

2. Postering and spreading the word in your neighbourhood

We’re already reaching tens of thousands of Canadians online - but we need to quickly reach out offline in our communities to make sure all Canadians know the facts about FIPA.

Postering can take half an hour, or all day - you can do as much or as little as you like. It all helps. Just download the fact sheet on FIPA, make as many copies as you like, and put them up around your community… places like coffee shop notice boards, community centres, churches. If you like you could even go door to door and put copies in your neighbours mail boxes. (If you put them up in public just make sure it’s places where postering is allowed.)

Here’s the fact sheet link to poster and distribute offline: DOWNLOAD PDF HERE

Want to do more to stop FIPA in your community? Sign up here.

Thanks to donations from 3,500 Canadians, we ran a full-page ad on page 8 of Ottawa’s Hill Times newspaper on Monday, November 5.

Just in case your MP didn’t see it while they were in Ottawa last week, we have created a letter-size version in black and white that you can print out and take to the office of your member of Parliament. 

What will they say to their constituents now that you know the truth?

Download the PDF here.

On Monday, The Tyee ran a new opinion article from Gus Van Harten, a treaty law expert and associate professor at Osgoode Law School.

In this article, Professor Van Harten systematically and clearly dismantles 11 of the government’s most popular talking points supporting the Canada-China FIPA.

We think it is a must read for anyone who is still unclear on the risks associated with this secretive and extreme investor deal.

Download a printable PDF.

Thank you for offering to help spread the facts about FIPA through traditional media. The first thing we’d like you to do is write a letter to the editor of your local paper. Here’s how:

1. Check out these fantastic lists to see if there’s an email contact for your paper:

• /wordwarriors/contacts.html
• /Tools/LetterToEditor_eng.asp
• If your paper doesn’t have contact information on those sites, go on the paper’s website, and look for the “contact us” link or similar, to find an email for letters to the editor.

2. Open up a new email, and write your letter (see below for ideas). Include your full name, address and phone number as many papers will not publish without.

3. Important: Please cc or bcc us when you send - [email protected] - so we can keep track.

Tips on writing a powerful letter to the editor

It’s best if you write the letter in your own words, and keep it short (200 words max). If you’ve had a misleading response to our campaign from a Conservative MP, talk about that.

Here are some key points you can use if you like:

• Any day now, Prime Minister Harper could ratify the secretive and extreme Canada-China FIPA investor deal. The agreement would bind Canada for 31 years and let foreign corporations sue the Canadian government for huge amounts of money if we do anything to limit their profits. Worse yet, these lawsuits would be decided by unaccountable arbitrators in secret tribunals outside of Canada’s court system.

• Thousands of Canadians have already come together across political lines to tell our MPs to stop this terrible deal, but instead of having a genuine, open conversation with Canadians, Conservative MPs just keep sending out identical, misleading talking points written by the Prime Minister’s Office.

• Our government has not been transparent and accountable to the public. There has been no real debate in Parliament, no vote, and no reports on the risks. There was a whole election fought over NAFTA. If this is such a good deal, why don’t they want us to hear about it? 

• FIPA would let foreign corporations sue Canada if we limit their profits. We will be at the whim of unaccountable arbitrators with a record of putting corporate profits before democratic control. NAFTA has showed us that bigger countries have the advantage in this unfair system. Canada has lost every case brought against us by a US company, costing us millions and undermining our democracy.

• The lawsuits will be settled in secret tribunals outside Canadian courts. Unlike all other international treaties, this FIPA lets the Canadian and Chinese government keep the public in the dark about the facts and arguments of the cases. So we will not know how these lawsuits are undermining our democracy and economy. There’s only one guarantee: we will find out how many millions (or billions) of taxpayer dollars we’ll have to handover to foreign corporations.

Want to do more to spread facts about FIPA in traditional media? Sign up here. 

Diane Frances describes herself as a “free enterpriser, a free trader, a small “c” conservative and an experienced business person” and she “believe[s] this agreement represents a naive, shocking lapse of judgement.” 

Here’s her powerful article in the Financial Post: Canada-China trade deal is too one sided 

Professor Gus Van Harten is a Canadian expert on international investment deals and arbitration processes with a global reputation. He is one of the handful of experts in the country who has absolutely no financial stakes in the Canada-China FIPA passing (many others work privately in the field would stand to benefit from the hefty legal and arbitration fees the new FIPA would generate). Someone sent him the Prime Minister’s Office talking points for Conservative MPs and he took them apart line-by-line. 

Here’s his point-by-point rebuttal in the Tyee: Taking apart the Tories’ Party Line on Canada-China Treaty

And here he is taking on the spin from major commentators who are missing the key points: Don’t be fooled by spin on the Canada-China treaty

Here’s Gus Van Harten’s original open letter to Prime Minister Harper: Expert sounds alarms in letter to Harper

Bonus - check out Terry Glavin’s searing article in the Ottawa Citizen: Canada-China Investment Protection Racket