Feds Fined Under NAFTA for PCB Export Ban
by Toronto Star
12 October 2002 (Canada) –
Feds fined under NAFTA for PCB export ban From Canadian Press Seven years after banning exports of PCB-laden waste to the United States, the federal government has been ordered to pay $8.2 million to an American company hurt by the decision. An arbitration tribunal issued the damage award Monday in the S. D. Myers Inc. claim under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The award follows a November 2000 finding that Canada violated two NAFTA obligations in 1995 when it closed the border to shipments of polychlorinated biphenyl waste from Canada to the United States. Ottawa changed the policy in 1997, and Monday's decision results in no change to current Canadian laws.
S. D. Myers, an Ohio-based PCB recycler, said that before then-environment minister Sheila Copps imposed the ban, it had negotiated contracts worth more than $50 million Cdn to treat waste from hundreds of Canadian utilities, schools, universities, hospitals and other holders of PCB-tainted material.
"Canada's unlawful export ban destroyed the company's Canadian orders, leaving Canadian PCB customers with the sole choice of having their wastes destroyed at much higher prices by one Canadian competitor (owned by the Alberta government at Swan Hills in northern Alberta) located thousands of miles away from the location of the majority of Canadian PCB wastes," S. .D. Myers said in a statement Monday.
Stated company president Dana Myers: "We entered the Canadian market to help Canadians deal with an important environmental issue. We played by the rules.Our company was of the highest quality and our prices were lower than our Canadian competitors. Our Canadian customers supported us but we were penalized by the Canadian government, solely on the grounds >that we were American."
In imposing the 1995 ban, Copps explained that she could not be sure the waste would be disposed of in an environmentally safe manner.
Myers reacted under Chapter 11 of NAFTA, a part of the trade treaty that allows companies to sue governments if they believe they have been treated unfairly. The NAFTA decision "is a victory for Canadian and American businesses and consumers," said Barry Appleton, a lawyer for S. D. Myers, who said tribunals have ruled against the Canadian government in every decided NAFTA claim to date. "This award proves that the NAFTA works for small companies as well as large ones."
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