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"Myers used NAFTA to complain about Canada's PCB export ban, so the ban was lifted. Now they are using NAFTA to demand payment for lost profits from when the law was in effect. NAFTA empowers a company to force our government to have to pay for trying to protect the environment," said Maude Barlow, volunteer national chairperson with the Council of Canadians. "With the challenge occuring in a secret tribunal, Canadians aren't even allowed to know what's happening. It's undemocratic and simply outrageous and Canadians can look forward to much more of the same under NAFTA," adds Barlow. Under NAFTA rules, Myers' complaint and any proceedings, including negotiations with the Canadian government, are kept confidential.

Myers is using a NAFTA provision on which the controversial Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) is based. The MAI, a proposal to establish far-reaching rights for multinational corporations, is under negotiation at the OECD, where talks are scheduled to resume in October. The provision empowers corporations to directly sue governments in NAFTA tribunals for cash damages for any government action "tantamount to" an indirect expropriation or "taking." Sometimes called "regulatory takings," this provision allows Myers to claim its missed opportunity to profit during the ban constitutes an illegal seizure of its assets.

Says Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, "NAFTA's critics warned that NAFTA would have a chilling effect on public interest safeguards. This case proves that corporations will use NAFTA to attack public health and environmental laws. NAFTA's "takings" provision goes further than the property rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, with devastating effects on public health and the environment."

Myers' use of NAFTA to attack Canada's policy reverses the international trend towards minimizing trade in hazardous waste. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) imposed a total ban on PCB imports in July 1997.

"Under U.S. law, Myers can not import PCBs from Canada. This suit is about extorting money from the Canadian government during the few months the U.S. allowed PCBs to be imported," says Wallach.

"Chalk this case up to another NAFTA broken promise. Ethyl's and now Myers' lawsuit show that trade agreements will be used to subvert environmental goals; an occurrence that the U.S. government repeatedly denied would happen under NAFTA. Yet rather than slowing down and reassessing its trade policy, the Administration is negotiating agreements that would apply these same anti-regulatory rules worldwide," Wallach says.

In addition to the MAI, the Clinton Administration is negotiating the Free Trade area of the Americas (FTAA), a hemispheric trade pact, which will include an investment chapter modeled on NAFTA's. Negotiations on the investment rules for the FTAA are set to begin in September.