Any trade agreement with the UAE will also sit within a long-standing Canadian pattern: Ottawa’s near-automatic insistence on including Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS). ISDS allows foreign investors to sue governments over potential economic losses. These cases are most often used to challenge environmental laws. Except for the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), where the first Trump administration sought to remove ISDS, Canada has been happy to sign FTAs and FIPAs with ISDS provisions. And notoriously, Canadian companies — especially in fossil fuels and mining — launch a large number of ISDS cases against foreign governments.

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