Corporate personhood is an American legal concept created by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1819. First, under U.S. and increasingly, international law, corporate “persons“ enjoy many of the same rights as actual citizens under both British common law and the U.S. Constitution.Corporate personhood is at the root of the global proliferation of U.S.-style corporate “free trade” agreements that fetter the ability of governments to pass laws for the benefit of their citizens. Taken to their logical end, they open the door to allowing private corporations to effectively repeal wide swaths of the democratic commons and in some cases, virtually bankrupt poor nations.Canada under Brian Mulroney and the U.S. under Ronald Reagan launched the new era of effective corporate governance with the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement of 1989, subsequently expanded to the North American Free Trade Agreement to include Mexico, in 1994.The so-called “free” trade deal negotiated between Mulroney and Reagan dominated the 1989 federal election, stoking a nation-wide debate firestorm that shoved aside all other national issues during the 1988 federal election.Mulroney's Conservatives won, thanks in large part to a multi-million dollar advertising campaign launched by Corporate Canada.Since then, “free” trade agreements have exploded across the globe. So far, Canada has signed seven free trade agreements and 27 foreign investment protection agreements. Two more await signatures – the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership that includes the U.S.Canada currently has seven free trade agreements: Panama (2013), Jordan (2012), Colombia (2011), Peru (2009), Costa Rica (2002), Chile (1997) as well as the original 1989 Canada-U.S. FTA that was expanded to Mexico under NAFTA in 1994.Canada's partners in Foreign Investment Protection Agreements (FIPAs) are Argentina (1993), Armenia (1999), Barbados (1997), Benin( 2014), Costa Rica (1999), Croatia (2001), Czech Republic (2012), Ecuador (1997), Egypt (1997), Hungary (1993), Jordan (2009), Kuwait (2014), Latvia (2011), Lebanon (1999), Panama (1998), Peru (2007), Philippines (1996), Poland (1990), Romania (2011), Russian Federation (1991), Slovak Republic (2012), Tanzania (2013), Thailand (1998), Trinidad and Tobago (1996), Ukraine (1995), Uruguay (1999) and Venezuela (1998).Scott Sinclair is a former senior trade policy advisor with the B.C. government and currently is a senior research fellow with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, where he directs the centre's Trade and Investment Research Project. He is the author of numerous books, chapters, and papers on topics ranging from privatization and health care reform to trade treaties and foreign policy.In his recent paper for the CCPA on investor-state settlement under the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and Canada-EU Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement, Sinclair warns that Canada's experience regarding investor rights under NAFTA should amply illustrate its dangers.“There have been 35 investor-state claims against Canada under NAFTAs investor state settlement (ISDS) mechanism and the number continues to grow,” he writes. “To date, Canada has lost or settled six claims and paid damages to foreign investors totalling over $171.5 million. Canadian taxpayers have paid tens of millions of dollars in legal costs defending against these claims,” he writes.Perhaps the most famous of those claims involved the closure of Newfoundland's AbitibiBowater timbermill in Newfoundland and Labrador. “The case involved a bankrupt investor that had closed its last timber mill in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, leaving behind a host of problems including unpaid bills, unemployed workers, un