ed that such measures are not applied in a manner that would constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between countries where the same conditions prevail or a disguised restriction on trade between the Parties, nothing in:a.Part Two (Trade in Goods), to the extent that a provision of that Part applies to services, b.Part Three (Technical Barriers to Trade), to the extent that a provision of that Part applies to services, c.Chapter Twelve (Cross-Border Trade in Services), and d.Chapter Thirteen (Telecommunications), shall be construed to prevent the adoption or enforcement by any Party of measures necessary to secure compliance with laws or regulations that are not inconsistent with the provisions of the Agreement, including those relating to health and safety and consumer protection.This provision appears to offer no meaningful exception to Chapter 12 disciplines because of the proviso that it applies only to "laws and regulations that are not inconsistent with the provisions of the Agreement." A law that denied a water service provider National Treatment by not approving a license to supply cross-border water services whether to Canada, or from it, would in our view be inconsistent with the provisions of Chapter 12 and therefore fall outside of the ambit of the purported exception created by Article 2102.2. In summary: Even this brief review reveals the considerable exposure that water export regulations would have to trade agreement based challenges or investor claims. As we have seen, these claims may be founded on very different substantive grounds. In addition, trade agreement based actions may arise in two distinct ways. The first occurs when the state-to-state dispute procedures of NAFTA or the WTO are invoked. For geographic and practical reasons we believe that it is unlikely that such a dispute would arise other than at the instance of the US. In responding to Question 6 we suggest that Canada address th...
