October 21st, 2016 – Canada’s longest-serving member of the Queen’s privy Council, the Honourable Paul Hellyer, P.C., along with two co-plaintiffs, Ann Emmett and George Crowell, both prominent members of the Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform (‘COMER”), launched a constitutional challenge against the much-maligned Canada-Europe Trade Agreement (“CETA”), at the Federal Court of Canada today. Their lawyer, constitutional lawyer Rocco Galati, filed the statement of claim on his clients’ behalf on October 21st, 2016. The Plaintiff’s central challenge is four-fold, namely that: (1) the federal government does not have the constitutional authority to sign, execute and implement treaties without the express prior authority of Parliament through an Act of Parliament; (2); the vast majority of the CETA articles and their impact encroach on exclusive Provincial spheres of jurisdiction protected by the division of powers under the Constitution Act, 1867; (3) the CETA guts and extinguishes the constitutionally protected Judiciary in Canada by creating foreign tribunals to determine property and legal issues in Canada without any judicial oversight or jurisdiction of the Canadian Courts over the disputes; and (4) various articles of the CETA violate constitutional enshrined rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and over-rides Charter guarantees that ground Canada’s ability to mount public programs on Health, Education, Social Services, and public utilities including the elimination of subsidies, monopolies, and state enterprises for public welfare. In short, the treaty places the rights of private foreign investors over those of the Canadian Constitution and Canadian citizens.