Grant: Operating Grant

Trade and investment liberalization is a key element of contemporary globalization that has the ability to improve population health through economic growth and improved social determinants of health. However, liberalization treaties can also pose health risks by introducing new restrictions on public health regulatory space and capacity. The World Health Organization has called for health impact assessments (HIAs) of present and proposed trade treaties to better understand these impacts. Canada has mandated regulatory impact analysis statements on new federal regulations, for which health is one of numerous considerations, although it does not appear that trade/investment treaties have been subject to such analyses. In collaboration with a concurrent Australian-based study, we will undertake a HIA of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, considered to be a model for 21st century trade and investment treaties (of which Canada is a negotiating country) and its impacts on food and nutrition security, given the growing global obesity epidemic. We will focus on how the TPP may restrict policy space for domestic health regulation and alter the availability of drivers of noncommunicable diseases in Canada and low and middle income countries involved in negotiations; and to what extent the TPP is coherent with or may conflict with previous international treaties designed to protect health and human rights. Our HIA will consist of a combination of methods to analyze the potential health effects of the TPP and the distribution of these effects within populations. Our findings have the potential to be shared with health and trade policy officials in Canada during current TPP negotiations to help mitigate negative (and maximize positive) impacts on health, and identify analytic tools for future assessments of trade/investment treaties for health policy analysts.