Business and human rights frameworks are emerging as primary mechanisms for assessing and navigating human rights engagements in business and human rights implications of business activities. There are also recent and ongoing changes to investment treaties including the turn to express human rights provisions in these instruments. In a three-part assessment, this paper reviews and analyzes the language in some of Canada’s most prominent and debated investment treaties.

First, the paper assesses human rights language in Canada’s investment treaties through the lens of mainstream business and human rights principles. Second, it examines the human rights provisions from the perspective of critiques of the dominant business and human rights paradigm. Third, it explores the appropriateness of relying on investment treaties as instruments with potential to define human rights engagements that are fundamental to communities impacted by business activities. This paper’s assessment essentially problematizes the framing of Canada’s investment treaties as sites where business and human rights principles and norms are negotiated.

Ibironke Odumosu-Ayanu is Professor at the College of Law, University of Saskatchewan where she has also served as Acting Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies. She was recently a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Brighton. Dr. Odumosu-Ayanu works in the areas of foreign investment law, extractive natural resource governance, human rights law, and socio-economic development. Dr. Odumosu-Ayanu has received several research grants, including Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grants, to support her research. Her work has been published in leading journals and collections and she has presented her research at numerous conferences and workshops. She is co-editor (with Dwight Newman) of Indigenous-Industry Agreements, Natural Resources and the Law (Routledge, 2021). She has served/serves on editorial boards of academic journals including the Law and Society Review, the Business and Human Rights Journal, the Journal of African Law, and the African Journal of International Economic Law. Dr. Odumosu-Ayanu has been a Co-Chair of the American Society of International Law’s Midwest Interest Group and a Vice President of the Canadian Law and Society Association. She has also received the Provost’s College Award for Outstanding Teaching at the University of Saskatchewan.