New Rules of Court of Alberta stipulate "Mandatory" dispute settlement.

The Rules of Court which lay down the procedure to be followed in civil litigation in the Alberta, Canada have undergone a major overhaul after almost 40 years. Among other areas, one area which has been given great emphasis is “Mandatory” dispute resolution. The relevant Rules enlisting these changes are R. 4.16(1), R. 4.16(2) and R. 8.4.

R. 4.16(1) requires mandatory requirement of participation in good faith dispute resolution process before going ahead with the trial. The dispute resolution process could be of various types and may be either judicial dispute resolution or private mediation.

R. 4.16(2) entails various situations when these requirements can be waived. The situations are if: (a) the parties engaged in a dispute resolution process before filing the claim, (b) the nature of the claim is not one to likely result in agreement, (c) there is compelling reason why a process should not be attempted, or (d) the court is satisfied that the process would be futile. 

Country-wise statistics on investment treaty arbitration

UNCTAD has released an "IIA Issue Note" titled "Latest Developments in Investor–State Dispute Settlement". A  summary of the Note can be found at the Kluwer Arbitration Blog.

What interests me the most in this report is a respondent country-wise tabulation on the number of "known - investment treaty claims". Argentina tops the list with 51 claims having been initiated against it so far. Mexico comes second with 19 claims and Czech Republic third with 16 claims. The first time a developed country appears in the list is Canada and United States on the fifth position with 14 cases each. There have been 9 cases against India. The statistics may indeed lend some support to the concerns raised by developing nations that investment treaty arbitration is increasingly being used to their prejudice.

We will soon try to tabulate these cases based on whether the respondent was a developed country or a developing country and what the outcome of the arbitration was.