A month ago, Canada's federal, provincial and territorial governments volunteered to be directly sued by investors under the Agreement on Internal Trade. This quiet announcement from Brudenell, Prince Edward Island, seems to have gone almost unnoticed.

But it is a huge step toward imposing the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) on all Canadian jurisdictions and inserting investor-state provisions into Canada's proposed Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the European Union.

Brits do it, Aussies do it,
Even the Japanese do it,
Let's do it, let's … form a coalition!

We can fall in love, too. But the first order of business really ought to be getting rid of Stephen Harper and his odious so-called Conservatives.

Canada's twin---the two were parted at birth---is Australia. Like all permanently separated twins, living very far apart, the differences between them are enormous. In Australia's night sky, you see the Southern Cross, which Canadians never see, while Canadians look up at the Great Dipper and the North Star, which is never visible to Australians. In Australia, the sun always moves to the left in the sky and in Canada it always moves to the right. That said, the twins share striking similarities.

Canada and Australia were established as settler colonies whose founding populations occupied territories that had been the homelands of aboriginal peoples for thousands of years, in the case of Australia for about forty thousand years, in the case of Canada for ten or twelve thousand years.