Bill C-30 (Historical)

Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act

An Act to implement the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union and its Member States and to provide for certain other measures

This enactment implements the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union and its Member States, done at Brussels on October 30, 2016.
The general provisions of the enactment set out rules of interpretation and specify that no recourse may be taken on the basis of sections 9 to 14 or any order made under those sections, or on the basis of the provisions of the Agreement, without the consent of the Attorney General of Canada.
Part 1 approves the Agreement and provides for the payment by Canada of its share of the expenses associated with the operation of the institutional and administrative aspects of the Agreement and for the power of the Governor in Council to make orders in accordance with the Agreement.
Part 2 amends certain Acts to bring them into conformity with Canada’s obligations under the Agreement and to make other modifications. In addition to making the customary amendments that are made to certain Acts when implementing such agreements, Part 2 amends
(a) the Export and Import Permits Act to, among other things,
(i) authorize the Minister designated for the purposes of that Act to issue export permits for goods added to the Export Control List and subject to origin quotas in a country or territory to which the Agreement applies,
(ii) authorize that Minister, with respect to goods subject to origin quotas in another country that are added to the Export Control List for certain purposes, to determine the quantities of goods subject to such quotas and to issue export allocations for such goods, and
(iii) require that Minister to issue an export permit to any person who has been issued such an export allocation;
(b) the Patent Act to, among other things,
(i) create a framework for the issuance and administration of certificates of supplementary protection, for which patentees with patents relating to pharmaceutical products will be eligible, and
(ii) provide further regulation-making authority in subsection 55.‍2(4) to permit the replacement of the current summary proceedings in patent litigation arising under regulations made under that subsection with full actions that will result in final determinations of patent infringement and validity;
(c) the Trade-marks Act to, among other things,
(i) protect EU geographical indications found in Annex 20-A of the Agreement,
(ii) provide a mechanism to protect other geographical indications with respect to agricultural products and foods,
(iii) provide for new grounds of opposition, a process for cancellation, exceptions for prior use for certain indications, for acquired rights and for certain terms considered to be generic, and
(iv) transfer the protection of the Korean geographical indications listed in the Canada–Korea Economic Growth and Prosperity Act into the Trade-marks Act;
(d) the Investment Canada Act to raise, for investors that are non-state-owned enterprises from countries that are parties to the Agreement or to other trade agreements, the threshold as of which investments are reviewable under Part IV of the Act; and
(e) the Coasting Trade Act to
(i) provide that the requirement in that Act to obtain a licence is not applicable for certain activities carried out by certain non-duty paid or foreign ships that are owned by a Canadian entity, EU entity or third party entity under Canadian or European control, and
(ii) provide, with respect to certain applications for a licence for dredging made on behalf of certain of those ships, for exemptions from requirements that are applicable to the issuance of a licence.
Part 3 contains consequential amendments and Part 4 contains coordinating amendments and the coming-into-force provision.

Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this may well be my last speech before the House adjourns for the holidays, so I would like to take this opportunity to wish my constituents a very happy holiday and to thank my team members: Francine, Sébastien, Nesrine, and Catherine. They have been very patient with me during the especially long five weeks of House sittings coming to a close this week. While some might say, “Finally”, those of us on this side of the aisle have just begun. We would like to wish everyone a very happy holiday.

I am pleased to rise today. I like saying that I am pleased to rise, and people seem to say that all the time. Still, I am not exactly ecstatic here because there are lot of problems with this Canada-European Union free trade agreement. When we oppose Bill C-30 and the agreement as written, it is very important to emphasize that we did the same during the previous Parliament. What really bothers me is having to make the same arguments that we used with the Conservatives in debates on international trade issues. Our stance on free trade keeps coming up. We are in favour of free trade, but it has to be fair and not at just any cost.

Unfortunately, that is what is missing from the approaches taken by successive Liberal and Conservative governments. It is clearly missing from this agreement, as well as other agreements, such as the trans-Pacific partnership, which is also before the House, in a way, considering the conversations that have taken place with various civil society groups.

There are several aspects that are of concern, and I would like to begin with the most troubling one, the one that has been raised most often in this debate, namely the investor-state provisions. This is fundamental. If you were to go door to door, something every MP has done, and you asked everyone if it seems appropriate that a private company could sue its government for making a decision after it was elected, and the government has to defend itself, or even compensate the company using taxpayers' money, I think virtually everyone would unanimously agree, and no one in Quebec or Canada would think that was acceptable. However, that is exactly what this agreement allows.

The problem with those provisions is that they undermine two pillars that the NDP sees as the most important pillars of free trade and free trade agreements, namely regulations on environmental protection and the protection of workers.

These investor-state clauses would allow a company to sue the Government of Canada if the federal government or a provincial government introduced regulations or legislation that the company felt hurt its bottom line and its ability to make money. This is completely unacceptable. A perfect example of this problem is the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Mexico. Quebec passed laws to ban fracking in certain areas of the St. Lawrence River. In 2011, if I am not mistaken, a company took the federal government to court because Quebec passed environmental legislation. This completely compromised environmental protection and violated one of the pillars that the New Democrats consider essential in order to support a free trade agreement, which is to be able to trade with a partner with environmental legislation similar to ours.

I am choosing my words carefully because the answer we will probably hear from the other side of the House is that this is what makes the European Union an ideal trading partner. Certainly, we share values with the European Union as a political unit, but the problem arises when a private sector company can begin pitting its interests against regulations made by elected governments here in Canada. There we have a serious problem.

The same applies to worker protection. Even the most responsible of companies require a certain degree of government oversight with legislation to ensure some minimum protections for workers.

That is the purpose of the Canada Labour Code and the Quebec Labour Code. They ensure that workers have a minimum of rights. In a society such as ours it would be unacceptable for a company to take legal action against the government on the basis that such rights are detrimental to its business.

The government has told us not to worry because these provisions will not affect workers' rights, environmental protection, or any other area. However, as the member from Outrement so clearly pointed out earlier today, there will be two sides to the debate. The investors will take legal action against the state, who will argue about the importance of environmental protection. The company will only have to justify its position by saying that it does not harm the environment and that they can proceed. That is the problem.

As the member for Outremont said so well, to date, Canada has done nothing to demonstrate that it can win in these circumstances, in these secret tribunals, and protect the people we are here to protect and that this agreement does not protect.

The other problematic aspect is that the government has not come up with a concrete solution for Brexit. The majority of our EU trade is with the United Kingdom, which is now preparing to leave the European Union. The government does not seem to have taken this fact into account. When, unlike the past few days, government members decided to participate in the debate, they were asked that question, but their answer was not convincing.

There is also the issue of higher prescription drug costs, which will affect the daily lives of Canadians. The members opposite are good talkers, but they still do not have a plan to reduce drug costs like the one the NDP proposed during the last election campaign. The government should acknowledge this problem.

In the 2012 dissenting report of the Standing Committee on International Trade, the Liberals specifically requested a sectoral study to explain the costs associated with the free trade agreement between Canada and the European Union, and especially its impact on the cost of prescription drugs.

I do not understand why the Liberals were calling for such a study when they were in the opposition, and today everyone acts as if it never existed. I will not even speak of the debate on health transfers, where the same reduced transfers proposed by the Conservative government have been maintained.

Since time is passing, I will close by addressing the final point, which is the most important one for the people in my riding. I am of course referring to the way that the dairy producers have been swindled. Despite the real change promised in the last election campaign for Quebec’s dairy producers and craft cheese makers, the Liberal government is doing worse than the Conservative government that preceded it.

In the last Parliament, a motion by my colleague from Berthier—Maskinongé was passed unanimously. Every party in the House, including the Liberal Party, voted in favour of this motion, which called for the producers to be compensated. That is the least that can be done after putting supply management on the table, something Stephen Harper’s Conservative government had promised not to do.

The Conservatives had promised to compensate producers in the amount of $4.3 billion. That was a very fine commitment on their part. Today, however, the Liberals have dropped that to a mere $300 million. That is staggering. It is a betrayal of dairy producers, one of the many betrayals they have suffered at the government’s hands.

Take for example the diafiltered milk issue, which is still not resolved. This is the sort of issue that demonstrates that the Liberals are acting just as the Conservatives did, if not worse.

It is for these reasons that we are opposed to Bill C-30 and that we are demanding that the government reflect upon and renegotiate these important matters. It is not too late to make these fundamental changes which will allow us to exercise our duties as parliamentarians, that is, to protect the citizens we are representing here, the citizens whom this sort of agreement will not be protecting, the citizens it will be betraying.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House at the point of calling the question on Bill C-30, the bill that would bring in the comprehensive economic trade agreement between the European Union and Canada.

I have the honour to represent the only party in this place that has voted against all investor-state agreements. Although mostly the NDP members vote against them, they do not always. I would urge them to reconsider and ensure, for the future, that all investor-state agreements be rejected. They really have nothing to do with trade at all. I want to dive into that aspect of the investor-state agreement and touch briefly on the other aspects Canadians should be concerned about.

First, as many members in this place have already raised, it will increase the cost of pharmaceutical drugs. It is very clear that this will happen. Numerous independent studies have looked at the implications of the so-called CETA on drug prices for Canadians.

Second, it is also clear, and it has been raised by a number of groups, that the language the European Union wants in the text on the question of municipal powers for procurement will also be negatively affected by CETA, including access to procurement for municipalities, academic institutions, school boards, and hospitals. If they should decide that they want to make sure they are buying locally, they could be offending the provisions of CETA.

The third part is the most controversial. It is certainly the most controversial in Europe. It is why Canadian parliamentarians are being sold a bill of goods when we are told that there is any urgency here. I am really surprised that the Liberal government chose not to have significant review and consultation nationally. We had that on the trans Pacific partnership agreement but not on the comprehensive economic trade agreement with the European Union. This is surprising, given that there can be no need for urgency in Canada to ratify when there are 28 countries, and an additional 10 subnational groups throughout the European Union, that have yet to ratify, and given that there is still a pending decision from the European Court of Justice as to whether the comprehensive economic trade agreement is compatible with European law.

The controversy within Europe is overwhelmingly about the one piece of this agreement that I think could be very conveniently and easily removed without affecting the trade aspects at all. This takes some underscoring. What kind of trade agreement has an entire section that has nothing to do with trade? The answer, these days, is almost all of them. We are being sold, hook, line, and sinker, the notion that a trade agreement must include something called investor-state dispute resolution systems, or FIPAs, foreign investment protection agreements.

The first of these anywhere in the world was chapter 11 of NAFTA, and we have a lot of experience with it. I do not believe that even the negotiators of NAFTA believed that they were introducing anything novel when they negotiated chapter 11. As much as Canada had a national debate on NAFTA, chapter 11 never came up, because it was a sleeper provision. It might have stayed asleep, actually, if it had not been for the ingenuity of a Toronto lawyer, Barry Appleton, who decided that chapter 11 of NAFTA could be interpreted in a completely novel way.

The essence of the legitimate protection of investor interests in other countries is that we do not want a government coming along and nationalizing the assets, saying, “You have built a lovely refinery here. We are now going to say it belongs to the government of 'fill in the blank', and you, as an investor, are not going to get your money back on that.”

That is what people thought chapter 11 was initially, because it talked about protection from expropriation, but chapter 11 used some novel language. It talked about governmental measures that were tantamount to expropriation. Here is where the clever lawyering came in.

The first chapter 11 came to us when this Parliament banned the trade and use of a toxic gasoline additive, a manganese-based gasoline additive, that had a human health threat component. It also gummed up the diagnostics of the on-board catalytic converters for automobiles, so car manufacturers were worried that it would void their warranties. Environment Canada was worried that it would cause more air pollution. Neurotoxicologists, like Donna Mergler, at the University of Quebec in Montreal, was worried about it causing an increase in a disease that looks a lot like Parkinson's, but it is manganism.

Well, Parliament banned it, but because of a chapter 11 NAFTA challenge from a private corporation in Richmond, Virginia, Ethyl Corporation, Canada found itself in an arbitration case. This was just the first of many, and we keep losing them, or we keep having them settled out of court, although we cannot call these places courts, unless we use the word “kangaroo” first. These are arbitrations in hotel rooms with private arbitrators. They make money being arbitrators. They are expert lawyers. We can find Canadian lawyers who claim to be environmental lawyers suddenly selling out to be expert lawyers for U.S. corporations at these secret hearings.

The secret hearing process under NAFTA in chapter 11 is egregious. Just as egregious is the Canada-China investment treaty. I would have to say that it is more egregious, because every investor from the People's Republic of China is going to be a state-owned enterprise for the People's Republic China. Therefore, their ability to sue us is virtually unlimited. Of course, the Canada-China investment treaty never had even as much debate as we are getting on CETA. It never went through Parliament at all, because previous Prime Minister Harper approved it in cabinet, confidentially. The treaty binds the Canadian government until the year 2045 to the People's Republic of China, and its state-owned enterprises have more right to challenge decisions made in Canada than any Canadian corporation does.

CETA falls somewhere in between. CETA is being sold to us by many as the gold standard. It was the head of trade negotiations for the European Commission, Cecilia Malmström, who came up with the idea that since this investor-state provision in CETA is so controversial and is attracting so much protest from within the European Union, maybe we can make it look more like a real court and end the fact that it is so clearly profit driven.

Can members imagine arbitrators who are one day working in their big downtown law firms and the next day are essentially judges determining whether the decisions passed through parliaments around the world are going to hold up to their private scrutiny? There is no appeal, no oversight, and no room for intervenors to make the case as to why it was appropriate to ban a gasoline additive or to stop the export of PCB-contaminated waste or to not put a toxic waste disposal facility next to a town's freshwater supply. These are all real-life examples under chapter 11 where the polluters have won and the citizens have lost, and it happens over and over again.

CETA proposes some improvement, no question. It is much better than chapter 11 of NAFTA and better than the Canada-China investment treaty, which we seem to have forgotten ever even happened in this place. When I hear Conservative members getting up and asking whether the new administration under the Liberals is moving too close to China, I kind of want to run over, shake them, and ask if they do not remember that they passed, in secret, or their cabinet did, the Canada-China investment treaty, which is the worst of all of these.

Professor Gus Van Harten, of Osgoode Hall Law School, literally wrote the book on the bad investment deal with China. The book is called Sold Down the Yangtze, if members want to pick it up to find out how our sovereignty was sold out by the Harper administration.

Gus Van Harten has done a careful study of what is being offered in this so-called gold standard, and there definitely are flaws.

The arbitrators will have a more permanent roster. Can members imagine if our judicial system picked judges at random from the private sector, and they did better on cases where the rich guys won? Can members imagine how fair our judiciary would be seen to be? Well, CETA makes an improvement on that. There will be a permanent roster of such judges. They will still be drawn from private-sector work, and although they will be prohibited under the CETA terms from acting as advocates and lawyers before a CETA investment court, they will not be barred from operating as advocates and lawyers under other dispute resolutions, such as chapter 11 of NAFTA.

There is still this culture of an elite group of corporate lawyers who are literally global ambulance chasers. They find companies and tell them that they can sue a government if they want to.

The sad part, as well, is that, for a moment, Cecilia Malmström's proposal called for allowing civil society to come forward as intervenors. That part of her proposed gold standard was dropped.

My plea to the current government, and my plea to all parliamentarians, is to dig in our heels on this. I commend the NDP caucus for digging in its heels on this. We should dig in our heels and say that these are anti-democratic by definition.

There is no chance in the world that a company that emanates from the European Union is going to expropriate Canadian property in Europe, contravening all the laws and international common law practice. We are in a safe zone here, developed country to developed country. Let us get rid of the unfair investor-state provisions and fix CETA so that it is about fair trade.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to speak alongside our leader and my colleagues in opposition to Bill C-30. I would also like to thank my colleague, the member of Parliament for Essex, and our entire team for pushing the debate forward.

On something as important as the trade agreement with the European Union, it deserves proper debate in the House of Commons. Truly, it is only the NDP that is pushing for that debate, pushing to ensure the government is being held to account on a proposed trade deal that we find extremely problematic for Canadians.

I also rise in the House today not just as the member of Parliament for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski but also as the jobs critic for the NDP. Earlier today, we presented our federal call to action entitled “The Precarious Generation: A Call to Action”. It was based on our months long national tour, a series of national consultations in nine provinces and one territory. We heard from young people, millennials, their parents, their friends, and people from our communities across the country. They all came to share their stories, their lived experiences with respect to what was an emerging crisis in Canada, which is the rise of precarious work.

Today I was honoured to put forward the kinds of recommendations that millennials across our country shared with us, recommendations that are bold, that are hopeful, that are visionary. Those recommendations come from a place of great challenge and increasing difficulty. Millennials are facing the prospect of being less well off than their parents generation in a very real way. That is a phenomenon we have not seen in recent times in our country.

The numbers talk for themselves. The rate of youth unemployment is twice the national average. Thirty-nine per cent of workers under the age of 30 are precariously employed. Most are working in temporary and contract work, despite the fact they are currently looking for, and certainly would much rather have, full-time employment. In provinces like Ontario, 300,000 young people are working unpaid internships and, in many case, those unpaid internships do not lead to paid work.

We heard heart-wrenching stories across the country. I remember hearing from a young worker in P.E.I. who talked about the fact that he had just graduated with a Bachelor of Science in biology, and he could never imagine having a job in his field on the island. Every morning he woke up at 4 a.m. and went to work in a fish plant. Every night he worked at Best Buy.

In Newfoundland, young people talked about the fact that their provincial government had just brought in an austerity budget. They knew they came from a province where people usually had to leave to find work. Despite the fact that they thought times were getting better, once again their generation would have to leave to find work somewhere else.

In Halifax, a young woman came forward. She told us that where she came from the most secure form of employment for young men was to join the military, a real precarious kind of work.

In Winnipeg, we heard about work, particularly in the public domain. Jobs like garbage pickup, which had been done for a very long time by younger, indigenous men, had been outsourced and devolved. These men were able to support their families with the income they made, but now they were unable to make that kind of living. As a brother told us at that meeting, they were treated as disposable as the garbage they pick up.

In Regina, we met a young woman who broke down in the meeting. She talked about how she could not afford her tuition. She could not bear to think what she would do to come out of the burden of student debt that she faced. She knew she had to find work that had pharmacare benefits to ensure she had the medication she needed.

In Calgary, we had a NDP cabinet minister tell us that for many years Calgary had been the promise land for young people from across the country. Today, even if individuals are from Alberta and are young, they can barely make it there.

In Vancouver, a young woman talked about the fact that because she was in a cycle of precarious work and because housing prices were so out of reach, she, like many young people, found it heartbreaking to know she would never be able to afford a home in the community she came from, and “heartbreaking” is the word that she used.

One of the last meetings in our 14 stops was held in Windsor, Ontario. When we talked about precarious work across Ontario and across the country, people told us to go to a place called Windsor. Windsor tells a story of how our generation has been sold out. Year after year, we have seen the impact of trade agreements that certainly have not had our best interests in mind. We have seen governments that have not had our best interests in mind and we have seen where that has gotten us. An older activist talked to us about the way in which manufacturing had been dealt a blow there for quite some time. Jobs that young people would normally do and certainly hope to raise a family with that do not exist the same way they used to. At the end of that meeting, we heard from a young woman who was finishing her law degree, her third degree. She is from Windsor. She moved back home and into her parents' basement. At the end of that meeting, she said that she did not know why anyone in the room was surprised that people of her generation could not imagine owning a home, having kids, and raising a family as that was just how it is now.

Those stories inform me and the work we do in the House, as we stand to oppose CETA, yet another trade agreement set to sell us out. It is clear from the messages we heard that both our generation and people who care for the millennial generation will not tolerate further actions from federal governments that do not have the interests of young people, and all people, in mind going forward.

In recent decades, and certainly since the start of the neoliberal era, we have seen a great many good jobs leave our country. We have witnessed the erosion of our social safety net to the benefit of corporations, millionaires and billionaires.

Today, and I have witnessed this throughout recent months as I was crisscrossing the country to take stock of the working conditions of our generation, it is clear that good jobs are becoming increasingly scarce, and that the millennial generation is living in uncertainty, with no benefits and no job security. How can we have come to this point, when we were promised an unprecedented level of prosperity if we opened our borders and liberalized trade all over the world? Well, it is because, from the start, liberalization was designed for the corporations and the billionaires, not for the middle class and the working class. We opened our borders not for human beings but for money, and massive amounts of it left. The tax havens are overflowing with profits made on the backs of workers here and elsewhere. We have allowed the rich to break our social contract, and to pay for our social services we are turning ever more to wage-earners who are paying today so that their employers can be subsidized to the tune of billions of dollars. We were promised that free trade would create jobs, but where are they? I would like someone to show me the jobs that have since been created, because after 10 months of consultations, no one seems to have found them.

We in the NDP have always been skeptical of these free-trade agreements unilaterally designed for the richest people, and time has obviously proven us right. Employment today is part-time and rarely unionized, and does not allow one to support a family or future projects. That is the sad state of our society.

Is it possible to conclude agreements that promote trade and serve the interests of Canadian workers? Of course it is, and that is why we are fighting today against Bill C-30 and the free-trade project with the European Union.

Finally, I am proud to stand up with my colleagues in the New Democratic party and thousands of Canadians all over this land who are opposed to this government’s measures.

I am proud to stand with my colleagues in the NDP and in solidarity with tens of thousands of Canadians, many of them young, who call on the government to work with us in providing a better future.

Bill C-30 and the proposal before us is not in that vein. We will continue to oppose it.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to add my thoughts on a very important bill, Bill C-30. This bill will implement a proposed free-trade agreement with Europe, an agreement which has been talked about for years here in Ottawa.

Indeed, to be quite frank, never in my life have I seen an agreement be the subject of so many press conferences and ceremonial events. I remember former prime minister Stephen Harper regularly blocking the halls of Parliament to go off once again to sign the free-trade agreement with Europe.

Our new prime minister cannot stop announcing it. He sometimes takes the plane on Sunday morning to go to Europe to sign the same agreement once again. One time it was because Wallonia had given its consent. Today we are in the process of discussing a bill, because there is still no agreement.

The reason why there is still no agreement is that certain serious questions have been raised about the very signing and content of this agreement.

When we look at the details of any trade deal, we have to look at our own past track record in signing similar deals and ask ourselves why we continue hitting our heads against the wall with some of the provisions that are in here, including, in particular, the investor-state provision.

A lot of people, when the Prime Minister rushed off for the umpteenth signature of this European trade deal, were a bit surprised to find out that the Walloon parliament had thrown in its lot with this thing, yet nothing could be further from the truth. There had been a lot of promises along the way by Canada, what is going to be changed, what is going to be modified, and Wallonia had simply decided to keep its powder dry.

There is an attempt right now to push this thing through. We all know that trade with Europe is important, but trade with Europe is so important that we have to get it right. That is why we keep asking the same questions.

I have played a role in the past in various trade deals. When the NAFTA was brought together, I was the president of the Quebec Professions Board. I did a lot of work with Americans on this. It was actually helpful in bringing down trade barriers within Canada, which is something we do not talk enough about. It was such a balkanized version of the professions, both in the U.S. and here, it put considerable pressure on the professions to make sure that any rules against free movement of professional services had an overriding interest in terms of public protection, consumer protection.

That is worthwhile. That is some of the good things that can come out of these deals. It is too easy to simply say we are going to have this new regulation or that new rule and it is all about public protection. However, we have to know whether or not that is actually the case.

Here is the rub. Who gets to decide? When we talk about an investor-state provision, what we are in fact talking about is the ability for an investor to go before an anonymous tribunal to have the very question resolved, in their favour most often. Canada has an awful track record on this. We have lost 70% of the cases under the NAFTA. What we are saying is that before we turn that over to an anonymous international panel instead of leaving it with our domestic courts, let us know what we are talking about.

The government keeps on insisting that in matters of environment and health, there is going to be a carve-off. However, that still leaves the question of who decides whether or not it is a legitimate environmental or health concern.

Again, let give a real example, one that I lived when I was the minister of the environment in Quebec. I banned 2,4-D, a widely-used pesticide produced by the Dow Chemical Company. Dow turned around, under chapter 11, and immediately started suing the Canadian government, saying, “You're not allowed to ban 2,4-D. You don't have conclusive evidence that it is directly dangerous to human health when used as directed.”

If an average suburban lawn owner gets dressed up in haz-mat outfit and starts putting this stuff around, and their kids are wearing haz-mat outfits and not playing on the lawn, and Rover is wearing a haz-mat outfit out on the lawn, that argument by Dow Chemical is true, perhaps in the immediate, without talking about how much of that is going to leach into the environment.

The Canadian government, for once, did not lose, because Dow was convinced to withdraw its lawsuit because Canada admitted that there was no conclusive evidence of a direct immediate harm to human health when 2,4-D was used as directed. However, who decides? That is the key question here.

Who has the final say with respect to health and the environment?

If we made regulations prohibiting the use of certain chemicals in the textile industry, for example, would we be immediately sued by a big European corporation such as BASF, a major German chemical manufacturer? The answer is almost certainly yes, because companies will never accept being told that a government can decide that; they will call in a group of two or three lawyers from big business and commercial law firms to win the right to continue.

Despite the many announcements, the process that has been proposed was rushed, if we compare it to what exists elsewhere. An NDP political slogan comes to mind when I look at what we have on the table, which is that we have to put people before profits.

There is a long-held view in my party that we have to put people before profits, and that was never more true than in the case of something like CETA. We are giving over to corporations the ability to sue national governments if they feel that their profits are being compromised.

There is also the risk of what we could call “regulatory chill”. The people in government who are responsible for protecting the environment and public health are going to be discouraged from doing so because of the threat of being sued under these new agreements.

Let us also look at what we are going through right now to know what the future can hold.

They say that what goes around comes around. It is astounding to see our dairy farmers, who are expecting market control in the form of supply management, currently losing several hundred million dollars per year because of incompetence and mismanagement by the Liberal government, which is pursuing old Conservatives policies.

Let me explain. Supply management protects our market for milk. When a dairy product comes over the border, it is subject to duty. Cheese is not allowed to be made if it does not contain milk. A metamorphosis does actually occur; it is all very Kafkaesque. At the border, the government says this product is not milk. With another word from this same government, a perfectly identical product suddenly and magically transforms into milk when it is used in cheese production.

We were promised $4.5 billion in compensation, but that simply evaporated. We are now left with less than one tenth of that amount.

Newfoundland is losing hundreds of millions of dollars because of our decision to do away with rules requiring processing to be done here.

It will be almost impossible to bring in national pharmacare. We are protecting companies and their profits instead of protecting people. The NDP will continue to fight against this trade deal, because we are not making Canadians' lives and our environment the priority.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-30, An Act to implement the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union and its Member States and to provide for certain other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House to convey my constituents' concerns. I am very grateful to voters from Nanaimo—Ladysmith who have been sending me their ideas by email, Facebook, and Twitter, letting me know what concerns them about the trade deal, CETA, that is on the table and is the matter of debate today.

New Democrats support trade deals that reduce tariffs and boost exports, while remaining firm that components like investor-state provisions that threaten sovereignty have no place in our trade deals. In my view, the job of government is to pursue better trade, trade that boosts human rights and labour standards, and protects the environment and Canadian jobs.

A final trade deal must be judged on its net costs and benefits. New Democrats have always been clear on this. We have opposed deals in the past that would jeopardize Canadian jobs and the environment, and that would have a net negative impact on our country.

As has been said so many times in the House, by all parties, trade with Europe is too important to get wrong. The NDP supports deepening Canadian-European trade ties in order to diversify our markets, but we remain with significant concerns about the proposed deal.

First, I have heard that changes in CETA will increase drug costs for Canadians, and the cost of prescription drugs is already a tremendous problem. If CETA poses a barrier to implementing a national pharmacare program, that is a problem for Canadians.

Second, local procurement could be interfered with. When I was elected to local government, we opposed the TILMA trade deal because it would have interfered with our ability as local governments to bias our procurement policies in favour of local businessmen and women.

Third, Investor-state provisions, as has been said so many times here, would have to be removed before this deal is ratified. We cannot have mechanisms inside trade deals that have the risk of inviting corporate lawsuits that would interfere, or would present a chill on Canadian democratically implemented protections for environment and labour.

Fourth, the Liberals have not properly compensated dairy farmers for the acknowledged negative economic impact on their industry. They would have a tremendous loss of market share, and that needs to be protected.

I want to speak today about two issues that are of particular concern to coastal communities and to Nanaimo—Ladysmith, the riding I am honoured to represent.

Wineries are a problem under CETA, and we are afraid it will exacerbate the already massive wine trade imbalance between Europe and my region in Canada. Currently, the European Union exports 180 million litres of wine to Canada, but Canada only exports 123,000 litres in the European direction. I note that the Canadian Vintners Association is asking for federal support to help the Canadian wine sector adjust and prepare for the implementation of CETA, but we have not had news on that.

Two wineries in my riding are being celebrated and supported by our local chamber of commerce and by the growing food movement, where people are willing to come out and especially support local wineries. The Chateau Wolff Estate winery and vineyard is in the Jingle Pot area of Nanaimo. It is an organic, five-acre vineyard that has some of the oldest vines on Vancouver Island. It is a lovely spot. It is right in the protection of Mount Benson, on a south-facing slope, with a large rock face that helps temper the climate. It creates a very unique growing region. We are proud of it.

A second winery that I want to see protected in this trade deal is the Millstone Winery. It is a family-run, six-acre vineyard, nestled in the Millstone River valley of Nanaimo, where I am elected. These are local businesses that we are protecting, celebrating, and supporting. For them, it sounds like the CETA deal is all downside and no upside.

A second area where coastal communities have significant concern is the impact of the trade deal on maritime jobs. CETA would, for the first time, legally allow foreign-owned vessels and foreign crews to transport goods between Canadian ports. It would also open up domestic dredging contracts to foreign suppliers.

We have had a huge downturn in our forest industry. We are making the shift from mining to more value-added industries. To lose these highly skilled, very localized local jobs at this time is impossible to contemplate, and it should not be done.

CETA, it is said, will lead to the immediate loss of approximately 3,000 Canadian seafarers' jobs. These are high-quality, well-paid jobs. These men and women have been working their whole lives to get the certification to allow them to do this work on our coasts. The industry as a whole supports 250,000 direct and indirect jobs. It is very valuable to us on the B.C. coast.

Foreign boats will bring in foreign workers with no requirement for a labour market impact assessment. These workers can be paid as low as $2 an hour, and they could suffer from low safety standards and poor working conditions. By permitting more foreign-flagged vessels, CETA encourages tax avoidance, since foreign ships registered with the flag of convenience countries like Malta or Cyprus take advantage of tax havens and the cheapest available labour.

The Marine Workers & Boilermakers Industrial Union has issued a very strong statement about CETA. It said:

The maritime section of CETA will destroy the Canadian maritime industry as it exists today by ending what is known as cabotage.

Cabotage is the protection given to the Canadian maritime industry under an act called the Coast Trading Act. Cabotage protects our coastal trade by requiring any vessel trading within Canada - from port to port along any of its coasts - is Canadian owned, operated and crewed. It is a simple, powerful and critical protection. It provides our sons and daughters, mothers and fathers with good, safe, family supporting jobs in an industry that is vital to our economy. It ensures that Canadian industry is regulated and inspected by Canada. That protects not only jobs, but also our environment and our financial health. Canadian companies pay taxes in Canada.

The statement went on to say about the negotiations:

...are not only attacking coastal trade. They have also included dredging companies, tugboat fleets and passenger vessels.

Are you willing to see your city government unable to give preference to a local company over a foreign bidder when a harbour needs dredging, barges need towing, logs are boomed or the ferry service critical to our province is required?

That is a statement from Rob Ashton who is the first vice-president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union of Canada. He is also co-chair of the Canadian Maritime and Supply Chain Coalition.

I have heard the same concerns echoed by Graeme Johnston, the president of the BC Ferry & Marine Workers' Union, and by his predecessor Chris Abbott, and by his predecessor Richard Goode, all strong leaders on the coast who are all standing up against CETA and its impact on coastal communities and coastal jobs.

Why pass Bill C-30 now? Given all these concerns and unresolved issues, I am reminded of the words of Maude Barlow, national chairperson of the Council of Canadians. She said, “Given the process could take another five years in Europe, what's the rush here other than another photo op?”

On the matter of indigenous peoples, we remain concerned that despite the Prime Minister's commitment to a true nation-to-nation relationship, there has been no duty to consult fulfilled here. When the Assembly of First Nations' national chief Perry Bellegarde appeared before the trade committee on TPP, he called for immediate consultations with all first nations.

I am disappointed that the government is rushing this, and I will say in closing, once again, that while we are in favour of a trade deal with Europe, as it is an ideal trading partner, we are concerned about the specific measures within CETA as negotiated. It is our job to uphold the interests of Canadians in this process. The Liberals have missed key opportunities to fix CETA, but the deal is not yet done. We will continue to urge them to remove the investor-court provisions, address increased drug costs, local procurement, compensating dairy farmers, protecting coastal jobs for ferry workers and longshoremen, and protecting the interests of Canadian wineries so we can celebrate local business.

I say once again, trade with Europe is too important to get wrong. We must hold out for a better deal that protects Canadian interests and keeps our ties with Europe strong.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to have this opportunity to rise today to speak on Bill C-30, the comprehensive economic and trade agreement between Canada and the European Union and its member states.

Let me be clear that I am in support of and in favour of trade. The NDP is in support of trade. However, we want fair trade. We want trade that respects workers' rights, the environment, and aboriginal rights, and does so in consultation with business, ensuring that the business community is protected. After all, Canada is a trading nation.

I was a small business owner and the executive director of a very successful chamber of commerce on Vancouver Island. I know firsthand the benefits that cross-border commerce can have for our economy and Canadian business.

As the progressive opposition, we believe it is important to review the details of trade agreements. We do not blindly support any trade deal. We take our time to look at a deal closely. We want to get it right, so that everyone wins on all sides of a trade agreement, which leads me to CETA.

This trade agreement is flawed, and trade with Europe is far too important to get it wrong. I am going to illustrate three ways in which this deal is flawed, including the investor-state provisions, cabotage, and the cost of pharmaceutical drugs. When it comes to the investor-state provisions, the Liberals are asking parliamentarians to sign off on CETA despite the fact that European states, such as Wallonia, have made it clear that the investor-state provisions will have to be removed before they will be willing to ratify this agreement.

Let us talk about the investor-state provisions, because that is what a lot of folks back in Courtenay—Alberni, my riding, are concerned about when discussing CETA. In February 2016, the trade minister announced changes to the investor-state dispute settlement provisions that were supposed to improve transparency and strengthen measures to combat conflicts of interest. Yet, the investor court system will still allow foreign investors to seek compensation from any level of government over policy decisions they feel impact their profits. That gives up local decision-making and sovereignty over our decision-making. That means that foreign companies will have access to a special court system to challenge Canadian laws without going through domestic courts.

The government has not explained how this would ensure that environmental and health and safety regulations would be protected from foreign challenges. The question is, why not? It is now clear that this deal will not pass Europe without significant changes to the investor-state provisions.

Another huge concern, especially in my riding of Courtenay—Alberni, is the maritime section of CETA. That part is very troubling to my constituents and residents of Vancouver Island and coastal British Columbia. The maritime section of CETA is of deep concern. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union just released a statement about this portion of the trade deal. They said:

The maritime section of CETA will destroy the Canadian maritime industry as it exists today by ending what is known as cabotage.

Many members are probably wondering what cabotage is. It is a measure under Coast Trading Act that protects our coastal trade by requiring any vessel trading within Canada to be Canadian owned, operated, and crewed. This is very important. It is important that we protect our jobs, environment, and economic health. If CETA goes forward, it will destroy the protection of cabotage. It will allow foreign-owned vessels to work the coastal waterways they are currently banned from. It will allow cheap labour from foreign countries to run their ships here, putting our Canadian seafarers out of work.

When I think about the people working in our coastal communities, they are our sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, who have good, safe family-supporting jobs in an industry that is vital to our economy.

These foreign-owned ships also will not pay taxes here in Canada. This is unfair. It is an unfair labour advantage. It is unfair advantage.

For decades, the U.S. and Canada have fought off aggressive attempts to remove our coastal protections, but with one swipe of the pen CETA will remove that protection. CETA will lead to the immediate loss of approximately 3,000 Canadian seafarers' jobs. These are high-quality, well-paid jobs.

I want to talk about how CETA will affect economic development opportunities in my riding specifically.

A plan is being worked on in Port Alberni in the Alberni Valley. This plan will be a great opportunity to invest in short sea shipping. This is being done with the Huu-ay-ah first nation.

Port Alberni is a deep sea port. It is the perfect place for the proposed Port Alberni transshipment hub, also known as PATH. It is an initiative to develop a container transshipment, short sea shipping terminal to move goods from the Alberni Valley to the Lower Mainland. CETA will impact PATH because it will undercut the Canadian labourers working on the docks and the ships. We have been working hard to develop a secure, healthy marine economy to help alleviate some of the congestion in the Lower Mainland, working with the Port of Vancouver and helping to support the Pacific gateway.

One-third of the children living in the Alberni Valley live in poverty. The valley has one of the highest unemployment rates in southwestern British Columbia. We are looking at this opportunity as a way to help drive us out of this difficult challenge that we are facing, to get us back on track, as we transition from a forest economy to one built on our marine economy. This deal will threaten the huge amount of work we have done in pulling all of the stakeholders together.

This trade deal is unacceptable to Canadians, but especially to my constituents who rely on the water for their livelihood. This deal would be incredibly damaging. Rather than building our economy, it would deepen the poverty and increase unemployment in places like the Alberni Valley.

The other major concern with this agreement is pharmaceuticals. Many constituents have sent me messages, telling me they are concerned about how CETA will impact the cost of drugs for Canadians. Changes to intellectual property rules for pharmaceuticals under CETA are expected to increase drug costs by more than $850 million annually. The Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions has warned that this deal would make it more difficult to bring down prices through a national pharmacare program.

When the Liberals were in opposition, we know that they demanded that the Conservative government present a study on the financial impacts on territorial and provincial health care systems and prescription drugs. The government is now telling the provinces that it will cut health care transfers while pursuing agreements that risk increasing drug costs for the provinces without any sort of analysis, which the Liberals asked of the last government.

Canadians are already paying more for important lifesaving drugs than nearly any other OECD country. I have knocked on doors in my riding and met people who tell me they have to choose between buying food or drugs. They are living in pain because they cannot afford their drugs. People have had to come out of retirement to pay for their drugs. How do I tell these people that drug costs will go up even more? We should not be considering anything that could increase drug costs for Canadians.

Right now in my riding, raw log exports have gone up tenfold in 10 years. The Liberal government, without doing a proper economic analysis, reduced and removed a 25% tariff on building Canadian ferries here in Canada, which are instead being built in Poland and Turkey now by people working for low wages. Our fish are being filleted in China and returned to our grocery store shelves. Our coastal economy is being decimated. The impact this agreement could have on our coastal communities is very concerning.

New Democrats are in favour of a trade deal with Europe. We have deep historical and cultural ties with Europe. Europe has some of the most progressive democracies in the world. However, I am concerned about specific measures in CETA as currently negotiated. It is our job as a progressive opposition to uphold the interests of Canadians during this process.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by saying unequivocally that New Democrats believe that it is possible to create a Canada whose economy is sustainable, just, and fair while remaining competitive on the world stage. We believe that we all thrive in an equitable society where everyone has equal access to nutritious food, a safe home, an education, decent work at fair wages, clean air and fresh water, health care, pharmacare, a secure retirement, and child care.

Just today it was reported that child care costs in Canada are unaffordable. They are through the roof. Canadian parents know that, but the current government does not seem to have a clue. After 40 years of promises from Liberals and Conservatives alike, we still have no national, affordable, regulated child care in this country.

Our trade agreements should reflect not only the importance of a strong social safety net but our values as a nation, and child care is certainly one of them.

Any trade deal should promote and protect our communities and our families. Remarkably, it is not clear that CETA serves Canadians in regard to community needs and values. Because of this lack of clarity, New Democrats cannot support Bill C-30.

The NDP supports deepening the Canada-EU trade relationship to diversify our markets, but that does not cloud our vision or divert us from our commitment to ensuring that our trade deals serve the people who have placed their trust in us.

Despite lofty promises to the contrary, it appears that once again, the current government wants to force this bill into legislation without the transparency, public consultation, and careful consideration it warrants. This kind of smoke-and-mirrors tactic invites a healthy dose of skepticism.

Canada's trade relationship with Europe is too important to get wrong. We should be working to fix problems with the current deal rather than settling for this flawed agreement.

We have significant concerns and unanswered questions about CETA. It has been called the biggest trade deal since NAFTA. Without proper security, however, and scrutiny, trade agreements such as CETA have the potential to bargain away programs, services, products, and even the values that we, as Canadians, hold dear.

Our experience with NAFTA should be a lesson to us. Under NAFTA, Canadian workers suffered when well-paid union jobs moved south to low-wage jurisdictions, leaving communities and local economies devastated. In London, the story of Siemens, ABB, Westinghouse, Philips, and Caterpillar are sad examples.

Under the investor-state dispute settlement provisions of free trade agreements, Canada has become one of the most sued countries in the world, winning only three of 39 cases against foreign governments. Under NAFTA, Canada has paid out over €135 million on these claims, mostly to the U.S., and outstanding cases worth another €1.75 billion remain and are a concern.

This past February, the minister announced changes to the ISDS provisions that are purported to improve transparency and neutralize the potential for arbitrator conflicts of interest. However, the renamed investor-court system still allows foreign investors to seek compensation from any level of government over policy decisions those governments make, decisions the investors say threaten their profit margins. In other words, foreign companies will have access to a special court system to challenge Canadian laws without going through our domestic courts.

There is evidence that private corporations have attempted to use the threat of investor-state charges under NAFTA to discourage governments from advancing legislation that is in the best public interest, threatening the progressive social values we hold dear as Canadian citizens.

Critics have argued that CETA threatens our public services, including health care; that it endangers local job creation; that it threatens our sovereignty when it comes to fresh water and a clean environment; that it threatens our food sovereignty and farmers' rights; that our cultural and communications sovereignty is in danger; and that indigenous sovereignty and human rights are threatened, as are labour rights and the quality of our existing jobs.

Several European states have already made it clear that the investor-court provisions of the agreement must change before it is implemented, yet Bill C-30 includes all the necessary legal changes to implement CETA without knowing what those changes will be. Liberals are basically asking parliamentarians to sign a blank cheque and trust them to fill out the amount afterward: Sign the contract and read it later.

It is not an exaggeration to say that our democratic and domestic sovereignty is at risk if we accept a deal whose consequences are unknown. We can do better. Some could argue that Canada and Europe have more progressive policies than the U.S., making CETA different from NAFTA in its potential to affect our democratic sovereignty. Consider, however, that most large American corporations have Canadian subsidiaries. What is to stop one of those subsidiaries from invoking the investor-court provisions of CETA to challenge the environmental, health, and labour policies of signatory states?

New Democrats have been calling for a national pharmacare program for Canada forever. Evidence shows that such a program is not only sustainable but is cost-efficient for the government to implement. It would save billions in taxpayer dollars and would make life easier for Canadians who rely on those prescriptions for their health and quality of life.

In opposition, the Liberals demanded a study of the fiscal impact of CETA on prescription drug costs. In government, they are rushing to implement CETA, while at the same time they are refusing to consider increased health care transfers to the provinces. One would think that sunny ways would require a comprehensive analysis of policies and agreements and their effects on Canadians before signing off, but that does not seem to be the case here. Canadians deserve better.

Recognizing that supply management farmers would suffer under CETA and the TPP, the previous Conservative government earmarked $4.3 billion for compensation to industries affected by the deal. The Liberal government has announced a $350-million package for dairy farmers, falling far short of their actual losses under CETA. Neither has the government explained how it will compensate Newfoundland and Labrador for fish processing losses expected under the deal.

Under CETA, companies will also have the increased ability to employ temporary foreign workers without consideration of the impact on Canadians. These effects have the potential to be devastating to our local economies as well as to those workers who must accept precarious working conditions to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads.

In opposition, Liberals called for further consultation with Canadians on CETA. In government, they passed a motion in camera to restrict written submissions to those who the trade committee had selected to appear. This is yet another example of Liberals campaigning on the left and governing on the right. It is understandable that Canadians might have a hard time keeping up with this Liberal sleight of hand.

Given that testimony from over 400 witnesses and written submissions from 60,000 Canadians were overwhelmingly critical of the TPP, it appears that the Liberals have learned from their TPP experience. If only they had used this hard-won knowledge to actually listen to Canadians about their very real concerns regarding CETA rather than restricting public consultation and conducting what should have been public business in a closed and secretive environment.

We know from the example of Wallonia, in Belgium, that improving the agreement is possible where there is political will to do so. Because of Wallonia's intervention, consideration of trade union concerns has been incorporated into the legally binding, interpretative instrument of the agreement.

New Democrats do not oppose trade deals that reduce tariffs and boost exports, but we do not believe that investor-state provisions that threaten our sovereignty are necessary evils. In fact, investor-state provisions are unacceptable evils. They serve corporations and only corporations. These provisions do not serve people.

We believe that the job of government is to pursue better trade, trade that boosts human rights and labour standards, protects the environment, and protects our health care system, social security, and Canadian jobs.

We believe that better trade deals are achieved with inclusion and must involve a better consultation process than was employed by previous Conservative and Liberal governments, and now the current Liberal government. It has kept—

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-30 at second reading. This bill implements the Canada-Europe comprehensive and economic trade agreement, or CETA.

I have to say to my colleagues that, unfortunately, we will be voting against it. I would have really liked to be able to support a good agreement between Canada and Europe in order to increase trade, because we know that the European continent is ripe with opportunity for our businesses. They definitely could have benefited from a good agreement that increases trade with Europe. We do already trade with Europe, but a trade agreement would allow us to trade even more.

Unfortunately, the agreement and its implementation bill leave much to be desired. This is not simply my opinion; many Canadian and European experts have been very critical of the bill's provisions. One of the things that has been most roundly criticized is definitely the legal framework for investor-state dispute resolution. It is a parallel system that allows investors like multinationals and states to challenge our own democratic decisions made here in Canada at all levels of government. This means that we could be sued for implementing policies that could be seen as affecting the bottom line of multinationals or working against the interests of foreign states. That will be part of my speech.

I identified many other problems with this agreement. However, as I said earlier, I am disappointed that we did not manage to come up with a better agreement because Europe is a place where we must do business. If ever there were a continent we could work well with outside North America, where we live, it is indeed Europe, where there are very robust workers rights and environmental protections; very solid workplace health and safety regulations that are comparable to what we have here in Canada; and excellent food safety and product safety regulations. This is a continent that Canada can certainly work well with because of our similar rules.

Today, as we speak, many of our regulations are similar to those in Europe. It is therefore important that we increase trade with that continent. Unfortunately, the bill and the signed agreement certainly do not meet our expectations.

Bill C-30 is definitely being rushed through. It allows the government to ratify CETA in full, but does not answer key questions. For example, many measures applicable to investors and states have not yet been defined and are being staunchly opposed in Europe. Right now we have no details about an appeal procedure or how the members of the arbitration panel will be chosen. That is where things stand at the moment.

The Liberal government is asking parliamentarians to sign a blank cheque, telling us it will fill it out later. Canada and Europe tried to alleviate Europeans' concerns about CETA, but the Liberal government has yet to consider Canadians' concerns.

I want to point out four problems that I feel are really important and that must be raised. They may make government members realize there are serious flaws in the economic agreement and possibly change their mind about this bill.

I have already mentioned investor-state measures in relation to our democratic states. These mechanisms are not fair to Canada, and they are not fair to Europe, either.

That is why even European experts and politicians raised this issue. They also felt that there was a problem with allowing multinationals to challenge our laws.

Let us imagine that a political party is elected based on the promise to ban a certain product that its members felt was a danger to the public. When the party takes office, it keeps its promise by declaring the product in question to be contrary to the interests of the economy and the public. Under the agreement in question, the multinational that manufactures the product could challenge the government's democratic decision to ban it and demand compensation by saying that it sold millions of units of the product in our country.

Multinationals and corporations would thus become superior to our sovereign states, which make decisions based on their election promises. These companies could get the last word and obtain compensation under the agreement as it stands today. That is why I want to speak out against this in the House today. I want every member to understand the potential consequences of these investor-state provisions and the parallel legal system created by this economic agreement.

Even though my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot did a great job of explaining how this agreement will affect dairy producers, I wanted to mention them too because they are going to suffer major losses. That is why the previous government promised to compensate them when it was negotiating this economic agreement. The previous government recognized that dairy producers were going to suffer real financial losses and that, if it disrupted our supply management system by accepting more dairy products on our market, European cheeses in this case, the sales of our producers here in Canada could be negatively affected. The previous government therefore committed to compensating dairy producers for their losses.

The government often tries to smooth things over by saying that in exchange for allowing a certain number of European products onto our market, Canadian products will also have access to the European market. This is a market of 500 million people, and it is a tremendous market for selling more products, but in reality, because of the support that European countries give their own producers and other factors, it will be very difficult for Canadians to compete over there.

As well, obviously there are transportation costs involved in exporting products there. This sets up an uneven playing field, and it is just not the case that farmers will be able to make up their losses just by exporting and by trying to sell their products in Europe.

Another issue is the rising cost of drugs, which my colleagues have spoken about. Experts have estimated that Canadians will be faced with $850 million in extra costs. When the Liberals were in opposition, they called for a public study on the additional drug costs brought by changes to the intellectual property regime for pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately, once elected, they appear to have forgotten about this part, even though it was a prerequisite for supporting this agreement.

The fourth problem I wanted to talk about is that certain rules will prevent current or future rules from requiring greater local content. For example, municipal or other governments might want to see procurement rules encouraging a greater number of local companies to bid on government procurement contracts. These rules could also be deemed inappropriate under the economic agreement.

In closing, I will be pleased to answer my colleagues’ questions if they would like me to clarify what I have said, or anything else.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP has long been calling for improved trade with Europe to diversify Canada's markets. However, there are many serious concerns that have not been addressed and many unanswered questions regarding the proposed agreement.

I would like to say that I will not be supporting Bill C-30, an act to implement the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union and its Member States and to provide for certain other measures.

The Prime Minister signed the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA for short, on October 30, at the Canada-European Union leaders' summit. However, the Liberal government put Bill C-30, the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement implementation act, on the Notice Paper just two days prior to that, and it introduced the bill on October 31.

I would like to remind the House that this rushed process violated the government's own policy on the tabling of treaties in Parliament. This policy requires the government to table a copy of the treaty along with an explanatory memorandum setting out the key elements of the treaty at least 21 sitting days before the bill is introduced, not just two.

Trade with Europe is too important to be taken lightly. The government has to make an effort to fix the unresolved problems in the agreement instead of settling for a flawed document. There is no shortage of flaws, including in agriculture, health, the environment, and the list goes on.

Nevertheless, the Liberals are blindly forging ahead. We need to think of the people, the jobs, and the local economies in our regions. The cost of pharmaceuticals will go up. The Liberals' promised compensation has evaporated. Some 23,000 jobs will be lost. That is the number of jobs Canada will lose because of CETA.

A study published by Tufts University's Global Development and Environment Institute in September showed that we will still be experiencing the job loss fallout from signing this agreement in 2023.

According to Maude Barlow, chairperson of the Council of Canadians, this agreement “suggests that there aren't economic gains—only job losses, inequality, and the erosion of the public sector”.

I refuse to sit here and do nothing. It is our duty to protect the interests of our constituents. While the Conservatives had promised a $4.3-billion compensation package to supply-managed farmers who will be affected by the Canada-Europe agreement and the trans-Pacific partnership, the Liberal government ultimately decided to create a subsidy program worth just $350 million for dairy farmers and processors.

I hope the Liberals realize that that amount is not nearly enough to compensate the dairy industry for the job losses it is going to suffer under that agreement.

I would like to explain what this will mean for a region like my riding, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot.

The agrifood sector is really the motor for economic development in the riding I represent. I often say that I am extremely proud to represent Canada's agrifood technocity. We have a high concentration of producers in various activity sectors, including educational institutions like the Cégep de Saint-Hyacinthe, the Institut de technologie agroalimentaire, and our faculty of veterinary medicine, the only French-language school of veterinary medicine in North America. My riding is also home to laboratories, research centres, and many agrifood processing plants. My region's entire economy depends on the agrifood sector.

A retail clothing store owner recently told me that he realized that half his clients are farmers, or people who work in the agri-food industry. He realized, as a store owner, how much he relies on the agri-food industry even though he sells clothing for a living.

This is a fragile industry. Let us not forget that. I live on a concession road, on my husband's family farm. My husband is the son of a dairy farmer. When he was young, there were three dairy farmers along our road. Now there are none. I represent two RCMs, Maskoutains and Acton. There are very few dairy farms left in the Maskoutains RCM. It is almost all crop farming now.

In Acton, I have the good fortune of representing dairy farmers. If we look at the village of Upton, for example, we see that on some concession roads there is a dairy farmer at every corner, at every farm. We have to realize that every time we sign an international agreement where we chip away a little more at supply management, there are direct and immediate repercussions on these dairy farmers.

The “Strong and United” campaign was rolled out during the summer of 2015. What I found really encouraging about this campaign was that my constituents, and all Canadians, were made aware of the fact that supply management is not just the business of the farmers concerned. In fact, it is everyone's business because supply management of milk, eggs, and poultry ensures that consumers have an adequate supply. As its name indicates, the supply management system is a system based on supply and demand. It ensures that we have enough good quality products at prices that do not fluctuate.

My constituents have told me that they sometimes go the United States where a litre of milk is less expensive. I tell them to go back in three weeks to see what that litre of milk costs. Without supply management prices can fluctuate throughout the year. There can even be a shortage. In fact, two years ago, there was an egg shortage in the United States, which was followed by price hikes.

We can always count on having enough high-quality products. That is important. Under the Canada-Europe free trade agreement, 17,000 tonnes of European cheese will be imported to Canada. That is definitely going to affect dairy production. We will definitely not need to produce as much milk because we are going to be importing 17,000 tonnes of cheese. Small cheese makers are already talking about it.

In addition to the problems this will cause for dairy producers, there is also the matter of land use. I was saying earlier that I represent villages where there is a farm around every corner. When I visit the villages in my riding, I am told that the agrifood industry is the lifeblood of our villages and schools.

Earlier, I was talking about a clothing retailer, but this will also impact the village grocery and hardware stores. All of the jobs in my community are directly affected by the agrifood industry. It is therefore very important that, any time we sign an international agreement, we consider the specific impact that the agreement will have on the agrifood industry.

A few years ago, we decided to exclude culture from our international agreements because this is a sensitive field that needs to be handled in a specific way. The same is true of agriculture. It is a matter of land use and food security. Food self-sufficiency is important. When we sign an international agreement, we need to ask those questions about the agrifood sector.

In conclusion, the NDP cannot support an agreement that is harmful to our regions, our jobs, and all Canadians.

This could have been a good agreement. Unfortunately, the Liberals do not appear capable of acting in the public’s interest.

We hope that the government will take the time to consult Canadians and rework the agreement, which hurts our regions and the public. This is the only way we will be able to build healthy and sustainable trade relationships between Canada and the European Union.

I am very proud to have been able to present this message on behalf of the farmers and the constituents of Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot.

(The House resumed at 12 p.m.)

The House resumed from December 9 consideration of the motion that Bill C-30, An Act to implement the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union and its Member States and to provide for certain other measures, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the motion that this question be now put.

[Erin Weir, NDP, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is certainly correct that past Conservative and Liberal governments have taken the attitude that they should just sign any and all free trade agreements, without much regard for whether they are good deals, and without much regard for the actual provisions of those agreements. That is one of the ways we have been in trouble with things like investor-state provisions.

My colleague is also correct to note that there has been a shift away from this logic of free trade all the time and at all costs. There is a sort of re-evaluation of corporate globalization and what it means for working people. Rather than rushing ahead with this deal, I do think it would make sense for Canada to re-evaluate our position as well, and to re-evaluate our position in this changed world.

Certainly in terms of Brexit, as I pointed out in my speech, it removes from the European Union the one major economy with which we were running a trade surplus. The trade imbalance that Canada will suffer with what is left of the European Union is even worse, and the potential negative consequences of getting this deal wrong are even more dire.

My colleague has added some very good reasons to vote against Bill C-30.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my NDP colleagues and I have many concerns about Bill C-30, An Act to implement the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union and its Member States and to provide for certain other measures.

Since the beginning of negotiations with the European Union to conclude a trade agreement, I have had the impression, like many of my colleagues, that things are being hidden from us. A few years ago, on the occasion of a trip with the Canada-Europe Parliamentary Association, the Canadian delegation, of which I was a member, had the opportunity to discuss this agreement, which was then in the negotiation stage, with certain European parliamentarians, who were very clearly much better informed than we were.

It seems that the Conservative government of the time wanted to reveal absolutely nothing to its parliamentarians, even to the members of its own party. However, the Conservative and Liberal members quickly decided to accept this agreement without even knowing its details. For the New Democratic party, the fact that Canada intends to open its trade borders to Europe is too important for us to contemplate it lightly. That is precisely what the government is asking us to do.

Even though the NDP is in favour of strengthening our trade relations with the European Union, major concerns persist and many questions remain unanswered regarding the proposed agreement. For one, the government is asking us as parliamentarians to ratify an agreement even though certain European states have clearly indicated that the investor-state clauses will have to be amended or removed before the agreement is ratified.

We all remember that last October the regional government of Wallonia prevented Belgium, and hence the European Parliament, from signing the agreement, and then agreed to sign on the condition that it retain its right to refuse to consent to its ratification if its conditions are not met. So we are being asked to ratify the draft of an agreement which is not even final yet, and to disregard the concerns raised on the other side of the Atlantic, even though, at the same time, certain concerns are also being raised in Canada.

We are not going to give the government a blank cheque to finalize the last details of the agreement without being able to examine it in greater detail before it is implemented.

To add to the absurdity of all of this, I would like to remind my colleagues that 42% of Canada’s exports to the European Union go to the United Kingdom. In fact, the concessions Canada made when negotiating this agreement were based on the assumption that the United Kingdom would be a full party to the agreement. However, the Liberal government failed to reassess the net benefits of an agreement with Europe without this major trading partner of Canada’s, which could withdraw following Brexit.

Also, and I would like to talk a little in greater detail on this point, we are being asked to approve an agreement that creates a major breach in supply management and puts many farmers, particularly dairy farmers, in insecurity.

Supply management strikes a market balance. It allows dairy producers to collectively negotiate prices and plan total milk production in order to meet consumer demand. Unlike what is happening around the world, Canadian dairy producers can sell the product of their hard labour at stable prices, which are not subject to market fluctuations. This ensures that Canada’s dairy industry is one of the only self-sufficient agricultural industries that do not depend on government subsidies to survive.

Opening another breach in supply management will mean fewer and fewer guarantees for many products in terms of income stability, and this is particularly true in the case of family dairy farms.

The Conservatives had promised a $4.3-billion compensation package to supply-managed farmers who will be affected by the Canada-Europe agreement and the trans-Pacific partnership.

The Liberal government, for its part, decided to create a $350-million fund for dairy farmers. According to the Dairy Farmers of Canada, that amount is not nearly enough to compensate the industry considering the losses it will suffer under the agreement with Europe:

CETA will result in an expropriation of up to 2% of Canadian milk production; representing 17,700 tonnes of cheese that will no longer be produced in Canada. This is equivalent to the entire yearly production of the province of Nova Scotia, and will cost Canadian dairy farmers up to $116 million a year in perpetual lost revenues.

In other words, the funds announced are not nearly enough to make up for the losses that Canadian dairy farmers are going to suffer under this free trade agreement.

It is important at this time to talk about the situation facing the smallest dairy producers and family farms, which are on the verge of extinction.

I met with Viateur Soucy in June during a protest here, in front of Parliament, calling on the government to protect supply management and farming. The protestors were worried about diafiltered milk coming into the country and the impact of the trans-Pacific partnership and the agreement with Europe on dairy farms.

At 73, he drove his tractor to Ottawa with dairy producers from across Quebec and other regions of Canada. In Nouvelle, in the beautiful Chaleur Bay area of the Gaspé, the Soucys have been running a family farm for three generations. When Viateur, the eldest son of Ovide Soucy, took over his father’s farm with one of his brothers in the seventies, he decided to turn it into a dairy operation, because he saw it as an opportunity to provide his family with a stable income.

History has proven Mr. Soucy right up to now. Significant investments were made in modernizing the farm, the herd, machinery, new fields to feed the herd, and especially in production quotas, which, as we all know, are far from being allocated.

As long as the integrity of the supply management system was maintained, he was guaranteed an income. Mr. Soucy had an opportunity that most farmers do not, that of being able to keep his business in the family. Obviously, it is always easier to find someone to take over if they can be convinced that they will have a stable income if they put in the work, and of course on a farm, that means a lot of work. Mr. Soucy was lucky enough that one of his sons, Mikaël, took over the farm in 2004.

Today, Mikaël is the one who is dealing with the stress brought on by the decisions of this government and the previous government. When we spoke to Mikaël, he was not very happy with the government's decisions. We asked him what he thought of the compensation announced by the Liberals. Unfortunately, I cannot quote exactly what he said here because he was really unhappy.

Basically, he said that the revenue that farmers would lose because of this agreement would seriously impede their cash flow and that asking producers to invest and go further into debt was not a logical solution. He also asked us to ask the government a question. I will quote him here. He said, “I would like to know how long the government is going to string me along. Do I need to sell now or should I wait until my farm is no longer worth anything and I go bankrupt?”

That gives us some idea about his state of mind. Having a stable income is one thing, but once he has paid his overhead and his employee, that is, when he can manage to find one, he does not have much left to pay himself. If his income gets cut even further, what will be left for him? No wonder he is stressed and frustrated.

There are fewer and fewer family farms in Canada. It would be great if we could protect them. The problem is that if we allow a breach in supply management and compensate producers for their losses, this decision could be overturned by a change in government.

Given the number of promises broken by this government, you have to wonder whether someone might wake up one morning and say that the government has changed its mind and is going to withdraw this compensation. Who knows, maybe a lobbyist will pay $1,500 for access to a minister and ask for the whole thing to be cancelled.

If we uphold the integrity of supply management, we avoid all these possible outcomes. When it comes to this agreement, there are still too many unanswered questions and potentially negative impacts on the economy and on Canadians for the New Democratic Party to approve it and support its implementation without amendments.

Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, said, “Given the process could take another five years in Europe, what's the rush here other than another photo op? There needs to be a fuller public consultation process on CETA, just as the government has done with the trans-Pacific partnership.”

What is the big rush?

The Minister of International Trade often says, when talking about softwood lumber, that she wants an agreement, but not just any agreement. Well, that sums up quite well the NDP’s position on the Canada-Europe comprehensive and economic trade agreement. We want a good agreement, but not just any agreement.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I took note of your comment just a few minutes ago about time. I must admit that I am not normally someone who backs down from a challenge, but what is being proposed here this morning is utterly impossible. We are supposed to try to summarize, comment on, and analyze a treaty as comprehensive as the one in Bill C-30 in just 10 minutes.

Instead I will try to shed some light on a few aspects of this treaty that I see as particularly important and that will allow everyone listening to this debate, especially the people of Trois-Rivières who have placed their trust in me, to understand the situation I find myself in and my position on this treaty.

All too often, and this is perhaps the first point I want to make, people try to portray the NDP as a party that is reluctant to sign free trade agreements, but that is not the case. What is true, however, is that we never make any decisions about an agreement without reading it. It took quite a while for the texts of the treaty to become available. Even as we speak, not all clauses of the treaty have been finalized.

I commend the Walloons who distinctively said they would go a step further, but reserve the right to go back and say no thank you if at the end of the process their questions and aspirations have not been satisfied.

I wonder why there is such urgency in Quebec and Canada. We have more than a few weeks to ratify this agreement. We are already hearing in Quebec, partly through the leader of the official opposition, that ratifying this agreement is out of the question if it does not include meaningful compensation for Quebec's dairy industry. I will come back to that.

Of course, he is not the Premier of Quebec, but between now and the end of the ratification process, a lot can change, not only in Quebec, but also in many provinces across Canada and in many of the countries directly affected by this free trade agreement.

I heard the Minister of International Trade and many of her colleagues say that they wonder who the NDP might sign a treaty with, if not with the European Union.

In response, I would like to turn the tables and ask this: if we cannot sign the best agreement possible with the European Union, a treaty that will be a building block, a model, and that will pave the way to the signing of all the other agreements that will follow, or that fixes agreements previously signed, with whom can we make the best possible agreement?

That is why we are so insistent that our suggested improvements be heard and advanced by the government to ensure that everyone will benefit.

It will be very evident, in the two or three points that I hope I have the time to develop, what the impact will be for Quebeckers and Canadians. I am talking about monetary implications.

Take Quebec's dairy producers, for example. I am using an example I am very familiar with. That said, the same applies to fisheries, which will or could encounter exactly the same kinds of problems.

Members will recall that during the election campaign, when candidates across Quebec were meeting with the Union des producteurs agricoles or directly with farmers to discuss their problems, everyone was carefully listening. Everyone had committed to a certain number of things.

The Quebec dairy industry is based on the family farm model, a model we would like to keep. Let me be clear. When we talk about the family farm model, we are not talking about a small business. These are multi-million dollar businesses. These people have a lot of responsibility and a significant financial burden. Signing a treaty that does not guarantee reasonable accommodation, at the very least, places a great burden on their shoulders and will cause them a great deal of stress.

In the previous Parliament, the Conservative government, which initiated the negotiation of this free trade agreement, promised to provide approximately $4 billion in compensation for dairy producers, if I remember correctly.

I rarely supported the Conservatives' policies, but if I compare the financial compensation that the Conservative government planned to give the dairy industry to the compensation that is now being proposed by the Liberal government, I have to admit that they are light years away from each other.

The Liberal government is currently proposing to provide dairy producers with $350 million over five years. The promised compensation has gone from $4 billion to $350 million over five years for two programs. The first program is a support and investment program to help modernize dairy operations. The government is now going to invest only $250 million in this program, rather than $350 million. However, as I was saying earlier, each farming operation is worth several million dollars.

What does the government expect to accomplish with such a small purse? Many dairy operations in Quebec have already modernized in order to remain competitive and ensure that their products are sold at competitive prices, so what will this program do to support the industry if the free trade agreement is signed? There are serious concerns in that regard.

With regard to the second program, the remaining $100 million will be invested over four years in dairy processing. That amounts to $25 million per year. Knowing how many dairy operations are out there and how much they are worth, we can see that this amount is clearly insufficient.

That is not even to mention the diafiltered milk issue, which the Liberals have not yet resolved and which makes the agreement in its current form a disaster for all dairy producers. We need to resolve this problem before we think about signing the agreement.

We also need to address the major impact that the substantial increase in the cost of prescription drugs will have on the pocketbooks of every citizen of this country. We have an ageing population, and as a rule, the statistics show that, unfortunately, that does not necessarily mean that the people living longer are always in good health. Consequently, the portion of our collective budget that we have to allocate to prescription drugs, as to hospital care, is a variable we have to take into account.

To the extent that there is a considerable increase in the price of prescription drugs, since we would be protecting drug patents longer through this agreement and it would take two or three years longer before companies could manufacture equivalent generics, each level of government will have to pay more for prescription drugs.

In Quebec, for example, where the entire population has access to pharmacare, there are still some who do not have the means to buy their medications, even if they only have to pay the prescription fee, and who have to consider slashing their grocery budget. That is another problem we will have to resolve.

There is a third problem that I will barely have time to touch upon, given the signal I am getting from the Speaker. Perhaps I will return to it if there are any questions. I am talking about investor-state disputes. To summarize very simply, corporations currently have such great influence on free trade agreements that they can sue governments that have made decisions which they claim would limit their ability to do business. One can well imagine all the problems that ensue.

I will be pleased to respond to questions from my colleagues.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-30, an act to implement the comprehensive economic and trade agreement between Canada and the European Union, or CETA, as it is often referred to. This landmark agreement is the result of years of hard work and I welcome the opportunity to help bring into force the deal that we as a government struck.

I congratulate the trade minister for signing and prioritizing this agreement. I do wish she would do the same for the TPP. I wish I could tell her that all the travelling and absences from her family will get easier, but, unfortunately, I cannot. However, I am sure they understand, as I do, that the work being done is to benefit their future and the future of all Canadians.

I also thank her parliamentary secretary for the work he has done on this file and for his participation at trade committee.

CETA was part of the most ambitious trade agenda Canada has ever seen. The Liberals call it the gold standard, which, of course, includes the trans-Pacific partnership. Our previous Conservative government under the leadership of the Right Hon. Stephen Harper; the former Minister of International Trade; and my colleague, the member for Abbotsford, were able to negotiate free trade agreements with 46 different countries.

Of course, none of that would have been possible without the tremendous work done by our country's world-class negotiators, and in the case of CETA, Steve Verheul and his team, who spearheaded negotiations with the European Union. The amazing results they were able to achieve on Canada's behalf, at times in strenuous situations, and the personal sacrifices they made to get the job done deserve a tremendous amount of respect and gratitude.

The truth is, the work they do is never complete. Even when agreements are concluded, the boots are always on the ground, helping exporters here at home, or Canadian businesses that have expanded abroad, to integrate deeper into global supply chains. They are the first to arrive and always the last to depart, carrying and leaving traces of Canada along each stop.

As members of Parliament, we honour their work not just by reading their names into Hansard, but by implementing the agreements they lost sleep over, ensuring that the deals they fought for, at the expense of countless days, weeks, and months away from their families, are realized.

To our negotiators, trade agreements are more than just tariff lines and clauses on a piece of paper. To them these agreements are a living contribution to ensuring that Canada remains prosperous and become a part of their DNA and, in turn, a part of our history and success as a long-time trading nation.

What does that success look like in terms of CETA? It looks like a full elimination of duties on all non-agricultural goods going into a market of over 500 million people. It looks like the elimination of almost 94% of agricultural tariffs when we export our goods into an almost $20 trillion economy.

CETA is projected to bring a 20% boost in bilateral trade and a $12 billion annual increase in Canada's economy. Put in another way, this is the economic equivalent of adding $1,000 to the average Canadian family's income or almost 80,000 new jobs to the Canadian economy. That will almost make up what the Liberal government has lost this past year so far.

The Canada–EU trade agreement is our country's biggest bilateral trade initiative since NAFTA. Let us just hope that our Prime Minister is not as eager to reopen CETA after it has been ratified.

CETA is unique in many ways, but the way that sticks out is how involved the provinces and territories were. Never before have the provinces and territories been part of international trade negotiations at such a grand level. The Europeans were hesitant at first, fearful that aboriginal concerns would slow down negotiations. The fact is, the opposite was true. Because of the level of provincial and territorial involvement, we were able to conclude the agreement back in 2014 as one voice with everyone on board. It turns out that the same could not be said for the EU, as we saw in Belgium with Wallonia. Part of that problem, of course, was the trade minister's incessant need to placate every irritant of every faction she could find, all for the sake of branding the agreement as Liberal and progressive.

In the end, when we do the side-by-side comparison of CETA, between the 2014 version that we concluded as the previous government and the current progressive version, we find that the so-called progressive changes the Liberals made were all rejected out of the gate by the EU Council and its member states. That means the agreement that we have before us, when it comes into effect, will be essentially what we concluded back in 2014, with the glaring exception now of any arbitration process for the ISDS claims. Our party strongly supports the international initiatives that will generate increased economic activity, drive prosperity, and create jobs as well as foster greater co-operation between our democratic allies.

The Canada–EU agreement emphasizes the importance of secure access to international markets through a rules-based trading system. It also would allow us to establish deeper trading relationships beyond North America. The same can be said for the trans-Pacific partnership, or TPP. But why would that be important and why would we look beyond North America? Well, it is important as part of the ambitious trade agenda I mentioned earlier.

As we know, Canadian exports to the U.S. account for about 75% of the total exports. This of course has its benefits, but we have to diversify our trade portfolio the same as anyone would diversify a stock portfolio. If we rely strictly on the U.S. market, as we have done for years, when the U.S. has a problem we face the same problem.

CETA, on the other hand, is a very aged market, a very mature market. The Pacific Rim of the TPP takes into account a growing or emerging middle class that we would have access to. So between the two, we would have access to 80% of the global GDP. It is very important that we have both agreements in place.

Yet, that is exactly what is happening as six nations press ahead with the TPP agreement, leaving Canada behind. At this point, we can and must change our position.

In addition to weakening Canada's position by prematurely putting NAFTA on the table before the new U.S. President has even been sworn in, there is the government's continued indecision and Liberal foot-dragging.

The general provision of the enactment sets out rules of interpretation and specifies that no recourse may be taken on the basis of sections 9 to 14, or any other—