International Trade Committee on April 24th, 2012

[Mark Rowlinson]

Again, to pick up on your former point, because Canada has now essentially adopted a template for trade agreements—

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Ever.

[Mark Rowlinson]

Let me finish.

It's a template to which we have never particularly subscribed. It's therefore not surprising that we haven't supported any of the template agreements the Canadian government has entered into.

If I could address your first point—

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Do you mean any Canadian government ever, not just the last six-plus years, but any previous government?

[Mark Rowlinson]

Well, the template really started with the North American Free Trade Agreement. It's that template I'm referring to, and it's that template the Canadian government has continued to follow. We didn't support NAFTA, and therefore we haven't followed any other agreements that have followed that template.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

But you support trade.

[Mark Rowlinson]

If I could make one other quick point, you mentioned the issue of transparency, to bring up my former point. One of the problems, of course, is that these trade agreements are presented to this committee and to Parliament and to everyone, for that matter, as a fait accompli. That is to say, they are signed and drafted and negotiated in secret, without broader consultation. That's the kind of transparency I was perhaps referring to. We could open up the negotiation process a little more and have further inclusion. Then we could have a real discussion about the benefits of trade.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

So when you're negotiating with your employers, you allow all your members in the membership to be negotiating with you.

I used to belong to a union. I've been on strike. And it's not the case. The union does not include you in the negotiations. They just report back to the membership.

[Mark Rowlinson]

Let me tell you exactly how we negotiate with employers. When we negotiate with employers, we meet with all of our members. We send them surveys on their priorities in bargaining. We put together and collate those surveys. We then have meetings with all of our members, or if it's a large plant, with all of the various shifts, and talk with them about their priorities. Our bargaining committees then put together a list of priorities and proposals. They consult with the membership about those priorities and proposals, and then they enter into negotiations. That's exactly how we negotiate.

You're right. One doesn't negotiate in a public process. But in terms of the position advanced by the union on behalf of the members, it is absolutely a public, democratic, and consultative process. It's essential to our trade union.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

We got to this point. We have the labour agreements and the environmental agreements. We've negotiated. You've seen them. We've heard, from different perspectives, that we should not proceed because of the issues of labour and the environment.

My understanding is that you wouldn't support this agreement because you believe that we need to have a human rights assessment before proceeding, and the environmental agreement isn't sufficient, and they don't allow employees to form a union.

[Mark Rowlinson]

Mr. Neil raised the question of the human rights assessment. Again, I think it is incumbent upon this committee and the Canadian government to have a full assessment done on the possible impact this trade agreement is going to have before we enter into it. To the best of my knowledge, that assessment hasn't been done.

To get back to your collective bargaining analogy, we want to know intimately from our members what their priorities are and what effect a new collective agreement will have in the workplace before we go ahead and negotiate and sign an agreement with an employer.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thanks.

Mr. Neil, do you have any comments?

[Garry Neil]

Absolutely, the human rights impact assessment ought to be done before the agreement is concluded. That's our position.

We support a different model of how you get to true free trade agreements. For example, the model we almost can get to in the culture sector is the way you do it. You negotiate bilateral cultural cooperation agreements.

Governments ought to be making concrete commitments to each other about how to promote increasing the exchange of movies, books, magazines, and cultural products of all kinds. You do it in that way, because, of course, if you bring the cultural people around the table, the objectives are similar.

It is about creating more balanced exchanges between cultures rather than having all of our cultures dominated by only one or two. That's a model I think we would be well advised to move to.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Davies.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to come back to the environment a bit. As I understand it, there is nothing in this agreement that obligates either country, Canada or Jordan, to improve environmental standards or regulations.

There are provisions that would obligate each country to comply with an enforced domestic environmental law, but of course that would depend on both countries having effective domestic environmental laws, which I'm not clear that Jordan has. It also includes a voluntary best practice for corporations with respect to meeting their obligations under the environment.

I'm wondering if you could expand a bit on the Canada-Jordan agreement and whether you see the side agreement on the environment having a positive impact in terms of not just maintaining our environment but actually improving the environmental standards in both countries.

[Garry Neil]

In fact the agreement on the environment does have a strong provision in it, which is that the parties have set out mutual obligations, including the establishment of high levels of domestic environmental protection through their environmental laws and policies. The problem, of course, is that there is no way to enforce that. There is no cooperation agreement that says how we develop such high levels of domestic environmental protection.

In fact we see in our own country, with the most recent budget, that there is erosion of environmental protection rules. We're worried about that.

The agreement as it stands has a very good provision in it, but there's no way to enforce that. There's no way to encourage both of our countries to improve our levels of environmental protection.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Could I maybe challenge you gently on that? My reading of it is a bit different. I wouldn't characterize this agreement as having any protective strength. It says that the countries won't weaken their domestic international laws in an effort to encourage trade or investment.

That's a conditional statement. It actually would permit the countries to weaken environmental laws, as long as they were not doing so explicitly to encourage trade or investment. Secondly, again, it requires the countries to enforce their domestic environmental laws. As you said, that is predicated on us finding that Jordan, for instance, has strong environmental laws.

Do you have any evidence to suggest that Jordan has strong environmental laws that this agreement would compel them to enforce?

[Garry Neil]

No.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Okay.

Mr. Rowlinson, can you draw from the NAFTA, or any other experiences, to describe how the side deals in these types of agreements have been used in the past with any effect to protect workers' rights? Do we have any experiences or real credible data on these kinds of side deals that show domestic working standards or employment standards have been raised in any country as a result of side deals?

[Mark Rowlinson]

The short answer is no.

I will speak on two levels to that question. Again, I have been involved in numerous complaints that were filed under the NAFTA labour side agreements. I have used those complaints. Without exception they have all ended with ministerial consultations that have led to no real remedies for the workers affected and, frankly, no real improvements to the labour standards that were identified in the complaints.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Because I sense there is disagreement from what you are saying and what the government is saying, have you read any material from the Government of Canada that can point to an example of a country that has seen its labour standards improve as a result of side deals? Has the Government of Canada actually produced evidence that we could look at?

[Mark Rowlinson]

I'm not aware of any. If you look at all the literature I have seen, and obviously NAFTA is the example that has the longest track record, economic, equality, labour, and trade union rights in all three of the NAFTA signatories countries—Canada, the United States, and Mexico—have in my view gotten worse since we signed NAFTA.

The example of Colombia has been mentioned. Obviously the Colombia agreement was only implemented, if I'm not mistaken, last summer, so we don't really have enough of a track record to connect whatever may be happening in Colombia to the implementation of that agreement.

I would challenge gently those who assert that free trade is bringing growth, prosperity, and certainly equality and justice to Colombia. I have been to Colombia on many occasions, and I have met with President Santos to discuss these issues. It is true that there has been some diminution in the level of violence in Colombia, but it is not true, in my estimation, that the situation for workers and trade unions has improved demonstrably over the last number of years.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

Now we'll move to Mr. Shipley, but before we do, I want to welcome the new team.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Isn't the committee looking better over there?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

As I say, we've got a new, improved team as well. We're definitely better looking.

Mr. Shipley, the floor is yours.