Bill C-24 (Historical)

Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act

An Act to implement the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the Republic of Peru, the Agreement on the Environment between Canada and the Republic of Peru and the Agreement on Labour Cooperation between Canada and the Republic of Peru

This enactment implements the Free Trade Agreement and the related agreements on the environment and labour cooperation entered into between Canada and the Republic of Peru and signed at Lima on May 29, 2008.
The general provisions of the enactment specify that no recourse may be taken on the basis of the provisions of Part 1 of the enactment or any order made under that Part, or the provisions of the Free Trade Agreement or the related agreements themselves, without the consent of the Attorney General of Canada.
Part 1 of the enactment approves the Free Trade Agreement and the related agreements and provides for the payment by Canada of its share of the expenditures associated with the operation of the institutional aspects of the Free Trade Agreement and the power of the Governor in Council to make orders for carrying out the provisions of the enactment.
Part 2 of the enactment amends existing laws in order to bring them into conformity with Canada’s obligations under the Free Trade Agreement and the related agreement on labour cooperation.

Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement Act

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we see nothing about workers' rights in this agreement. We have been hearing that this agreement is inferior to the one negotiated by the United States and the American Congress.

My question is quite simple. If workers have fewer rights and there is less protection for the environment, it is an inferior agreement.

Why does the member for Sherbrooke believe that the Liberals are prepared nevertheless to support this agreement, which is clearly inferior to the one that the U.S. and the American Congress were able to negotiate and amend subsequently?

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is a fundamental question. First, what are the Conservative government's motives behind its instructions to its negotiators for negotiating agreements of this type? One word comes to mind, but it is unparliamentary. Second, what are the Liberals' motives for not putting a stop to these types of agreements? During his speech on the Colombia agreement, the Liberal Party critic for international trade raised the fact that it was because his party was aspiring to power. Does that mean that you have to set aside your values in order to be in power?

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise this morning to voice my opposition to Bill C-24.

One of the things I was reminded of as I sat here is that in the early to mid 1980s we started a free trade agreement with the United States. I recall that a certain Conservative member said it was like sleeping with an elephant and if the elephant rolled over we would be in some difficulty.

That particular debate went on, and ultimately the free trade agreement was signed. Then the elephant rolled over and from 1988 to 1990 Canada lost 524,000 manufacturing jobs. We have progressed, some people might say, to NAFTA, and the repercussions are still being felt.

What I see as a change in this proposed agreement is that we are somewhat of a dominant partner in this one. With that dominant partner status comes a responsibility. As a nation, we could have been taking the lead on the environment and labour rights in this particular country. We know that many of the South American countries have some tremendous problems in the area of human rights. The records are disastrous down there.

Bill C-24 is a bill to implement the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the Republic of Peru, the Agreement on the Environment between Canada and the Republic of Peru and the Agreement on Labour Cooperation between Canada and the Republic of Peru. With regard to labour cooperation, we had an opportunity to enhance the labour standards in this country by setting benchmarks that should have been in the agreement.

Nobody in this place will dispute the necessity of trade. We all understand that Canada is a trading nation. Canada has taken a leadership role in human rights in the world for many generations now, and it is highly regarded and respected. This is a lost opportunity. We had an opportunity to similarly move the benchmark forward in the negotiations around the free trade agreement with Colombia. As we know, Colombia has the worst human rights record on the face of the earth. Some will say, and I am sure they are sincere, that by having trade and having an agreement with Colombia, Peru and other countries, that this will enhance and bring forward their human rights. Personally, I believe we should have been pressing for human rights prior to even entering into negotiations.

Members may recall that there was a report prepared on the corporate and social responsibility. In fact I believe the member from Sherbrooke commented on it in his remarks. Well, that particular report never made it to this House. That report was returned to the government a year ago last November. It was talking about situations, particularly of Canadian enterprises operating in South America and other countries.

There has been a question in our communities as to why that was never tabled in this House. Why was that document not brought forward? The NGOs, the civil society and other people came together across this country to prepare it. I think the evidence is now here as to why the government would not want the corporate and social responsibility document tabled; it is because it would directly impact on these two agreements.

From time to time in our offices we are visited by guests from other countries. Just last week we had a young woman, Yessika Morales, who visited us from Colombia. Yessika's father was shot and killed by the paramilitaries in 2001. She came to us with her concerns about that particular trade agreement with Colombia.

They have a great fear in that part of the world. In no way am I suggesting Canadian companies are directly complicit, but in South America, if a corporation from any part of the world working there were to be something like King Henry when he said, “Will nobody rid me of this troublesome monk?” and Thomas Becket died, in a similar fashion, if the executive board or the executives of a mining corporation or other enterprise were to suggest that there is any kind of problem with a labour leader, that labour leader would be gone.

The example is Colombia, where 2,690 trade unionists have died since 1986. Some people ask how I know that is part of that; it's because in the same period about 17,000 people died. Amnesty International's Human Rights Watch and others have documented these cases.

We had a great opportunity with this dominant position that I referred to before to take our place as an international leader on human rights, to sustain that position and to move forward to help countries like Peru. We failed to do it.

In the particular agreement, once again, labour rights and environment rights are side agreements. I come from the labour movement, and in my time I was part of the negotiations between Bell Canada and the union, on the union side. During negotiations in 1988, and then again in 1990, we went to the employer with our list of our proposals and the employer would have a list of their proposals. It is interesting that ours were called demands and theirs were called proposals, but that is another issue. At some point in the negotiations we reached a place where we said we could not resolve this. But we had to have something. In that case, the employer wrote a letter of intent.

That was all well and good. When the collective agreement was signed and we were back in the workplace and workers' rights seemed to be impinged, we went to the union and said we wanted to grieve. The union said it was sorry it could not because that was only a letter of intent; it was not binding.

These side agreements are exactly the same thing as this letter of intent. It is a nice way of masking that we do not have any powerful, sustainable actions we can take to protect the environment in Peru, or protect the workers' rights, or the workers' lives, in many cases. It is very troubling when we look at an agreement of this nature.

I will give some credit to the government, because it has moved somewhat away from the Bush agreements of the past. We would probably find that some of those have been getting a very rough ride in the Congress of the United States, but it has moved somewhat past that. Still, it does not do what is needed to protect the workers of this country. As we demean or lower the rights of any nation in the world, it takes the rights of all nations and lowers them.

It is important to consider who will benefit from trade agreements of this nature. I will give an example of one company, the Bank of Nova Scotia, that will be moving to higher investments in Peru. I am sure that on the investment front there will be some reciprocal trade that happens, and it is to the benefit of the countries involved.

I must point out, Peru is not a major trading partner with Canada to begin with. Our two-way merchandise trade between the two countries only reached $2.8 billion in 2008, and Canadian imports were over $2 billion, of which 50% was from Canadian gold companies operating in Peru.

I go back again for a moment to corporate social responsibility. That highlights the importance of having a framework of the responsibilities we expect of Canadian companies when they operate in a nation like Peru, whether we have a trade deal or not.

With that initial trade deal, the negotiations were started as far back as 2002, under Mr. Chrétien and the Liberals at the time. They first held discussions with Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia. Our trade minister in 2007 launched the formal trade talks with Peru, and the government signed in May 2008.

There are critics around the world on trade issues and trade agreements. Mary Tharin, from the COHA, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, was talking about the U.S.-Peru free trade agreement, and she suggested the agreement has given the president of Peru the excuse to start dismantling labour rights and what regulations they do have on the environment in Peru.

From my perspective, the good news is that since the president started doing that, his approval rating has dropped or has almost vanished. However, we are not talking about a democracy like Canada when we are talking about the impact that would have on him and how that might sway him not to proceed to a greater degree of damaging those particular rights.

In the United States in 2007, there was a considerable debate and, as indicated, some compromise was made and it approved a free trade agreement with Peru designed to drastically reduce import-export tariffs, hypothetically putting an end to protectionism on both sides.

We hear the government saying that we cannot have a buy Canadian strategy because that would be protectionist in this worst of times. As the member from Winnipeg pointed out earlier in his remarks, in 1927 the United States undertook protectionism, if we want to call it that, but it was buy American where procurements of local governments and state governments were intended to spend their taxpayer money on, heaven forbid, American goods, which is, in my opinion, precisely what we should be doing in this country.

The approval for that free trade agreement in the United States has been delayed by both the Senate and the House of Representatives due to concerns, mostly on the part of the congressional democrats, I would say, about Peru's environmental and labour standards. It took quite a while for that to ultimately get resolved.

Despite the free trade agreement's conditions, which state that labour standards must not be lowered, a number of President Garcia's recent decrees have put the country's public service workers in jeopardy. In May, the Federation of State Employees got to the point where they felt desperate enough to organize a strike.

The whole problem is that these agreements are about trade at all costs. We should think about that for a moment. Yes, I said in my opening remarks that trade is important, and we all accept the necessity of trade, but Canada as a country has always been a country that took principled stands, a country that stood up for human rights and for the values that are necessary to sustain a healthy country.

Tomorrow there will be a demonstration outside of this place by a group of labour unions and labour activists. As we close in on June 6, the anniversary of D-Day, we are reminded how the veterans of this country fought in the war against Nazi Germany to have Canadians sustained and have the right to demonstrate outside of this place.

Canada has gone far and wide to protect the rights of citizens in other countries and in our own country and has done a wonderful job in doing so. However, when we move to agreements with nations with questionable human rights records and questionable records on the environment and we fail, as the dominant partner in those negotiations, to improve areas of the environment, environmental regulation, labour laws and rights, then we fail as a nation.

I am really troubled that in the two agreements, the agreement with Peru and, more particularly, the agreement with Colombia, I think our government has failed us. In the particular case of the free trade agreement with Colombia, I am quite ashamed of the fact that we would even negotiate with a government that is as tied to the drug trade as that nation is.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have had the benefit of four years working with the Commission for Environmental Cooperation under the NAFTA. After two decades of recommendations by public advisory boards actually appointed by the present government and the governments of Mexico and the United States calling for stricter adherence to the environmental agreements and, in fact, taking a step further in incorporating the side labour and environmental agreements into the agreement, could the hon. member please speak to the issue of whether or not it is appropriate that we are still side-barring environmental impacts and labour rights in our trade negotiations?

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated in my remarks, I have a history in the labour movement with negotiations. The very failure of having a letter of intent in a collective agreement is worse than not having something in the agreement that states what is needed. It is masking over the fact. These side agreements are doing something very similar. They are not addressing the issues in a substantive way to move the mark forward on the environment, human rights or labour rights in this case.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to compliment my hon. colleague on his excellent remarks. I know that he comes from a labour background, which means that he is very sensitive to issues affecting human rights and the environment.

I partly agree with him when he says that this type of agreement is smoke and mirrors. The economic benefits to Canada from agreements with countries like Peru and Colombia, where human rights and workers rights are ignored and no efforts are made to improve social conditions, will be extremely minimal.

There is something I do not get, though. That trade has little impact on our economy, but at the same time we are very soft on the great, big country with which we do a lot of trade, namely the United States. Trading with the United States has much more of an impact on our economy.

This morning, a bill was introduced, which both the official opposition party and the ruling party have spoken against. Our borders are currently closed, and there are protections for the buyer's market in place. In my opinion, these are very important issues, much more important to our economy and our employment situation than the Canada-Peru agreement, whose impact is much less significant.

I would like to hear the hon. member on that.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in regard to the bill we debated here this morning about a buy Canadian strategy, I indicated in my remarks that the U.S. started such a strategy in 1927. Americans buy locally and are proud to buy American products. We should be proud to buy Canadian products.

In my riding of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, we have been decimated on the manufacturing front. It is tragic at times to see the flow of vehicles crossing the border into the United States to purchase there and then come back. All my life I have spoken to my friends about buying Canadian. Hamilton used to be the textile capital of Canada but it is no longer there. Steel is at risk in Hamilton, although at this point indications are that it is because of the market downturn, but still, all in all it is a major concern.

I am not opposed to having a free trade agreement with any nation so long as we set a standard in that agreement and that we ensure the agreement enhances environmental regulation and human rights. Where human rights are in question, we should never be signing the agreement until we are satisfied that there is a basic fundamental set of human rights in any given country.

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

Mr. Speaker, in looking at this agreement, one of the concerns expressed has to do with a decree by the Peruvian government, legislative decree 1015, which was designed to facilitate the privatization and stripping away of communal lands held by indigenous people, allowing them to perform the subsistence farming that supports their communities.

That particular decree was pushed back but many others are coming forward from the same government. Our government seems to feel that those decrees are business as usual or that doing business with the Peruvian government is just fine. As I said, these new laws are meant to facilitate the expropriation of the country's land.

Interestingly enough, a similar thing happened some years ago in Colombia where that government, in order to facilitate trade agreements with the United States, privatized land. It took land away from the indigenous people who were farming it. In the case of some of the people living in the mountains, some of the territories had gold mines on them. Canada, of course, jumped on the gravy train on this one. Essentially, these people were stripped of a livelihood that was centuries old. Canadian and American mining companies went in and simply grabbed whatever they could.

Like the people of Peru, those people stood their ground. They literally stood at the entrances of their villages and told the junta and death squads that they could not enter. They did not care whose businesses the junta and deaths squads felt they were protecting. They were not going to allow them to enter and kill their children.

This whole reality in terms of how we deal with South America seems to be repeated in this Peruvian agreement. I wonder if the member, as a human rights expert, could comment on what we are seeing with regard to these trade deals and the abuse of human rights.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a tragedy is unfolding in South America in regard to the displacement of people and the disappearance of trade unionists. It is interesting how we hear that they were not murdered but that they have disappeared. It happens to tens of thousands of them across South America. The tragedy is that when a dominant nation, such as Canada, goes into negotiations with a particular country, a lot of things start happening in preparation for that agreement.

The people on the farms are quelled by leaders saying that they should be moved off and out of the way before the agreement is signed. Trade unionists disappear. I used the example earlier of Yessika Hoyos Morales' father who disappeared in 2001. Four years later, a colonel quietly told her that his death squad had killed him. This is horrific.

As a nation, in any trade agreement we have a responsibility and our government has a responsibility to enhance human rights wherever we travel, to set that example worldwide and to live it every day in the protection of our own human rights, labour rights and environmental rights and those of any nation with which we do business.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very interested in participating in the debate on Bill C-24, An Act to implement the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the Republic of Peru, the Agreement on the Environment between Canada and the Republic of Peru and the Agreement on Labour Cooperation between Canada and the Republic of Peru, but I also have some serious concerns.

When we look at the debate surrounding this free trade agreement with Peru, it is clear that there are few things that are specific to this Latin American country. In other words, this agreement is part of the trade policy the federal government has been pushing in the Americas for the past few years. So, some of the criticisms I will make today will sometimes be similar to criticisms I could make of the agreement with Columbia, which we saw recently.

In both cases, the Conservative government presented Parliament with agreements that had already been signed and negotiated before Parliament even had a chance to examine them and make recommendations or changes. That is a disgrace. I participated in a mission to Columbia with the member for Sherbrooke. We met with unions, community groups, grassroots groups, business leaders and others and they made a number of important comments. If the government had really taken the time to examine this agreement and the report put out by the Standing Committee on International Trade, I am not sure that this agreement would be before the House today.

On January 28, 2008, the federal government announced that it had signed a free trade agreement with Peru, once again presenting parliamentarians with a fait accompli. As representatives of the people of Quebec and Canada, we cannot accept this sign of contempt, this negligent attitude toward democracy that the Conservative Party demonstrates when it presents us with this sort of agreement that has been signed without any substantive debate.

In my opinion, this contempt for institutions is certainly not the best way to serve democracy. I deplore the fact that the Liberals sanction such behaviour by the Conservatives. They want to take over the government in the next election, so they should know that we cannot accept this sort of thing.

That said, the Bloc Québécois is strongly opposed to this implementation bill because it does not meet a number of criteria and objectives that, in the Bloc's view, must be met before free trade agreements are signed, especially with developing countries.

In the interests of international solidarity, we have a responsibility as parliamentarians to condemn bilateral free trade agreements that go against workers' rights, the environment and even some countries' ability to maintain their sovereignty. We condemned the bill to implement the free trade agreement with Colombia, as I mentioned, and we are condemning this one as well today.

Not so long ago, I was reading a great American writer, Joseph Stiglitz, who said that the problem with bilateral agreements is that often, stronger countries exploit weaker ones. This is less likely to happen with multilateral agreements.

That is the danger of these agreements. Often, they come back to haunt us. If, during the negotiating process, Canada does not respect the rights of foreign workers and developing countries, it very often finds itself exploiting people in very difficult conditions. Companies are not always environmentally friendly. They take their operations offshore and cut jobs here at home because it is easier for them to engage in their economic activities if they do not respect certain social conditions, certain working conditions and the environment.

The Bloc Québécois has always maintained that trade can contribute to the socio-economic prosperity of nations. However, this can only be the case if trade agreements include measures that ensure sustainable development, respect for the environment and the development of the populations involved. That is particularly true when these bilateral agreements involve a developed country and a developing country, such as the treaty with Peru.

The free trade agreement with Peru includes a clause to protect investments that is patterned on NAFTA's chapter 11 and that will allow businesses to sue governments. To include a chapter protecting investments could impede Peru's social and economic development. So, any legislation that prevents an investor from fully enjoying his investment could lead to court action and compensation. We are essentially giving the upper hand to foreign investors, who will dictate the social, economic, cultural and environmental policies of the country that welcomes them. That is not normal.

Imagine an environmental law that would prevent a polluter from enjoying his polluting investment, such as in the mining sector. The act would not be struck down because an environmental provision would allow the state to maintain it, but it could be deemed as requiring payment of compensation. Moreover, the agreement has the effect of raising the amount of compensation to be paid. Indeed, in the case of expropriation, not only does the state find itself forced to pay the value of the investment—that is the initial amount invested—but also all the revenues that the investor anticipated from his investment.

In other words, in this chapter 11, compensation also applies to lost profits. That is shameful. With such agreements, the sky is the limit. This government seems to want to promote these agreements, instead of multilateral treaties. This opens the door to court action, and the amounts involved would be so high that they would deter the state from passing any legislation that may upset multinational companies that carry on operations on its territory.

Since the Peruvian economy is the more vulnerable one, it is more likely to suffer the consequences of a clause protecting investments. In Canada, which is a developed country, the impact will not be as significant, particularly since there are not many Peruvian investments here. The situation is quite different in Peru. For example, a Canadian multinational will be able to legitimately challenge any environmental law passed by the Peruvian government, on the ground that the legislation prevents it from benefiting from its investment.

Considering that Canadian investments in Peru are primarily in the mining sector, which is a great polluter, there is cause for concern. Indeed, Peru's mining potential is significant, and over 80 Canadian mining companies are present in that country. Canada is the number one investor in Peru's mining sector. Given the poor track record of Canadian mining companies, and a total lack of will on the part of the Canadian government to regulate their operations, protecting the additional investments of these companies through a new chapter 11 is definitely not the best thing to do to improve the social, environmental and economic conditions of Peruvian workers. Moreover, I do not see how this could have a positive impact on the economy of Berthier—Maskinongé and of Quebec as a whole.

In a nutshell, we are afraid that measures to protect investments provide disproportionate protection for Canadian investors as opposed to local people and the environment. Obviously, Peru can enact legislation and make regulations to govern the activities of mining companies.

But the danger lies in the fact that the Peruvian government does not have the resources or infrastructure needed for proper oversight of the companies’ activities inside that country.

The Bloc Québécois is opposed to this agreement. We are not opposed to protecting our companies’ investments abroad, but this must not be done at the expense of the rights and needs of the local people. Because Canada’s primary interest is in investments in the mining sector, the Bloc Québécois believes we need to adopt a real policy to hold Canadian mining companies accountable. I am not talking about a disguised policy like one of the motions the Liberals introduced in the House not so long ago. They lectured us on the whole question of corporate social responsibility abroad and they vote in favour of agreements like these with Peru or Colombia. We need a real social responsibility policy, one adopted here in this House, an aggressive policy that means that when we sign bilateral agreements, that being something we are somewhat opposed to, preferring multilateral agreements, at least chapter 11 will not apply.

In 2007, the Bloc Québécois called on the federal government, as recommended in the Report of the Advisory Group for the National Roundtables, to adopt mandatory standards and accountability measures relating to the activities of mining companies abroad. This issue has been going on for a long time. Those measures should be accompanied by penalties for companies that do not comply, for example by eliminating their entitlement to tax benefits, loan guarantees and other forms of federal government assistance. Not only are these companies often operating in very particular situations, but they are also financially supported by our governments. In March, unfortunately, the Conservative government rejected a large majority of the recommendations we had made. The Conservative government has decided that social responsibility standards will be voluntary instead of mandatory.

The Liberals support the free trade agreement, in spite of all the speeches they make in this House where they say they support respect for the environment and corporate social responsibility abroad.

If we do not have an accountability policy, the mining companies will be able to expand their activities and will be subject to no rules and liable to no consequences when they pollute or they threaten human rights.

I also want to mention the dispute settlement mechanism in this agreement. The mechanism provides that a company that feels that a government has violated the investment provisions can institute proceedings directly against that government before an arbitration tribunal. We have a lot of questions about the dispute settlement mechanism in this chapter. The tribunals hearing the disputes are set up to hear a specific dispute. The deliberations of the arbitrators and their decisions are secret, unless both parties to the dispute decide otherwise. It is quite something.

Although the free trade agreement with Peru has a number of improvements in terms of transparency—this has to be said and we pointed a few of them out—the Bloc Québécois still feels that disputes should be settled on a centralized, multilateral basis involving the different countries that signed the bilateral agreements, rather than on a case-by-case basis.

We cannot accept the fact that multinational companies not only have special privileges in comparison with the host society in general but can also institute legal proceedings against a national government before special tribunals.

Our opposition to this free trade agreement is not based solely on the way investments are protected. We think that the government’s strategy of concluding individual trade agreements makes it impossible to establish a fair trading relationship that benefits everyone.

We cannot enrich ourselves by exploiting people because, as I have said, that comes back to haunt us every time.

We put downward pressure on wages in other regions. If people are kept in poverty with terrible working conditions, the downward pressure is felt by working people around the world. If companies are allowed to exploit people now, they will come back here in another form to do business and put downward pressure on the working conditions of our workers.

The government is currently negotiating free trade agreements with some 20 countries, in addition to the agreement it signed with the four countries of the European Free Trade Association. We supported this agreement. We are not against all agreements. This one was economically beneficial and respected workers’ rights and environmental legislation. It had major benefits for Quebeckers and all Canadians. For these reasons, we supported it. We are not opposed to every kind of agreement.

No studies have been done, though, showing whether these bilateral agreements are beneficial. Regardless of whether they are good or not, the Liberals and Conservatives are ready to sign more of them even though it is still impossible to determine whether they have been beneficial.

Last year, I sat as a member of the Standing Committee on International Trade. We invited government experts and we asked them what the benefits would be for Quebec and Canada. We wanted to know if this agreement was fair and if workers were going to benefit from it, or if it was going to result in job losses. The government is often unable to provide an answer to that question and it signs free trade agreements with other countries, without knowing the economic, social and political consequences of these treaties. That is unbelievable.

As I mentioned, I was with the member for Sherbrooke during the discussions on the agreement with Colombia. The government spent money to send a parliamentary delegation, to meet officials in that country, and to see what was going on there in the context of this agreement. However, the agreement was signed before the government read the committee's report. That is strange. It does not matter whether the agreement is good or bad, the Liberals sign it.

In a report presented by the Standing Committee on International Trade, the Conservative government even considered signing a free trade agreement with China. Just imagine: a bilateral agreement with China. What would be the economic spinoffs here?

In my riding, the manufacturing, furniture and textile sectors have felt that impact. There was talk of a new bilateral agreement. When it comes to international trade, this government does not seem to have a clear direction, along with objectives to ensure economic viability and respect for individuals, environmental standards and workers from all over the world, and not just Quebec or Canada.

These agreements weaken the multilateral approach. Bilateral agreements with developing countries should be avoided, because they often lead to agreements that put richer countries at an advantage over poorer countries. This is not from me, but Mr. Stiglitz, a former adviser to the Clinton administration and the author of many books, who condemns these bilateral agreements. This is the situation that we are experiencing with this accord and with the one with Colombia.

Since I only have one minute left, I am going to conclude.

I do not believe that these treaties will have a major economic impact in Quebec, particularly the agreement with Peru, or the one with Colombia. Instead, we should work a lot harder to get respect from our big American partner, and we should stand up to it regarding some issues.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening carefully to what the Bloc member has been alluding to and I have been trying to understand the thesis with respect to how he views free trade agreements. I would like to think they are fair trade agreements to some extent. He has argued that because there is no strong multilateral framework, these bilateral agreements will supersede issues as they relate to the environment, human rights and so on. I think the House is impressed with the knowledge the member has, but my question is, is there any other alternative?

When Brazil and Canada were engaged in an aerospace situation with respect to Embraer and Bombardier, there was a charge that the Government of Canada was unfairly benefiting one of our industries. Through the WTO, Canada was able to bring attention to that issue. There was a degree of voluntary acceptance with respect to the findings.

The House is seized with the argument that the member has put forward. However, without these kinds of agreements with the Caribbean countries of the CARICOM, and without the ability to stimulate capital transfers and investments in those countries, where would those countries be? My colleague has argued that this $2.8 billion balance is favourable to mining interests and so on.

Given that there can be strong human rights legislation in Peru, and I would argue that the Peruvians have capability in the area of labour jurisdiction and labour law, does entering into these kinds of agreements with Canada not give more protection to those countries?

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question.

My answer is that we are signing bilateral agreements with countries where living, economic and social conditions are often pretty tough. Our mining companies, as my colleague and I both know, frequently fail to respect workers' rights and environmental standards.

That is why we cannot support this kind of agreement. My colleague mentioned the WTO, which offers a number of recourse options because it includes many countries and the rules are well-defined. Bilateral agreements can cover anything at all, and that is why we are saying that respect for the people and countries involved is not always included. In multilateral agreements, however, there are both rich and poor countries, so there are rules and the negotiations cover more issues. I think that makes it easier to respect all of the people involved.

When I speak here in the House, I often mention the fact that we have gone through some tough situations with the Americans. Just think of the softwood lumber issue and our partially closed borders. It is a kind of protectionism. When our truckers cannot cross the border freely to export goods, that affects the cost of production. But it does not look as though the government is interested in dealing with these situations. The government is hiding its agenda and trying to convince people that agreements with Colombia and Peru will support our economic growth. I am not so sure about that. We have seen the numbers, which suggest that the impact on our economy is negligible. All it will do is protect foreign investors in the mining sector. Fine, we are not against that, but the economic impact would be minimal, in our opinion.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned with the number of issues in regard to this agreement, perhaps because I and many of my colleagues here have lived through the less than stellar agreements of the past, such as the free trade agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement. In both of those cases we have seen Canadian workers and labour rights in Canada decline. We are living in a reality where Canadians are suffering quite significantly because of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Despite all of the claims that it was somehow going to improve employment and improve our standard of living, we see a rapid and quite disastrous decline.

In this free trade agreement with Peru, we see that new laws have been put forward, decrees by the government, which it says is to modernize the public sector. Unfortunately this so-called modernization seems more punitive than positive. In fact these new rules have given the National Civil Service Authority the right to negotiate with workers in Peru and skip the collective bargaining process entirely.

I wonder if the member could please comment on the fact that collective bargaining is being undermined and how important collective bargaining is to the rights of workers.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his excellent question.

I would like to reply by quoting Joseph Stiglitz, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. She surely is very familiar with him. He has written a number of books about trade relations and globalization. He is very interested in matters pertaining to working conditions and the negotiation of collective agreements for the most disadvantaged. When he received his honorary doctorate from Université de Louvain on February 3, 2003, Joseph Stiglitz—an author who I often read—said, “As our interdependence has increased, we have discovered that we need rules to govern the process of globalization and to create institutions to help it function. Unfortunately, these rules are too often established by the rich countries to serve their own interests and especially individual interests within these countries.”

That is basically what my colleague is saying. These agreements place a great deal of pressure on countries. In Colombia, we have seen that unions cannot necessarily negotiate their working conditions. Furthermore, they have even been threatened. People have been assassinated for negotiating their working conditions. I do not believe that this promotes good working relations or good conditions for the local population.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first I would like to congratulate the member for Berthier—Maskinongé on his speech.

Towards the end of his speech, he alluded to the fact that free trade agreements negotiated by the government have never required, prior to being adopted, a status report to determine the real impact on certain industries, or even certain industrial sectors, in order to have an idea of what might happen. In committee, an amendment was proposed asking the government for a report, within five years after the signing of a free trade agreement, on what had taken place or what should be changed. The proposal was rejected by the Liberals and the Conservatives. What does my colleague think of the government's lack of vision?