Bill C-41 (Historical)

Canada-Korea Economic Growth and Prosperity Act

An Act to implement the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the Republic of Korea

This enactment implements the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the Republic of Korea that was done at Ottawa on September 22, 2014.
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 15 or any order made under those sections, or on the basis of the provisions of the Free Trade Agreement, without the consent of the Attorney General of Canada.
Part 1 approves the Free Trade Agreement and provides for the payment by Canada of its share of the expenditures associated with the operation of the institutional aspects of the Agreement and the power of the Governor in Council to make orders for carrying out the provisions of the enactment. Part 1 also provides protection for certain geographical indications.
Part 2 amends existing laws in order to bring them into conformity with Canada’s obligations under the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the Republic of Korea.
Part 3 contains coordinating amendments and the coming into force provision.

Canada-Korea Economic Growth and Prosperity Act

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat fearful for the member that he has bought into the tremendous amount of spin that is coming out of the Prime Minister's office on this particular trade agreement. Let me give him a dose of reality with some facts.

Korea is the one that actually put itself on a road to signing trade agreements throughout the world, and that was done back in 2003. In 2004, Canada, under then prime minister Paul Martin, initiated interest and started the process. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter there was a change in government and the new government decided to drag its feet. Not only countries like Chile, United States, and the European Union, but other countries have actually already signed and implemented agreements with Korea. Canada, on the other hand, has been very negligent on the file.

My question for the member is this. Would he not acknowledge that, because of that negligence, there are certain industries, including the pork industry in my own province of Manitoba, that have lost out on opportunities because of the current government's lacklustre attitude in trying to get a trade agreement signed with Korea?

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I clearly cannot agree with the member opposite, as his positioning of this is entirely wrong.

It did begin in 2005 and it stalled in 2008. These agreements reached an impasse. I do not know if the member opposite has been involved in negotiations of any type, but clearly when in the middle of complex negotiations, it happens that one will reach these positions that are intractable and cause for impasse. It was rekindled in 2012.

I agree that lost time is lost productivity and lost performance and business. So today, with 38 free trade agreements signed by this government in 7 years, many more under way, and now this agreement coming to fruition, our government has clearly demonstrated leadership in bringing free trade opportunities to Canadians and businesses for more fruitful relationships with these countries. In this case, it would open up 50 million new consumers to Canadian small and medium-sized businesses.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Don Valley West for his strong support of our ambitious trade agenda as a government. I will make a quick comment before my question. I find it quite ironic that my Liberal friend talks about spin when the simple fact is that, of all the market access negotiated in free trade agreements for Canada, almost 98% is due to the Conservative government. The 2.5% is something about which the member should not be bragging.

The member for Don Valley West is a strong champion for our automotive industry in Canada, and certainly it is important to my riding in Durham. Can he talk about how important this is, to ensure that our manufacturing lines in Ontario have access to as many markets as the production lines in the United States do?

[John Carmichael, Conservative, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's question is extremely relevant in this transaction, because the auto sector is the one that would be greatly affected on both sides of the ocean, both in Korea and in Canada.

Currently, about 88% of all vehicles manufactured here in Canada are manufactured for export. For Canadian companies manufacturing their product here in this country, we have to ensure that we are supporting open markets. Clearly the agreement would do that. We have funds like the automotive innovation fund, which encourages investment in this country for manufacturing purposes. I hope that in the case of this agreement we would have Korean companies investing in new plants and facilities to ensure that their products would be built here, both for the export market and for sale in North America.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the question to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment is as follows: the hon. member for Drummond, The Environment.

[Paulina Ayala, NDP, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Beauport—Limoilou.

Today we are talking about Bill C-41, An Act to implement the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the Republic of Korea. The NDP wants to strengthen trade ties between Canada and the Asia-Pacific region. We recognize that this is vital to Canada's prosperity in the 21st century. That being said, before signing off on anything, the NDP evaluates trade agreements according to important criteria. That is why it has often opposed these deals in the past.

We feel it is important that our potential partners believe in democracy, human rights and labour laws. They should have adequate environmental standards that are in line with Canadian values. These details are very important. If there are problems in these areas, we must ask our partners to take steps to meet those objectives. That is important.

South Korea is a democratic country but was under a dictatorship for a long time. Changes in a country's history do not happen overnight. The 1987 dictatorship did not disappear one day and it was all sunshine the next. It takes time to get used to living with our differences, which is why I am going to talk about a fundamental point.

South Korea was under a dictatorship until 1987, at which time it became a multi-party and dynamic democracy that built a labour movement. That does not mean that everything is going perfectly well, either, but still, wages are good and civil society is beginning to organize.

However, when we sign free trade agreements, we have to be aware of the true labour conditions in the other countries involved in the negotiations. We hope that they are like us in Canada, but that is not the reality. It is something else entirely.

As a matter of principle, the NDP does not want to sign free trade agreements with dictatorships or totalitarian regimes like China. The NDP expects that countries that sign free trade agreements with us uphold human rights and are environmentally aware. Above all, they must respect workers' rights. The NDP wants to negotiate with countries that share these same fundamental rights that are so important to Canadians.

Let us go back to South Korea and all the changes it went through. Having lived under a dictatorship myself, I can assure you that it takes time for meaningful change to occur within civil society and among those who held power for so long. It takes a long time for democracy to really take root and for real changes to emerge.

I am not talking only about changes to legislation, since constitutions can be changed and highly productive people can be put to work in the institutions. I am also talking about changes in the social conscience, not only among workers, but also among those who hold political power and those who hold economic power. That is very important.

The link between political and economic power should lead those people to adapt to a new vision. This does not happen overnight; it can take a generation before these changes really happen. People need to believe in the future and press on.

To further my research on unions, I went to Amnesty International. I learned that a lot of things are happening in South Korea, but I still thought that we should not expect that country to be as advanced as ours. After reading some documents, I learned that this year there was a strike at Samsung and the union leader, Yeom Ho-seok, who was 34 years old, took his own life in his car on May 17.

This union leader explained his actions in a letter: “I sacrifice myself because I cannot bear to see any longer the sacrifice and pain of others as well as the difficult situation of fellow union members”. We are not talking about 1987; we are talking about 2014.

Jamie Doucette, a lecturer in Human Geography at University of Manchester and an expert on labour and democratization in South Korea, explains that “Samsung's refusal to recognize itself as the employer of unionized workers conforms to a standard corporate practice in South Korea”.

That is why I am saying that we cannot expect miracles. I think our Canadian companies really have a duty to help not only the leaders of South Korean companies but also the country's political leaders to understand what the real values of workers and unions are. In that sense, Canada has a lot to offer.

We all know that South Korea has a very dynamic economy. Environmentally speaking, it has made real progress, which is a great thing. Its GDP is also very high.

However, the situation of its workers really worries me. We must and we can do better with these agreements. This should be Canada's trademark. We are capable of exporting these visions and ways of doing things. That costs nothing. All we need to do is share best practices.

I would like to go back in time a little. I am thinking about the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement that we signed back in 2008, but have discussed recently in Parliament.

I was invited to go to Colombia last summer along with a group of Canadian union members and so I went. I had an opportunity to visit the country, although I was accompanied by journalists. It does not matter. I was able to see how little respect some Canadian companies showed their Colombian workers and how they felt entitled to pollute, which they would never do here in Canada, and certainly not in the way they are doing in Colombia.

To conclude, we are going to support this agreement. However, I hope that we will take extra steps to ensure that workers' rights are upheld under these agreements.

We, as members of Parliament, are about to allow major Canadian companies to set up shop in other countries. However, these companies must act as true ambassadors of Canadian values and of respect for working conditions and human rights.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for her wonderful speech and for the excellent presentation she gave on why we support this free trade agreement. However, it is very important to point out that we are not supporting it blindly.

This free trade agreement contains a new clause that we are concerned about. Under this clause, large corporations will be able to take legal action against the Canadian government if they feel their free trade rights have been violated. However, the rights of governments should take precedence.

Would my honourable colleague care to comment on that?

[Paulina Ayala, NDP, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his question. I completely agree with him.

Who are the sovereigns of a country? They are the citizens of that country. Companies should not be telling them what to do. That aspect of the bill is worrisome.

Since the negotiation of free trade agreements began, the sovereignty of people to make decisions about natural resources has been called into question. That is unacceptable.

That has to change because we are starting to give certain companies power that will have an impact on us, right now, and on our children's future. It is the Canadian government that will have to pay. That is unbelievable.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade]

Mr. Speaker, we are now in the second day of a truly groundbreaking parliamentary session where the New Democrats, after 40 years, look like they will stand in the House and support a trade agreement.

The NDP trade critic yesterday outlined the three criteria, in a very cogent speech in the House, on which the NDP judged these trade agreements.The first was democracy and respect for democracy. The second was strategic direction. He was not too clear on that. The third was terms that were satisfactory. However, in the hon. member's remarks she seems to contradict the NDP trade critic by saying that there is no respect for democracy, labour rights and that sort of thing.

The member for Windsor West and the member for Parkdale—High Park have spoken very critically of a deal with Korea.

Is she one of the members of the official opposition who does not agree with its overall position to support the deal and could she outline what parts of the three-pronged NDP tests she has issues with?

[Paulina Ayala, NDP, Honoré-Mercier, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think my colleague quite understood what I said. We can all agree that this sort of thing will take time for a country that was once a dictatorship.

Korea has made great strides. This country survived for years under a system of oppression. We can make comparisons between Canada and Korea, but we are not the same. That is why we need to focus on that. It is true that there are unions in Korea and that is wonderful, but they are still weak compared to those in Canada.

What do the NDP and Canadians expect? We expect to share our way of doing things so that the quality of life of workers in other countries improves. That does not mean that they do not have unions. They do, and they also have legal strikes.

I am not contradicting my colleagues. I am simply providing additional information. What I am saying is that we cannot pretend that we are all the same. We have to understand each country's history. I believe that Canada can do more to improve working conditions. Canadian companies must not be allowed to profit from irregularities. On the contrary, Canada must set a good example for workers.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a huge privilege for me to be able to speak to Bill C-41. The New Democratic Party will be able to support the entire bill. Yes, the entire bill. However, when we get into the details, we will closely examine some aspects of it and will have suggestions for changes to improve the bill or, at the very least, consider potential renegotiations with South Korea on some aspects that could pose a problem.

I have spoken about the investment-protection clauses on a number of occasions since this debate started. The NDP is not the only party to oppose this type of clause. The main opposition party in the South Korean national assembly opposes it as well, which is wonderful news. Once again, despite my repeated questions, the members of the government party in this House unfortunately were not able to tell me—I cannot imagine that they were refusing to answer—whether this is a requirement of the Government of Canada or whether Korea wanted to have this type of clause.

That said, we can all agree on the heart of this debate, which is that the NDP supports this bill. This support is contingent on the status of this bill. It is at second reading and will go to the Standing Committee on International Trade to be studied and debated. Obviously, the NDP's support is very much related to the situation in South Korea. As the member for Honoré-Mercier so eloquently stated, the country now has much more solid democratic institutions. South Korea emerged from a rather repressive dictatorship in 1987. It has much freer legal, social and economic structures. Now there is freedom of speech and the union movement has gained support and legitimacy.

I was looking at some figures from the OECD. In South Korea, the overall unionization rate is around 10%, whereas in Canada it is around 26% or 27%. According to my research, unionization rates are much higher in big Korean corporations—around 40% in the 10 largest Korean corporations, compared to the overall unionization rate. That is good news, but as the member for Honoré-Mercier pointed out, that does not prevent these big corporations from using appalling tactics to suppress union activism. Unfortunately, these tactics led one union leader to commit suicide because of what he saw, what he shared and what he heard from the people he represented.

Fortunately, like Canada, Korea is evolving rapidly. Like my colleagues, I acknowledge that evolution, that march toward a future that we all believe will be much better. That being said, I was really very critical in previous debates on other bills related to other free trade agreements, such as the Canada-Honduras and Canada-Panama free trade proposals. I was really very critical of, among other things, the appearance of moral endorsement of countries plagued by corruption and crime as well as the inequality inherent in the negotiations. We can all agree that negotiations between Canada—a very rich country with some 35 million inhabitants—and very small countries—those with just a few million inhabitants and a per capita gross domestic product that is not in the same league as Canada's—can hardly be called negotiations between equals.

In these cases, we cannot say we negotiated on an equal footing. Nonetheless, with regard to the negotiations between South Korea and Canada, we are negotiating as equals, and that is excellent news.

I must say that it was an honour and a privilege to sit on the Standing Committee on International Trade. Bilateral agreements are not as bad as multilateral negotiations where it is easy to leave out exceptional provisions, specific measures, and to be taken hostage by special interests, as we unfortunately see far too often in many negotiations between two countries. I know that this philosophy is widely shared by my NDP colleagues.

As I pointed out in the beginning of my speech, the current free trade agreement raises a number of important questions. I wonder how far Canada pushed for certain clauses or whether it was the Republic of Korea that imposed its will relative to other negotiations.

There was talk about access to government contracts, for instance, provincial and municipal government contracts as well as those associated with crown corporations. Fortunately, that is not part of the agreement, unlike the agreement between the European Union and Canada. Accordingly, we are supporting the free trade agreement.

As a result of what happened with the European Union, we hope that through the negotiations we will get to know all the aspects of this agreement and ultimately vote on it after reviewing what might be improved and offering suggestions.

I talked about protecting investors. Fortunately, we have a relatively open process in this agreement, compared with the much more opaque process we had for other free trade agreements. What is more, either party can withdraw with six months' notice, which is excellent news.

I will use my two minutes remaining to talk about the carelessness of the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party—there is no denying it—when it comes to the choice of partners Canada negotiates with. My Liberal colleagues went to great pains to criticize the Conservatives for dragging out the negotiations for a free trade agreement between South Korea and Canada. However, they are mum on how the agreements with Colombia, Panama and Honduras were fast tracked.

Given the Conservatives' record, we should perhaps not be surprised by this discrepancy. The Conservative Party takes shortcuts and does not take the time to choose its partners. Furthermore, some very close friends of President Putin were not included in Canada's sanctions, which are completely warranted in light of the situation in Ukraine.

In closing, I will draw a parallel to my time on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. Passing stringent laws, much like signing free trade agreements, is of little value if they are not supported by a strategy and by concrete, robust and consistent means.

That is the modus operandi of the Conservative government. All too often it has become stuck on adopting measures without thinking them through and without supporting their implementation; above all, they are stuck on what I would call a certain magical thinking. I hope that if we adopt this free trade agreement, the means will soon follow, and I hope that the Conservatives will walk the talk, because this is an extraordinary opportunity for both our countries.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade]

Mr. Speaker, once again, as I had said to his colleague, this is a transformative week in the House with the NDP supporting free trade for the first time. I would make note that just yesterday the head of the Unifor union called this deal a disaster from its standpoint, and the member raised some concerns with some of the labour provisions.

I note that the head of the Ontario Federation of Labour also suggested that the announcement of the NDP on minimum wages was really done to hide its support of free trade.

Therefore, have the New Democrats consulted with their supporters in organized labour in Canada in their consultations before making the decision to support this agreement and whether the minimum wage proposal was a concession in that regard, as Sid Ryan suggested just yesterday?

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the honourable Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade for his question. The NDP approach in general consists of consulting all stakeholders party to a debate, negotiation or bill, which is not necessarily the government's approach. I have sat on three committees and I have seen the very strict selection criteria for witnesses, which is unfortunate. I find that deplorable.

Having said that, I would like to point out to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade that when it comes to unions, all democratic states allow for freedom of association. I was looking at OECD figures before giving my speech. In 2007, the rate of unionization in Canada was 27% and in the democratic state of Israel, it was 33%.

I would like to bring this figure to the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade and to say to him that unions are partners of society and the economy, and that they are equal in value to any other partner.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, as I am sure the member is very much aware, the Liberal Party has indicated its support for the proposed Korea-Canada free trade agreement.

Some concerns have been expressed over the last number of years relating to the automobile industry. It is an industry that is of vital importance to our country. It affects some provinces more than others, but it has interests throughout the country in its vitality and ongoing growth wherever possible.

It is great to see this agreement as we have been waiting for it for a number of years.

In certain other sectors we have fallen behind. I refer to my home province of Manitoba, for example, and the lost opportunities with relation to port sales. Could the member comment on this? Because of the government's inability to negotiate this as quickly as other jurisdictions, whether it be Chile, the U.S. or the European Union, there will be a cost in lost opportunities. Does the member have any concerns or thoughts that he would like to share with respect to those lost opportunities because of the government dragging its feet on this issue?

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we can certainly shift the topic of the debate to the costs associated with the delays in some rounds of negotiations. However, I would like to take my colleague down another path and ask him to consider the risks associated with blind adherence—for instance, adherence to an agreement whose terms we know nothing about, as is the case with the free trade agreement with the European Union.

Clearly, the Liberal Party has a long history of wilful blindness. Consider the purchase of four used, inoperative submarines, which we are still paying for to this day. When you get involved in those kinds of processes, you have to take full responsibility. I say “full” because haste is a real danger.

As for this free trade agreement, we must remember that the global conditions can be very difficult for a country like Canada. In the auto sector, there is no denying that competing countries like China and Brazil actively support their auto sectors to such a great extent that investment subsidies can reach as high as 60%; this is huge and very costly for everyone and it is preventing Canada from reaching its full potential.