Bill C-4 (Historical)

Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement Implementation Act

An Act to implement the Agreement between Canada, the United States of America and the United Mexican States

This enactment implements the Agreement between Canada, the United States of America and the United Mexican States, done at Buenos Aires on November 30, 2018, as amended by the Protocol of Amendment to that Agreement, done at Mexico City on December 10, 2019.
The general provisions of the enactment set out rules of interpretation and specify that no recourse is to be taken on the basis of sections 9 to 20 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, provides for the payment by Canada of its share of the expenditures associated with the operation of the institutional and administrative aspects of the Agreement and gives the Governor in Council the power 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.
Part 3 contains the coming into force provisions.

Canada-United States-Mexico Implementation Act

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his speech, especially since he spoke about agriculture.

Speaking of compensation, the Bloc Québécois will absolutely not accept as support a modernization program similar to the one the government created in 2018 for Europe. That program has proven to be a disaster.

We are calling for a program that provides direct support, and we want to see it in the next budget. What does my colleague think of that?

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, there are some concerns with the new NAFTA agreement when it comes to the dairy sector.

There is no other agreement I can think of that Canada signed that has put a cap on the growth of an agricultural commodity, which the Liberals have done with dairy. There is now a quota on the export of products like skim milk powder and protein powder.

When the Liberals say this is a better agreement, certainly that may be true in some areas, but in the dairy sector it is absolutely not true. In some areas, like dairy processing, there is no compensation whatsoever, even though the Liberals did promise a compensation package.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, I was talking to a dairy processor from British Columbia who made the point that quotas are going to be very destructive to that industry.

My question for the hon. member is about the process we had. He mentioned the secrecy behind it. I am just wondering if the member would be in favour of working with us to produce a new system for future trade deals.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, we do not have to rewrite the process, because the process was done properly under the previous Conservative government.

As I said, the minister of trade and the minister of agriculture at that time offered to hold regular meetings with their colleagues on the opposition benches and not only kept all stakeholder groups informed but actually had them at the negotiating table with us. That is the system that works. That is the system that ensures everyone's voice is heard. Stakeholders did not always agree, but at least they had the chance to put forward their positions at the table. That is the system we need to follow.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to the new NAFTA. I would like to start by showing why this agreement is so important.

More than 400,000 people cross the Canada-U.S. border every day for work. Every day, $2.4 billion in goods cross the border. About two million Canadian jobs are directly linked to free trade with the United States. We now have six times as much trade with Mexico than we had when we signed our agreement in 1993.

Let us also look at the history of why we are negotiating NAFTA. The U.S. president was elected by saying that NAFTA was the worst deal ever made. It was inevitable that any Canadian government was going to have to renegotiate with the United States on NAFTA.

This Canadian government, in my view, did an exceptional job in arriving at a deal that is even better than the previous NAFTA in almost every area. That is sensational when looking at the difference in size between Canada and the United States. The United States has a population that is about nine times bigger than that of Canada.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that Canada is the U.S.'s biggest trading partner in the vast majority of states and that millions of American jobs are linked to NAFTA, there is far less knowledge in the United States on the importance of the trading relationship between Canada and the United States than there is in Canada.

As a result, the team had to deal with numerous challenges in this negotiation, one of which was educating Americans on how important their trading relationship with Canada is. Another was navigating the system in the United States, where the administration was of one party and the majority in the House of Representatives was of another party.

We have now arrived at a point where Mexico has ratified the new NAFTA, the United States Congress has passed it and the U.S. president has signed the bill, ratifying it. We in Canada are now left to decide one thing: Do we go along with our partners in the United States and Mexico and ratify this deal or do we not? I would say yes, we need to do so.

I will talk about a couple of the areas where Canada resolutely defended its position in the NAFTA negotiations.

First, there is chapter 19, the dispute resolution mechanism. We all heard the Americans continually challenge chapter 19, trying to have it removed from the new NAFTA. Indeed, in the initial agreement between Mexico and the United States, that chapter was removed. Canada was able to ensure that this chapter remained, leaving us a dispute resolution mechanism with the United States, something we desperately need in dealing with a trading partner that is vastly bigger than us.

In the course of these negotiations, we succeeded in protecting supply management, something the Americans, who saw it as one of their key issues in the deal, said they wanted us to repeal. We also succeeded in this deal by getting new labour and environment chapters that were not in the previous agreement, things that will be of benefit to Canadian workers and the environment. Indeed, with changes made through the demands of Democrats in the U.S. Congress, the enforcement mechanisms for the labour and environmental chapters are better now than they were in the original deal.

As parliamentary secretary for labour, I am very pleased with the labour chapters in NAFTA. The labour standards that are now established in NAFTA are progressive and fully enforceable. They help level the playing field for Canadian workers and businesses; are a major upgrade from those in the original NAFTA because they protect migrant workers and union members; prevent the import of products made by forced labour; require measures to protect workers against discrimination; ensure that laws and policies that protect workers' rights, like those for collective bargaining and freedom of association, are enshrined; give Canadian businesses a chance to grow; and give workers a fair chance to share in the benefits of free trade. That is something.

In addition, for automobiles to be NAFTA-certified, 70% of the parts used in them have to be made in North America, in Canada, the United States or Mexico. In the current NAFTA this obligation is not there. That is a huge deal for parts makers in Canada that contribute to the auto industry, and it includes steel and aluminum. Seventy per cent of the components need to be made in North America.

I understand the concerns that have been expressed about aluminum, but we have to remember that we started with a 0% requirement and are now at 70%. For those parts that are manufactured in Canada and the United States, the anti-dumping measures prevail and, as such, Canadian aluminum producers are doing far better, despite concerns that Mexico may use Chinese aluminum. We do not want that to happen, but that could be happening and is probably happening right now. The deal does not change that issue. It only means that now 70% of the parts need to be made in North America.

While I acknowledge it is true that the deal for steel states that parts need to be poured and melted in North America and it does not for aluminum, that will come into effect seven years from now. We have seven years to see if we can improve stuff on aluminum. However, it still means that the protections for aluminum providers today are better than they were under the previous NAFTA. It is a gain, not a loss.

Another thing that is really important is that now a significant percentage of parts need to be made by workers earning more than $16 an hour. That is a huge deal, because it means that factories in Mexico with low-cost workers will no longer be able to produce the NAFTA-certified parts under this threshold. That means that more jobs will be kept in Canada and the United States and not moved to Mexico. That is an incredible victory in this deal. Canada has established with Mexico a working group to improve labour standards and working conditions. Mexico is going to need to make labour reforms, especially in areas that are crucial for the implementation of the new NAFTA. The Canada-Mexico bilateral labour working group will ensure that Canadian expertise is available to share our best practices and strengthen co-operation with Mexico. It will bring together Canadian and Mexican experts to help implement the new NAFTA's labour protections and standards. Therefore, when we talk about all of the different things that NAFTA could have been, and we look at the U.S. original negotiating position, this new trade agreement could have been very difficult for Canadians. In the end, this panel of people that Canada has put together, from our professional civil service to our government members working on this, to those many others that helped in the process, including many members of the former Conservative government who aided our current government in negotiating NAFTA, all talked about former prime minister Brian Mulroney, who was intricately involved in assisting our government, and the former interim leader of the Conservative Party, Rona Ambrose. This was a team Canada effort, as it should be, because when we create a trade deal that is of so much importance to Canadian jobs, Canadian workers and our Canadian economy, it is primordial.

It is primordial to have a first-rate team of people from all over the country who represent labour, employers, unions, individuals from all different groups, including the government, the opposition and everyone. I think Deputy Prime Minister Freeland and her entire team did an outstanding job.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I want to remind the member that he cannot use the minister's name. He can use the position, but not the name.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker, in closing, what I would say is this. This trade deal, while not perfect in every area, is better even than the previous NAFTA, is an incredible victory given the political context of our times and the current U.S. administration we were negotiating with. I am very proud to vote in favour of this trade deal.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I wish my colleague across the way all the best.

I want to ask him about the negotiating strategy that we followed. The rhetoric during the last presidential election was very much focused on Mexico. The American president, then candidate, was very critical of trade practices by Mexico as part of that rhetoric. Over the course of the discussions after the election, it was interesting to see how that rhetoric shifted from Mexico to Canada. The American administration basically signed on to a deal without Canada and then said, “Take it or leave it.”

The opposition and the public do not know all the things that happened, or what was said or not said behind closed doors. I wonder if the member could reflect on why he thinks that, as a result perhaps of some of the conversations or steps or missteps by the Liberal government, the target shifted from Mexico to Canada in the context of that conversation.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would note that the rhetoric of the current U.S. administration seems to shift from target to target to target with a lot of volatility.

I cannot necessarily speak to the issue of rhetoric. I can say that the Canadian government stood resolutely for the points that Canada said we would make in the current NAFTA, meaning we resisted U.S. demands to remove the dispute resolution mechanism from NAFTA, which the Mexicans had agreed to in the initial deal with the United States. That was reinserted because Canada insisted upon it. The United States wanted us to completely remove our supply management process. We resisted that.

I am proud of the fact that we not only reached a deal but we reached a deal by resolutely standing in defence of Canadian workers across the country.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Madam Speaker, one thing that seems to be missing from this whole conversation, both here in the House of Commons and across the country, is any sort of economic analysis of the impact of this trade agreement. It would seem a very important thing to know before we say yes or no to this or ask for changes. The U.S. Congress made some significant changes. We are being asked just to rubber-stamp it and send it on. One thing we do not have is any kind of economic impact analysis. I wonder if the parliamentary secretary could comment on that.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker, one thing that is incredibly important is that we can all recognize the disastrous impact on Canada of not having a trade agreement with the United States, when literally millions of jobs in Canada depend on that trade agreement. Our officials who provided us with briefings this week made that clear. In this case, the economic benefits to Canada of free trade with the United States and Mexico are abundantly clear.

I very much hope that we will have, and continue to have, more information in that regard provided to Parliament and to committee.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Madam Speaker, I commend my colleague for admitting that the agreement gives greater protections to steel than to aluminum. Since there are solutions that do not necessarily involve changing the agreement but could protect aluminum, does my colleague think that his government should try to find a solution? We could do it now, rather than wait seven years.

What does my colleague think?

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

I listened to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs's answer to the question from the leader of the Bloc Québécois. She told him she was open to any proposals. I know the Deputy Prime Minister, and she is a woman who says what she thinks. I hope we will all work together to improve what we have.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise today and speak to this very important issue for the Canadian economy and Canadian foreign policy. I know it is also important to my constituents.

We are discussing the new NAFTA. It is important to be clear at the outset that I and the Conservative Party are very supportive of free trade. We are the party of free trade, and it is important to review how we got here. Before I do that, I will underline our commitment to the importance of free trade, particularly in North America. My party wants to see that happen and wants to ensure it happens in a way that is in the best interest of Canada.

If we go back a few decades to around the time I was born, some people in the House will remember the free trade election in 1988. It was very much a live issue of whether free trade with the United States was good for Canada. The Liberal Party and the NDP's position was that this would lead to a hollowing out of Canada completely, and that the effect of this was, as John Turner said at the time, to make Canada a colony of the United States.

I am pleased to say that our party, as on many other issues, was on the right side of history and has been able to prevail in that cause. We are now at a point where there may not be a universal consensus, but a much greater consensus, on the importance of free trade.

Even as we hear more verbal acquiescence from Liberal politicians and others to the idea that free trade is good for Canada, it is very clear if we look at the record that, even today, Conservatives have pursued trade relations with other countries with a great deal more enthusiasm and vigour.

During the time of the Stephen Harper government, we moved forward and signed trade deals with countries representing over 60% of the world's GDP, including the trans-Pacific partnership deal and the Canada-E.U. free trade agreement. We were also pursing trade negotiations with a variety of other countries that were a bit smaller, but still very important.

The government's celebrated achievements in the last Parliament around trade were really crossing t's and dotting i's on agreements that were negotiated under Conservatives. We applauded the fact that they did not stop the progress that was happening.

As we can see even today, the vigour with which Conservatives support and pursue free trade deals is much greater. We understand that voluntary exchange between free peoples is the basis for prosperity, here and around the world. In a context where that voluntary exchange is between free peoples, where it benefits Canadian workers as it does, there is no reason for the government to get in the way of people's ability to engage in commerce across international borders.

In front of us, we have a situation dealing with NAFTA. To add context, we had the election of an American president who said he wanted to renegotiate NAFTA. He took some positions that were very far out of step with what Canadians wanted, which would not have been in Canada's interest.

The Liberal government now claims as victories the fact that it did not make all of the concessions that were asked for. It says, “We could have lost this”, and so forth, but we did not lose things we could have lost. Hopefully the negotiation was never saying, “You can have exactly what you want.” It is a certainty, and it is clear in the deal and the outcome we have, that the government took the existing position we had, negotiated with the positions proposed and ended up with something in between, something that still lost ground for Canada in terms of our interest.

The Liberal government has argued, although not explicitly, that it was inevitable. Maybe it is not said directly, but the government says it was a difficult context and, given the context, this was the best that it could do. There were various strategic decisions made at the political level that did not help.

I think the government could have, at the outset, put the emphasis on Canadian jobs and Canadian workers. It could have been clearer earlier in articulating the specific focus of Canada's interest, rather than putting the focus on more symbolic issues.

I think the government could also have avoided being directly unnecessarily antagonistic. I, of course, disagree with policies of other governments from time to time. I am not someone who is shy about expressing that, including in the chamber. However, I think the government could have done a better job in trying to miss those opportunities to goad the other side and to make themselves the issue, instead of making Canadian workers and their opportunities the issue.

We now have this deal in front of us. I think it could have been much better, but on the other hand we have to take it as it is. I will say for the government, that we are negotiating deals in a minority Parliament. We see an example of this happening in other countries around NAFTA, where the system requires the President to engage actively with congressional leaders around the details of the deal.

Right now we have a minority Parliament, where the government did not actually get the most votes in the last election. They got about a third of the votes. They got fewer votes than the Conservative Party did. The responsible way to negotiate deals, to pursue these kinds of things in the context of a minority Parliament, is to have opposition shadow ministers and members directly involved all the way along and given the opportunity to be actively there, proposing ideas, rather than the government just saying that they are going to be briefed after the fact.

As it happens, Conservative members were very involved in advancing the national interest. They were spending time in the United States advancing the relationship, defending Canadian-American trade and talking about the importance of these things. However, we are still not being briefed and engaged in those conversations in a way, and to the degree, that would be considered automatic in the vast majority of democratic legislatures around the world.

I would ask the government to work to do better on that. If it wants to ensure the success of these kinds of agreements in a minority Parliament, it needs to understand that the opposition has a responsibility to scrutinize them in the national interest and in particular in the interest of Canadian workers.

In the context of trade, we need to reflect on our national competitiveness. In an environment where we are trading internationally, we inevitably have to consider the competitiveness of our economy in relation to other countries. That is one of the reasons I think the Teck mine project in Alberta is very important.

We need to ensure economic development. We need to ensure that Alberta is able to develop its natural resource sector. The Teck Resources Limited project, a $20.7-billion project, could be producing 260,000 barrels of crude oil per day. This would be very good for the Canadian economy. This would be very good for our competitiveness. This would be very good for jobs and opportunity in Alberta.

I want to clearly express my strong support for this project, but we have mixed messages and dithering on this from the government. We had the environment minister saying the cabinet could make a decision to improve it, reject it or delay it. Indeed, the Liberals have implied that they might make that decision contingent on certain policy actions at other levels of government.

The reality is that this project has already been through a rigorous assessment. It is a project that is good for the Canadian economy, and I think is consistent with our environmental commitments, insofar as the world will continue to use oil and we should create incentives for the development of new technologies to improve our environmental performance. In that context, and recognizing strong support for this project from indigenous communities, I hope the government supports it.

This is one of many examples of issues that are important for our national economy and for ensuring our competitiveness, and I hope the government will take my support for the project, and that of other members and certainly of the whole Conservative caucus, into consideration as it moves forward.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his well-delivered, well-thought-out speech, and I agree with him on practically 95% of it. However, in a minority Parliament, God forbid that I dwell on the 5%, so let us take a look at the 95% that I agree with.

I have been involved with the Canada-Europe Parliamentary Association and have been through the CETA negotiations with the EU, and one of the most contentious items I have dealt with over the years was dispute settlement. Let us be honest: A country of our size can punch way above its weight when it comes to international agreements on free trade and many other multilateral agreements.

I want to get the member's comments on the importance of having a dispute settlement mechanism in this agreement, as well as in CETA, in order for us as a small nation to go one step above.