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 Agreement Implementation Act

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is always good to stand in the House and stand up for my riding of Cariboo—Prince George. However, it will not surprise my hon. colleague across the way that I am going to stand up for all the forestry workers and the hard-working forestry families from the province of British Columbia. Over 140,000 jobs, either directly or indirectly, are tied to forestry, and 140 communities are forestry-dependent.

In the last year, we have lost 10,000 jobs, yet there was not one mention of forestry in the Speech from the Throne, and forestry could not have been thrown in or a new softwood lumber agreement could not have been thrown into the CUSMA. My simple question is why.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Madam Speaker, I feel for those forestry workers, for their families. They have been unjustly and unfairly hurt by what is happening with this dispute when it comes to softwood lumber. It has gone before the courts many a time, five times, and Canada has won every single time.

[An hon. member]

Seven times.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

I hear “seven times”, Madam Speaker.

We will win again. We are with our forestry workers, and we will support them through this.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

There will be three minutes and 35 seconds for questions and comments on the member's speech after question period.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-4, An Act to implement the Agreement between Canada, the United States of America and the United Mexican States, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Chris d'Entremont, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to stand to talk about the new NAFTA and speak on behalf of the concerns of the good residents of West Nova, and by extension Nova Scotia generally.

It could be my Maritime sense of humour, but we keep calling it CUSMA, or the Canadian-U.S.-Mexico agreement. Quite honestly, “NAFTA” meant that the North American population was benefiting, but we know now from the things we have been seeing and hearing that Canada is not necessarily benefiting from many of these concessions.

Maybe we should change the name to the organization or country that is making the most out of this. Then it would be the USMCA, because it seems that the Americans ran the gamut here and won all the concessions they needed. Let us just call it the new NAFTA in the hope that North Americans are benefiting from this new Liberal trade agreement.

This debate has been going on for a long time and as an agreement such as this one is very complicated, our partners have their own outcomes, making negotiations challenging.

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

I will interrupt the hon. member for a moment. I want to remind hon. members that eating in the chamber is not permitted. I can see a few people chewing and eating something. I just want to point that out and make sure that we are all aware of that. I am sure the member who is eating will move out of the chamber or stop.

The hon. member for West Nova.

[Chris d'Entremont, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, for that intervention. These are all learning experiences for us, especially for those of us who are new to Parliament.

As I said, it makes our outcome for negotiating challenging. We find ourselves in the last two weeks toward final ratification of this agreement. Mexico did all its work ahead of time and the U.S. spent a number of weeks ratifying its side of the agreement. Here we are on February 3 and we find ourselves trying to ratify the Liberals' agreement as brought forward. It is only through this process that the Liberal government has realized that it is a minority government and it needs the opposition to support and pass the bill.

I was asked several questions about the new NAFTA during the election, as many of us were. Most of them revolved around the dairy industry or supply-managed commodities and I will get to that in a few moments, but first I would like to underline some statistics about Nova Scotia's exports to the United States. The numbers I have are from 2015, 2017 and 2018.

In 2015, the United States was the destination for 69.39% of Nova Scotia's international goods exports. The U.S. by far is Nova Scotia's number one trading partner. Europe, at about 10%, and other countries, at about 20%, received the balance of Nova Scotia's exports in 2015.

Four U.S. regions received about 85% of Nova Scotia's U.S. trade in goods in 2015. About 37% was sent to New England, as one would expect, on the eastern side of the country. About 24% went to the southeast region, 15% to the Great Lakes region and about 8% to the mid-east region. The remaining 14.77% was distributed among other regions in the U.S.

In 2015, rubber or tires from Michelin and fish products added up to about 55% of the total exports for Nova Scotia. They were the main domestic exports to the United States. Another 17% of exports to the U.S. were paper, mineral fuels and plastics. The remaining 28% consisted of other miscellaneous goods.

In 2018, fish products accounted for 24%, or $883.5 million, of total exports from Nova Scotia to the U.S. Crustaceans, lobsters, crabs and others, represented about 69%, or $605 million, of this product group.

Nova Scotia's exports continue to diversify by destination, with declining exports to the U.S. They were down about 0.6% when comparing January and February 2018 with January and February 2017. Exports to other destinations rose and were up about 31%. This is also the case for many other provinces in Canada. Exports from New Brunswick, Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, where growth in exports to the U.S. outpaced growth to other destinations, grew more concentrated in the U.S.

Nova Scotia's exports to the U.S. were down by about $3.4 million as declining values for energy, forestry, electronics, motor vehicles and parts, aircraft and other transportation equipment and consumer goods more than offset the gains in farm, fishing, intermediate food, metal ores, metal, mineral products, chemicals, plastics, rubber and machinery equipment.

As an aside in this discussion, the coronavirus is creating tremendous challenges for our exporters. China is Nova Scotia's second-largest export destination. Comparing January and February 2018 with the same months in 2017, Nova Scotia's exports grew by about $36 million, mostly on gains in forest products and consumer goods.

To say that U.S. trade is important to us is truly an understatement and the trade deal that supports it is paramount.

I spend a lot of time talking about the fishing industry in the riding of West Nova which, as we can see, exports almost all its products outside the country, so I thought I would spend the remaining time talking about the agricultural industry. It may not export quite as much, but it was affected quite substantially by the changes in protections pertaining to supply-managed commodities. It seems that every time Canada negotiates a free trade agreement, those commodities take a hit.

A few years ago, in 2005, when I was a provincial minister of agriculture, I attended the WTO negotiations in Hong Kong. At that time there was a protracted discussion on Canada's continued support of supply-managed commodities, pressure from the European Union and the U.S. The Liberal government of the day was ready to allow access to other countries at that time.

It was not until the provincial ministers, Liberal, Conservative and NDP, came together, supported by the national commodity associations, that the negotiating team finally took it off the table. Since that time, and before that time, I have been a supporter of our commodities. Now that I represent the largest agricultural area in Nova Scotia, that support has become even stronger.

Nova Scotia's agricultural community is small compared to those in other provinces, but the backbone is dairy and poultry. Without those, the other commodities would have trouble existing. That is why any loss of market affects Nova Scotia more than others. A 3.6% loss of the dairy market truly affects the small farms in Nova Scotia, which is why the adjustment payments are important to allow better cash flow due to these market changes.

I am a big believer in grassroots government. We must listen to those in our community. I therefore want to underline what we have heard from others.

The Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, or CAFTA, stated:

CAFTA welcomes the announcement that negotiations have concluded on updating the CUSMA.

We look forward to receiving confirmation that the changes don’t negatively impact our members.

Since the initial negotiations concluded well over a year ago, the prolonged discussions required to secure support in the U.S. Congress have undermined business certainty.

CAFTA is waiting for answers on what the final decision is going to be.

Pierre Lampron, president of Dairy Farmers of Canada said that in a parliamentary system, “all bills, including those aimed at ratifying international agreements, are subject to a legislative process designed to improve them, and it’s important not only for the dairy sector, but also for aluminum workers, that this agreement be put through that process.”

I hope that everybody has the opportunity to talk to the dairy farmers who will be coming to Parliament Hill over the next number of days.

The North American free trade agreement is extremely important to producers in my riding, but not any old deal will do. We need one that benefits our industries and which does not take one area of the country for granted, as we are looking at with the aluminum issue. The government must prove to us, and better yet, prove to Canadians, that it is getting it right. That is in the court of the government today.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I know that the dairy farmers are in Ottawa this week. I am hoping to meet with some tomorrow morning. I am sure many of my colleagues on all sides of the House will be engaged with the dairy farmers in the coming days.

Having said that, whether it is this trade agreement or previous ones, one of the issues has always been supply management. Our negotiators on the Canadian side, along with politicians on all sides of the House, and perhaps some more so than others, have always had a strong sense of compassion and emotion in ensuring we maintain supply management. The dairy sector is probably one of the best examples as to why it is important we do just that.

In the Liberal caucus, there is very strong support for supply management and there always has been. Perhaps my colleague could provide his personal perspective, and possibly even the perspective of his caucus, on supply management.

[Chris d'Entremont, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Madam Speaker, we have heard the continued support for supply-managed commodities on a number of occasions when different members have spoken of the new NAFTA. We talk a lot about dairy because that is the one area that seems to be hit the most, but we also heard about chickens and other poultry coming across our border. We will continue to be supporters of free trade, but at the same time, we understand the challenges we have in our supply-managed commodities.

As I said, in Nova Scotia, without dairy, without the monies that come in because of that protection, if we want to call it that, they are the ones who have the money for tractors and new equipment, which falls into support for the rest of that industry.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to draw my hon. colleague's attention to one particular section in the agreement that places threshold limits on dairy exports, notably milk protein powders and infant formula. This agreement would establish export thresholds whereby if Canada goes beyond them, we have agreed to slap on punitive tariffs, basically pricing ourselves out of the market. I would like to know what the United States got in return for our agreeing to this.

Does my hon. colleague know of any other example around the world where a country has so ceded its sovereignty over its ability to determine where it wants to sell its exports? Just what kind of economic damage might this mean for our important dairy producers across the country going into the future?

[Chris d'Entremont, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. I had to cut my speech a bit short, but one thing we have been wondering is what the government got in exchange for forfeiting our sovereignty over our exports of milk protein concentrate, skim milk powder and infant formula.

Even within our caucus, we have the same questions as the member just asked, namely what the government offered up in exchange and how it is going to fix this situation.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, the member has spoken about what would happen with the supply management system with this accord. We know there have been some compromises made by the government in order to get this on the table. The issue was not just the fact that this was there, but in the shadow of the agreement that preceded it, the trans-Pacific partnership, some room was ceded by the supply-managed industries to foreign powers. No expectations seemed to arise when the government met with the other parties to the NAFTA that this would also have to be offered to our strongest trading partners.

Would the member like to comment on the lack of preparation and the lack of reality which the government entered into these negotiations with, as opposed to our previous trade agreements when we actually walked in from positions of strength so we were able to negotiate give and take with our trading partners? I look forward to that answer.

[Chris d'Entremont, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Madam Speaker, it has seemed that all through the process we have not been a part of it, until this point when we as an opposition are actually part of this discussion. We were dragged into this discussion. Mexico seemed to be able to do more than we did in negotiation. We actually seemed to be put aside during part of this discussion, which created a tremendous challenge for us. This would have been better if we had been at the table the whole time.