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.

Speaker's Ruling

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Public Service Renewal) and to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak to this very important bill, Bill C-4, an act to implement the new North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, formally known as the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement. This agreement is extremely important to Canada, Canadian businesses and workers, and I can say, as a representative of a Mississauga riding, that the bill, this agreement, is very important for my constituents and the businesses in Mississauga.

Our government has embarked on a very aggressive trade agenda because trade is extremely important to Canadian businesses and workers. Members will be interested to know that one out of six jobs in Canada depends on trade. It is because our country produces some of the best products and services in the world, and the world needs more Canadian products and services. We know that with our agenda to grow and support the middle class and create more jobs for the middle class, we need to encourage Canadian businesses to trade, export and import more.

Our government maintained an aggressive trade agenda, and over the last few years we have signed and ratified CETA, a free trade agreement with the European Union, and the CPTPP, a free trade agreement with Asia-Pacific nations. Today, Canada is the only G7 country that has a free trade agreement with all other G7 nations. This is a competitive advantage that our friends and competitors in the United States do not have. We have a great environment in Canada for businesses and workers to export our products and services around the world.

Over the last few years, after the U.S. election, President Trump has campaigned on the issue of revamping and reviewing NAFTA. Our government took that very seriously and engaged with the U.S. administration to make sure that we protect Canadian interests, particularly the interests of Canadian workers and businesses. Access to the United States market is extremely important for businesses. Every day, almost $2 billion of products and services cross the border into the United States, so we know how important maintaining access to U.S. customers and businesses is for our businesses and workers.

At a time of increased protectionism, when, as we all know, the U.S. administration was adamant about increasing protectionism and building barriers, it was very important for our government to protect the interests of Canadian businesses and workers. What did we do? We assembled a strong team of industry, labour and stakeholders, a team that transcended partisan lines, with representatives from different parties and groups, to make sure that a complete voice for Canadian businesses was at the table as we were negotiating and protecting Canadian interests.

Canadians will recall the process that we engaged in over the last few years. It was at times very difficult, as most trade negotiations are, and there were moments of challenges and difficulties. In assembling a great team, engaging the provinces, premiers, stakeholders, legislators in the House of Commons and senators, we took an excellent team Canada approach as we embarked on this negotiation process with the United States, led by the Deputy Prime Minister, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and other ministers. We made sure that Canada's voice was strong and firm at the table, as we were very interested in maintaining access to Canadian businesses, markets and workers.

There were some challenges. As members may recall, there was a period when the U.S. administration imposed steel and aluminum tariffs on Canadian businesses. We were very firm and clear in our opposition to those tariffs. We fought very hard for businesses and workers to have those tariffs lifted. There was a regrettable time when some opposition voices were asking us to lift the countervailing duties that we had imposed on American products, but we knew it was the right thing for Canada. It was the right thing for Canadian interests.

The outcome of the negotiations was very good for Canada. We ensured that 99.9% of Canadian businesses, products and services maintained tariff-free access to U.S. markets. It was really important for business certainty, for business continuity and for workers to know that this access would be maintained.

For the automotive sector, we have increased the rules of origin to 75%, and that is good news for Canadian workers and businesses. We all know how important the auto sector is to the Canadian economy. It is very important for businesses in my riding of Mississauga Centre.

We have also preserved the state-to-state dispute resolution mechanism. That was something the U.S. administration was intent on removing, but we knew it was really important to continue to have an independent adjudicator for the dispute resolution mechanism, and we were able to preserve it.

We were also able to preserve the integrity of our supply management system. Again, the U.S. administration came to the table intent on completely dismantling our supply management system. However, we stood our ground. We stood firm behind our farmers and producers, and we protected the integrity of our supply management system.

We also preserved the cultural exemption that existed in NAFTA. That was very important for our cultural industries. Canada, compared to the United States, is a relatively small market, but we have our own unique identity. We have the unique identity of bilingualism and multiculturalism. We were able to protect an inclusion for our cultural industries, so that we could maintain our policies to nurture and support Canadian culture here at home.

We created provisions or chapters for rules of labour, for the environment and for making sure that we maintained our policies for reconciliation with indigenous peoples. We wanted to make sure that we retained sovereignty over our policies as we were embarking on this journey of reconciliation with our indigenous peoples.

The agreement preserved important access to the United States and Mexican markets. Today, businesses are seeing a lot of uncertainty, especially during this difficult time of dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak around the world. It is very important for businesses that are investing in Canada, and for businesses that rely on access to the United States, that they know that access to the U.S. market is preserved and supported, and is there for the long term.

It is really important to thank all the stakeholders who were involved throughout this difficult and long journey to reach this agreement with our friends, the United States and Mexico.

It was important to have their voices at the table. It was important to have their insight at the table and our government made sure that we took their input into account.

I want to take a moment to thank our colleagues in the House, the Conservatives, the Bloc and the NDP, for offering support to help us ratify the bill in front of us today. It is a sign for all of Canada that we can set aside partisanship when we know that we are working on something that is in the interests of all Canadians and Canadian businesses. Even at a time when people are saying minority parliaments may be more difficult to work in, this is a great moment for all of Canada to see that we are able to set aside partisanship interests because we know what is in the interests of Canadians is in the interests of all parties in the House.

I am grateful to the Standing Committee on International Trade for doing its job in studying the bill. I know the members worked tirelessly around the clock to make sure that voices who wanted to offer their opinion on the bill were able to testify at committee. Experts were able to come and present their testimony before the committee. Members of the House who sat across from each other at the committee were able to work collaboratively and pass the bill at second reading and send it back to the House of Commons.

This is a moment for us to acknowledge that we are able to work together for the benefit of all Canadians. I look forward to our colleagues in the Senate studying the bill in an expedited fashion. I know they understand the importance of the bill. We know that our friends in the United States and Mexico have already ratified the agreement, so Canada is on its way to finalize the ratification process.

Businesses know that it is very important for them. It is very important to note that businesses are breathing a sigh of relief today when they see the House of Commons about to ratify this NAFTA and they are comforted by the fact that there are so many upgrades to this agreement that benefit them.

I talked about the protection for labour standards, environment, indigenous policies and cultural exemptions, and about increasing the rules of origin for our products. I also want to take a moment to recognize how we were able to deal with the steel and aluminum tariffs that were imposed on Canadian products by the United States.

We were able to stand firm. Today not only have we been able to lift those tariffs, but now we have a side letter with our friends in the United States that ensures that, if at any point in the future the United States decided to impose tariffs under the guise of national security, we were able to get Canadian businesses an exemption from those tariffs. Those exemptions are at a greater level than the levels of our current production and current exports to the United States. Not only were we able to lift those tariffs, but we were able to get guarantees and exemptions from the United States that if at any point in the future, for some reason or another the United States decided to impose those tariffs again, Canadian products and services from steel and aluminum will be exempted.

When we tabled Bill C-4, I know our friends in the NDP and the Bloc had some questions about the bill. I am happy to talk about the process of our discussions that took place, ensuring that we listened to their concerns and we found a way to address their questions so we could reach consensus on the bill.

Let me take a moment to thank my colleagues in the NDP. We were able to reach an agreement that, with future trade agreements, we will declare our intentions and objectives of those negotiations here in the House of Commons where all MPs and Canadians will see up front what the objectives of those negotiations are.

In discussions with the Bloc, we were able to come to an agreement that on behalf of Canadian workers and producers of steel and aluminum, Canada will work with our friends in the U.S. and Mexico to encourage them to implement some monitoring measures the way we have in Canada on the production of steel and aluminum.

This is a great example of how our government is able to work with the other parties in the House to respond to their needs and address their legitimate questions.

I know the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and entire government are all looking forward to ratifying this important legislation. It will mean stability and increased exports for our businesses and workers. It will mean increased and growing prosperity for the middle class. It will mean growing jobs for the middle class in Canada. I am grateful to my colleagues in the House of Commons for supporting us and I am looking forward to the debate.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member opposite has again used the term “non-partisan” on quite a few points. I do not think anyone in this room would consider it partisan to point out that all members of Parliament who are not part of the executive or cabinet have a duty to hold the government to account for its conduct, particularly when it comes to these free trade deals.

The member talked about how Canada had a team Canada approach when it came to working together. Very early on, the government decided it would work with Mexico and take a team approach against the challenges that the Americans, particularly the President, had launched. The President had been very clear that most of the issues in this NAFTA negotiation had to do with Mexico. They did not have to do with Canada. However, near the end of the negotiation, the Mexican government did a bilateral where clearly trilateral issues were discussed and Canada was left out in the cold. The team Canada approach was left out in the cold.

Does this member believe that the government let the country down when it came to this approach at that critical juncture? It was critical for this country.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague. I totally understand the important role that the opposition plays in asking tough questions in the House of Commons. I do disagree with him though about his party's advice to our government throughout the negotiation. I do not agree with him that Canadian businesses and workers were left out. In fact, everybody who has been observing this process can say today that our government took the best approach for protecting Canadian interests and for protecting Canadian businesses and workers.

The Conservative Party wanted us to surrender early on and not respond to the tariffs that were imposed on Canadian businesses by the U.S. administration. We did the right thing. We stood up for Canadian interests.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, I clearly understand my colleague's message that there was good co-operation on this file, particularly when it comes to aluminum. I want to thank all of the members opposite who spoke for their open-mindedness.

Something stood out to me in what you said. You said that, in the future—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

The member must address the Chair and not the government directly.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, something stood out to me in my colleague's speech. He said that, when this type of negotiation happens in the future, the government would declare its intentions ahead of time.

I would simply like to say that the trend in the most recent trade negotiations was to protect Ontario's auto industry and Alberta's oil industry; such is the Canadian way. Quebec's interests were not necessarily taken into consideration.

The question I would like to ask my colleague is this: Should we not try to come up with a mechanism so that Quebec has a stronger voice in trade negotiations?

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to assure my colleague that Quebec's voice is and has been very important throughout this negotiation process. This means not only our colleagues, the Liberal members of Parliament and other members from Quebec in the House, but also the businesses and stakeholders who represent and work in Quebec. They were at the table throughout this process.

We have always declared our intentions as we embarked on negotiations for a free trade agreement. This agreement we reached with the NDP formalized a way for us to table it in the House of Commons, but we have always declared our interests. I want to remind my colleague that Canadian and Quebec interests were preserved in this negotiation, whether related to supply management, automotive, aerospace or agriculture. I know many Quebec producers, farmers, manufacturers and workers are relieved that we are about to ratify this bill.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Madam Speaker, I certainly want to thank the Democrats in the United States for standing up for Canada and ensuring we got some better deals than the Liberals were willing to sign off on. We got rid of the investor-state provisions and we support that.

What the member did not talk about was chapter 19 and the fact that the government has traded away our right to data sovereignty. When I spoke with U.K. colleagues in Washington recently, they were really disturbed that we no longer have the right to protect our data sovereignty, that we have lost the right to put in privacy provisions that the EU is moving toward and that we do not have the power to tax the Google, Facebook and Amazon giants. Certainly, their lobbyists are dancing and popping the champagne.

I am really concerned about the safe harbour provisions, which do not allow Canada to hold YouTube or Facebook to account for the drive of extremist content that is happening through their algorithms on their sites. We do not have the power to take them on. I would ask my hon. colleague why Canada has dropped the ball so clearly on the issue of data rights and the rights of our citizens in the digital realm.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to start off by saying I completely disagree with my colleague's characterization. I feel everything he said is inaccurate, but I know he believes what he is saying. His interpretation of the agreement is what he thinks he is saying, but I am here to tell the House and all Canadians that his interpretation is inaccurate.

I am happy to work with him. I will say this. Stay tuned. We are working in Canada, in the House and within our government, on finding rules to hold Internet giants responsible for their content and the privacy concerns of Canadians. This is an important subject. I can assure members we are on top of it.

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, in general, the Green Party supports this new agreement.

However, I received an email from the National Farmers Union related to a press release it put out saying the amendments to the Canada Grain Act go beyond what is required for CUSMA, so there are a couple of changes in this legislation that are not required by CUSMA that are detrimental to Canadian farmers.

If Standing Order 76 had not been changed at the committee level with a motion, I would be able to put forward an amendment right now to change the legislation, but I am not able to do that. Unfortunately, farmers, grain farmers in particular, are upset about part of this agreement. I am wondering what we can do in order to deal with their concerns.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his question. I also want to thank him and his party for their support in ratifying NAFTA.

This issue has been studied at length in committee. It has been considered by our government. Grain farmers and producers are well served with this agreement. In fact, they are relieved we have reached this agreement. We will always protect the interests of Canadian farmers and producers.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Madam Speaker, I was surprised by the amount of talk about the wins the Liberals had, but there was no mention of gender equality issues. Before negotiations even started, the Prime Minister talked a lot about how he was going to ensure a lot of gender issues were tackled and somehow it does not seem that happened. I am shocked the member did not even mention one word about it in his speech. I wonder if he can mention why that is the case.

[Omar Alghabra, Liberal, Mississauga Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague is right. I neglected to mention it not because it is less important, but because there is limited time to talk about those issues.

She is right. There is a chapter in the agreement that encourages and facilitates working between our countries and making sure that we promote gender equality and promote women entrepreneurs. This is something to celebrate and to be proud of.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Madam Speaker, I seek unanimous consent of the House to split my time with the member for Chatham-Kent—Leamington.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Does the hon. member have unanimous consent to split his time?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Madam Speaker, it will be that member's maiden speech so I think we are going to hear a really good speech from him today. I cannot think of a better topic for him to speak to, because trade is an important issue to the people in his riding. I look forward to hearing his comments. I am sure they will be wise and worth listening to, unlike some of the other comments we have heard here today. No offence intended.

We are getting through Bill C-4. There is no question about that. We kept our word. We said we would not hold this up. We said that we would do everything we could to properly see this go through the committee stage, which we did. We heard some 200 submissions from people who wanted to appear before the committee.

Even though the Liberals shortened the time, with agreement from the NDP, and made it tough to hear from all of those witnesses, we managed to get through the bulk of them by having extended sittings. I want to thank all members of the committee for sharing their time in the evenings and the staff who were involved so that we could listen to these people. They had serious concerns, and I want to talk about some of those today and get them on the record.

I will start off with dairy. During the TPP negotiations, we were going to give roughly 3.5% market access for dairy to the U.S. and all of the other countries involved in the TPP. When the Liberals pulled us out of the TPP and held us back for a year and a half, and Obama lost the ability to move it forward in the U.S., TPP was going to be the replacement. By the Liberals not moving forward here in Canada, and not creating a window for Obama to move forward in the U.S., we lost that window of opportunity for a period of time, thus a new election in the U.S.

We did the TPP. We still gave up 3.5%, and now we had to negotiate a new NAFTA deal with the U.S. What did we do? We gave up another 3.5%. Dairy producers have been hit twice, which they feel is unfair, and I can understand where they are coming from.

What makes it even more disturbing is what else the Liberals gave up. They gave up their ability to market things like powdered milk around the world, things that we have a surplus of here in Canada. When they were being consulted through the negotiations, they told us in committee that they were under the impression that it would be limited to North America. The text of the agreement indicates that it is global.

Why would the Liberals let another country determine the amount of exports a sector is able to do? That is what the Liberals agreed to in this agreement. The dairy sector has some serious concerns and complaints about that, and this is something the minister will have to address.

Aluminum and the 70% rule are another issue with respect to this agreement. There is still a lot of concern in the aluminum sector in Quebec about why that was different from the steel industry. Why was the aluminum industry not given the same considerations as steel? If we wanted to have North American content, it should have been that way.

What is concerning here is that there could possibly be a back door through Mexico for a pile of cheap aluminum to be dumped into the North American market based on how that country goes through the process of identification. I understand our officials have said they are going to monitor it, along with the U.S., to make sure that does not happen, but the same thing could have simply been done for aluminum as was done for steel. We would have been fine.

Another opportunity that the Liberals missed out on, and which the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord brought up in one of our meetings with Steve Verheul, our trade negotiator, is the fact that green aluminum is produced in Quebec and in other parts of Canada. It is all based on hydro power. The facility in British Columbia is based on hydro. The facilities in Chicoutimi are based on hydro. Canada probably produces the most environmentally friendly aluminum in the world.

Why would that not be put into the agreement? Why would we not say that if we want to have green vehicles, environmentally friendly vehicles, let us use environmentally friendly products like Canadian aluminum?

There were opportunities to say that was the way the implementation should be, so that we were not renegotiating the deal. Instead, all three countries said they wanted to do more for the environment and this was one way, so let us put it in our implementation act that we do just that. There was an opportunity there again, an opportunity we would not have known about unless we did some due diligence in committee.

Government procurement is very disturbing. The Liberals did not even touch on it in this new agreement. They said they would leave it up to the WTO. Then we found out the U.S. was talking about pulling out of the WTO government procurement program. We have no protection with respect to government procurement. We have no provisions to fight off buy America. We have nothing in place.

I would strongly encourage the government to go back to the table on this part, especially if we see the U.S. pull out of the WTO agreement. It should get a deal on procurement and deal with buy America, because the Liberals did not do that in this agreement.

Then there is the auto sector. We feel that Canada's auto sector is going to be hit by a decline of almost $1.5 billion when we look at the impact of the changes in the auto rules.

I understand that the U.S. was very tough on these negotiations. There are some wins in it for our guys here in Canada, there are some wins in the U.S. and some concessions made out of Mexico on that. When it comes down to the auto part of the deal, that was actually done in Mexico between the U.S. and Mexico and we took what was left. We did not have a lot of input into the auto part of this deal.

I have some concerns about longevity when it comes to the competitiveness of our auto sector. With these new rules, we are going to have more expensive cars and they are going to be more expensive in the global marketplace. We did nothing to improve the competitiveness of the auto sector within the three countries, which is a really huge missed opportunity.

We also need to talk a little bit about de minimis rates. I know the U.S. wanted us to go up to a higher number. We kept it at a lower number, which is good, but then they put in a strange amendment. They left Canada Post out as being one of the carriers. Looking at it, all of the commercial carriers can handle any packages across the border and get the new de minimis rate, except for Canada Post.

I live in rural Canada. Canada Post delivers my parcels. Why would we have a deal leaving out Canada Post? It is a Crown corporation, and parcel delivery is probably the most lucrative part of Canada Post. Again, this is an area that I think the government needs to look at and fix, because it does not make a lot of sense.

We tried all along to see this piece of legislation go forward. We knew the importance of the deal. We did not like it. We knew it stunk, but I want to get it on the record that we were being progressive and trying to be proactive in moving this forward. This goes back to before the election.

Before the election, we made a motion at the standing committee, once the original deal was signed, to do a pre-study. There were concerns at the time that we would not have the U.S. moving at the same speed as us and we would be ahead of them. Mexico was actually moving very fast. We said that we should have all the pre-studies done and then we would just have to deal with it in the House. The Liberals declined. In December 2019, we offered to come back early and deal with this. The Liberals declined.

It was not until the end of January that the Liberals actually brought it into the House and we managed to work with the other opposition parties and everybody here. Instead of taking the normal 16 days, we did it in six days. At committee, all we wanted was to do thorough research, so we were willing to get it done in the last week of sitting. That last Thursday we put forward a unanimous consent motion, which the Liberals declined, to start this process basically two weeks ago. The member across the way said no. I want to make sure that everybody understands in the House that we have never been the ones holding this up, but we did say that we wanted to have a good thorough look at it.

One of the things that happened at committee, which I think committee members and all members of the House should be very concerned about, is that 20 minutes before our last meeting the Liberals dropped off their economic analysis. They gave us not even an evening, not even an hour to go through it, only 20 minutes. We quickly went through it and started looking at the announcements and the benchmarks, which were compared to nothing. Instead of taking this agreement and comparing it with what we have today, which is what was done on TPP and other trade agreements, it was compared to nothing.

It was a horrible assessment. It was just unusable to help us talk to people who were going to be negatively impacted to find a way forward. It was just incredible.

When C.D. Howe did its assessment, it found this deal is going to cost our economy $14 billion a year. For the Liberals to say this is a win-win-win, no it is not. It is plug our noses and be thankful we got something, because something is better than nothing.

As I sum this up, there is more that I could probably talk about with regard to the committee, but I want to thank all the companies that came forward and all the individuals who gave evidence.

I want to challenge the government because you got a lot of really good information. Do something with that information, mitigate the losses and make sure they are not left out, because it is your responsibility to come up with a game plan. We would be glad to help.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member knows fairly well that he is not to direct the questions directly to the government. He has been in the House long enough. I am sure that he was not directing those directly to me, but he should be going through the Speaker to raise those issues.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Humber River—Black Creek.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, Humber River—Black Creek, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize the fabulous work that the vice-chair did at the international trade committee. He was very helpful making the points that were necessary and with getting it through committee and back to the House now. We heard him mention the number of jobs that he was concerned about, as we all are. I guess there were some things we were not necessarily crazy about, but it was a question of other areas that had some improvements.

Can the hon. member elaborate a bit on some of those areas that are actually improvements with Bill C-4?

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Madam Speaker, I also want to congratulate the chair of the committee. She did an excellent job, and all the committee members did a very respectful job in moving this forward and getting it out of committee as quickly as possible to get it here today. I look forward to the House doing the exact same thing. There is no reason to delay this in the House. It can get into the Senate and move forward so that Canadian companies can have bankability and stability.

I think bankability and stability are the big things we gained out of this agreement. Companies are sitting there saying that they cannot live without any agreement and that they need something. They need to know what the rules are. Even if they are not great rules, at least they know what the rules are so they can play by them.

That is one thing this agreement does: It sets the rules out. As well, maybe it sets the stage for some improvements down the road. We have some work to do to make this a better deal and make sure Canadian companies are more competitive, but we can deal with that going forward.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his work on the trade committee. He has been very liberal in his praise for all the members working so hard. It is nice to see, because people back home expect us to do these things, although this member is one of our most conservative members.

What I would like to ask is specifically about intellectual property. Free trade agreements are changing. They are no longer just tariff access agreements by which we are getting rid of tariffs. In this one, we would actually be changing copyright. We would be extending it from 50 years after the death of an author to 70, matching the American rules.

There has been a lot of research showing that pushing these things back benefits only large corporations. At the same time, we would see less innovation and fewer things going into the public domain. We know that the Disney corporation has been very hawkish in this area to extend the life of their copyright for Micky Mouse, etc.

These changes would harm Canada's interests. Does the member think we need to compensate through changes and modernization of the Copyright Act to allow for more innovation in that space?

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Madam Speaker, we have actually heard some conflicting testimony on this issue. We have heard some people saying that they want to see it moved up faster and we heard some people saying this is going to have a negative impact on how they go about doing their business. I think we have to do a proper balance. I do not think we have a lot of choice in this scenario in reality.

That said, when we look at the cultural exemptions, digital privacy and things like the safe harbour, as our colleague from the NDP talked about before, we see that the inability to hold companies like Facebook and Google and Instagram accountable for their content is a problem. We need to figure out how to solve that problem, because they have to be accountable for what they post or what is posted on their sites. For those companies to have no accountability is not acceptable to Canadians.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, one major problem with the agreement was the fact that it did not treat aluminum the same as steel. Speaking to a local radio station, my colleague from Chicoutimi—Le Fjord said he did not think aluminum would ever get the same treatment as steel, but thanks to our negotiations with the government, we achieved that.

I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on what his friend from Chicoutimi—Le Fjord said.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Madam Speaker, I did go to Chicoutimi—Le Fjord and I talked to both the primary and secondary producers of aluminum. They gave us some great suggestions on how to move forward to mitigate some of the concerns they had with this agreement.

The member there has some great ideas, which we have shared with the government, and I think there are some good ideas moving forward.

That is the thing, though. That is the difference between Conservative and Bloc members. We are looking for solutions to make Canada a greater country, and that includes Quebec. The member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord was doing just that, and he did an honourable job.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Madam Speaker, as this is my maiden speech, I would respectfully ask for the traditional maiden speech consideration to acknowledge those who have helped create this opportunity to address the House today.

As a colleague stated several weeks ago, cats have nine lives, but members of Parliament who do not acknowledge their families and forget them have only one, so I want to begin by thanking my wife, Charlene, for her support as we began going down this road several years ago. Charlene is a relatively quiet, private individual, so when she joined me knocking on doors in an unfamiliar part of our riding on our 34th wedding anniversary, I knew I had her full backing. I am thankful for Charlene's love and support.

We are blessed with four daughters, aged 23 to 30, who are presently scattered across Canada, and I also enjoy their support. Kiana is pursuing her master's degree in economics at Waterloo; Brenna is articling for the Bar in Vancouver; Carina is a registered nurse working in long-term care, pursuing her master's degree in gerontology and living in Kamloops, B.C., with her husband Adam, and this June will give us our first grandchild; lastly, our oldest daughter, Alyssa, lives closest to us near Leamington and continues to pursue her dream career as an operatic lyric soprano while teaching music.

I am very proud of my four daughters and I will continue to work to ensure that their lives have no glass ceilings above them.

I am fortunate that my parents, Abe and Susan Epp, who are in the mid to late 80s, were able to join us here in Ottawa in November as I accepted the responsibilities of this office. I thank them for a lifetime of love and support.

I also want to thank my brother Peter and his family. They are the business partners of Lycoland Farms, a family farm business founded by my grandfather, who purchased the home farm in 1949. I have the privilege of being the third generation living on that property today, with my brother and his son providing the day-to-day leadership in that business. We pride ourselves on maintaining this farm along with other lands now under our stewardship in a better environmental state than when my grandfather first purchased this property.

It is my privilege to represent the riding of Chatham-Kent—Leamington, CKL for short, which is Canada's most southerly riding. I want to thank our EDA, along with all the volunteers who joined our campaign last fall.

With two major centres, Chatham and Leamington, and more than 20 smaller towns and villages, providing a better future for our community of communities is a shared goal. Historical communities such as Comber, Blenheim, Morpeth, Highgate, Ridgetown, North Buxton, south Buxton, Charing Cross, Erieau, Wheatley, Stoney Point, Lighthouse Cove, Rondeau, Merlin, Erie Beach, Clachan, Duart, Shrewsbury, Guilds, Rushton Corners, Prairie Siding, Sleepy Hollow, Coatsworth, Jeannette's Creek, Port Crewe, Port Alma, Dealtown, Cedar Spring, Fletcher, and Muirkirk provide a rich, unique legacy in Canada, and I sure hope that I did not forget one.

Chatham—Kent—Leamington is one of the earliest settled areas in Canada. It is largely surrounded by water, which is why it was settled early, as water was one of the most efficient means of travel and trade two to three centuries ago. That same water still has a profound effect on our riding today.

As Canadians, we describe our country as stretching from shore to shore to shore. The north shore of Lake Erie forms the southern boundary of the riding, with Pelee Island and Middle Island's shores entirely within that lake. With additional shoreline on Lake St. Clair also adding to the over 150 kilometres of shoreline, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, along with other ridings across approximately one-third of Canada's southerly border, truly belongs in our national maritime boundary description. These shorelines provide sources of employment and enjoyment, but they also provide challenges as we grapple with record-high Great Lakes water levels.

However, for the moment, I want to focus on the hard-working folks who work some of Canada's most productive soils that are surrounded by these shores, and the people who add value to the products from our farms in the food sector.

Agriculture and food processing are the traditional bedrock of our local economy. With the 42nd parallel running through the riding about two kilometres south of my home farm, we enjoy one of the longest growing seasons in Canada.

Along with very fertile soils, our microclimate, buffered by the Great Lakes, allows the production of grain and oilseeds and a whole range of fruits and vegetables that make an important contribution to Canada's food security.

This vegetable production on some of our sandiest soils also spawned a greenhouse industry that today is a world leader. It is an honour to represent some of the most advanced greenhouses in the world. They utilize the most modern technologies, thereby reducing negative effects on the environment and considerably improving the energy efficiency of crops, and thus remaining competitive both in national and international markets.

Similarly, our manufacturing sector, with geographic proximity to the historical birthplace of the North American auto sector, has developed into a world leader, not only in the tool and die sector for auto but also for aerospace, automation, food processing and handling, greenhouse technologies, and a host of other industrial sectors.

We have a talented, industrious workforce led by entrepreneurs whose imagination drives their initiatives, both in their businesses and in our communities. Agriculture and agri-food, as well as the manufacturing sectors, are solid, competitive local industries ready to serve both domestic and export markets.

Therefore, Bill C-4, the Canada–United States–Mexico agreement, CUSMA, which is being debated today, is highly significant to my riding. We have a long history with trade, with many businesses having grown to service the logistics of trade and participating both domestically and in export markets. Our riding is well positioned geographically to serve Canada's interests by being ready, willing and capable of adding to Canada's exports, one of the stated goals of the government.

Let me add my voice to those who say the Conservative Party of Canada is the party of freer and more liberalized trade. We were party to the original North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA 1.0. Let me state that this agreement before us today is certainly not NAFTA 2.0; NAFTA .7 might be more accurate.

Nevertheless, we have been clear from the outset that the Canadian business community needs certainty, and we will support this bill. In fact, we have been pushing the government, as the previous speaker stated, to expedite the passage of this bill, but coupled with a proper examination of its implications. A closer look revealed several flaws that will cost our country. For example, and as previously mentioned, softwood lumber issues related to the buy American policy were not addressed.

Let me focus some comments on two areas of the economy that are important to my riding. While the horticulture and grain and oilseeds sector of agriculture were largely unaffected by the negotiations, our supply-managed sector was not. An additional 3.6% of our dairy market was opened up to imports, which was more than what was intended under the TPP, the trans-Pacific partnership.

Originally, with Mexico and the U.S. as planned signatories to the TPP, the new TPP thresholds were intended to be updated to NAFTA levels.

In addition, this agreement eliminates class 6 and class 7, and establishes export thresholds for milk protein concentrates, skim milk powder and infant formula. Other supply-managed industries also had similar outcomes, with imports given additional access to domestic markets.

Canadians are wondering what Canada got in return for these concessions. Would the opportunities for other agriculture sectors, such as our grain and oilseeds and horticulture sectors, be enhanced? Not that I have heard.

At the last minute, another concession was given. Aluminum was not afforded the same protection as steel, which was that 70% of steel used in auto production must be North American, defined as melted and poured in North America. Aluminum was not afforded the same consideration.

With increased interest in the electrification of vehicles and the replacement of steel with aluminum parts to lessen vehicle weight and increase fuel efficiency, it is expected that aluminum content will only increase in future automobile manufacturing. This development directly impacts a business in my riding. Dajcor Aluminum began 10 years ago in Chatham, and in the last decade has grown from nothing to over 250 employees. They extrude aluminum into various parts, mainly targeted to North American auto manufacturers.

Mike Kilby, president of Dajcor, testified at the trade committee hearings into Bill C-4. He concluded his submission with the following:

To summarize, this is a terribly bad deal for NA aluminum producers, extruders and for manufacturers of aluminum automotive components in Canada and the U.S. Mexico already has a labour advantage and now they get to add a subsidized commodity to that advantage.

The Conservatives support freer and fair trade. We will support this bill, despite its many shortcomings, because of the certainty that investment demands. There must, however—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Unfortunately, the time is up. I allowed for a little more time. I am sure the hon. member will be able to add anything else he may want to during questions and comments.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Humber River—Black Creek.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, Humber River—Black Creek, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased the hon. member gave his first maiden speech. He did a fine job. I welcome him to the House.

The member spoke of many issues and, in particular, aluminum. Getting 100% was impossible, but 70% certainly was achievable and has brought some stability to that industry. We hear that people are glad for the aluminum market as it is, but I would like him to elaborate a little more on it and on his concerns that it could have been a better deal. I would like to hear the member's suggestions.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Madam Speaker, yes, certainly 70% is better than zero, but, as I understand it, the industry was largely supplied by aluminum from North America. The industry challenged, through CITT hearings, dumping allegations in 2009 and again in 2014. The Americans did the same thing in 2010 and 2015. Those hearings were upheld through the Canadian International Trade Tribunal to block dumping. Now, at the very last minute, our trade negotiations allow this back door for the potential of aluminum from other sectors to be stockpiled and allowed into the North American market through Mexico. Therefore, while 70% is better than zero, it is certainly less than 100%.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, I listened attentively to my colleague's remarks, and I would like to comment briefly about aluminum.

Thanks to the Bloc Québécois's negotiations with the government, aluminum will probably end up being treated just like steel. There will even be a mechanism to prove dumping by China or any other country. That mechanism means aluminum can get the same protections as steel.

I just want to point out to my esteemed colleague that listening to the Bloc Québécois really works sometimes. He talked about supply management, so I will mention the bill we introduced to plug any holes in supply management once and for all. Would my colleague be prepared to support that kind of bill?

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Madam Speaker, my understanding is that the aluminum going forward under the present provisions does not have the same protection as steel. I would certainly enjoin any efforts that would grant that to our aluminum producers. I am not aware of that at this point.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Madam Speaker, the agreement that the Conservatives will be supporting takes out the investor-state suing provisions in the current trade agreement with the United States. Since the Conservatives are supporting that, I would be interested in the hon. member's opinion on the agreement the Conservative government signed with China, the FIPA agreement. Can we be assured that if Huawei is denied participation in the 5G network, there will not be financial repercussions for the United States under that agreement, which the previous Conservative government negotiated?

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Madam Speaker, unfortunately, I did not have the time to finish my concluding comments, but I will go at that question another way.

The government does have a responsibility to the sectors affected by its decisions and there should be redress for the casualties of the government's compromises.

I wanted to conclude with the fact that the upcoming budget must begin that process. As Conservatives, we stand ready to address the upcoming shortcomings of NAFTA .7 and hold this government to account.

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

Madam Speaker, I congratulate my hon. colleague on his maiden speech.

I am from a forestry riding in the province of British Columbia, in which 140 communities are dependent on forestry. Tens of thousands of jobs have been lost just in the last year alone. The Liberal government has dithered away time and has not secured a new softwood lumber agreement.

I would ask my hon. colleague why he thinks the Liberals missed a key opportunity to negotiate a new softwood lumber agreement in this new agreement.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Madam Speaker, the short answer is this. I have no idea why the Liberals would not address such long-outstanding issues such as softwood lumber, buy America provisions and a whole host of other provisions. I do not know.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the Bloc Québécois to speak to the Canada-United States-Mexico agreement. The Standing Committee on International Trade has put a lot of time into analyzing the agreement. My colleagues who sit on that committee with me can confirm that we have worked late on many occasions.

As I reminded members in my first presentation to the House on this topic, Quebec's separatist movement does not need any lessons on fostering trade with the rest of the world. Free trade with the United States is the result of a successful gamble taken by Jacques Parizeau and Bernard Landry following—and this is interesting—a fear campaign led for the most part by the House targeting Quebec's presumed inability to survive without the Canadian economy. That was not the case.

We took a chance on free trade, and what a success it has been, since access to the market south of us has been such a windfall for our SMEs, especially because Quebec has always managed to merge openness to trade with economic nationalism, using the most effective tools. However, as Jacques Parizeau later criticized, free trade has too often become synonymous with secret negotiations in favour of multinationals, ranging from the relinquishment of political sovereignty to sacrificing the most vulnerable members of society.

What does all this mean for CUSMA?

First of all, transparency was severely lacking from the entire process. At the Standing Committee on International Trade, the economic impact study authored by the chief economist at Global Affairs Canada was not tabled ahead of his appearance. How were we supposed to read and go over that study with enough time to prepare speaking notes?

What is more, the study presents a dubious and dishonest methodology because it compares CUSMA to the absence of an agreement. It compares CUSMA to nothing, as though NAFTA has not been in effect for years. Of course, some might say that without CUSMA there would be nothing left.

Personally, I cannot imagine a situation in the near future where Canada and the United States would no longer trade with one another. We can only conclude that, without CUSMA, we will revert back to NAFTA. If we tear up NAFTA then we will go back to the FTA. If we tear up the FTA, then there is always the World Trade Organization.

I know that each of these scenarios does not amount to the same thing. I know that it would be better to have a direct channel between the signatory countries. Nevertheless, it is just fearmongering to claim that we would somehow magically end up in a situation where trade between the United States and Canada would no longer exist.

I would also like to address another matter. The first version of CUSMA, as presented in recent years, was completely unacceptable. Just think of the provisions that would have allowed the digital giants to bring their goods into Canada without tariffs and to sell them tax-free. The provisions concerning pharmaceutical patents would also have benefited major corporations and increased the cost of prescriptions. Fortunately, these provisions are not in the current version of CUSMA.

I must say from the outset that the current version of the CUSMA is far from what an agreement should be in 2020. I will take the example of the environment. Although we are in a climate crisis, the agreement contains next to nothing on the environment, except for some good intentions. There is no mention of environmental agreements other than those that were in NAFTA. There is no climate standard, no acknowledgement of climate change and no system to deal with problematic cases, except for the state-to-state dispute settlement mechanism, which is not exactly known for its amazing efficiency.

However, when compared to NAFTA, CUSMA is an improvement in some respects. For that reason, we must opt for this version rather than the status quo.

CUSMA abolishes the ban on limiting exports of Canadian oil to the United States, a measure that could hinder efforts to fight climate change, and that is just fine.

The agreement reaffirms the cultural exemption, which we are very happy about. Quebec has been actively advocating at UNESCO, with the support of France, to make sure that culture is not treated like a commodity.

The elimination of NAFTA's chapter 11 is another significant step forward. This chapter dealt with investor-state dispute settlements and sacrificed political power in favour of a virtual government of multinationals. These multinationals were able to sue states if they had the misfortune of limiting the ability of a corporation to make profits while trying to protect their citizens.

Ottawa was sued several times over the years, for example for its decision to restrict imports of a fuel additive suspected of being toxic, for restricting the export of toxic waste, for revoking patents for medications of questionable quality, and also for Quebec's decision to ban the sale and use of certain pesticides on lawns and Quebec's moratorium on drilling in the Saint Lawrence. That list is far from exhaustive.

Canada is the NAFTA country most often sued by private investors. The worst thing is that this mechanism has subsequently been emulated in all of the free trade agreements. Around the world, 60% of these lawsuits have ended in multinational corporations triumphing over the states being sued or negotiating a friendly agreement, according to the UN report. That means that in 60% of cases, the power of money partially or totally prevailed over the states' political will and the power of democracy. Naturally, this quantitative assessment does not factor in the constant pressure on public decision-makers, who need to censor their own comments to avoid getting dragged into court.

Jacques Parizeau used to say that globalization was like the tide. We cannot stop the tide, but we can build dikes.

This chapter of NAFTA did not even allow us to build dikes. Now that this chapter, which had such serious consequences, is gone, all we can say is good riddance. However, we will keep a vigilant eye on the new chapter on good regulatory practices. The chapter is quite restrictive, and its tone reveals a deep-seated distrust of state intervention. That is something we will certainly have to keep a close eye on, to ensure that it does not turn out to be a new impediment.

The elimination of the provision allowing private investors to sue states is a laudable precedent. It will be hard to bring back that type of mechanism in future international negotiations.

Other gains were sadly much too symbolic. CUSMA includes one chapter dedicated exclusively to small and medium-sized businesses and it emphasizes how important they are. That is very good, but this chapter unfortunately does not go beyond affirming some basic principles. CUSMA fortunately protects market access for these businesses in most sectors.

The chapter on labour does contain some notable improvements, in particular for the auto sector. Although Quebec has no direct ties to this sector, the provision does indirectly establish a minimum wage that, I must say, will be difficult to enforce. Nevertheless, that is definitely an improvement.

Other categories of workers will unfortunately not benefit from that same improvement, although this chapter does give workers some recourse. Will these methods be effective? Only time will tell.

However, CUSMA is not free of grey areas. It is important to mention that one of them is softwood lumber. The softwood lumber situation is a constant irritant. It never stops. It is like a problem that is never solved. As we know, the United States has always applied punitive tariffs on our lumber. The U.S. math has always been clear: Industries are driven into bankruptcy while the wheels of justice slowly turn.

Washington has always been able to play outside the rules. The CUSMA negotiations could have been an opportunity to clarify those rules to ensure that such unfair practices no longer occur. That was not the case.

That is why I introduced an amendment to have the minister create an advisory committee on softwood lumber products that are not on the export control list.

As my colleague mentioned earlier, some copyright issues are being addressed similarly to how the United States is addressing intellectual property. This approach may well favour big business.

The dairy sector has clearly suffered a setback. The scenario is always the same: Every governing party makes a heartfelt commitment during the election campaign to never tamper with supply management again. Every party tells us not to worry because it will not touch it, unlike its predecessor. However, when that party takes office, it goes about negotiating in secret, like its predecessor, and then we learn that supply management has been affected. When the agreement under discussion becomes public, the excuse is always that it is only a small breach and that we must not worry because it is only a small percentage. Okay, fine, but when those small breaches are taken together, let's face it, they amount to a sizeable crater.

In CUSMA, giving up 3% of the market means losses of about $150 million per year. The agreement also eliminates class 7, which dealt with the dairy protein problem. Worse still, it gives Washington the ability to limit the amount of dairy protein our producers can sell to other countries. Allowing one country to oust another as a global competitor by controlling its exports is, we believe, unprecedented.

We will not back down on this. The government must provide direct compensation to affected farmers without delay. I would also encourage the House to support the Bloc's bill banning any future hits to supply management. Our food supply is too important to be subject to the rules of global economic war. Lip service and simple election promises do not cut it anymore. We need a legal obligation here. Our farmers, the very people who enable us to fill our fridges every day, have been made to suffer enough. The first thing we do when we get up every morning is open the fridge. We owe our farmers a debt of gratitude. After all, they are the only professionals we need every day, many times a day.

On the sensitive issue of aluminum, the government pulled a classic Canadian move. Despite the government's denials, aluminum, a Quebec industry, was not given the same protections as Ontario steel. While the government was celebrating this agreement, the Bloc Québécois noted that the protections were not the same and spoke out about it. The agreement protects only North American aluminum parts, but requires that steel be melted and poured in North America. However, Mexico does not produce aluminum and could continue to use dirty Chinese aluminum, which is lower quality and made in coal-fired plants. This dumping would have jeopardized the expansion projects of Quebec aluminum plants, threatened jobs in those plants and undermined the tremendous environmental opportunity presented by our carbon-neutral aluminum, which is the greenest in the world. What is more, in an era of climate change, the trend in the auto manufacturing industry is to move toward lighter parts. The Quebec National Assembly voted unanimously on a motion to support our aluminum workers and industry.

At first, the government denied the elephant in the room, but we held firm. That paid off and the government committed to collect real-time data on aluminum imports. If that data shows that Mexico is indeed sourcing foreign aluminum, the government promised to revisit this issue and ensure that our aluminum gets the same protection as steel. Mexico's angry response shows that there is indeed a problem that the government insisted on ignoring.

Although certain representatives tried to claim that there was no real change, Canada's chief negotiator, who was responding to a question I asked in committee, acknowledged that this definitely constituted a gain. We will be keeping an eye on the government to make sure it keeps its word. The burden lies on its shoulders. We will therefore be voting in favour of CUSMA, not happily and not particularly enthusiastically, and, more importantly, knowing we will remain extremely vigilant. In fact, I promise to be the watchdog at the Standing Committee on International Trade. We will also keep a close eye on all this here in the House.

In closing, I want to talk about a long-term vision for the future. In this file, as in many others, we tried to minimize the losses. The Bloc is always hard at work when it comes to damage control. However, we must not forget one basic rule: Those who are absent always get the blame. Not being at the table when decisions are made definitely has its consequences.

In fact, in the negotiations for the agreement with Europe, the former Quebec representative within the Canadian delegation said that the role of the Quebec delegation was unfortunately limited to offering a love letter. In other words, people were hard at work everywhere, especially behind the scenes, where they were trying to influence the delegation, except at the decision-making table. This cannot always be without consequence. Those who are absent always get the blame. That is why the ultimate, long-term goal of our actions is of course the independence of our nation, Quebec.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, Humber River—Black Creek, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member is on our international trade committee and I appreciate his support and participation.

Looking at the cultural exemption in particular, that is something very important to all of us and certainly to the government. It means that with this agreement we will be protecting a $53.8-billion industry, thousands of jobs across Canada, 75,000 of which are in the Quebec region.

I would like to hear my colleague's comments on whether he thinks that is a worthwhile part to have in this agreement.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Madam Speaker, I talked about the cultural exemption in my speech. We are pleased that it is being reaffirmed. I would remind hon. members that Quebec fought hard for this UNESCO recognition. There are some things that cannot be treated entirely as commodities. Our culture is undeniably very rich and recognized around the world. That being said, we do not have anything that resembles Hollywood. That is why we need to have practices and guidelines in place to regulate and protect our culture and offer it preferential treatment. The cultural exemption is an excellent way to do that. It is not the only way, but it is essential.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Madam Speaker, I listened to my colleague's speech intently and I want to thank him for his work on the international trade committee. He mentioned how Canadians are going to be paying the price for the Prime Minister's weak leadership. He talked about the aluminum industry, the dairy sector and the softwood lumber sector, all of these lost opportunities.

One point he brought up that is incredibly important to Canadians is the lack of transparency. The original TPP that was negotiated five years ago by the government had a positive effect of $4.3 billion on our GDP. The new agreement, according to C.D. Howe and as we heard in committee, is a $14-billion hit to our economy. The economic impact studies, as the member so carefully pointed out, were not even available to us until one day before the end of the agreement.

The Liberal government told Canadians before the election that this was a win-win-win, if members remember. It was a great deal for Canadians. Then we found out their own numbers. In my own community of Oshawa we have had a $1.5-billion hit to the auto industry and a decrease of 1.7% for production.

The member said that he is a watchdog and he is going to be a good watchdog working together on committee. I see myself in that form as well. There is so much misleading information and a lack of transparency.

How important is the implementation of this trade agreement and the oversight for that implementation, given the support for the negatively affected sectors? Also, because of the government's weak leadership and tendency to secrecy, how important are that implementation and oversight going to be?

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Madam Speaker, transparency is essential. Sadly, it has always been lacking in this type of agreement. It is imperative that we find a way to come up with institutional mechanisms. The committees are one. We will do our job and I invite the other opposition parties to do theirs.

The Bloc, the NDP and the Conservatives all agreed on the fact that this process was short on transparency. Generally speaking, these types of negotiations are held with very little consultation. This is true even at the preliminary stages, before anything is discussed with parliamentarians. Civil society groups are rarely consulted. In the end, they win some and they lose some. We must certainly find a way to monitor this, and I invite my colleagues to give that some thought.

Motions are moved in committee on specific aspects of the potential consequences of trade. We must ensure that we do our job effectively. Yes, negotiations are held behind closed doors, but this issue needs to be debated at the political level thereafter.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, in his speech, the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot mentioned that an agreement had been reached between the Bloc Québécois and the government regarding the aluminum sector.

In committee, we heard that the government already had mechanisms in place to find out how much aluminum was in transit from China to Mexico. The information needed to find out what is happening is therefore already provided.

How is the agreement between the Bloc and the government different from what the government is already doing?

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member was at committee when this gain was acknowledged. Although the commitment to provide us with all the data had already been discussed, this new measure goes beyond that commitment. We will have a lot of work to do in committee. If dumping were ever to occur, we now have a clear commitment that the government will raise the issue again and give aluminum the same status as steel. That changes absolutely everything.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, I commend my colleague for his well-researched speech. It stands in contrast to some of the speeches we hear in the House, when members spend their time thanking their families and colleagues. I think his speech was strong and contributed to the debate. For those reasons, I salute him.

As my colleague noted, we have made what we can consider to be a gain on aluminum. At the very least, we have been able to reduce the harmful impact that the agreement might have had on Quebec aluminum.

My colleague mentioned softwood lumber in his speech. I appreciated hearing him mention that the United States is behaving in an underhanded way by dragging certain Canadian lumber producers through the courts until they run out of steam. I also liked his comments on supply management.

He ended on a strong note by telling us that the solution may be independence for Quebec. However, in the meantime, the Bloc Québécois may have a solution to propose. If the Quebec delegation were given a larger role, through some sort of mechanism, would that not result in better agreements? I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on that.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Madam Speaker, honestly, that would be great, and we are working hard to make that happen. That is of course an area we will be investing energy in. The problem is that we could invest our energy in so many other things if we were truly free to make our own decisions. We would not get bogged down in convoluted squabbles with the rest of the country, whose interests are sometimes diametrically opposed to ours.

I fully understand why the rest of Canada might not care about aluminum, because aluminum is a Quebec industry. I fully understand why the rest of Canada would make concessions and not do anything for aluminum because it would rather put its eggs in another basket. There is no doubt in my mind that becoming good neighbours would be in our mutual interest.

[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 am sure my friend would recognize that in virtually all provinces and territories there is a certain element of uniqueness in terms of their economy and different industries and so forth. There is a high demand for people to participate in the negotiations and as government we have a role to play.

The member made reference to supply management and we will use that as an example. The original proposal from the United States was to completely dismantle supply management. This government, working with partnerships, was able to ensure that supply management continues on as part of the Canadian heritage and tradition. Does the member not see that as a positive thing?

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Madam Speaker, as you can see, I learned my lesson.

As for what may have happened at the bargaining table, we are well aware that the United States wanted to eliminate the entire system. That goes without saying. However, since the government had made a direct promise not to touch the agriculture industry, this sector should not have been touched. At the very least, it should have been an untouchable, but that was not the case. The government promised several times not to touch it, as the previous government had done. In the end, it did touch it. At some point, the government needs to stop insulting people's intelligence.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I have found the third reading debate and indeed this whole process around the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement interesting. Today I watched as the governing Liberals, the opposition Conservatives and the separatist Bloc all tried to take credit for free trade and sing the praises of free trade. I can tell members that the New Democrats are not here to sing the praises of corporate free trade; far from it. We have been pretty consistent critics of this model of trade, but not trade itself.

One of the sleights of hand that too often happens not just in this place but in the media about trade is that somehow the corporate model of free trade that has been very good at reinforcing corporate rights over the rights of people and the environment is somehow the only way to do trade. New Democrats are not under that illusion. We know that too often corporate free trade deals have meant that countries get trapped in a race to the bottom, that these deals are structured in a way to allow international capital.

We hear in other debates about how Canada needs to compete for investment, and if it tries to regulate in the public interest in areas that have to do with the environment or workers that international capital is going to leave and go to other jurisdictions. These types of free trade agreements are all about making that easier and all about intensifying the threat of capital flight in the event governments choose to stand up for their workers, the environment or the rights of indigenous people within their territory.

CUSMA unfortunately is part of that model. What is different here is that we are not talking about going from no free trade agreement to having a corporate free trade agreement. What we are talking about is two different agreements and which one we are going to have. As some people mentioned earlier, if we did not go for the new CUSMA and the existing NAFTA was abrogated by the President of the United States, there would still be a free trade deal in place, the original free trade deal between Canada and the United States.

We are not in a position where we are talking about whether Canada is going to sign up for some new commitment under the corporate free trade agreement. What we are talking about is which commitment is going to serve Canadians better. That is an important point to make, and that has been a consistent theme throughout the debate on this. Certainly it has been an important part of the NDP's deliberations on this particular deal.

In my speech at second reading, I said there were two questions that were going to guide us in our thinking. One was whether, on balance, this deal would leave Canadians better off than the current agreement. The second question I said would guide our deliberations was whether we could leverage the process around this deal, which we knew was going to pass anyway because the Conservatives said early on that whether they liked it or not or studied it a long time or a short time, ultimately they were going to vote for it. We knew that this was an agreement that was going to pass, and the question was whether we could use the process around this ratification in order to get a better process that made the next trade agreement negotiation more open and transparent to the Canadian public.

I want to talk a little about some of the problems with the model and then I want to talk a little about this particular agreement and why, on balance, we think that the package of things that comes with this agreement will leave Canadians a bit better off than the status quo.

In addition to the problems of the corporate free trade model I mentioned earlier, particularly that race to the bottom when it comes to environmental standards and labour standards, there is another problem. We hear often from Conservatives that what they do not like about government is that it picks winners and losers, except that they have no problem with that when it comes to free trade agreements. Often the Conservatives negotiate the deal and then the Liberals sign the deal. That seems to be the pattern.

The Liberal Party and Conservative Party work very well together when it comes to advancing this corporate model of free trade, but Conservatives do not have a problem picking winners and losers in free trade agreements even though they do not like the idea of picking winners and losers when it comes to funding renewable energy, for instance, over other industries. They say that is an unacceptable picking of winners over losers. However, when it comes to sacrificing the dairy industry in agreements, we know the Conservatives negotiated concessions on supply management in the TPP, which ultimately the Liberals signed on to.

I was trying to listen in the best spirit and interestingly, optimistically, I heard members of the Conservative Party defending Canada Post, a Crown corporation. That was great to hear. I might add that is not reminiscent of the way the Conservatives behaved as a government, but it was nice to hear. That was another instance where they were decrying picking winners and losers. I am inclined to agree that Canada Post should not have been singled out, because I am a proud supporter of Crown corporations. I hope their resolve carries forward with them into whatever future positions they may have in this House, be it government or the fourth party. We can only hope.

I mentioned also that CUSMA picks winners and losers when it comes to the digital economy. Unfortunately, the losers, by and large, are Canadians themselves. This has been another feature of these corporate free trade agreements where governments, I think quite needlessly, tie their hands when it comes to making good public policy. One of the things this agreement does is it really constricts the options Canadian governments have going forward on how to deal with what is a new, emerging and very important and significant aspect of the global economy, which is the digital economy.

For instance, in this agreement, the government has agreed it will not make third party platforms responsible for the content posted on those platforms. That is a major policy decision. It is one that we may well live to regret. It is a discussion which, in my opinion, should have happened in this House in a far more robust way. That is not the kind of thing we should have been negotiating with trading partners prior to having a meaningful debate about how Canada wanted to treat this issue.

In some places within trade agreements we get protection for existing laws, rules and policies. We really have not had the opportunity to establish those in a meaningful way for many aspects of the digital economy. We see the government already signing away its ability to make those decisions and, by extension, the ability of this place and Canadians themselves to decide how they want their digital space managed going forward. That is a feature of these kinds of agreements. It is the kind of thing the NDP has been a vocal critic of. We think it is one thing to decide we want to trade with another country, but when we look at agreements like the Auto Pact, which were not global free trade deals but about dividing up the wealth that comes from producing those products and ensuring that the trading partners each were getting their fair share of the wealth generated by the products that were going to be moving freely across the border, that is not what free trade is. Rather, it is more about, as I said earlier, setting up rules to make it easy for multinational corporations to move their production around. That may have a short-term benefit on price, but it does not always. We know companies charge what the market will bear. In the long term, I think there are many Canadians who would appreciate the opportunity to pay a bit more for a good or service that contributes to Canadian workers and keeps wealth in Canada, but I digress.

I mentioned earlier there were two questions that would guide our deliberations. I want to speak to the first one now, which is whether, on balance, this agreement is better than the status quo. There are a few things I would point to that are laudable, despite the faults of this agreement.

One is the elimination of chapter 11 of the original NAFTA. That was the clause under which foreign corporations, not Canadian corporations—although I would not have been a fan of that, but I think it was that much more egregious that it only gave these rights to foreign corporations—could sue the Canadian government for creating laws or instituting regulations that protect the environment or workers that they saw as costing them profit. Canada not only put that in the original NAFTA, but these investor-state dispute settlement clauses have been in most of the trade agreements that we have negotiated. Canada has paid out the most in the world under these kinds of clauses, so I am glad to see that go. I note it was something the President of the United States wanted gone and that initially our government defended, which has always seemed backward to me. Nevertheless, regardless of who got it out, it is out and that is a good thing.

It is likewise with the energy proportionality clause. It said that if, in any given year, we take the average percentage of Canadian production of oil and gas that went to the United States over the previous three years, in future years the U.S. would have a right to insist on that percentage of Canadian production. Regardless of whether there was a domestic shortage or whether we could get a better price somewhere else, the United States would have a right to that percentage of our production of oil and gas. We have always seen that as a completely unreasonable, to put it mildly, infringement on Canadian sovereignty and something that was not in the best interests of Canadians, so we are glad to see that go.

There are a number of new North American content provisions for the auto sector, which we think is a good thing. They hearken back to the Auto Pact. Those provisions are actually least like free trade provisions, but they are being lauded as potentially doing the most for the Canadian auto sector. I think this is a signal that the free trade model, in itself, is not enough for Canadian success.

One of the other things to note is that in the original version of CUSMA there were provisions that would have significantly increased the cost of biologic drugs. This was due to, unfortunately, not our own government, but to the Democrats in the United States who went back to the table. Because they were not satisfied with the original agreement, those provisions came out. That means that some of the increases in the cost of prescription drugs that were going to happen as a result of this agreement, which we have seen in other agreements like CETA and the TPP, are not happening in this agreement. That is a good thing. One of the reasons that the NDP has often opposed some of these trade agreements is because they offer unreasonably good protection to international pharmaceutical companies at the expense of Canadians who require medication to improve their quality of life.

We also saw, in the second round of negotiations spurred by the Democrats in the United States, first-of-their-kind labour provisions in a trade agreement. I will not say that they are perfect; a lot of work is going to have to be done in order to ensure that they are implemented in a way that realizes the maximum potential for workers in Mexico, but these agreements would provide some upward pressure on wages for Mexicans working in the auto sector. I think just as, or more, importantly, and we heard this at committee from a Mexican member of the labour movement, it will make it easier for them to organize real unions in their workplaces. Evidence shows that when there is a union, one is able to get better working conditions and secure better wages. That is good for Mexican workers and for workers in the United States and Canada as well. This is to the extent, and that extent remains to be seen, that companies will not be picking up their operations and simply moving them to Mexico because it is a way of getting out of having a union in a workplace and paying higher wages.

Again, this is not a panacea; it is not going to change things overnight, but these enforceable labour provisions are the kinds of things that New Democrats have said for decades ought to go hand in hand with the rules that are established, and very strongly protected, in international trade agreements.

By voting for this agreement at this time, we are trying to consolidate the gains of having chapter 11 eliminated, having the proportionality clause eliminated and having the potential increase in prescription drugs stopped. We want to give a chance to allow these first-of-their-kind labour provisions to play out and to see whether we can use trade agreements to increase fairness for workers. I hope, if we can show that there is success on that front, that one day we could get meaningful enforcement of some environmental rules across jurisdictions too.

This agreement really does not do that. It does not mention the most important agreement designed to address the most important environmental challenge of our time, which is the Paris accord and climate change. I think that is where we are going to need to get if we are going to have accountability internationally for countries reducing their climate emissions. We need to tie those accords to economic accords as well, so that there can be meaningful consequences for countries that do not live up to their expectations.

I want to spend a little time now talking about the second question that I said would guide our deliberations on this matter, which was whether this ratification process could be leveraged to get a better trade process for the next time.

This process in itself was not great. We heard other members speak earlier about just how late Parliament got an economic impact assessment. By everyone's admission, we are talking about a major deal. We are talking about a lot of trade crossing the border every day, and there has been a lot of commentary on the agreement. The surprising thing for Canadians who may just be learning about this, if they are watching at home, is that debate was not supported by any real economic data because the government did not release it until the day before the end of the committee hearings, which was just the last sitting Thursday. Therefore, the economic report that actually puts some numbers to what we are doing here came out on the Wednesday and the committee study concluded and moved along on the Thursday. That did not make a heck of a lot of sense.

There are other things that have not made sense over the years, particularly the high degree of secrecy around trade negotiations. As I mentioned in my speech at second reading, two of our biggest trading partners, with which we have concluded free trade deals, the European Union and the U.S., both released far more information about their negotiation process to the public. They create far more of a space for civic engagement around trade negotiation and allow their citizens to weigh in on what is important to them, what they think their executive is doing right in those negotiations and what it is doing wrong. We saw how that interplay between the legislature and the executive can create opportunities to get better deals. We saw that happen with this very agreement, unfortunately not here in Canada but in the United States where Congress was able to get involved and require the President to go back to the table in order to get a deal that was acceptable to the legislature.

This Parliament only deals with trade deals once they are signed, sealed and delivered and there is no possibility of going back to the table. That was why I contacted the Deputy Prime Minister early on in this process, to talk about some of those problems of process and how we might be able to improve those going forward. That precipitated a period of negotiation, at the end of which the government committed to put in its policy for tabling treaties in the House of Commons a new commitment. The government will now tell Parliament formally, 90 days before beginning formal negotiations with another country or group of countries, of its intent to bargain a new trade deal. It will table its negotiating objectives in Parliament, which means publicly, 30 days before those negotiations. That is comparable to what already happens in the United States, and is even less stringent than what happens in the European Union, so it is a completely reasonable thing to do and Canadians will be better off for it.

Finally, on the topic of the economic impact assessment, we got a commitment from government that it will make it a matter of policy that governments table economic impact assessments side by side with the ratifying legislation so that we never again end up in the ridiculous position we were in this time, where we were being asked to study a bill without having any economic data about its impact. I should not say “any”; we did have some from the United States because a year ago, it published an economic impact assessment. Canadians and their parliamentarians should not have to look to our trading partners for information about how a trade deal is going to affect us. We should be able to get that from the government. We now have a commitment to make it a matter of policy that governments will provide that information, which is important.

There is more I would like to say, but I look forward to the question and answer period.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Madam Speaker, the member of the NDP mentioned a couple of things of interest. One was he mentioned the original status of the trade agreement and that leaving it as it is probably would not have been a bad thing. Has he forgotten about the tariffs that were imposed under that trade agreement, with its lack of defining things? There were the tariffs that were put on aluminum, that were put on steel, that were put on wood products, paper and whatnot. He has forgotten that.

The member mentioned the corporate free trade deal. A lot of the corporations that are in favour of this trade deal employ hundreds of thousands of people across this country, many of them unionized employees, to their benefit. In my riding, Ocean Choice International applauds the trade agreement because it enables the company to open markets free of tariffs and to provide well-paying jobs to the people who work for that company. Can the member say whether he still supports that, or whether he would just as soon those corporations did not have that ability in those free trade agreements?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am just digesting the question. I hope I was clear enough that I am not a supporter of the original NAFTA. The NDP was not and is not.

What I was saying is that I do not like the model. I do not like the model that that agreement was signed under, and I do not like the model that this agreement was signed under. What we have been tracking in this debate is whether, overall, the one agreement under a bad model is, relatively speaking, better than the original agreement under a bad model.

Of course there are lots of corporations that employ a lot of Canadians; that does not mean they can do no wrong. That does not mean that they are all wonderful people. That does not mean they are all looking out for the interests of their employees.

I would refer the member to the 400,000 Canadians who have lost manufacturing jobs since the signature of the original NAFTA, including those in Oshawa who just recently had their plant closed, despite the fact they did award-winning work, because that plant moved to Mexico for the sole purpose of low wages. Canadian workers should not be forced to compete with that. That is exactly what these deals do.

There is some relief from that, for the first time, in these labour provisions. We are interested to see how those play out.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to make a quick comment about something my colleague just said. He said that the manufacturing sector lost a lot of jobs when NAFTA was signed. I do not necessarily see things the same way he does. That problem with the manufacturing sector coincided with an increase in the Canadian dollar, which happened because the oil industry is seen as the only factor in the Canadian economy. That is what we call the Dutch disease, and I do not think it has anything to do with the first NAFTA.

What does my colleague think about that?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, there were clearly many job losses between 1994 and 2007-08, when the Canadian dollar was at par with the U.S. dollar. The appreciation of our currency may explain some rather recent manufacturing job losses, but it does not explain the jobs lost between 1994 and 2007-08.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate the member for Elmwood—Transcona on clearly laying out the NDP trade policies. I congratulate him on his very effective work as our trade spokesperson.

The member does not take enough credit for something I think we will regard as historic. When we look back on the changes that his work with the Deputy Prime Minister led to in the way we approach trade agreements, we are going to see this was a historic change, providing more transparency, more openness and a role for Parliament in having input into the trade agreements instead of a last-minute yes or no, as in this case.

I wonder if the hon. member could give us some idea of how these agreements he reached with the government will apply to the upcoming trade negotiations with other countries.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am going to go back a little ways to a process that some might remember around what was referred to as the security and prosperity partnership, SPP.

One of the really frustrating aspects about those negotiations was that we did not know the full extent of them. In one of the minority Parliaments that preceded 2011, there was an attempt to get documents, just for Canadians to get some basic information about what the government was doing at the negotiating table with the United States on that file. A Conservative chair of the committee at that time stood up and walked out of the room, lest emotion pass demanding information about what was going on at that table.

What we have negotiated with the government and what should be different is at least Canadians will know that a negotiation is taking place. That sounds really basic. It does not sound particularly exciting. It sounds like the kind of thing that of course we would know, because the government always tells us. However, the fact is that there is no requirement for the government to tell us. The SPP was a great example of a time when it refused to tell us.

Not only would we know that the negotiation was happening, but we would have, at the very least, the high-level negotiating objectives, which were presumably different for the SPP than they were for the TPP or CETA.

This is one of those things that are easy to understate. It sounds like it is not that big of a deal, and that the government was already doing that. The point is that it was not. People in the trade justice network, labour unions and other parts of civil society know that these trade agreements can have a real impact on the lives of working people, not just corporate tycoons who are going to make more money but real Canadians who have a real potential to lose out on things that matter to them in their lives. This is going to give them a window in, to know where to start looking and sniffing around to find out what is going on and how it is going to affect people, whether they are members of unions or organizations, or just ordinary Canadians whose welfare they are concerned for.

That is why it is a really important starting point.

[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 am encouraged by the Deputy Prime Minister and her ability to reach out to find ways to improve upon the system. I applaud the member's approach in trying to deal with that issue.

However, I would not want to give an impression that all of a sudden a group of individuals in the United States met with representatives from Mexico, an agreement was signed and no background work was done. For months, if not years, there were discussions and dialogue on a potential agreement that needed to be achieved in Canada. There was industry representation from all regions of the country and hundreds of hours of debate, not only on this issue but on other trade agreements.

Therefore, we should not give Canadians a false impression that everyone was blindsided. Even after the agreement was signed, the Deputy Prime Minister offered the leadership of all parties the ability to participate and gain more information.

Could the member provide a general overview of those comments?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I know the Deputy Prime Minister has made a lot about the amount of consultation that went on. However, there is a big difference between consulting sector-specific people under the cloak of NDAs, or non-disclosure agreements, where they are not allowed to talk about anything, versus bringing it to Parliament where there are things we can discuss. There is a difference between sharing objectives at the negotiating table with people who are not allowed to talk about those with anybody else and sharing them in Parliament, where the country can have a conversation about what should be on the list and what should be taken off the list, and supply management is a great example.

Dairy farmers are hit hard by this agreement. I hope there will be another context. It has been done somewhat at committee, where we have talked about ways government can mitigate some of the ill effects that are part of this agreement. That debate should have taken place with more information on the table. Up until two weeks before this version of the deal was signed, dairy farmers were told they would be okay, that there were not significant concessions beyond what was in the original NAFTA.

People were caught off guard. Public debate has a way of bringing those things out. It does not always, it is not perfect, it is a blunt instrument, but it can really bring things to the surface. That is why it was such a priority for us to take the first meaningful step on a road toward a better, more transparent process. In the long term, that will help us get better deals that are fairer for workers and the environment.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue]

Madam Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise to speak to Bill C-4, an act to implement the agreement between Canada, the United States of America and the United Mexican States.

We must ask parliamentarians to come together and join our partners in the United States and Mexico and ratify this agreement. We need to ratify it expeditiously and ensure certainty for businesses and, more important, ensure certainty for employees across this beautiful country we call home. It is of paramount importance.

I recommend all my colleagues and all Canadians watching read the economic impact assessment on the new NAFTA, the CUSMA. I will read some of the preamble, which states:

The final CUSMA outcome effectively achieved Canada’s overarching objectives by preserving key elements of NAFTA, modernizing and updating the Agreement to support Canada’s access to and integration with the North American economy, providing important stability and predictability with respect to overall market access, and addressing the harmful impacts of U.S. Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum, as well as threats of similar tariffs on automobiles and auto parts.

I am sharing my time today with my hon. colleague, friend and mentor, the hon. member for Humber River—Black Creek.

Two aspects of the agreement need to be highlighted as we begin the debate in the House. These are of paramount importance to the New Democratic Party, the Conservatives, the Greens, the Bloc and the Liberals.

The first is that this would ensure Canada's trading partners in North America would maintain high levels of labour and environmental protection. This agreement has bipartisan support in the United States between Democrats and Republicans. It has been ratified already by the United States and Mexico. It has support from our major unions in Canada, Unifor, Canadian Labour Congress. The agreement is a win for the environment. It is a win for labour. It is a win for hard-working middle-class Canadians from coast to coast to coast. It is a win for our businesses to help grow our economy and keep it moving forward.

Second, the agreement would strengthen the state-to-state dispute settlement mechanism between parties and would ensure that disputes would be settled in an effective and efficient manner. This is all contained in the impact assessment that was done by Global Affairs. It is a great read, is quite insightful and it provides an overview of where we will go with this agreement and how it will benefit all three trading partners and their workers.

We all know we live in a world that is currently seeing a lot of uncertainty with COVID-19. I want to express my sincere appreciation and full support to our health professionals in Canada and across the world who are on the front lines of the situation we are facing. I pray for them and thank them again for what they do.

Many of my colleagues will know that I am economist by training. I worked globally in Toronto, New York City and spent time in Europe before I entered politics. In my view, Canada, its workers and businesses are well positioned to handle the evolving economic environment or landscape. As a country, we will continue to succeed and grow as a people and our economy. We will continue to create jobs.

I witnessed first-hand the tech boom and bust, the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, which at one point our U.S. neighbours to the south were losing several hundred thousand jobs a month. Thankfully coordinated action by the Federal Reserve, under Ben Bernanke, central bankers everywhere and policies pursued by the Obama administration staved off what I believe would have been a second global depression.

As parliamentarians, we must understand how interconnected the global economy is and with that how interconnected the global energy sector is. We have all read the headlines. There are many forces at work currently in the global energy markets, and I wish to begin part of my speech and speak to the importance of Canada's energy sector to Canada's economy today and in the years and decades to come.

CUSMA guarantees access for Canadian products and services to the United States, keeps barrier-free from happening and is good for our energy sector among all other sectors, such as auto, aluminum, steel, dairy, services, intellectual property, etc.

I would like to express my thanks to all of Canada's energy and mineral mining sector workers, whether it be those in the oil sands sector, those working in the western Canadian sedimentary basin, those mining uranium, those maintaining our nuclear plants in Ontario and those working on the TMX pipeline or on the Coastal GasLink, which will supply LNG to the Asian markets, displacing coal and thus reducing the world's global greenhouse gas emissions.

We speak about climate change. We speak about saving our planet. We speak about moving forward. One of those aspects is displacing coal through LNG and that needs to happen so we can get to where we need to be.

CUSMA provides the energy sector, auto sector, our tremendously hard-working dairy farmers, steel and aluminum sector workers and the entire Canadian economy with certainty. However, again, let us focus on Canada's energy sector, which accounts for a very large portion of the two-way trade between Canada and the United States and for a very large portion of the trade between all three countries.

Here are a few facts about how important the energy sector is to the Canadian economy.

As of 2018, Canada's energy sector directly employed more than 269,000 people and indirectly supported over 550,500 jobs. It is all on NRCan's website and I encourage Canadians who want to analyze how important this sector is to take a quick look. That is over 800,000 good, middle-class jobs, with the overwhelming majority providing good wages and benefits to families across Canada.

According to 2018 statistics, the energy sector accounts for over 11%, or $230 billion, of Canada's nominal GDP. Direct revenues from energy to governments totalled over $14 billion in 2018.

As an economist, one measure I like to see is our merchandise trade statistics that are published monthly. In 2019, the Canadian oil and gas sector generated a trade surplus of $76 billion for our economy. That is money flowing into our economy to pay for schools, bridges and roads and to maintain our high standard of living. We can compare this to the auto sector, which is so important for Ontario, that has a trade deficit of $20 billion.

Behind that $76-billion trade surplus, Canada is the sixth-largest world's energy producer, the fifth-largest net exporter and the eighth-largest consumer of energy. Frankly, energy drives our economy, our daily lives and our standard of living.

Total energy exports in 2018 were $132 billion versus $55 billion of imports, with oil and gas exports at $118 billion of which 95% were to the U.S. Notably, we export energy products to approximately 148 countries and 90% of that goes to the United States.

Human capital is a paramount strength of Canada, its people, its diversity, the ability to be an inclusive society and strengthen our economy. That is what makes our country a blessed place to live. When we also include Canada's natural capital resources, whether it is our agricultural sector, our forestry sector, hydroelectric power driven by our rivers and waterways, the mineral and energy wealth our country, Canada and its citizens are blessed and our potential when we work together is endless.

The new free trade deal between the three countries provides certainty to over $1.4 trillion, and growing, in trade volumes. Trade generates jobs, grows our economy and ensures a bright future for all children, including my own.

The world is becoming more interconnected. Our trade deals, CETA, CPTPP and CUSMA allow us preferential access to 1.5 billion individuals across the world. They allow us to continue to export our goods and services. Canada is a magnet for immigration. The best and brightest want to work here. They want to invent. They want to raise their families here. They want to call Canada home, and we welcome them.

On that front, CUSMA will allow us to move forward. When I read the economic impact assessment produced by Global Affairs, I saw what we have done, what the team under Steve Verheul has done. I applaud them. I applaud the Deputy Prime Minister for her steadfast commitment to ensuring a great deal for Canadian workers and businesses.

I have heard from all sectors and stakeholders in our economy and they all want this deal to pass. Whether it is the Chamber of Commerce, both locally and Canada-wide, or Unifor or the Canadian Labour Congress, they all want certainty. In this period of time, we need certainty for our economy. This deal would deliver it.

I look forward to debate this week and participating in it, commencing with today's speech. We know we need to provide certainty for our workers and literally the millions of Canadians whose livelihoods depend on trade with the United States and Mexico.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I learned from my colleague's speech that he is an economist by training. I want to take this opportunity to ask him a question.

There was some confusion in the House. Several members of the party opposite told us that aluminum received the same treatment as steel. Inevitably, following discussions that we had, the government admitted that aluminum actually had not received the same treatment as steel.

Just once, I would like a member of the Liberal Party to clearly tell the House that aluminum did not receive the same treatment as steel until the Bloc Québécois intervened.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member from Jonquière for his question.

First of all, on CUSMA, the cultural exemption was maintained in the deal. We know how important that is for Quebec's economy and its cultural sector, which is very large and employs, I believe, over 75,000 workers.

With regard to the aluminum sector, I had the pleasure many years ago of visiting the Alma smelter, which I think is in the Lac Saint-Jean region. I spent a couple of days there touring the plant. It is beautiful to see how it harnesses the power of our natural resources.

I would like to answer the member's question directly with a comment from Mr. Simard, the president and CEO of the Aluminum Association of Canada. With regard to the revised USMCA, or CUSMA, he stated, “We think the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement) is the right way to go.”

I believe we need the support of all parties in the House to provide certainty not only to the steel and aluminum sectors, but to all sectors in Canada and all workers.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly glad we finally got rid of the investor-state provisions that negatively impacted Canada's jurisdiction and our ability to put forward policies that benefit our citizens.

However, what concerns me is that chapter 19 reads like a wish list for the lobbyists of Google, Facebook and Amazon, who spend as much time in the halls of the Liberal government as they do in Washington. There is a fundamental issue of data sovereignty emerging around the world in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The right and need to have data sovereignty to put in proper privacy protections have been stripped away. The Liberals have given that over to the Google, Facebook and Amazon lobby in Washington.

Canada has an inability to actually hold the data giants to account through safe harbour provisions or to look in the black box of algorithms that are pushing extremist content. It is an issue that is driving legislators in Europe to take action, yet we have stripped it away to become a branch plant of Silicon Valley without the right of legislators to protect our citizens.

What does my hon. colleague think about this?

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians' data information is of paramount importance to our government, as data should be to any government throughout the world. We have very strict guidelines on privacy and how we use data, with PIPEDA being one of the regulations that govern Canadian data.

I am in full support of provisions ensuring that corporate behaviour remains good, if I can use that term, and follows all the rules when business is practised. I am not a big believer in, nor do I fully condone, any sort of corporate cronyism, as I will coin it. For me this is about corporations following the rules. Individuals have to do it, so corporations have to do it.

With regard to attracting workers to Canada, I welcome investments by Google, SAP, SAS and Mastercard. We are generating good middle-class jobs in Canada in sectors that are going to lead growth, and we want to make sure this is happening here and not in other jurisdictions.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, Humber River—Black Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to join my colleagues today as we deal with Bill C-4, which is extremely important for us. We call it the CUSMA, or the Canada-United States-Mexico agreement.

I am pleased with the work we did at committee on this particular issue. My committee colleagues from all parties showed their dedication to their constituents and their country while we did this study. Every member made it clear to me that it was their sincerest intent to collaborate, co-operate and come together as a committee to make sure that we did the job we were elected to do and worked in a non-partisan way on something that is critically important to Canada.

With our intensified schedule, our committee analyzed this bill for a total of 38.5 hours. The hard work that took place at committee ensured that Bill C-4 was returned in a timely fashion. Over 117 witnesses were invited, and we heard from a large range of individuals, organizations and businesses.

I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the hard work of the staff of the House of Commons who were present during these extended meetings. None of this could have been possible without the work of our committee clerks, analysts, translators and the House of Commons staff, who carried out their duties with utmost professionalism. A huge thanks goes out to everyone involved.

This new agreement will help reinforce strong economic ties between Canada, the United States and Mexico. It will improve North America's ability to compete on the global stage. This agreement will also bring back predictability and stability to the economic relationship between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, which we heard a lot about from various businesses and presenters.

We have seen several actions from the U.S. on trade that had contributed to economic instability for Canadian businesses and their workers, and they were clearly concerned. Canada was confronted with the option of either renegotiating NAFTA or facing the possibility of the United States withdrawing from the agreement. I am pleased that we now have a modern trilateral agreement that turns the page and focuses on the three pillars that make our economic relationship so successful: stability, economic integration and clear, transparent and enforceable rules.

From the start of the negotiations, Canada set out to achieve key priority outcomes: preserve important NAFTA provisions and market access into the U.S. and Mexico, modernize and improve the agreement, and reinforce the security and stability of market access into the U.S. and Mexico for Canadian businesses. We are proud of the fact that we have achieved all three of those objectives.

It is particularly important to note that the preferential tariff treatment under NAFTA is preserved in this new agreement. Canada's preferential access to the U.S. and Mexican markets is vital to the continuing prosperity of Canadian workers whose livelihoods rely on this trade. During consultations with stakeholders, we heard repeatedly about the importance of preserving the benefits of NAFTA and the integrity of North American supply chains. We understand how vital they are to Canadian companies and exporters.

As an annual average from 2016 to 2018, Canada exported 412.2 billion dollars' worth of goods to the United States, Canada's top export market. Over the same period, Canada exported an annual average of 9.2 billion dollars' worth of goods to Mexico, Canada's fifth-largest trading partner. These are very significant numbers, and the new NAFTA ensures continued preferential access to these key export destinations.

The new agreement preserves the market access outcomes that were achieved in the original NAFTA. This means that NAFTA's duty-free access for all non-agricultural goods will be maintained. For agricultural goods, Canadian exports will also continue to benefit from duty-free access for nearly 89% of U.S. agricultural tariff lines and 91% of Mexican tariff lines. The new NAFTA will help farmers to be more competitive and will make it easier for them to export their products and continue to feed North America and the rest of the world.

Maintaining these tariff outcomes provides Canadians with an advantage over those in countries without a preferential trade agreement with the United States and Mexico. It also ensures predictability and continued secure market access for Canadian exporters to our largest trading partners. The preserved tariff-free environment also safeguards the integrity of the integrated North American supply chains. Other key elements of the original NAFTA have also been preserved, including the chapter 19 binational panel dispute settlement, a state-to-state dispute settlement, the cultural exception and temporary entry for business persons.

The new NAFTA also helps open new market access opportunities in the U.S. for Canadian companies and improves existing market access. The new modernized agreement includes new customs and trade facilitation measures that will make it easier for companies to move goods across the border, including by eliminating paper processes and providing a single portal for traders to submit import documentation electronically. In particular, the new agreement moves away from the traditional certificate of origin to a new certificate of origin that allows companies to use existing documents in their business process to certify origin.

The new NAFTA includes a new stand-alone chapter on rules of origin and origin procedures for textiles and apparel goods that will support Canada's textile and apparel sector. The agreement preserves the existing market access that Canada has under NAFTA to the U.S. and Mexican markets in these sectors and ensures that the benefits of the agreement go primarily to producers located in North America. The new agreement provides greater flexibility for producers to use small amounts of materials from outside the region without losing their preference.

Furthermore, the agreement expands a provision from NAFTA to set out a special procedure to more easily establish the origin of the indigenous textiles and apparel. Under this provision, a textile or apparel item that the parties agree is an indigenous handcrafted good will be eligible for duty-free treatment, even if the good does not satisfy the applicable product-specific rule of origin.

Given the importance of predictability and transparency in international trade, the new NAFTA includes provisions that will provide added assurance for exporters that their goods will not be delayed by unjustified or unclear measures at the borders. Companies will have enough time to adjust to new regulations and other requirements. The agreement also ensures Canada's agricultural and processed food exports can rely on sanitary and phytosanitary measures that are risk-based and that increase predictability of market access so that products make it to market in a reasonable amount of time.

The section 232 side letter on autos and auto parts achieved as part of the overall outcome provides added security and stability for Canadian automotive and parts companies that export to the U.S. market. It will reaffirm Canada's attractiveness as an investment destination for this sector.

On trade and indigenous people, for the first time in a Canadian free trade agreement, the new NAFTA incorporates a general exception that clearly confirms that the government can adopt or maintain measures it deems necessary to fulfill its legal obligations to indigenous peoples. An indigenous working group was established to further the dialogue between the government and indigenous peoples, share ideas and work collaboratively on solutions.

We are pleased to have concluded an agreement that incorporates new and modernized provisions that seek to address 21st-century trade issues and support opportunities for Canadian businesses and workers. This includes bringing obligations on labour and environment into the agreement and subjecting them to dispute settlement. It also includes important outcomes toward inclusive trade, including with respect to gender and the interests of indigenous peoples.

In particular, the new labour chapter includes commitments to protect and promote internationally recognized labour rights and principles in North America. It also includes unprecedented protections against violence and against gender-based discrimination with regard to sexual orientation, sexual harassment, gender identity, caregiving responsibilities and wage discrimination.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague chairs the Standing Committee on International Trade and we were able to work together quite well on this agreement. The question I have for her is about something we found out that was quite disturbing, which was the transparency of the government on the economic impact implications of this trade agreement.

Before the election, the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister were very clear that this was going to be a win-win-win for Canadians. We found out late in the game the government's own numbers. For example, for people in my community in the auto sector there was going to be a hit of $1.5 billion to the auto industry and a decrease of 1.7% in production.

My colleague did not know and we did not know. I believe the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister were aware of it because they were working on it since 2017.

In order for this not to happen again, what does she think has to be implemented for future trade agreements? This was extremely misleading and it may have caused people to vote differently in the election.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, Humber River—Black Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the great work he did on the committee. He was a great member to work with, as were all the members on the committee.

Not everything goes the way we all want it to go. At the committee level, in reference to the economic report we were waiting for, we did receive it quite late in the process. All of this has been very difficult to ensure that this NAFTA and Bill C-4 get through the committee and that we recognize all of the pluses, such as the thousands of jobs we are protecting in Canada as well as the opportunities for growth that need to happen.

We always learn in everything we do as parliamentarians, and I hope we will learn from this experience as well to move forward.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member's remarks with interest. At the end of her remarks, she touched on provisions dealing with gender and equality for women. One of the problems with the way we have negotiated trade agreements has been the secrecy around those negotiations, and I certainly salute the Deputy Prime Minister and the member for Elmwood—Transcona for trying to fix that in the future.

My understanding is that many sources reported that the deal originally had much more extensive provisions dealing with gender equity, workplace harassment and other things that are very important to the equality of women in the workplace and that those disappeared from the final agreement, replaced by just some very general statements.

Can the member tell us if she has any information about what happened to those more extensive gender equity provisions and why they disappeared?

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, Humber River—Black Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the fact that we have issues such as sexual identity, sexual harassment, the protection of the indigenous community and a variety of other things in a trade agreement is terrific.

Would I like to see more? Yes, I would. I would also like to see these kinds of human rights issues embedded into trade agreements. I think there should be more opportunities to see that happen in the future, and I certainly would like to see more of it, not less of it.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement]

Mr. Speaker, I want to add my voice to those of all members of the House who praised my hon. colleague, the member for Humber River—Black Creek, for her profound commitment and diligence when serving as chair of the Standing Committee on International Trade.

In her view, how does the North American trade agreement contribute to Canada's stability, especially in these uncertain economic times? How does the signing of this agreement contribute to Canada's economic stability?

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, Humber River—Black Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's acknowledgement very much.

This NAFTA is clearly going to give what we heard is needed. Out of the 117 witnesses, I think at least 100 of them talked about the need for security and stability. They were very uneasy knowing these discussions had been going on for several years. They were very fearful of losing NAFTA completely and wanted to see us do the best we could to get this through. In their minds, and we talked to representatives from the Business Council of Canada and numerous others, this was going to bring stability to Canadian businesses.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek.

As the member of Parliament for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, I welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate regarding the Canada-U.S.-Mexico agreement, or CUSMA, which will replace the North American Free Trade Agreement that was negotiated by a previous Conservative government.

To paraphrase comments previously made by my Conservative colleagues, the good news is that, after rigorous debate in Parliament and at committee, Canada will continue to have a trade agreement with our largest trading partner. The bad news is that it was negotiated by the Liberal government, which made concession after concession to the United States and Mexico.

The United States is our greatest ally and our largest trading partner. The NAFTA deal that was negotiated by the Conservatives was good for Canada, with $2 billion a day in trade crossing our border, which represents 75% of Canadian exports. The U.S. direct investment in Canada was over $400 billion, which is huge.

Since NAFTA was first implemented, over five million jobs have been created, and total trilateral trade has quadrupled to $1.2 trillion. Conservative trade deals have done a good job creating jobs for Canadians.

The Conservative Party of Canada is the party of free trade. An election was fought over free trade. Luckily for Canadians, the Conservatives won that election. It was under former prime minister Brian Mulroney that the first Canada-U.S. free trade agreement was signed. Then it was under former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper that Canada signed a record number of trade agreements, providing Canadian businesses with unprecedented access to markets around the world.

The Conservative Party is the party of free trade. We have long supported free trade and will continue to support a free trade agreement with the United States, our largest trading partner, and Mexico.

On February 25, I had the honour of presenting a private member's bill, Bill C-222, an act to amend the Expropriation Act with respect to protection of private property. There has been a disturbing trend in Canada toward what is referred to as regulatory, de facto or constructive taking of private property. This happens when government uses its statutory powers to regulate or restrict the property rights of an owner without acquiring title to the land being adversely affected. The landowner feels the impact of the regulation as if the land has been expropriated.

In the United States, the fifth amendment of the American constitution protects private property rights. In Canada, government acquisition of land without the owner's consent is not subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Private property rights were excluded from the Canadian Constitution when it was repatriated in 1982.

In Canada, landowners' rights are found in the expropriation legislation. The government must follow the law as to what land may be expropriated and must observe procedures set out in the legislation. In Canada the government can strictly regulate land, limiting its value and what a landowner can and cannot do with it without triggering the procedures in the legislation.

A de facto regulatory taking means a property owner is not entitled to compensation unless the restrictions of the owner's rights are such that they should be properly regarded within the meaning of the Expropriation Act.

I introduced Bill C-222 to provide some protections from the government taking people's property without compensation. It would appear that CUSMA addresses the issue raised by my private member's bill, Bill C-222. Canadian common law on de facto expropriation suffers from what some jurists refer to as external incoherence.

The present context of CUSMA decries the possibility that the rights of foreign investors in Canadian property are afforded more protection than the rights of Canadian property owners of Canadian property. The source of this incoherence is article 1110 of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, which has been carried over into CUSMA under article 14.8 on expropriation and compensation.

Article 14.8 in the new agreement provides:

1. No Party shall expropriate or nationalize a covered investment either directly or indirectly through measures equivalent to expropriation or nationalization (expropriation), except:

(a) for a public purpose;

(b) in a non-discriminatory manner;

(c) on payment of prompt, adequate, and effective compensation in accordance with paragraphs 2, 3, and 4; and

(d) in accordance with due process of law.

2. Compensation shall:

(a) be paid without delay;

(b) be equivalent to the fair market value of the expropriated investment immediately before the expropriation took place (the date of expropriation);

(c) not reflect any change in value occurring because the intended expropriation had become known earlier; and

(d) be fully realizable and freely transferable.

3. If the fair market value is denominated in a freely usable currency, the compensation paid shall be no less than the fair market value on the date of expropriation, plus interest at a commercially reasonable rate for that currency, accrued from the date of expropriation until the date of payment.

4. If the fair market value is denominated in a currency that is not freely usable, the compensation paid—converted into the currency of payment at the market rate of exchange prevailing on the date of payment—shall be no less than:

(a) the fair market value on the date of expropriation, converted into a freely usable currency at the market rate of exchange prevailing on that date; plus

(b) interest, at a commercially reasonable rate for that freely usable currency, accrued from the date of expropriation until the date of payment.

5. For greater certainty, whether an action or series of actions by a Party constitutes an expropriation shall be determined in accordance with paragraph 1 of this Article and Annex 14-B (Expropriation).

The language used here was rolled over from the 1992 NAFTA and it refers to the indirect nationalizing or expropriating of a measure as being tantamount to nationalization or expropriation. The language clearly exists to ensure that compensation will be owed for both de jure and de facto expropriation by the expropriating country.

The scope of article 14.8 is indeed wide. “Measure” includes any law, regulation, procedure, requirement or practice, and the definition of “investment” is so expansive that it cannot be included here. Moreover, there is no allowance, as there is in Canadian common law, for express statutory language to extinguish the right of compensation.

How the previous NAFTA article 1110 has been treated in arbitration among the parties of NAFTA, Canada, the United States and Mexico, has, or at least should have, bearing on expropriation law in Canada generally. This is particularly so given NAFTA's, now CUSMA's, constitution-like status as a document that cannot be amended without the consent of all signatories.

The NAFTA expropriation case that has received the most attention from Canadian legal scholars is probably The United Mexican States v. Metalclad Corporation. In that case, Metalclad had received approval from the federal government of Mexico to operate a landfill in the municipality of Guadalcazar and began to construct the landfill on that basis. Mid-construction, Guadalcazar informed Metalclad that it would require a municipal permit and must cease construction pending its issuance. More than a year later, Guadalcazar finally made its decision: permit denied.

The governor of San Luis Potosi, the state in which Guadalcazar is situated, further declared Metalclad's land to be a natural area for the protection of rare cacti. The federal government took no saving action. In its decision, the tribunal stated, “these measures, together with the representations of the Mexican federal authorities”, on which Metalclad relied, “and the absence of a timely, orderly or substantive basis for the denial of the construction permit, amounted to an indirect” or de facto “expropriation.”

The tribunal's belief in the far-ranging scope of article 1110 is evident. As outlined in its decision, expropriation in NAFTA, and now CUSMA, includes not only “the open, deliberate and acknowledged takings of property” but also the “covert or incidental interference with the use of property which has the effect of depriving the owner, in whole or in significant part, of the use or reasonably-to-be-expected economic benefit of property.”

Where the ratification of CUSMA will leave expropriation law and Canadian property rights in the future is uncertain. Time will tell whether or not the law will continue to afford foreign investors more protection than Canadians. This is one example of why a detailed analysis of CUSMA is so important for Canadians to understand what is being signed.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement]

Mr. Speaker, very simply, obviously we on this side of the House believe strongly in the agreement that has been forged with our partners and allies.

I note the concerns raised by my hon. colleague and I will simply ask her a question. If she is that concerned about it, why is voting for the agreement?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, CUSMA validates my private member's bill, Bill C-222. It naturally follows that Bill C-4 also supports the same principles found in Bill C-222. That is why I am supporting this CUSMA agreement.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy working with the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, even though we rarely agree on anything.

My question involves the fact that she is now supporting a trade agreement that will take out the investor-state dispute resolution. That is something that she supported when the former Conservative government in a previous Parliament put investment protection into the Canada-China agreement.

Does the member still support the idea that a corporation like Huawei should be able to sue the Canadian government for losses, and to do so in a secret process, if they are denied the ability to participate in the 5G network? That is something the previous Conservative government put in place in 2014.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the issue of Huawei involves matters of national security, and I believe in ranking the security of Canada and the defence of Canada as paramount.

I look forward to broad support for Bill C-222 from my colleagues and government members on the basis of consistency between article 14 of CUSMA and the articulation of private property rights in private member's Bill C-222. This is in addition to other sound legislative reasons for supporting Bill C-222.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, the vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture made this quote:

Canada agreed to place a world-wide cap on exports of certain dairy products in the CUSMA, which is unprecedented in regional trade agreements. As the nation’s prosperity depends on reliable access to global markets, Canada must not agree to this kind of provision in any future trade agreement.

What does the member see as the dangers in making this concession in regard to limiting our own trade in other countries on the basis of this agreement?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague makes a very good point. Dairy producers tell me that at the very least there has to be some form of compensation for what they specifically have given up.

After negotiating CETA successfully, we had in place a compensation program that was ready to go. Then the election occurred in 2015. The Liberals took over, and they denied compensation to dairy farmers. Furthermore, we have to get permission from the United States before we sign any further trade agreements.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages (Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency)]

Mr. Speaker, on the last point, I emphasize that there was not a loss in the trade of those projects. There is a level at which an additional fee is added, but Canada is nowhere near that level yet, so there is not a loss there.

I thank the member for her speech. It was great. On a slightly different topic, however, I wonder if she supports the increased benefits in CUSMA for labour, the environment and women's rights.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what I support most is the fact that CUSMA justifies Bill C-222. In terms of anything the member just described, I would want to make sure that the property rights of Canadians are at least equal to what is being given to foreigners who own property in Canada.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I truly appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-4, the new free trade agreement with the United States and Mexico, at third reading.

Perhaps I should say that I appreciate finally having the chance to speak to this agreement, as Conservatives have tried time and again to move this deal forward.

It is that clear we need economic stability, and an unsigned free trade agreement with our largest trading partner is anything but stable. In 2016 alone, Canada exported approximately $425 billion in goods and services to the United States while importing approximately $407 billion.

I will be speaking about how this deal will impact my riding and my province, but first I want to reflect on how we got here.

For over 30 years, free trade in North America has been a cornerstone of the Canadian economy. Negotiated by a Conservative government in the early 1990s, NAFTA made tangible, positive impacts on the lives of millions of Canadians. It helped propel us to becoming one of the most prosperous countries in the world, a country that weathered the 2008 recession better than any of our G7 counterparts. This is a Conservative legacy, a legacy of prosperity.

However, for some time during the previous Parliament, it appeared that this legacy of prosperity was in jeopardy as a result of the actions of the Liberal government. Still, the Liberals managed to pull a deal out of the fire. Of course, it would have been better not to have started the fire in the first place.

This deal is likely the best the Liberals could do, but it certainly was not the best deal possible. When negotiations began, President Trump was concerned about what were perceived as unfair trade practices from Mexico. Canada was not his target, nor was there any reason to expect that we would be, yet the Liberals squandered much of the goodwill we had with the United States almost as soon as the negotiations began by presenting a list of priorities that had essentially nothing to do with free trade, a list not, I would note, dissimilar to the list the Liberals presented in their initial discussions with China, who quickly sent them on their way.

Within months, the United States placed the removal of the dispute settlement mechanism and supply management on the table. There had been little indication that these were issues with Canada. The United States went further by imposing tariffs, no doubt unfairly, on Canadian steel and aluminum. We were then left on the outside looking in as the Americans negotiated and agreed to a bilateral trade agreement with Mexico. Canada was forced to play catch-up in negotiations and needed every ounce of goodwill to save a deal.

How did the now Deputy Prime Minister respond to this precarious situation? She responded by using her platform while accepting an award to imply that the president of the country we were trying to sign a free trade agreement with was a totalitarian. That is what I mean by starting the fire.

It is remarkable, and I say this with all honesty, that the Liberals were able to salvage any deal out of that house fire, let alone one that contained a dispute resolution mechanism and did not do away with supply management entirely. Still, the question must be asked: How much better would this deal be if the Liberals had not undermined themselves time and time again? Unfortunately, we will never know what deal we could have had, but we do know what deal we have.

Now I would like to take some time to speak about how this agreement would impact my riding and my province.

As many in the House may know, I represent a large, mostly rural riding which is home to the majority of Saskatchewan's supply-managed farms. However, most of my colleagues would be unaware that I also represent a large area that is referred to as the “iron triangle”, a cluster of municipalities with metal manufacturing as a primary or major industry. Communities like Humboldt, Annaheim, Englefeld, St. Gregor, Vonda and many others punch well above their weight in the design, development and manufacture of high-quality, world-leading agricultural equipment.

They make up an important part of Saskatchewan's growing manufacturing industry, which is an industry that exports over $300 million in products each and every year. One can imagine how much of an impact the tariffs placed on Canadian steel and aluminum had on these communities and the companies that call them home.

The trade war that resulted had real consequences for the constituents in my riding, many of whose livelihoods rely on the free movement of manufactured metal equipment throughout North America. Understandably, it came as a relief that the tariffs on steel were removed in the negotiation process. However, that good news has been tempered by the ongoing tariffs on Canadian aluminum. Given what I have already outlined, I think there can be little doubt that a better approach in negotiations would have seen these tariffs removed completely.

Similarly, Canada was in a good position at the beginning of these negotiations to finally bring an end to the long-running saga of softwood lumber disputes. Now, as luck would have it, the United States Department of Commerce recently announced that there would be a significant decrease in the tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber, yet there is still no agreement in place going forward, leaving lumber producers in Saskatchewan in limbo for long-term planning. This was another missed opportunity.

Supply management, as I mentioned earlier, is a part of our economy that likely only came under scrutiny because of the Liberals' poor strategy in the early days of negotiations.

First, let me be clear that I am very happy to see that the Liberals did not literally give away the farm, although whether they figuratively did is up for debate. This new agreement would open up 3.6% of the Canadian dairy market to imports, significantly more than was agreed upon by the previous Conservative government in the TPP. It would also impose a threshold on Canadian exports of milk protein concentrates and other similar products to the United States and Mexico.

But there is more: Not only would CUSMA limit dairy exports to the signatory countries, but it would also limit exports to other countries not party to this agreement. What is more, we would now be required to report to the U.S. dairy commission before we begin negotiations with other countries. This would further limit the ability of Canadian dairy farmers to replace market share lost in Canada by sales to the signatories of CUSMA, and would handcuff us in other free trade negotiations going forward.

The losses to our dairy sector arising from these concessions will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and this comes at a time when dairy farmers are seeing increased costs from the carbon tax, costs they cannot recover either through rebates or through the market. The government must realize that our dairy industry, especially the many family farms in my riding, cannot continue to see their margins shrink and still remain in business.

There is more I could say on this deal, but in truth, Canada needs a free trade agreement going forward. We recognize that. Our already weakening economy cannot handle further trade uncertainty. Industry groups, chambers of commerce and provincial premiers understand this, and the majority have therefore asked the House to ratify CUSMA.

Faced with this reality, the questions of what could have been must give way to what is, and so, while far from perfect, CUSMA is better than nothing.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages (Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency)]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to get some clarification. The member suggested that tariffs remain on aluminum, but there are no tariffs remaining on aluminum.

I am not sure what the member was referring to, but to emphasize the benefits for aluminum, first of all, the regional value of content in automobiles would be increased from 62.5% to 75%. With regard to aluminum purchased by automakers in the past, 0% had to be from North America, but now 70% would have to be from North America. Also, seven core parts, the major parts of automobiles, must have a 75% regional value, which they never had to have before, and a lot of those parts are aluminum. Also, the provisions on aluminum, to make them even better, can be changed at any time.

I would ask the member for clarification on her point that there are still tariffs on aluminum.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps I did misspeak.

What I would like to point out is that we have been clear in our support of the aluminum industry and have stated that while the 70% rule of origin included in CUSMA looks good on paper, there are many things that we are concerned about.

In fact, my colleagues on the committee wrote a letter to the Deputy Prime Minister outlining that failure to include a smelted and poured definition would leave the North American industry vulnerable to dumping from overseas, and particularly through Mexico. That is why my colleagues recommended that the Liberal government adopt the recommendations of the Aluminum Association of Canada, including working to ensure that Mexico adopts an import monitoring system for aluminum as robust as our own, reporting on the status of the $2 billion in tariff revenue collected so far, and developing a strategy to market Canadian aluminum as the greenest in the world.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have enjoyed working with the member on a number of committees and always appreciate her input.

She and a number of other colleagues have talked about the lack of transparency in the current process around trade. The NDP has negotiated an agreement moving forward, not impacting this agreement, where the government will henceforth be looking to transparency in negotiating trade agreements, consulting with people up front and, particularly important and something that Canada really has not done, putting in place the economic evaluations of what a trade agreement could mean. This is so the trading negotiators actually have content in front of them as the trade agreement is negotiated.

I wanted to ask the member how she feels about that approach, with more transparency around trade. Does she feel, as I do, that ultimately that will lead to better trade agreements?

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I too have appreciated working with my hon. colleague over the last number of years.

I think all of us would agree that accountability and transparency in everything that we do as elected representatives are goals and values that we should support and look to attain. I would like to refer back to the letter that was written by my colleagues to the Deputy Prime Minister. They voiced deep concern and disappointment with both the government's refusal to co-operate with the official opposition and other opposition parties and its inability to organize an effective legislative schedule, which delayed the work of the committee regarding the scrutiny of CUSMA. This is where we might be able to see some of that transparency and accountability when, as legislators, we are tasked with doing our due diligence in scrutinizing an agreement that we have to ratify in this place.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Surrey Centre.

I am pleased to rise in the House today in support of Bill C-4.

Over the generations, Canada, Mexico and the United States have established an economic relationship that is a model for the entire world. Since 1993, trade between Canada, the United States and Mexico has more than quadrupled and was valued at $1.2 billion U.S. in 2018.

In 1994, NAFTA created the largest free trade zone in the world. The continental North American economy, which is currently estimated to be worth $23 billion U.S., encompasses a regional market of nearly 490 million consumers.

Under this proven, rules-based free trade system, key sectors of the North American economy have developed into integrated production platforms that strengthen the innovative and competitive economic backbone of North America.

The new agreement will enhance the strong economic ties between the three countries and improve North America's ability to remain competitive globally. This agreement also restores the predictability and stability of economic relations between Canada, the United States and Mexico.

The U.S. took several trade actions that contributed to economic instability for Canadian businesses and their workers. Canada had to choose between either renegotiating NAFTA or seeing the United States withdraw from the agreement. I am pleased that we now have a modern trilateral agreement that turns the page and focuses on the three pillars that make our economic relationship so successful: stability, economic integration, and clear, transparent and enforceable rules.

From the start of the negotiations, Canada set out to achieve key priority outcomes: preserve important NAFTA provisions and market access into the U.S. and Mexico, modernize and improve the agreement as much as possible, and reinforce the security and stability of market access into the U.S. and Mexico for Canadian businesses. We are proud that we achieved those objectives.

It is particularly important to note that the preferential tariff treatment under NAFTA is preserved in CUSMA, which helps consolidate our most important trade relationship. Canada's preferential access to the U.S. and Mexican markets is vital to the continuing prosperity of Canadian workers whose livelihoods rely on this trade.

During consultations with stakeholders, we heard repeatedly about the importance of preserving the benefits of NAFTA and the integrity of North American supply chains. We understand how vital it is to Canadian companies and exporters.

As an annual average from 2016 to 2018, Canada exported $412.2 billion worth of goods to the United States, our top export market. Over the same period, Canada exported an annual average of $9.2 billion worth of goods to Mexico, our fifth-largest trading partner. The new NAFTA ensures continued preferential access to these key export destinations.

Maintaining these tariff outcomes provides Canadians with an advantage over countries without a preferential trade agreement with the United States and Mexico. The agreement ensures predictability and continued secure market access for Canadian exporters to our largest trading partner.

The preserved tariff-free environment also safeguards the integrity of integrated North American supply chains. Other key elements of the original NAFTA have been preserved, including the chapter 19 binational panel dispute settlement mechanism, the state-to-state dispute settlement process, the cultural exemption and temporary entry for business persons.

The new NAFTA also helps open new market access opportunities in the United States for Canadian companies and improves access to existing markets. The new modernized agreement includes new customs measures and will also make it easier for companies to move goods across the border by reducing paper processes and providing a single portal for submitting import documentation electronically.

In particular, the new agreement moves away from the traditional certificate of origin to a new certificate of origin that allows companies to use existing documents in their business process, such as an invoice, to certify origin.

The new NAFTA also includes a new stand-alone chapter on rules of origin and origin procedures for textiles and apparel goods that will support Canada's textile and apparel sector. The agreement preserves the existing market access that Canada has under NAFTA to the U.S. and Mexican markets in these sectors and ensures that the benefits of the agreement go primarily to producers located in North America.

Furthermore, the agreement expands a provision from NAFTA to set out a special procedure to more easily establish the origin of indigenous textiles and apparel. Under this provision, a textile or apparel item that the parties agree is an indigenous handcrafted good will be eligible for duty-free treatment, even if the good does not satisfy the applicable product-specific rule of origin.

The new NAFTA includes provisions that will provide added assurance for exporters that their goods will not be delayed by unjustified or unclear measures at the borders. The section 232 side letter provides added security and stability for Canadian automotive and parts companies that export to the U.S. market and will reaffirm Canada's attractiveness as an investment destination for this sector.

With respect to trade and indigenous peoples, and for the first time in a Canadian free trade agreement, the new NAFTA includes a general exception that clearly confirms that the government can adopt or maintain measures it deems necessary to fulfill its legal obligations to indigenous people. An indigenous working group was established to further the dialogue between the government and indigenous people, to share ideas and work collaboratively on solutions.

We are pleased to have concluded an agreement that incorporates new and modernized provisions that seek to address 21st century trade issues and support opportunities for Canadian businesses and workers. This includes bringing obligations on labour and environment into the agreement and subjecting them to dispute settlement.

It also includes important outcomes for inclusive trade, including with respect to gender equality and the interests of indigenous people. In particular, the new labour chapter includes commitments to protect and promote internationally recognized labour rights and principles in North America.

This chapter also includes unprecedented protections against violence and gender-based discrimination with regard to sexual orientation, sexual harassment, gender identity, caregiving responsibilities and wage discrimination. It is worth noting that the new chapter also includes a non-derogation clause that prevents the parties from weakening their labour laws to encourage trade or investment.

To address labour violations related to collective bargaining and freedom of association in a timely manner, the agreement also includes new mechanisms for rapid response between Canada and Mexico and between the United States and Mexico.

In the event that, in a state-to-state dispute settlement, one party is found to have violated its obligations with regard to child labour, the other party could trigger the rapid response mechanism to remedy the violation of the child labour obligations.

The full environment chapter, which is subject to the dispute settlement mechanism, includes measures for implementing the parties' obligations under multilateral environmental agreements and responding to global environmental problems, such as illegal wildlife trade, illegal fishing, conservation of species at risk, protection of biodiversity, ozone-depleting substances and marine pollution.

This modernized agreement is good for Canadians because it provides the predictability and stability that businesses and workers sorely need.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech.

The NDP negotiated an agreement, to take effect with CUSMA, to allow for greater transparency so that the general public can understand free trade agreements. This agreement was to ensure that people would be consulted before instead of after and that the government would make sure the public understands the economic impact of the negotiations before they even begin. This has yet to happen. There was no credible process in the eyes of the public. Fortunately the Liberal government understood that the NDP's approach was better.

Does my colleague agree that it is better to provide more transparency so that the public understands the issues associated with each agreement negotiated?

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

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

First of all, we are committed to the principles of transparency, which are very important to us as elected officials. We have a duty to enforce these principles, and we do.

Furthermore, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs negotiated with the other parties to ensure that the entire process was transparent.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, a unanimous motion passed at the international trade committee requested that the member's government release its economic impact analysis for CUSMA. It was not provided until one day before the clause-by-clause was conducted.

The government's economic impact report compared CUSMA to not having a NAFTA deal at all. What this says is that the government wanted Canadians to believe that any trade deal, no matter how unbalanced or restrictive at this point in time, would be better than nothing at all. However, the C.D. Howe Institute released a report comparing CUSMA to the old NAFTA on February 21. It shows that this would reduce Canada's GDP by $14.2 billion and Canada's exports to the U.S. would fall by $3.2 billion, while our imports from the U.S. would increase by $8.6 billion.

How does the member see this as a fair deal for Canada?

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, with regards to the availability of the report, it is my understanding that the Deputy Prime Minister and her staff made it readily available as soon as the agreement was signed.

Insofar as the validity or the advantages of this new CUSMA is concerned, it is fair to say that it is a great advantage for all Canadians in all spheres of work, whether it be agriculture, indigenous peoples, textiles, aluminum, and for the car industry. It is a very good deal for all Canadians.

[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]

Mr. Speaker, it is important to recognize that after the agreement was signed, the Deputy Prime Minister made available negotiators for the agreement and staff to the leadership of all the different political entities inside the House so that there could be some ongoing dialogue prior to the House coming back in January. It is an important point, because I realize there are concerns.

Would my colleague not agree that over the last year and a half there has been a great deal of discussion inside the chamber and out, and a lot of stakeholders have been involved in this process for a long time?

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there have been ongoing negotiations with various members in the House and outside the House. What is worth highlighting this time around is that this is the first time we have the unanimous consent of all parties for the ratification of this new CUSMA deal. It is an outstanding accomplishment.

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 third time and passed.

Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement Implementation Act

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I am here to discuss the benefits that the Canada-United States-Mexico agreement will bring to Canadians.

Over the last few weeks, my colleagues and I on the international trade committee had the opportunity to hear from over 100 witnesses from across industries and from across the country as part of our study on Bill C-4. We presented the report back to the House on February 27 without amendments.

The new NAFTA, or CUSMA as it is also called, marks a new milestone in the mutually beneficial trade relationship between Canada, the United States and Mexico. We understood from the start that this achievement would not have been possible without the support, contribution and dedication of Canadians across the country.

Before the negotiations started, we began speaking with Canadians across the country. We listened to their views on the original agreement's benefits and challenges, and what could be done to improve Canada's trading relationship with the United States and Mexico.

Guided by Canada's inclusive approach to trade, we worked very hard from the beginning of the negotiations to secure outcomes that would advance the interests of provinces and territories, indigenous peoples, business and business associations, labour organizations, civil society organizations, women and youth, among others.

From February 2017 to December 2019, the government engaged with over 1,300 stakeholders through nearly 1,100 interactions on NAFTA modernization. Over the same period, we received over 47,000 submissions from Canadians on NAFTA modernization. Canadian stakeholders have been largely supportive of the new agreement and have underlined the importance of securing stability and predictability in our commercial relationship with the United States and Mexico. Their views informed Canada's negotiating positions in this modernization process.

From the outset, the government worked closely with the provincial and territorial governments. Their representatives were invited to travel to the location of each negotiation round and received daily debriefs from the chief negotiator and the members of the negotiating team. We also worked very closely with representatives of indigenous people. In fact, an indigenous working group was formed to work collaboratively on elements of importance to indigenous people in the NAFTA modernization process. In total, the Government of Canada met with representatives of 49 different indigenous groups, including self-governing nations, tribal organizations, national organizations, development corporations, business and lending organizations, legal advisers and policy experts.

We sought and received input and insight from across party lines. We reached out to current and former politicians, premiers, mayors, and community and indigenous leaders for help not only in shaping Canada's priorities, but in championing them. We created a NAFTA advisory council that included representatives of other political parties, as well as business, labour and indigenous leaders. All contributions and advice helped guide our way forward.

Since early 2017, fellow federal, provincial and territorial ministerial colleagues and their teams have cumulatively undertaken over 530 visits to the United States, including parliamentarians here who engaged on similar bilaterals with congressmen and governors in the United States. Others, including many members, have contributed to these efforts. Together, team Canada has collectively engaged with over 750 influencers and decision-makers across the United States.

The new agreement was made possible because we acted together and we acted with resolve at the negotiating table to uphold the interests and values of Canadians in seeking a workable and progressive trade agreement. We sought and obtained consensus on the key issues at home. That helped us prioritize Canada's interests and develop Canada's negotiating positions. In spite of the many hurdles, we worked tirelessly and remained steadfast in our principles and objectives in reaching agreement with the United States and Mexico.

The benefits of the new agreement for Canadians are concrete and considerable. They reflect Canadians' views expressed in the engagement process. Most Canadians viewed the modernization process as an opportunity to preserve key elements of the original NAFTA, modernize and improve the agreement where possible, and ensure the stability and predictability of the North American market. We delivered on these key priorities.

The new agreement preserves key elements of the original NAFTA, allowing for our continued regional prosperity and stability. It reinforces the strong economic ties between Canada, Mexico and the United States, while also recognizing the importance of progressive and inclusive trade by including key components in areas such as labour and environment, as well as language on gender and the rights of indigenous peoples.

In particular, Canada was successful in preserving the NAFTA chapter 19 binational panel dispute settlement mechanism for anti-dumping and countervailing duties, the cultural exemption, NAFTA duty-free access into the U.S. and Mexican markets, and the provision of temporary entry of business persons.

We preserved Canada's system of supply management, despite U.S. attempts to dismantle it.

We modernized and improved the agreement to address the modern-day trade realities and enhanced business opportunities in North America.

CUSMA has nine chapters, including chapters on digital trade, anti-corruption, and small and medium-sized enterprises.

We eliminated the investor-state dispute settlement and the energy proportionality clause. We brought the labour and environmental chapters into the agreement and subjected them to a more effective and efficient dispute settlement procedure.

CUSMA improves the dispute settlement mechanism in a manner that strengthens enforcement, including the areas of labour and environment. This is an outstanding achievement for Canada.

The agreement streamlines customs procedures to facilitate trade, reduce red tape and lessen the administrative burden for Canadian exporters and investors. It also includes outcomes that advance the interests of small and medium-sized enterprises, women and indigenous peoples in line with Canada's inclusive approach to trade.

Overall, CUSMA provides key outcomes for Canadian workers, businesses, communities and families.

In the new agreement, Canada was successful in achieving priority outcomes with respect to indigenous peoples, in line with the government's efforts to advance indigenous rights, prosperity and sustainable development in Canada and around the world.

There are also outcomes that reflect the important role of indigenous peoples regarding the environment, including the conservation of biodiversity.

Canada has made gender equality and women's economic empowerment a key priority in recent trade negotiations, including playing a leadership role to integrate gender-related provisions in the agreement. This is the first international trade deal to recognize the discrimination of gender and sexual orientation-based discrimination. This includes labour obligations regarding the elimination of employment discrimination based on gender, as well as other provisions related to corporate social responsibility and small and medium-sized enterprises.

The inclusion of language on indigenous peoples and gender rights is an important step in our government's commitment to reconciliation and gender equality. What we learned throughout the consultation and negotiation period of this agreement will be beneficial to apply to negotiations for future trade agreements.

With the stability CUSMA brings to Canadian producers and industries, we hope it will help Canada take advantage of our unique position of having free trade agreements with so many other regions around the world, including CETA with Europe and CPTPP with Asia and the Pacific. While the United States is our largest trading partner, Canada has the opportunity to become a hub for trade, being the only North American nation with free trade agreements in so many regions that reach over 1.5 billion people around the world.

It is amusing to hear members from across the aisle critique Prime Minister Trudeau or our government's handling of CUSMA and NAFTA, but what the most experienced expert on this issue said is in stark contrast. To quote someone who is considered the architect or originator of the first free trade deal and the second one with the U.S., former Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney said this about our government: “I told Trudeau he did a really good job with this renegotiation—”

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

I note that the hon. member finished up there. Unfortunately, I had already risen and his last few sentences might not be on the record.

I want to remind the hon. member of the use of members' names in the House. There was one instance of that, and we kind of let that go, but there was a second one, so just watch that you do not use them, particularly for prime ministers and other members who are included in speeches from time to time and in comments and questions in the House. I thank the hon. member for that.

We will go to questions and comments, the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that was certainly a fascinating way to spend part of my afternoon listening to the Liberal fiction of the open process that never existed until the American Democrats finally stood up on their hind legs and defended Canada, and we came back and got a better trade deal than the Liberals were willing to sign off on. They were willing to sign off on anything they were so desperate to please Trump.

What concerns me is that the future of the economy is data. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows that except the Prime Minister because the Liberals traded away our data rights under chapter 19. The National Research Council has said that Canada's economy is turning into a data cow for Silicon Valley. Under chapter 19, we cannot establish our digital sovereignty, even though that is where the EU is going. We cannot tax the big Facebook, Google and Amazon giants, even though they are getting a completely unfair trade advantage. We cannot go after them for the harmful content that has been generated through the algorithms of YouTube and Facebook, because the Prime Minister is more willing to bow down to the Google and Facebook lobbyists than even Washington is.

Why is it that the government cannot come clean, stand up and explain to Canadians why it sold away our digital sovereignty?

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, first, I want to correct my hon. colleague in terms of the consultation period. I was part of that study and heard over 10 witnesses speak. One of the common themes was that virtually everyone said that their industry was represented in these renegotiations. They said they were heard. In fact, the indigenous communities and business community from indigenous peoples said that this was the first time they were ever consulted so thoroughly on a trade agreement. Their interests were taken into account and they had nothing but great things to say.

Similarly, for digital content and copyright provisions, there were consultations. Canada has always been foremost in protecting our digital content, copyright provisions and our cultural sovereignty. Thousands and thousands of jobs will be protected with the cultural provisions we have kept in this and we will continue to maintain.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was thoroughly amused at the member's ability to define the success of this agreement by what Canada did not have to give up, rather than by the new access and new advantages that we gained under it.

Colleagues may recall that the Prime Minister said this was going to be a win-win-win. In other words, Canada was going to have a very clear win out of this. By any standard, by any measure, this is a worse agreement than we had before, although we are told now that a new NAFTA is better than no deal at all.

The member referred to all of the consultations that took place with stakeholders, industrial stakeholders and the aboriginal communities, but he failed to mention the members of this House on the opposition side who represent more than half of the communities across this country. Can the member tell us in this House that in fact the opposition was thoroughly consulted the way some of the other industrial stakeholders were consulted, yes or no?

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think the answer is yes. I think that former leaders of that party were part of the actual negotiation. The former leader was part of it and a former prime minister has been quoted saying it is a really good deal.

Let me quote what some of the other Conservative premiers in this country have said, such as, “A signed USMCA trade deal is good news for Saskatchewan and Canada." The Conservatives' wonderful Jason Kenney, the Premier of Alberta, said he is “relieved that a renewed North American trade agreement has been concluded.” Former leader Rona Ambrose was part of the negotiation. I think I have already quoted a former prime minister from the 1980s who concluded the first free trade negotiation and NAFTA and said that it was a “really good job”.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today to talk about this important trade deal.

I will be sharing my time with the member for Red Deer—Lacombe. He is a good friend and I would not want him to miss out on an opportunity to give the Alberta interpretation of this deal.

I do not want to be critical of the previous member or some of his interpretations of the deal. When I look at a trade deal, whether it is an economic trade deal or a sports deal or whatever, there are only two trades I can think of that are similar to this trade deal. One was when the Boston Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, and the other was a trade in 1992 to my team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, when the Calgary Flames were kind enough to give us Doug Gilmour. That is where we start, if we want to see what kind of a trade deal we have here.

David MacNaughton, the Prime Minister's appointed ambassador to represent us in Washington, said at the outset of the deal in November 2016, “I think any agreement can be improved.” He got that wrong, and he got it wrong big time. Another point he made that day was that Canada would have at least one clear demand, free trade in lumber. If that was the hill to die on, the Liberals were blown right out because they did not get anywhere on that.

In my riding of Huron—Bruce, which I have had the honour to represent for many years, depending on the location, it is an hour to an hour and a half to the Blue Water Bridge, right across from Port Huron, on the Sarnia-Port Huron border. We are right along Lake Huron. We have tremendous agriculture productivity, cash crops, edible beans and livestock of all sorts. We also have a tremendously strong manufacturing sector. We have the world's largest exhaust manifold manufacturer as well. We also have Bruce Power, which is the largest nuclear power plant in the world.

Trade to the United States is very important to us. Fair trade with NAFTA and the USMCA deal is obviously very important to us.

Other things that were not dealt with in this deal, which I think is very unacceptable, are the buy America provisions. We would have expected those to be dealt with. As well, there was no firm commitment from the government, and I will speak specifically to the very loose border in regard to CBSA. Many commodity sectors in Ontario have long-standing complaints against the leaky border, whether it is the dairy sector or the poultry sector with spent hens. There are many other topics that were not dealt with.

We should think about where we were five years ago. We had the then minister of international trade, we had Gerry Ritz, and we had the then prime minister agreeing to a monumental trade deal, the deal of the century, with TPP, which included the United States and Mexico. I can remember when that deal was first agreed to. It was right in the middle of the 2015 election. In spite of that, we had agricultural sectors saying that it had set up their sector for a generation. I know there were exact quotes at that time.

TPP is a perfect example of a trade deal, the one we concluded with the United States, where there is give and take. Agriculture groups could look at it and say that they had given up a little but, to the benefit of the entire sector, there were huge gains and, by the way, there was certainty with some of the biggest markets around the world for a trade deal.

If we look at what happened, some things could not be helped. There was the U.S. election and the United States pulled out of the TPP. I do not think anybody could have predicted that when the deal was first agreed to, but that is what happened. We entered into a deal, and the Prime Minister told Canadians he would get us a better deal, but he did not do that.

Let us look at some of the other deals. One of the best deals we did was between Canada and South Korea. That had so many huge benefits for Canadians, including for Canadian agricultural producers in my riding with edible beans. It was phenomenal, including for beef and pork. The tariffs were coming down. It gave us a tremendous opportunity. The TPP with Japan is going to make a big difference.

I have heard a number of members from the Liberal side talk about chapter 19 and chapter 20, but I go back a number of years when we had a dispute with the United States about country-of-origin labelling. This had a huge impact on our livestock sector in Canada. We did not go through chapter 19 or chapter 20. We went through the WTO. The Canadian Cattlemen's Association made note of that in its committee briefing that we do not even use that. It has not been used for 15 or 20 years.

I will agree that softwood lumber did have a one-time payoff perhaps, but in agriculture, it has been zero. The one thing the Liberals keep saying is a big deal in the agriculture community is peanuts. Peanuts is a great segue into something else I would like to talk about.

The U.S. PR paper talks about what the Americans gained versus what we gained. The U.S. gained access to dairy. The U.S. gained access to poultry. The U.S. gained access to turkey, eggs, and on and on. What did we get in return? Somehow we got a little dairy and I will see that when it happens. Apparently our big gain from the U.S.A. on agriculture is on peanuts and peanut products. I can think of all the peanut farms in my riding. What a thing. I know at the U.S. agriculture committee they were laughing about what a great deal they secured for American farmers. At home we cannot say that.

If we look at the beef sector today in Ontario, it is in crisis. The Liberal government pulled the processing licence for Ryding-Regency in Etobicoke and that has caused ripple effects in the beef sector in Ontario for years now. The Liberals did not have to pull it. They could have extended it past 90 days.

Then we look at what has been done through CFIA on transport rules. The Liberals thought they had a deal and time to do it, but CFIA went in and said here is the deal. Another deal recently done is on processing mainly eastern Ontario and some Quebec cattle in auction facilities like Brussels in my riding, Cookstown and others where they used to have great arrangements for processing cattle with their horns and other components. It was humane, safe and all of a sudden CFIA comes in and says they have to be held for so many days. There is no capacity for that. Now it is on farm.

The government has not been fair to Canadian farmers and farm producers. The agriculture minister was in Teeswater in the summer to make a big $70-million announcement for Gay Lea in my riding that was specifically trying to address schedules 6 and 7 products in the dairy sector. This huge investment to try to add value and create value for dairy farmers and the processing sector, and this deal knocks the legs right out of it, with 50,000 tonnes reducing to 35,000 tonnes. The price is not set by Canadian processors. The price is set by the U.S. If we want more access, guess who we have to go through? Uncle Sam. How could we do a deal like that?

I look back at 2019-20 and ask what the big change is. I used to work in the manufacturing sector. In the auto sector, saying that 40% of the Mexican production by whatever year it is, they will earn $16 an hour when assemblers are earning $7.40 an hour and auto parts employees in Mexico are making $3.40 an hour. What a joke. It should be 100% have to make that. We have hard-working auto parts workers in my riding who go to work every day through the snow, and produce a product that would trade around the world on fair price, fair labour, fair benefits. This deal does not do it.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages (Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency)]

Mr. Speaker, the auto parts workers in Canada love this agreement. It makes a lot of additional provisions for them, but I want to talk about agriculture, too. There are increases in access for refined sugar and margarine. The member said agriculture is small, tiny, and he might have used the word “peanuts”, but there is huge trade between Canada and the United States. Sixty-three billion dollars is not small. That has been preserved. There is $4.6 billion in trade with Mexico. I have a letter dated March 3 from the vegetable and fruit producers of Canada, who said that because of free trade, their trade is up 396%. They further stated:

Therefore...on behalf of a deeply integrated North American membership, we strongly urge [all parliamentarians] to...ratify this Agreement [in order] to facilitate a strong fresh produce industry for generations to come.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the peanuts part was actually peanuts, but on sugar, I think of the food guide. I understand there is trade between Canada and the U.S. on sugar, but as for the food guide, some of the private members' bills in the last Parliament were about sugar and sugary drinks, the issues we have with obesity and type 2 diabetes. I do not think the government should be holding out its big promise on this trade deal and talking about all the sugar it is going to ship to the U.S. I think there is enough sugar down there. We should be focusing on the big things.

On the auto side, I do not think what we did in the deal for the auto industry is that exciting. We need to build more automobiles in Canada for Canadians. How many pickup trucks do we manufacture in Canada right now, compared with how many we buy? We have to do way better and we have to demand GM, Ford, Dodge and other companies build their trucks in Canada and make the investments here. We have the talent and the labour. Let us build them here, not in Mexico.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in his speech, my colleague stressed the many breaches in supply management and the precarious situation facing supply-managed producers.

Let me just remind him that, on two occasions—in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the European Union—the Conservative government was the first to create breaches. However, since I subscribe to the idea that we learn from our mistakes, I wonder whether my colleague would not agree with me that the best way to ensure that these situations do not happen again is to have a bill that guarantees and protects supply management in all trade negotiations and treaties.

Would my colleague be prepared to support the initiative of the Bloc Québécois, which introduced such a bill?

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Mr. Speaker, no offence to my colleague, but he should go back to the 2015 quotes when we agreed to the TPP. He should look at what the Canadian dairy farmers and the supply-managed sector said. They said this was the best deal they could come up with and that it set the sector up for the next generation.

The next chance we will have to try to square this away with the Americans is if they ever try to get into the TPP. That is the only chance we will ever have to get anything back from them. When that opportunity comes, and we know TPP is too good for them to stay out of because they cannot get all those bilateral deals, we have to be tough and we have to fight. We have to say that the entry is going to be pretty high for the Americans to get TPP 2.0.

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

Mr. Speaker, I sit on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, which heard from witnesses about this agreement. It generally ranged from lukewarm to strong support. However, there is a lot of concern, especially in the supply-managed sectors, with the threshold limits that were established for the exports of certain dairy products. I would like to hear my colleague's comments on that, because the witnesses at committee said that was an unprecedented ceding of sovereignty, the fact that Canada would negotiate away our ability to export to other countries and to have the United States dictate that.

I would also like the member to comment on the fact that we had to rely on the goodwill of the Democrats in the United States to improve this deal when the Canadian government was prepared to sign it in the previous Parliament with none of these improvements present.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is unprecedented, and here are a couple of numbers. In egg production, 1.6 million extra eggs are going to rise to 10 million extra eggs in six years, and it is 1% more on top of that per year for the next 10 years. When we think about that, they also have their WTO allocation. This is 20 million eggs. It is a huge number. It is very concerning in the long term.

Believe me, these farm groups may come to committee and say nice things, but they are being nice. If we talk to them in our offices or over a coffee, they have a whole different vocabulary they use when they describe the current government and the trade deal they have been dealt.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to throw some kudos out to my colleague for his speech. He is a long-serving member of this House of Commons, as am I, and it is great to see him back here standing up for the people in his riding. This is my first speech in the House of Commons since the last election. It is not my maiden speech by a long shot, but I want to thank all of the good people in central Alberta and the riding of Red Deer—Lacombe for once again putting their trust in me and sending me back here with one of the best mandates that I have had.

I am not trying to say it is all about me. For those around the country who might not understand what we are going through, in Alberta the last election was basically a referendum on whether Alberta feels like it is a valued and equal partner in this confederation, and we are having those conversations as we go on.

It is also a good segue into whether Canada in the new NAFTA, or the CUSMA, is a full and equal partner in the North American trading space. I would suggest that we could have done better, but let us go back to where this all started.

Back in November 2016, Donald Trump was about to become the president in the fall elections of that year. Our Prime Minister naively humoured Donald Trump's assertions that NAFTA needed to be ripped up or renegotiated.

Rather than defending Canada's interests and saying something to the effect that the North American Free Trade Agreement was working very well for Canada, or that it was a long-standing agreement that had benefited all parties in the agreement, he willingly committed Canada to renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement with the President and with the American administration, should Donald Trump take over the White House, without fully understanding the ramifications of what he was saying. Other evidence suggests that the Prime Minister does not understand the ramifications of the things he says.

That is where we are. That is where this all began. There was nobody in Canada asking for this. I do not believe there was anybody in Mexico asking for this. Have there been irritants? Have there been long-standing issues with NAFTA over the years? Yes, because no deal is going to make everybody happy. We are not starting from that context, but that is where we are now.

Because we took that weak approach at the start, to pretend that everything was going to be nice if everybody would just naively follow the Prime Minister's approach and assume that everybody in the world was going to be nice and treat Canada nicely, we ended up in a situation where Canada is a net loser with the new agreement that we have, compared with where we were in 2015.

Let us talk about where we were in 2006. My colleague from Abbotsford, who was a cabinet minister from 2011 on, and I were both elected in 2006. Mr. Speaker, you are part of the class of 2006 as well. When the member for Abbotsford and I came to the House in 2006, Canada had trade agreements around the world that we could count on—

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

One hand, five.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Was it one hand? I thought it was six, but it is five. The member for Abbotsford, as a former trade minister, knows more about this than I do, I will concede.

Mr. Speaker, we could count the number of countries that Canada had trade agreements with on one hand. After 2015, we had trade agreements with 51 countries, through the previous Harper government from 2006. We negotiated these agreements, and we started the negotiations with a minority government. We did not start with a position of power in Parliament. As a matter of fact, we had 123 Conservative MPs and we were government. That is only two fewer than we have right now in opposition.

We were able to launch a series of trade negotiations that would insulate and cushion Canada's economy and spread our influence and trading relationships around the world with the trading compact of Norway and a few countries, Liechtenstein and so on, a small group in Europe; the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement, with the other European Union countries; the Pacific partnership trade agreement and a trade agreement with Korea. We have so many trade agreements now, I cannot even remember what they are all called.

Thankfully we have those opportunities to take advantage of now, because we were so dependent upon the United States before, and because of what we have just lost and given up. What did we give up?

I represent a large rural and urban split now, but when I was the MP for Wetaskiwin it was primarily a rural riding. I have the largest concentration of dairy farmers in Alberta in my riding. We gave up another 3.6% in the value of that supply management. More importantly, the dairy producers that I am hearing from in my riding are not satisfied with how that compensation is being reallocated.

Dairy farms in Alberta look a lot different from dairy farms in other parts of the country, and their needs are different from what the needs might be in other parts of Canada. The government should have had a different approach in meting out and making amends for that loss of market access.

The most egregious part of this is that the United States now dictates what countries Canada can export to outside of this agreement, when it comes to our supply-managed sector. We have ceded our ability as a nation to bargain for ourselves, on behalf of our producers and farmers, for who we can trade with outside of the three countries in the agreement.

For example, if we wanted to have an agreement trading poultry or dairy with Korea, and we wanted to change the nature of that relationship, we would need the permission of the United States of America to do so. That is actually the ceding of sovereignty, and that is an unfortunate and dangerous precedent.

The aluminum industry in Canada did not get the same deal as the steel industry. The steel industry got a pretty good deal. I think the steel folks are fairly happy, generally speaking. They got the escalating scale on the amount of steel that has to be poured in Canada or in North America. That is a good deal. This is a good thing for our industry.

Why could we not achieve the same thing with aluminum? What was the issue with that? I ask because Canada is in a good position when it comes to being able to smelt and pour aluminum. We did not gain anything there. We lost over $4 billion in trade in the auto sector alone.

Now I want to talk about softwood lumber. My friend from Abbotsford would remember this. Back in 2006, with a minority government that only had two more MPs than we currently have in opposition, we were able to resolve the long-standing softwood lumber dispute. We put $4 billion, which we got back from the United States, back in the pockets of Canadian businesses and companies that were wrongfully charged those tariffs. For years, we had peace on the softwood lumber front.

Where are we today? In the context of renegotiating this new CUSMA agreement, we still have outstanding issues with softwood lumber. A majority Liberal government for four years, with the full confidence of its own caucus, I am assuming, even with the bromance with President Obama for the first year, could not resolve these long-standing trade irritants with softwood lumber. As a result, rural Canada is again under siege, with jobs lost and mills closed outside of our major urban areas as a direct result of the government's inability to get good things done for the people of Canada.

I would like to use my last minute to talk about all of the good things that this trade agreement has and all of the new things it has gotten.

I am done.

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 third time and passed.

[Gagan Sikand, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Yukon.

I am pleased to speak in the House today in support of Bill C-4, an act to implement the new NAFTA and, in particular, the agreement's intellectual property provisions. Canadian creators and innovators make an important contribution to the North American knowledge economy. For instance, in 2017, 68% of the patents filed by Canadians internationally were filed in the United States, more than at any foreign patent office. The new NAFTA would allow Canadian creators and innovators to continue to conduct business with our U.S. and Mexican partners, ensuring that they would continue to receive a clear, predictable and transparent framework for the protection and enforcement of intellectual property, or IP, rights in all three markets.

IP rights provide Canadian innovators and creators with a period of time during which they can expect to hold exclusive rights and be entitled to receive compensation, such as royalties for the use of their creations and innovations. With the new NAFTA, Canadians can be confident that their IP rights will receive a minimum standard of protection and enforcement across the entire North American marketplace.

Since the original NAFTA was negotiated, a number of key technological and multilateral developments have taken place that have presented novel challenges, such as with respect to the protection and enforcement of copyright in the digital environment. These include significant advances in the digital economy, including the further development of modern digital technologies that, since NAFTA, have been addressed in multilateral frameworks like the World Intellectual Property Organization.

The updated IP chapter builds upon those international IP treaties, like the WTO agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, as well as the multilateral treaties administered by the WIPO with a view to establishing minimum standards on IP rights protection and enforcement for the North American marketplace.

Under the new agreement, all three parties agreed to an updated comprehensive chapter on IP rights protection and enforcement. This chapter includes obligations on copyright-related rights, trademarks, geographical indications, industrial designs, patents and pharmaceutical IP; data protection for agricultural chemical products and trade secrets; and IP rights enforcement in the civil, criminal and border contexts.

The modernized agreement also reflects several recent reforms to Canada's IP regime, such as those under the Combating Counterfeit Products Act and the Copyright Modernization Act, Canada's recent accession to several multilateral treaties under the WIPO, and initiatives undertaken through the government's recent intellectual property strategy.

For instance, further to reforms to Canada's copyright regime under the Copyright Modernization Act, the new NAFTA contains rules with respect to Internet service providers' liability that recognize Canada's notice and notice framework in this area as an effective approach to addressing online copyright infringement. The new agreement contains rules concerning legal protections for technological protection measures, or the digital locks on copyrighted works, which align with Canada's existing law and policy.

Regarding geographical indications, or Gls, the signs used on products to show that they come from a particular place with distinctive characteristics or qualities related to that place, the new NAFTA outcome is in line with Canada's open and transparent system for the protection of Gls. This means wines, spirits, agricultural products and foodstuffs remain eligible for GI protection in the Canadian marketplace, in line with Canada's current framework.

The agreement also contains provisions that require the parties to provide that judicial authorities can, where appropriate, order the award of attorney's fees to the prevailing party in civil proceedings. This is a valuable tool that often serves as a disincentive against bad actors who pursue bad faith litigation tactics, which can otherwise stifle innovation.

The agreement is not the end of the conversation among the three partners. It also includes a commitment from all three parties to co-operate in discussions on a range of IP issues of interest, such as on enhancing procedural fairness in IP litigation, including choice of venue, an issue of particular concern for some Canadian business owners operating abroad.

Building upon Canada's already strong IP regime, the new agreement would require changes in certain areas of Canada's existing IP legal and policy framework. For example, on border measures, Canada already provides officials at the border with the authority to act on their own initiative, as appropriate, to detain suspected counterfeit trademark or pirated counterfeit goods on import and export. The new agreement would require Canada to extend this authority to such goods transiting through Canada destined for another marketplace.

Regarding copyright, the new agreement requires a change in the general term of copyright protection from “life of the author plus 50 years” to “life of the author plus 70 years”. With respect to patents, Canada would be required to provide for a patent term adjustment in respect of unreasonable delays in the issuance of a patent.

To implement these two obligations, Canada has transition periods of two and a half years for the general term of protection for copyright and four and a half years for patent term adjustment. These transition periods would commence following the entry into force of the agreement and would enable the government to thoroughly consider and consult on how best to implement these new commitments.

On December 10, 2019, Canada, the United States and Mexico agreed to update certain elements of the new NAFTA to improve the final outcome and clear the path toward ratification and implementation. With respect to IP, agreement was reached to delete or amend certain provisions dealing with patent and pharmaceutical IP. Most notably, the parties agreed to delete the commitment on data protection for biologics, which means that Canada would no longer need to amend its domestic regime to provide 10 years of data protection in this area.

The parties also agreed to remove a provision on the availability of patents for new uses, new methods or new processes of using a known product, as well as provisions on data protection for new indications of existing drugs. Last, language was also added on an exception related to regulatory reviews on how the three countries may meet obligations dealing with patent term restoration, patent linkage and data protection for small-molecule drugs.

These amendments clarify that Canada, the United States and Mexico would remain flexible under the new agreement to pursue domestic policy priorities in these areas. Notably, Canada would be required to make changes to domestic patent or pharmaceutical IP regimes in order to implement the amended provisions. For many Canadian creators and innovators, one of the key barriers to exporting abroad is uncertainty over IP rights and whether they will be protected and enforced when operating in foreign markets. That is why Canada worked tirelessly to ensure that the new agreement establishes clear standards on IP rights and is enforced across North America.

Ratifying the new NAFTA is not just about securing economic benefits for Canada today, but also ensuring our continued prosperity in the future. The agreement would ensure that Canada continues to have a strong and vital relationship with our closest neighbours.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, we have raised concerns repeatedly around this deal. We are grateful that we are going to see the text of future agreements ahead of time so we can have a better idea what the objective is of the government, when it heads into these trade agreements and deals, so we can have a chance to scrutinize them.

We are concerned about the government and its commitment around the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We are wondering why the government would move forward with a commitment to sign this agreement that does not make reference to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. I see this failure in treaties and agreements cross-border, whether over our salmon or various related issues where I live, where indigenous people and their rights are not consulted.

Maybe the member could speak about the importance of this, whether it be in this trade deal or future trade deals, and how significant it is that the government address this.

[Gagan Sikand, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Madam Speaker, I can assure my hon. colleague that the rights of indigenous individuals and the environment are always top of mind when we are negotiating our free trade agreements.

Having said that, I do want to reiterate that the United States is our largest trading partner and how vital this ratification was, so for us to get this done was of utmost importance. However, we do definitely keep those issues in consideration.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague opposite for his speech and say that I was very happy to hear him talk about copyright and succession. The agreement would increase the succession term from 50 years to 70 years after the author's death. As it stands, the heir or the person to whom the copyright is bequeathed must request an extension of the copyright term.

Could my colleague tell me what the government thinks about the fact that the heir must request an extension 50 years after the author's death, when that is something that should be done automatically?

[Gagan Sikand, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Madam Speaker, we have made a marked improvement in our existing laws. Look at Mexico, for example, whose measure was 100 years. The fact that we have gone from 50 to 70 years is quite an improvement. I wanted to highlight that.

In terms of those who have to acquire the IP afterward, I am sure there is room to renegotiate this in the future when this trade agreement comes up for renewal. If colleagues look at what we have done, it is quite significant to move from 50 to 70 when our member partners were already at 100. It is quite a movement in the right direction.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is a privilege for me to rise this afternoon and speak to the tripartite agreement between Canada, the United States of America and the United Mexican States. I will be sharing my speaking time on this important issue with my colleague from Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock.

It is always a privilege to rise in the House in support of trade with our partners, as trade is one of the pillars of our economy. This afternoon, we are not talking about just any partner. We are talking about our American partner. As members know, our shared relationship and border go back a long way.

I will start by saying that I plan on supporting Bill C-4 because this agreement is in keeping with a long tradition that we established. In 1994, Brian Mulroney signed the first agreement, NAFTA, with the United States and Mexico.

This fundamental agreement helped Canada triple its exports to the U.S. and Mexico and also helped stimulate our economy. As a proud representative of a vibrant manufacturing region, I can see first-hand how this free trade agreement benefits our manufacturers in Bellechasse—Les Etchemins, such as Rotobec, and in Lévis.

I just want to remind my colleague that, like him, I plan to support this important bill to maintain our trade relationship with our most important partner. The United States takes in three-quarters of Canada's exports, a significant amount considering that Canadian exports totalled nearly $400 billion U.S. in 2016.

However, we are less pleased about the fact that the current government did a poor job of negotiating this agreement, as it does with most things. The Liberal government does not know how to negotiate agreements for Canada, and that has a negative impact on businesses such as those in the dairy industry in my riding. Nevertheless, we are better off with a bad agreement than with no agreement, which is why I have already voted in favour of this bill and why we hope it passes quickly.

For some time now, the Conservatives have been telling the government to hurry up and approve the deal. I worked in consulting engineering, where people say that a deal is not done until it is signed. It is not a good deal, but we need to get it approved ASAP.

That is why, in spring 2019, before the October federal election, we proposed a preliminary study of the Canada-United States-Mexico agreement so that it could be passed as soon as the government introduced it in the House, but the Liberals refused.

The day after the election, we asked the Liberals to consider the possibility of sitting in December between Christmas and New Year's because we thought it was important to ratify this agreement. Once again, the Liberals ignored our request.

We had to wait until the end of January before they finally bothered to table the agreement here in the House so that we could begin the legislative process. Once again, we asked for things to be done more quickly because people wanted to have their say about the problems with this important agreement. The Liberals refused.

That brings us to where we are today. We are making progress, and I can say that we intend to support the ratification of this agreement every step of the way. The relationship between Canada and the United States is one of the closest and most solid relationships that can exist between two countries. It plays an important role in our manufacturing jobs. A number of agreements and several billion dollars are at stake.

I want to take this opportunity to remind members that there is a border between Canada and the United States. Of course, it is important to ensure the free flow of goods between the two countries, but it is also important to ensure that our borders remain secure. I am referring to the beyond the border action plan announced in December 2011 by then U.S. president Barack Obama and then Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper. We recognize the importance of maintaining a strong trade relationship while keeping our borders secure.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, the Liberals did not negotiate a good deal in this case. As we have seen, many groups were left out in the cold. Overall, the agreement that was signed and that we are going to approve is not as good as the previous agreement that was negotiated by the Conservatives. That is unfortunate, but, as I said, we would rather have a bad deal than no deal at all.

Why are the Liberals such bad negotiators? When we look at their record on negotiating, we have to remember that the agreements collectively provide the big picture.

Take the dairy sector. This sector plays a very important role in the Chaudière-Appalaches region, especially in Bellechasse and Les Etchemins, where businesses are handed down from one generation to the next and are an economic mainstay in our region. These businesses have had to deal with not one, not two, but three agreements.

The first agreement, which was negotiated by our government, is the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. That agreement made some accommodations with regard to supply management to allow European products to enter our market. On October 18, 2013, an agreement in principle was signed with the European Union, and the agreement came into force in September 2017.

The trans-Pacific partnership is now known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. This happened during the transition from the Conservative government to the current government.

At the time, when we were in negotiations on the trans-Pacific partnership, the U.S. was involved, but it withdrew from the agreement in January 2017. The other members of the initial agreement picked up where they left off and renamed the agreement. However, the concessions that were made in the Canada-Europe free trade agreement and then in the trans-Pacific partnership were renewed. This left the dairy sector vulnerable, because there was no agreement with the U.S. when it came time to renegotiate the Canada-United States-Mexico agreement. In a way, we had already made two concessions. Even more damaging was the fact that the concessions were cumulative. The Liberals made more bad decisions on cheese imports.

Under the Canada-Europe free trade agreement, 16,000 tonnes of imported cheese from Europe was to enter our markets. The Liberals made the mistake of granting the power to import these cheeses not to those who were affected, namely manufacturers and processors, but to distributors, who received half of the import quota. This was even more detrimental than a simple reduction in volume because Quebec's entire cheese sector was undermined.

Mr. Letendre, the chairman of Les Producteurs de lait du Québec, stated that it made no sense to allocate 50% of the quota to distributors. He said that it is expensive to develop new products in order to compete and that this would hurt Quebec's industry.

I wanted to cite the example of the three agreements that were negotiated. Every time the Liberals were involved in the negotiations, it hurt the dairy industry and Canadian industries. Ultimately, our businesses are being penalized, and we have yet to see any compensation. That is unfortunate, because had Canada's interests been considered in the negotiations, we would not have had to make concessions.

I had many things to say, but I realize that my time is running out. I made my point at the outset. We intend to support the agreement despite its weaknesses because it is important to maintain the relationship with our most important partner, the United States.

[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 have been listening to the debate all day on this very important piece of legislation. From what I recall, it is the first time that all political entities, the Green Party, the Bloc Québécois, the NDP, the Conservatives and obviously the Liberal government which is putting it forward are supporting a trade agreement. We have stakeholders from across the country, union and business leaders who are also in support of this agreement. I would even go back to the author of the original trade agreement, Brian Mulroney, who also supports this agreement.

Would the member across the way acknowledge that throughout the last couple of years we have seen Canadians from coast to coast to coast come together to provide the feedback that has been necessary in order to get us to this very point today?

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

Certainly, everyone agrees that we are supporting a bad deal that does not address matters like the softwood lumber dispute or government procurement, for instance.

I have a note dated December 19 about Prevost, a flagship company in my riding. Prevost won the largest contract in its history, a $260-million contract to build 307 buses for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York state.

That is great news. However, the downside is that the agreement that was signed does not contain any provisions on government procurement. That creates uncertainty. Yes, we are going to support the agreement, but we are a long way from an agreement that provides a net benefit to Canada.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my Quebec colleague for his very interesting speech. I agree with him on the whole issue of supply management. In Quebec, we have felt the impact of treaties on supply management. The treaties that Canada has signed have always come at the expense of supply management and Quebec dairy producers.

However, I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about the agreement that the Bloc Québécois managed to get on the traceability of aluminum in order to prevent China from exporting aluminum to Mexico and flooding the North American market. In its negotiations with the government, the Bloc Québécois succeeded in protecting nearly $6 billion in aluminum investments in Quebec.

I would like to know whether my colleague thinks that this is a plus in the free trade agreement.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his kind words and his question. I would remind him, however, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I encourage him to remain vigilant. The agreement will not be changed. The traceability agreement depends on the goodwill of the countries, so we will have to see how it will be enforced. The same is true in the agricultural sector. Additional concessions were made at the expense of our agricultural industry. We on this side are still waiting to see what the compensation looks like.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, one of the biggest losers in the CUSMA is the supply-managed dairy sector as the member said. Along with concessions and CPTPP, this latest hit means a 10% loss of market share to Canadian producers.

Could the member speak about whether the Conservatives support the supply-managed dairy sector and if so, why they have supported every assault on the sector over the last five years?

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. I invite her to look at what the Conservative Party did when it was in power. We took action to limit milk protein imports from New Zealand and to stop the illegal import of cheese in the form of pizza kits. We did plenty. Unlike the Liberals, who have done nothing about the problem of diafiltered milk, the Conservative government did not sit back and simply say that it supported supply management; it took concrete action. Our record on that is very solid.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise in the House today to speak to the new NAFTA agreement and the repercussions of this important agreement. Of course, it is always a pleasure, and indeed my duty, to rise in this place and defend the interests of my constituents and those across Canada.

I want to thank all those involved on both sides of the House and all our neighbours and friends in the United States and Mexico for working on this agreement. As we all know, there was an incredible effort to get a deal on the table and that effort was a testament to how everybody understood how important this deal really was.

The Conservatives are in support of a trade agreement with the United States and with Mexico. It is good for business and it will provide the certainty for which all are looking.

The Conservatives, of course, are the party of trade. Our party is responsible for negotiating some of the largest and most important trade agreements in Canadian history. It was also under the previous Conservative government that we signed 40 trade agreements with countries all over the world. It was also under a Conservative government that NAFTA was first created. It was a historic agreement that propelled the Canadian economy into the future and provided unequalled opportunities for Canadian manufacturing, industry, energy, agriculture and other sectors.

The previous Conservative government was very forthcoming with information on the free trade negotiations that were taking place. The member for Abbotsford, as the then minister of international trade, provided many opportunities for parliamentarians to ask questions, take part in briefings and see documents. Unfortunately, we have not seen the same from the Liberal government. It prefers that the opposition just trust the government and not worry, that it got the best deal possible.

Over the past few weeks, the Liberal Party has claimed that it is the Conservatives who have delayed the implementation of the new NAFTA deal. Conservative members on the Standing Committee on International Trade sent a letter to the Deputy Prime Minister, outlining the concerns the Conservative Party had heard with a new NAFTA deal and to correct the record that outlined how it was, in fact, the Liberal Party who had been delaying the implementation of this new NAFTA deal.

Knowing that the federal election was coming up in October of 2019, the Conservatives offered to begin a prestudy on the original trade deal. It was originally called Bill C-100. That happened in May of last year. When the government was ready to move the legislation through the House of Commons, the work would already have been done in committee. However, the Liberals declined.

When the revised agreement was signed in December 2019, the Conservatives offered to come back early from the Christmas break to begin work on that bill. The Liberals declined that as well.

The Liberal government waited until January 29 to introduce the implementation legislation in the House of Commons, even though the revised agreement was signed in December. The Conservatives moved that legislation through the House of Commons in just six sitting days compared to the 16 days it took to move the original implementation legislation, Bill C-100, through the House of Commons and to committee.

The international trade committee had approximately 200 requests to appear on that new trade deal. The amount of work to do on the legislation had not changed and the Conservatives consistently offered to commence that work earlier. The Liberals declined.

The Conservatives ultimately offered to complete a clause-by-clause examination by no later than March 5, under the assumption that the government would not be recalling the House of Commons during the constituency break week to conduct report stage and third reading of Bill C-4. The Liberals declined that too.

The Liberals released their economic impact analysis for that trade deal only one day before the international trade committee had to conduct its clause-by-clause review and the first formal briefing that parliamentarians actually received on the new agreement was on December 11, 2019.

Canada's Conservatives sought a unanimous consent motion in the House of Commons to speed up the ratification of that new trade deal. The Liberals declined that too.

Those are the facts.

I want to turn now to the substance of that agreement. The deal is not perfect. We have said that many times on this side of the House and so have some of our other opposition colleagues. There are a number of shortcomings that I would like to put on record.

The Liberal government has left our great aluminum industry vulnerable to backdoor imports from China. While steel was protected with rules that steel must be melted and poured by primary steelmakers in North America in order to receive preferential tariff treatment, no such provision was added for aluminum.

Jean Simard, president and CEO of the Aluminum Association of Canada, said the following:

The advantage thus conferred to Mexico makes it more or less China's North American backyard to dispose of the products of its overcapacity, thereby generating the gradual relocation of North American transformers to Mexico.

The Liberal government also failed to secure a new ISDS, leaving Canadians and their businesses unprotected by unfair laws, tariffs or trade practices of our partners. This will leave many Canadian industries open to abuse, with little to no recourse.

In the early 2000s, the softwood lumber industry was devastated by unfair trade practices and it was only because of arbitration panels ruling against the U.S. that we eventually worked out a settlement.

In a statement, the president of the BC Lumber Trade Council said:

Having a robust and fair dispute resolution mechanism is absolutely critical to maintaining a rules-based trading system and providing an avenue for Canada and Canadian companies to appeal unwarranted duties.

The CUSMA deal, the new NAFTA, fails to include a fair dispute resolution process.

Another huge problem is CUSMA's sunset clause. The sunset clause sets out formal reviews every six years and a termination clause in 16 years unless it is renegotiated. I, among many other Canadians, would like to know why we are not protecting long-term stability for our Canadian business.

Dennis Darby, chief executive of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, said, “With a five-year potential sword hanging over your head, I think what it's going to do is cause manufacturers to not invest and be really, really risk-averse."

I would like to have on the record the shortcomings we see in the dairy section of this agreement. It would reduce Canadian dairy producers' access to the U.S. market at the same time opening the Canadian market to more U.S. milk products. This agreement dictates specific thresholds for Canadian exports of milk protein concentrates, skim milk powder and infant formula. If export thresholds are exceeded, Canada would add duties to the exports in excess to make them more expensive. It would also eliminate milk class 6 and milk class 7, which would affect dairy farms across Ontario and the country.

Pierre Lampron, president of Dairy Farmers of Canada, said, “[T]he message sent to our passionate, proud and quality-conscious farmers and all the people who work in the dairy sector is clear: they are nothing more than a bargaining chip to satisfy President Trump.”

I would like to take a minute to express my concerns with how the government is also handling the coronavirus crisis.

When is the Liberal government going to start to outlining its plan to Canadians in the case of a possible pandemic? Expecting Canadians to stockpile supplies is simply not enough. All Canadians deserve to be reassured that the government is prepared to assist and support those affected by the virus. We need much more vigorous screening processes upon entry, mandatory quarantine for those who do enter from high-risk countries or potentially stopping incoming and outgoing flights from high-risk areas. The health and safety of all Canadians needs to be a top priority.

Canada's Conservatives have offered repeatedly to expedite the new NAFTA deal in order to ensure swift ratification, but again, at every stage, the Liberals have chosen to play politics.

The committee heard from a number of sectors that would be negatively impacted by CUSMA, and it is important the government is aware of those negative impacts so it can work to mitigate them.

I want to reiterate for my friends on all sides of the House that the Conservatives support this legislation. We are the party of trade and we hope to see that continue.

[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, in the last four-plus years, the government has spent a great deal of time and effort dealing with the issue of trade. We have signed agreements with the European Union and the trans-Pacific partnership. Agreements have been signed with Ukraine and we have had other agreements with respect to the World Trade Organization. These have really helped Canada's economy.

I ask for my colleague's thoughts on the importance of trade to our nation, no matter what region of the country we live in. Today we are debating important trade legislation that will positively impact all Canadians.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Madam Speaker, I totally agree with my friend that trade, especially in our country where we produce more than we consume in a number of areas, is so important to how our economy functions.

We need to be able to get our product out and we need to have access to the world market. However, we are seeing some challenges, especially in the oil and gas industry. We are seeing it in some of our agricultural products. We still have concerns on aluminum. Softwood lumber still has its problems. Investment in the oil and gas sector is leaving the country by the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Although I agree with my friend across the way that trade is extremely important, and I congratulate the process moving forward, we need to talk about the shortcomings in this deal. Trade is a big piece of the economic puzzle, but unless we have the foundation correct, it is hard to attract investment and therefore increase business and economic capacity within the country.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, I have a quick question.

I agree that this is not a perfect agreement. I think New Democrats all agree that it is not what we had hoped for. There is a lot in it that we like, but it is not a great agreement.

One of the things that is most concerning to me is the way the negotiations happened. It was all done behind closed doors. Parliamentarians were not invited into that process. Nor were the citizens of Canada invited into the process. That is not how we would like to see trade negotiations go forward. We would like to see Canadians involved from the very beginning, not given a fait accompli at the end.

Could you talk a little about whether a Conservative government would potentially also ensure that Canadians and parliamentarians would be involved in the process right off the bat?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I am not going to respond to that. However, I want to remind the member that she is to address questions to the member through the Speaker.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Madam Speaker, on previous trade deals, if we look back in time, many of us who were in this place at the time would remember that the former minister of international trade, the member for Abbotsford, regularly opened up his office to members of all parties who had questions or who wanted to see documents.

I agree with my colleague that much of this deal was done in secret. Opposition parties had a very difficult time trying to access any kind of information. This is our job as parliamentarians. Our job is to analyze legislation. I know I had to find any text of this legislation on the U.S. government site.

Absolutely, the Conservatives support ensuring that the information is out. I think our past record speaks to that. The member for Abbotsford did just that when he was negotiating trade deals.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Cumberland—Colchester.

It is a great pleasure to rise in the House today in support of Bill C-4, the implementing legislation for the Canada-United States-Mexico agreement, otherwise known as CUSMA.

This agreement brings about the continued economic benefit to all parties and secures economic development and job opportunities by maintaining economic security, investment confidence and our dispute resolution and retaining existing access. The agreement provides key outcomes for Canadian businesses, workers and communities in areas such as labour, environment, automotive trade, dispute resolution, culture, energy, and agriculture and agri-food. Importantly, CUSMA also includes language on gender and indigenous peoples' rights.

The new and modernized agreement includes Canada's most ambitious environmental chapter to date, completed by a new environmental co-operation agreement. The environment chapter of the new NAFTA introduces key measures, such as a new enforceable chapter on the environment that replaces the separate side agreement. It provides assurances to workers and businesses by ensuring that all three state parties are held to account. It makes dispute resolution more accessible by reducing the burden of proof for the complainant, and clarifies the relationship between the new trade agreement and domestic or multilateral environment agreements. Moreover, the amendments agreed to in December of last year strengthen the act's dispute settlement provision to make a good deal even better and ensure that robust obligations on the environment will be fully enforceable.

It is the Government of Canada's priority to ensure that Canada's trade agreements not only advance our commercial interests, but also bring real benefits to all Canadian stakeholders. The environmental provisions support Canadian businesses by ensuring that trading partners enforce their environmental laws so that all parties operate on a level playing field.

When NAFTA came into effect in 1994, it was the first free trade agreement to link the environment and trade through a comprehensive agreement. This agreement was called the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation. Over the past quarter century, officials and experts from all three countries have carried out co-operative projects through this agreement. By doing this, we have enhanced our shared capacity to address environmental challenges.

Continuing with this tradition, the new NAFTA, or CUSMA, integrates comprehensive and ambitious environmental provisions directly into a dedicated environment chapter within the agreement, which is subject to provisions on dispute settlement that were not there before.

The new NAFTA preserves the core obligations on environmental governance that were present in the original agreement. This includes commitments to pursue and maintain environmental stewardship, effectively enforce environmental laws and promote transparency, accountability and public participation. These measures reflect the importance we place on ensuring that open trade and environmental conservation go hand in hand.

The new environment chapter includes commitments that go beyond what the original environmental co-operation agreement envisioned. State parties are no longer permitted to ignore environmental law to attract trade or investment and must also ensure that proper environmental impact assessments are carried out for projects with potential risks to the environment.

The new NAFTA creates new commitments on a wide range of global environmental issues, such as illegal wildlife trade and illegal logging, management of fisheries, protection of the marine environment and the ozone layer, sustainable forestry, and the conservation of biological diversity and species at risk. It also includes new commitments aimed at strengthening the relationship between trade and environment, including the promotion of trade in environmental goods and services, responsible business conduct and voluntary mechanisms to enhance environmental performance.

For the first time in a free trade agreement, the new NAFTA includes articles on air quality and marine litter. It includes binding commitments prohibiting the practice of shark finning. It also recognizes the important role that indigenous people are playing in the ongoing stewardship of the environment, sustainable fisheries and forestry management, and biodiversity conservation.

This agreement also provides for an environment consultation mechanism. Should state parties fail to resolve any environmental matter in a co-operative manner through various levels of consultation, including consultation at the ministerial level, a complainant may seek recourse through a broader formal dispute settlement. Additionally, trade sanctions may be imposed by an independent review panel, if needed, to ensure compliance with environmental obligations.

Although the core obligations on environmental governance apply only to federal legislation, commitments in other areas of the agreement, such as conservation and fisheries, apply to not only the federal level but also the provincial level.

I mentioned earlier that the new NAFTA contains enhanced provisions to ensure enforceability. In December 2019, Canada, the United States and Mexico agreed to update certain elements of the agreement, including stronger environmental obligations. For example, state parties have committed to doing their part to implement multilateral environmental agreements that have been ratified domestically. The new NAFTA also provides better clarity on its relationship to these other environmental agreements.

Canada, the United States and Mexico have negotiated a parallel environmental co-operation agreement that ensures a continuation of a trilateral co-operation, ministerial-level dialogue between parties and public engagement. The Commission for Environmental Cooperation will continue to operate with the support of a secretariat based in Montreal, a ministerial council that will continue to meet on an annual basis and a joint public advisory committee.

The environmental co-operation agreement also allows the three countries to establish a work program in which they can develop co-operative activities on a broad range of issues. These include strengthening environmental governance; reducing pollution and supporting strong, low-emission and resilient economies; conserving and protecting biodiversity and habitats; supporting green growth and sustainable development; and promoting sustainable management and use of natural resources.

Furthermore, through the joint public advisory committee, representatives from each country will continue to ensure active public participation and transparency in the actions of the commission. This committee's membership will be diverse and gender-balanced, and will reflect all segments of society by including representatives of non-governmental organizations, academia, the private sector, indigenous peoples, private citizens and youth.

These measures highlight the importance of honouring our role as environmental stewards and upholding multilateral environmental standards.

The issue of environmental conservation is of the utmost importance to the residents of my riding of Richmond Hill. While I was knocking on doors last summer, resident after resident raised the issue of environmental action and compliance as something that our government should prioritize. In fact, concern over the environment was second only to affordability as a key voter issue.

In response to this feedback, my team and I have collaborated with environmental stakeholders and community groups, such as Blue Dot and Drawdown, and have held town halls to encourage public participation and give residents the opportunity to comment on how we can improve government programs and services.

The Government of Canada is committed to bringing Canadian goods and services to international markets while maintaining our highest standards of environmental conservation and stewardship. We know this is possible, and we have a responsibility to do both at the same time. Under the new NAFTA and the parallel environmental co-operation agreement, Canada, the United States and Mexico have come together to ensure we are protecting our shared environment now and for future generations.

I encourage all members of the House to support the bill so we can move it toward implementation.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Madam Speaker, I have a couple of questions about the environment and transboundary access for water control. The member said many things were established with respect to the environment. How do we control the air that goes across the border and the water that flows across the border, the transboundary water bodies like the Great Lakes? How is this tied up in CUSMA?

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, for the bill and the programs, we brought together experts from the three countries through various committees to work together to make sure that elements such as water and air, where they cross borders, are taken into account.

From my point of view, this is no different from the extended supply chain in NAFTA or CUSMA throughout the three jurisdictions. Our supply chain is integrated and the agreement preserves our access. Therefore, water and air could be considered as an extended supply chain of cleaner air, cleaner water and a cleaner environment.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

I really like taking preventive action. I am happy to learn that the new agreement includes measures dealing with the environment. However, I have to wonder whether the agreement provides for consequences if Mexico, Canada or the U.S. does not uphold its part.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is one of the areas we are proud of. Our dispute mechanism remained intact. It is through the dispute mechanism, if these commitments have not been met, that we have a venue to bring issues to the forefront for a discussion.

I also talked about the parallel agreement that has been reached. Complainants now have the opportunity to use the dispute mechanism that is already in place and legislated to address issues.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, when the NDP called on the government to wait to ratify the first version of CUSMA so that the Democrats could improve it, the Deputy Prime Minister said, “what the NDP needs to understand is that reopening this agreement would be like opening Pandora's box.... It would be naive for the NDP to believe that Canadians would benefit from reopening this agreement.” However, the Liberals are very keen to brag about the improvements made by the U.S. Democrats.

Why should Canadians believe that the Liberals had anything to do with the changes that increased protections for workers and guard against higher drug prices?

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is a collaborative process and better is always possible. When there is an opportunity for amendments to come forward that meet the needs of all three parties and enhance the agreement, it is our responsibility to listen and incorporate them. In this case, we did listen and incorporate, and now we have the support of our government.

I am hoping that all members across the aisle will support the bill, and hopefully some of the concerns will leave room for opportunities to address issues in the next round.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the member for Vancouver East, Housing; the member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay, Natural Resources; and the member for Elmwood—Transcona, International Trade.

[Lenore Zann, Liberal, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to have the opportunity to speak to the new NAFTA for the second time in this House. I would like to discuss the benefits of the Canada-United States-Mexico agreement for all Canadians. Guided by Canada's inclusive approach to trade, we have worked very hard from the beginning of negotiations to secure outcomes that would advance the interests of the Canadian middle class, small and medium-sized enterprises, women, indigenous peoples, and also to protect our most vulnerable residents.

Historically, Canada has always been a trading nation. Canadian exports account for nearly one-third of our GDP. Imports help meet the needs of both Canadian businesses and consumers, providing both variety in consumer products and important inputs for industry. Canada has productive trading relationships with much of the world. Our government is working hard to support trade diversification and to have new and expanding markets.

However, the United States is still our closest and largest trading partner, and the vast majority of goods that cross our common border do so tariff-free. Every day, $2.7 billion in trade and roughly 385,000 people cross the border between Canada and the United States. This exchange of goods, services and investments supports Canadian jobs, businesses and communities. Our close relationship underpins the prosperity of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.

Our focus from the outset of negotiations was to preserve middle-class jobs and foster economic growth. Small and medium-sized businesses, or SMEs, are the backbone of the Canadian economy, employing nearly 10.7 million Canadians in 2018. This represents about 90% of the private sector labour force.

Among Canadian firms that exported goods to the United States, 96.2% were small and medium-sized businesses, which together accounted for over $145 billion in exports. Among those that exported goods to Mexico the same year, just over 88% were small and medium-sized firms, which accounted for a total value of $2.6 billion in exports.

The new NAFTA would preserve Canada's tariff-free access to our most important market. This is vital for our SMEs that rely on North America's integrated supply chains and its almost 490 million customers. By preserving this important tariff-free access, the agreement provides predictability and stability for those nearly 10.7 million Canadians employed by SMEs that depend on trade. This enables SMEs to continue to strive and to contribute to the Canadian economy in communities right across this country.

The agreement also preserves the NAFTA binational panel dispute settlement mechanism, retaining our access to an independent and impartial process to challenge anti-dumping and countervailing duties. This has been particularly important to Canadian companies producing softwood lumber products for export to the United States and the 187,000 workers in the forestry sector. As somebody who is from the northern region of Nova Scotia, I see the effects of this in my riding.

While softwood lumber continues to benefit from duty-free treatment under the new NAFTA, we recognize there is a long history of the U.S. industry bringing forward anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations against Canadian softwood lumber products. Our success in maintaining the dispute settlement mechanism means that Canada could continue to bring challenges against any unwarranted or unfair duties in order to seek their removal and the reimbursement to Canadian exporters of duties that have been paid.

I am very glad to also see this new agreement preserves the general exception for our cultural industries, which employ over 665,000 people across the country.

Our creative economy is so important. Going forward with the green economy and the knowledge-based economy of the 21st century, it helps us to create content that will be seen all around the world and really show off our country. Our success in maintaining the dispute settlement mechanism means that we can continue to challenge any of these unwarranted examples and challenges to our cultural industries as well. They are integral to our linguistic and cultural identity and they ensure our capacity as Canadians to be able to tell our own stories.

One of Canada's goals is to better reflect the trade interests of indigenous peoples in trade negotiations. To that end, the Government of Canada undertook extensive engagement with indigenous leaders, representatives, proprietors of indigenous-owned businesses and policy experts to better understand their trade interests and to seek input on priorities for the negotiations.

We have also retained policy flexibility to provide preferential treatment for indigenous peoples and indigenous-owned businesses, including in the areas of services, investment, government procurement, environment and state-owned enterprises. This means that Canada will maintain its ability to create procurement programs that support small and minority-owned businesses, including indigenous-owned businesses.

The new agreement will support all Canadian businesses, including SMEs, by ensuring continued access to the U.S. and Mexican markets. It will update the rules of trade within North America, making it easier for Canadian companies to do business, including through streamlined customs and origin procedures and greater transparency in government regulations in a wide range of sectors. For instance, new customs and trade facilitation measures will make it easier for companies to move goods across the border, including reducing paper processes and providing a single portal to submit import documentation electronically.

SMEs stand to benefit to a greater extent from such measures, as they may not have the same resources as larger firms and they have to address challenges when operating across borders. Improvements made on dispute settlement, including labour rights, will also be very important for our SMEs, as it will help ensure effective implementation of the agreement and a more level playing field. This way, SMEs may find themselves to be more competitive and have market opportunities that were not accessible to them under NAFTA.

The new NAFTA also includes a chapter on SMEs that will foster co-operation among the parties in order to increase trade and investment opportunities. This includes capacity building and promotion activities to support SMEs owned by under-represented groups. The agreement recognizes that these groups may benefit from strengthened collaboration on SME promotion activities designed to increase their participation in international trade.

The agreement includes requirements to make information available for SMEs that is specifically tailored for their interests, including information on entrepreneurship, education programs for youth and under-represented groups, as well as information on obligations in the agreement that are particularly relevant to SMEs.

The agreement establishes an annual trilateral dialogue, which provides SMEs with an opportunity to collaborate in addressing any issue that could impact them in the future. The dialogue enables participation of representatives from private sector employees, non-government organizations, unions and other experts, thus ensuring diverse perspectives, which is so important on issues related to the agreement that are relevant to SMEs. By doing so, the new NAFTA will give a voice to Canadian SMEs and facilitate discussions on issues that matter to them.

Let me conclude by highlighting once again that we have worked very hard to ensure that this new agreement will be of benefit to all Canadians, including middle-class workers, small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as traditionally under-represented groups such as women and indigenous peoples.

I am proud to say that we have achieved our objective. We have made important progress toward elevating standards and benefits for all Canadians, and for that I am grateful.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am anticipating that the Conservative Party will be supporting the bill, but there is a lot of concern with the dithering of the Liberal government. We were basically taken to the cleaners. The U.S. was never really focused on Canada. It was focused on Mexico. We could have had a deal that was a lot more beneficial to Canadian interests than what has been signed.

The member opposite talked about softwood lumber in the Maritimes, but this has proven to be a disaster in British Columbia with mills closing down throughout the province, including in my community of Maple Ridge where a 100-year-old mill, which was still very modern, has closed down.

My question is, although this deal is better than no deal, would the member acknowledge that we could have done a lot better than what it actually turned out to be, which is what the U.S. Congress said—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I am sorry, but we have to allow for other questions.

Members should take note of the signs that I am giving and pose their question when they see that I am telling them to hurry up.

The hon. member for Cumberland—Colchester.

[Lenore Zann, Liberal, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Madam Speaker, I would say to the member for Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge that I feel his pain regarding mills closing. In Nova Scotia several mills have also closed over the last 10 years for various reasons. It is never easy and it is very difficult for workers and union workers. However, I do not believe that it necessarily has anything to do with this particular deal. It has to do with the changing times and with businesses, oftentimes American businesses operating in Canada, going out of business.

One of the things I would say to the member is that I believe that this government did the very best it could under trying circumstances, and being forced into having to do a new NAFTA in the first place. I have to take my hat off to our Deputy Prime Minister for her hard work on this file.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member talked about the Deputy Prime Minister's approach to this trade deal. The Liberals say that this is the best we can get despite the circumstances.

When negotiations were entered into on this deal, the Liberals were happy with the original NAFTA. They did not want to renegotiate; they wanted the original deal. Then the first version of CUSMA was the best deal we could get. Now the latest version is the best deal we can get. Canadians are wondering how hard their government drove in terms of getting a good deal for Canadians at the negotiating table when the government has been satisfied every step of the way.

Is that the approach of the government on the softwood lumber agreement, saying to the people of B.C., “This is the best we can do”? Mills are closing and people are out of work. The government needs to take a better and stronger approach when it comes to these trade deals.

[Lenore Zann, Liberal, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Madam Speaker, as a former New Democrat, I know what it is like to be at the negotiating table.

We have to do the best we can do, no matter what we have or what is being offered. Of course we are going to say it is the best deal we can get. I mean, that is part of the trading deals that we do.

However, I have to remind people that pulp mills have been closing for the past 10 years. On one day, the day that Jack Layton died, two pulp mills closed in Nova Scotia. It was one of the most difficult days for our New Democrat government. We had to deal with Jack Layton's death and the closure of two pulp mills, and that was several years ago, long before this trade deal was ever a twinkling in Donald Trump's eye.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Madam Speaker, it has now been several weeks since Bill C-4, an act to implement the Agreement between Canada, the United States of America and the United Mexican States, was introduced.

It is becoming increasingly clear that this agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico has some serious consequences for Canada's and Quebec's economies. It is simple. Under this agreement, our exports to the United States will decrease and our imports from our neighbours to the south will increase. As a result, the United States will diminish Canada's industrial activity, shifting this activity to its own cities and towns. The C.D. Howe Institute's most recent study estimates that Canada's GDP will take a $14-billion hit. That is worrisome.

Agriculture in Canada, and especially in Quebec, will be one of the hardest-hit sectors of the economy. It will lose a significant portion of its market share to the United States. This is not to mention all the other trade benefits and legal advantages in terms of copyright, intellectual property, trademarks and data protection that the United States gained over Canada in these negotiations.

I even heard Canada's chief CUSMA negotiator say that the Government of Canada negotiated with the United States without analyzing the consequences of its decisions. Negotiating that kind of free trade agreement usually takes three years. Canadians should have been invited to submit studies that should have been debated to gain a better understanding of the long-term benefits for our economy. In this case, the United States forced negotiations and Canada was left scrambling.

The Government of Canada also rushed the study of Bill C-4. After finalizing the agreement last year, the Liberal government, which had a majority at the time, rejected the House of Commons' requests to examine the ins and outs of a future CUSMA implementation bill. That was last May. Then a general election was held on October 21. The House could have convened sooner, but that is not what happened. We finally opened the parliamentary session in December, but we did not discuss the agreement. We could have discussed it back in January, but that did not happen either. We could even have scheduled time for it in March during break last week, but it was all done in a rush in committee.

Fortunately, now that we have a minority government, the tone has changed, which has translated into some gains for Quebec. The Liberal government's haste was concealing some things. The Bloc Québécois insisted and managed to make the government aware of the consequences that its decisions and actions have on Quebec.

Fortunately, the Bloc Québécois was able to intelligently intervene to make this agreement a little more favourable for Quebec. If the Bloc Québécois had not done so, the Liberal government would have hurt Quebec's aluminum industry, even though it is the cleanest in the world. Indeed, CUSMA would have driven away more than $6 billion in investments in Quebec's aluminum industry. The Bloc Québécois salvaged something from the wreckage. The negotiations with the Liberal Party on Bill C-4 proved once again the importance of the Bloc Québécois in Ottawa.

On the other hand, it is unfortunate that CUSMA does nothing to address the softwood lumber crisis. Once again, it lets the United States dictate the market.

I now want to come back to the impact the agreement will have on rural life. In Quebec, over two million people live in rural areas. Eighteen per cent of Quebeckers live in a village like Saint-André-de-Kamouraska or in a small urban community like Macamic in the west of Abitibi. Over 40% of the revenue in Quebec's agricultural regions comes from the dairy industry. The weakening of supply management directly undermines the economic and social development of Quebec's rural regions.

Last weekend, I attended the Fédération de la relève agricole du Québec convention in my home town of Rouyn-Noranda. I spoke with many next generation farmers who are very concerned about the impact of the changes to supply management because a stable, predictable income is important.

In CUSMA, as in previous agreements, Canada failed Quebec's dairy farmers. I would like to remind members that most of Canada's dairy farms are in Quebec. CUSMA gives up more than 3% of our dairy market, which amounts to an annual loss of $150 million in revenue for the two million people who live in the rural regions. Our agricultural community, which is at the very heart of our villages' vitality, continues to grow weaker every year.

I therefore expect the government to think about our towns and villages in the various compensation programs. That is why the Bloc Québécois, dairy producers and farmers in general are asking for a direct support program to compensate for losses, starting with the next budget—and that means very soon—to ensure that the economic vitality of our rural regions is not undermined.

Canada seems to have no regard for the reality that farm life and supply management create jobs and investments that contribute to the existence of a strong middle class in Quebec's rural areas.

Fortunately, a few days ago, the Bloc Québécois introduced a bill to protect supply management in Quebec in future trade negotiations.

Under this bill, the federal government will not be able to make an international trade commitment through a treaty or an agreement that would have the unfortunate effect of undermining supply management in Quebec. Our farmers and producers will finally have the protection they deserve to deal with the politics of free trade in the world. Circumventing supply management needs to stop. This bill is essential. I invite all my colleagues in the House of Commons to support it because, in addition to being an easy target in negotiations, supply management can also be circumvented with the right strategies. It is no secret that the United States has been using milk protein as a way of getting around supply management for years. It used to be a way for them to offload their surpluses onto Canadian markets at a lesser price than what our producers were asking. Now, they use it as a weapon to destroy supply management.

With the last agreement, the Canadian milk solids industry has literally been put under third-party management by the United States. Washington can limit the amount of protein our producers are entitled to sell in the rest of the world. The Americans will be able to squeeze Quebec out of global markets. That is a direct attack on our sovereignty. In other words, our producers could end up with huge surpluses and the surpluses could disrupt and jeopardize our family farm model.

Even worse, CUSMA also requires that we consult the United States about changes to the administration of the supply management system for Canada's dairy products. To force a Canadian industry to consult its direct competitor in another country about administrative changes it could make in future on the national level challenges our sovereignty.

For that reason the Bloc Québécois is recommending that Bill C-4 be accompanied by the following measures: that supply-managed producers and processors be fully compensated for their losses resulting from the trans-Pacific agreement, CETA and CUSMA and that this be clearly indicated in the next budget; that import licences resulting from breaches in supply management be issued first to processors rather than distributors and retailers; that, before ratifying CUSMA, the government consider the fact that if the agreement comes into force before August 1, 2020, milk protein export quotas for 2020-21 will be 35,000 tonnes rather than 55,000 tonnes if the agreement comes into force after August 1; that the government establish a permanent forum with producers and processors to ensure that the export tariff quotas are implemented in such a way as to cause the least possible harm to the dairy sector.

I was talking about the importance of income stability, which will have huge implications for the next generation of farmers in particular. Access to land, all of the bank loans and other programs are made possible through guarantees. The quota system and supply management were the main guarantees that farmers could offer. The implications are still being downplayed and they affect the cities, towns and regions of Quebec especially. All of Canada's concessions to our trade partners in recent agreements will have a direct impact on Quebec's rural economy. The latest trade agreements negotiated and signed by Ottawa have done nothing but create uncertainty in Quebec's towns and regions, in particular among farm owners, who are generally the ones who stimulate economic growth in their communities.

The principles of CUSMA will clearly have huge implications on investments in farms and processors, not to mention the job losses in cities and towns. The impact on agricultural producers goes beyond dairy farmers. We are talking about other farmers, veterinarians, equipment manufacturers, equipment vendors, truck drivers and feed suppliers. These financial losses will be felt by the various SMEs that remain in these towns. What is worse, the towns' social development will be affected. Services could be lost, schools could be shut down, and so on.

I invite all my colleagues in the House to visit the riding of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, particularly east of Témiscamingue, to understand the impact of a school closure or even the closure of a single retail store. In order to reduce the impact of all these losses, especially on rural Quebec, would it be possible for Ottawa to finally accede to Quebec's request that Quebeckers be put in charge of regional development programs? In the wake of the disastrous outcomes for rural Quebec, federal programs should be tailored to rural Quebec instead of being Canada-wide programs designed by Ottawa. If Ottawa is not in a position to protect and develop rural Quebec, if Ottawa does not care about Quebec's regions, then it should let Quebec manage the programs in a way that is more effective and beneficial for Quebec.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages (Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency)]

Madam Speaker, I have to disagree. We have a minister for regional development in Quebec, separate from the rest of the country, who is doing an excellent job, and all sorts of projects are being approved.

The member mentioned the quota on milk protein, and that is true, but the quota is far above what we are producing now, so it is not going to have any immediate effect.

The member also talked about losses of investment in aluminum. Those decisions were made before the CUSMA final agreement was made.

As well, he mentioned a study, but there have been tons of studies that show the effects on benefits if we did not have this agreement. For instance, the RBC said there would be a dramatic reduction in the Canadian GDP of 1%, affecting 500,000 workers, and Scotiabank said that the Canadian economy would stand a strong chance of falling into recession without this agreement.

There are $57 billion worth of exports from manufacturers in Quebec, great businesses, which the agreement protects, and the cultural exemption would protect 75,000 Quebec workers.

Does the member agree those are benefits?

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Madam Speaker, I completely disagree with my colleague when he says that this has no impact on our producers. Signing the agreement on May 1 will have a devastating effect. We can try to salvage something for the industry and the producers because they work with the dairy year, which begins on August 1. The agreement comes into effect three months after it is signed.

About 110,000 tonnes of dairy products are sold on the markets. If the agreement comes into effect before August 1, producers will be able to export 55,000 tonnes in that dairy year. That is the agreed amount for the first year. However, if the agreement comes into effect earlier, we will have one month to dispose of those 55,000 tonnes. The amount is 35,000 tonnes for the second year.

If we manage to buy time, if we act responsibly as parliamentarians and take the time to debate it, we will be able to save part of the industry.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member from the Bloc Québécois listed a few areas of concern in the CUSMA agreement. I would appreciate it if he could restate them and discuss them.

I would also ask him to explain why the government failed to bring a good agreement to Canada and Canadians, and what could have been done to get a better agreement.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Madam Speaker, that is a good question, and I thank my colleague for asking it. A number of things did indeed fall through the cracks.

That happened because the government rushed things and botched the agreement.

Maybe they were afraid of the sharks on the U.S. side of the table, as François Gendron, an excellent MNA from Abitibi-Témiscamingue, suggested when he talked to the next generation of farmers at the Fédération de la relève agricole du Québec late last week.

I want to point out that the Bloc Québécois took action to find a solution that works within the framework of the signed agreement, a way to control aluminum import mechanisms. That benefits us in two ways, one of which is providing real-time data about aluminum imports. This mechanism works with what is already in place.

We will be able to ensure that the Mexicans are not engaging in dumping and that foreign aluminum—if its existence is confirmed in a report—is not processed. That means cast and shaped aluminum produced in North America will be used to make our car parts.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to talk about the current state of CUSMA from two perspectives. In my speech, I will reiterate some of the things my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue just mentioned.

First, I would like to start with an overview of recent developments and the exceptional and thoughtful work our party did to accomplish what at first seemed unlikely.

Second, I will address the factor that I like to call the historical context. I will talk about the different circumstances that set the stage for the various trade negotiations that occurred over the past 50-plus years, and the challenges posed by our current situation.

I would first like to applaud the hard work of the Bloc Québécois members from Lac-Saint-Jean and Jonquière, as well as the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot for his work on the parliamentary committee in this file. They all worked tirelessly and with great determination, with the support of our leader, the member for Beloeil—Chambly. They brought people together and supported many stakeholders—mayors and unions—in the aluminum industry, which is vital to their region.

The Bloc Québécois keeps its word. We are here to protect and support Quebec's interests and economy. We have not let up since December. Our resiliency and concern for our own have been on full display over the past few months.

I must recognize, and it is recognized, that the government decided to get involved on two levels. First, it committed to collect real-time data on aluminum imports in Mexico through traceability measures. Second, if that data shows that Mexico is indeed sourcing foreign aluminum, the government promised to revisit this issue so that the “melted and poured in North America” clause applies to aluminum in the same way it applies to steel. By so doing, the government recognized that aluminum did not have the same protection as steel.

Let us not forget that in the new Canada-United States-Mexico agreement, Canada is the only party that is actually harmed by the dumping phenomenon, that the trade agreements prohibit dumping, that this practice results in unfair competition, and that the success of free trade agreements must normally be based on mutual gains.

Our leader and member for Beloeil—Chambly found the balance required and obtained the co-operation of the Deputy Prime Minister to protect our economic interests and the interests of thousands of North Shore and Lac-Saint-Jean workers.

Earlier, I mentioned historical context as a factor. I would now like to talk about it by going back in time briefly.

The economic sovereignties of Canada and the United States have changed significantly since the second half of the 20th century. Initially, we had what was known as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, GATT, where the United States determined the outcome of trade disputes that might arise in a protectionist context. The energy crisis of the late 1970s and the difficult recession of the early 1980s opened the door to very cautious trade relations. The implementation of the FTA in 1989 required the tact, skilful bilateral trade relations and people-to-people links that were the hallmarks of the time.

Members will recall that Quebec economists were in favour of it. Like the Bloc Québécois today, two great economists, two great men who left their mark on Quebec, Jacques Parizeau and Bernard Landry, knew that such an agreement would be beneficial for Quebec and its economy.

In this initial agreement, Ottawa, Washington and Quebec were all winners. Mexico would complete the free trade trio less than two years later.

Under NAFTA, Quebec quickly reaped the benefits of its economic dynamism and, despite the virtual disappearance of its manufacturing industry, the growing openness of 21st-century world markets would allow the development of leading-edge industries. Collectively, we moved forward in an increasingly globalized world, with growing trade and much more.

I would like to highlight two elements that I cannot ignore. These two elements also come from the past.

They speak volumes about the arguments our party raised for several weeks. During all the years that the Bloc Québécois had a lot of seats in the House, successive governments were forced to take Quebec's expectations into account. No less than 16 trade agreements were negotiated and signed without ever allowing for the slightest breach in supply management.

In 2011 and 2015, with reduced Bloc representation, Canada concluded three free trade agreements. That made three agreements with three major breaches, namely Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and CUSMA. If there are fewer Bloc Québécois members, does that translate into less consideration for Quebec? To ask that question is to answer it.

This CUSMA came together with the Trump administration. We can all agree that this is a new context and it is not just any context. Based on three deals that are seriously eroding supply management, Canada is firmly on the path to weakening its sovereignty by letting our neighbour to the south undermine it. Yes, I said “its sovereignty”. I think everyone knows that for the Bloc Québécois, leaving our sovereignty in the hands of another nation is contrary to our nature.

Indeed, CUSMA grants the Americans oversight of the milk protein exports Canada can offer to countries outside North America. A provision like this in a trade agreement is unheard of in anything other than a colonial context, as this provision could have a devastating impact on the dairy industry. This is a question of sovereignty, since we are putting decisions that are our responsibility into the hands of another country. These decisions are not its concern. In other words, the United States was just handed control over Canada's external relations.

In Quebec, we are committed to our farmers. We respect our dairy producers. With CUSMA, Canada has scored a hat trick with three agreements that undermine Quebec's trade model, which has proven successful. The truth is, without a strong Bloc Québécois presence, the Canadian government does less for Quebec.

The historic context we are heading toward is now global. Every economy in the world has to deal with this. I am talking about the climate crisis that has to collectively push us to rise above commercial concerns alone. We have to ask questions. Is intensifying our economic integration the best way to act in this new context? Do we have what it takes to inspire other countries to do their part to deal with climate matters? Is it possible to reconcile economic prosperity with respect for the environment, and if so, how? Is it possible to reconcile regional vitality with economic openness? With regard to the last two questions, I would say that Quebec's aluminum industry is a fine example and that its development can inspire other countries.

We are calling on the government to be responsible and truly follow through on its recent commitments on the two measures related to the aluminum industry and to fully keep its promises.

We are also calling on the government to consider possible accommodations when it comes to Quebec's large dairy industry. Such steps are not so uncommon and the government does not have to wait 10 years to take them. These kinds of steps were taken at least 16 times in 15 years of NAFTA.

We are also asking the government to support our bill, Bill C-216, on supply management, and give it the consideration it deserves, that Quebec deserves, that its farming economy deserves.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages (Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency)]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for her very thoughtful speech and the co-operation of the Bloc related to this. I think what the Bloc has added related to aluminum is good. Everyone was worried about dumping from China into Mexico. The member mentioned only Canada was at risk, but that is not true. Nothing has changed with this agreement related to the risk. However, the major benefits for aluminum, over and above that, are that the overall regional value content rises from 62.5% to 75%, 70% of aluminum purchased by automakers must be North American, and 7% of the core parts of a car must have 75% regional value. The conditions on aluminum can be changed at any time.

I know the Bloc is very sensitive to the environment, to labour, to women's rights and to cultural preservation. This agreement has clauses related to all of those. I would like to know if the member agrees that the benefits for those are good to have in the agreement.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Madam Speaker, I want to talk about how that relates to the demands of the United States government. The U.S. government had a demand concerning supply management. It wanted to dismantle supply management because it wanted to protect its own dairy industry, primarily in Minnesota, where its electoral base is located. It succeeded.

The second aspect, which we believe is a bit more controversial, has to do with China. The U.S. government was intent on controlling China. The free trade agreement stipulates that, if Canada ever signs a free trade agreement with China, the American government has the right to review it. That affects our sovereignty. I would say that we do not want an agreement with China, a country where human rights are violated, a country that pushes the Uighurs into forced labour to provide us with manufactured goods. We will not accept that.

There is one more thing. The U.S. government got the two things it wanted. I was not at the negotiating table, but I do not think the American government was interested in culture.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will use my colleague's own words. It is true that she was not at the negotiating table. It was the Liberal government that was at the table, and the negotiations took place well before the October 22, 2019, election. I do not understand how the Bloc Québécois can take credit for gains made in an agreement that was negotiated last year. If the Bloc Québécois negotiated new agreements for Canada with President Trump, I am not aware of it. I think that what is happening in the House right now is a sham.

I would like my colleague to explain how she could have changed a couple of lines in the free trade agreement with President Trump.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. The Bloc Québécois did not negotiate with President Trump.

However, we did reach an agreement with the Deputy Prime Minister, whom we managed to convince. I want to remind my esteemed colleague that the Bloc Québécois asked countless questions in the House to make the point that aluminum could come from China, be processed a bit in Mexico and be considered to have been made here. For weeks and weeks, the government refused to recognize that aluminum did not have the same level of protection as steel. Even Jean Simard, the spokesperson for the aluminum industry, eventually acknowledged in committee that aluminum did not have the same protection as steel.

That is what the Bloc Québécois accomplished by asking questions and making speeches. We persevered because we wanted to protect our people.

[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, today is quite a special day. In fact, on February 28, I was hoping to give a speech of a similar nature. When I stood in my place on behalf of the government, I had asked for leave to see if we could begin debate on the very important piece of legislation that we have before us today.

I think it is important for us to recognize that, to the best of my knowledge, it is the very first time we have unanimous support from all political entities inside the House of Commons. We have the Conservatives, New Democrats, Bloc and Green Party members, along with the government of course, supporting what I suggest is an excellent deal.

I have been here all day listening to comments. The Conservatives asked about this and that. The Bloc asked the same thing. I listened to my New Democrat friends, and they also pointed out that there were things missing within the trade agreement.

This agreement is a win for Canadians. At the end of the day, when talking about negotiations—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I do want to remind members that there will be an opportunity for not five, but 10 minutes of questions and comments. I would ask members to start jotting down their ideas and questions so that they can be prepared for that important round.

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, when we are sitting around a negotiation table, it is not like there is the opportunity to say, “Here's my list and the lists for the Conservatives, the NDP and the Bloc of everything we want”, and then expect the United States and Mexico representatives to say, “Okay, no problem, you have it.” That is not the way negotiations work.

At the end of the day, we achieved a deal that is in the best interests of Canadians in all regions of our country. I would point out to members opposite that over the last couple of years we have had a significant amount of discussion and debate inside the chamber, and equally as important, outside the chamber, dealing with a wide spectrum of individuals, different types of stakeholders, different levels of government and different groupings, if I could put it that way, in order to ultimately pull it all together into what we now have today, which is an agreement we can all be very proud of.

The member for Yukon made reference to the Bank of Nova Scotia. The idea that we did not have to do anything is false. There was a presidential election, and it became very clear that Canada needed to be at the table to negotiate a renewed NAFTA. There were some members of the opposition who ridiculed the government of the day, saying that we should not have indicated to the U.S. that we were okay with sitting down at the negotiation table. We recognized how important it was to actually be there to ensure that Canadians' best interests were being served.

We can look at the final product, Bill C-4, and see the support it has generated. I just made reference to the opposition parties and the government, but different levels of government here in Canada, from the Premier of Quebec to the Premier of Alberta and many other premiers, are talking about how good this deal actually is for our country and for individual provinces.

We have heard unions, including trade unions, being very supportive of many of the gains made in this legislation. Both big and small business communities recognize the value of this particular agreement. Canadians as a whole recognize just how important trade is to our country and they are getting behind this.

For all intents and purposes, even though our Deputy Prime Minister has led the charge on behalf of Canada, it has really been an effort by so many individuals and they can take credit for what we have today.

I want to make reference to the negotiators. We have heard this in the past from other members. We are very fortunate to have some of the best negotiators in the world who are there to protect our interests. I suspect they continue to improve upon those skills because of the number of agreements that have been achieved.

Over the last five years, we have witnessed a government that has been very proactive in picking up where the former prime minister left off. We have been able to sign off on a number of critically important agreements.

From a different perspective, I listened to other members talk about what it means when we talk about trade. When I sit down with my constituents at the local McDonald's and they want to talk about trade, I will often provide tangible examples. In Manitoba we have a number of different industries. I often talk about our pork industry, as I have done in the House.

The pork industry in the province of Manitoba is doing exceptionally well. The vast majority of pork that is produced in Manitoba does not stay in Manitoba. A producer called HyLife is located in the beautiful community of Neepawa. Well over 90% of its products go to Asia. The jobs are into the hundreds. Those individuals are buying products, using services, living in that beautiful community and contributing to the economic and social well-being of Neepawa and the surrounding area. That would not be possible without trade.

Manitoba's pork industry processes millions of pigs every year that are sold around the world. We could talk about whether it is Maple Leaf in Winnipeg or Maple Leaf in Brandon. We could talk about the hundreds of farmers that are engaged in the process, from raising the pigs to ultimately having them delivered to factories or processing plants by truckers. It is a major industry in Manitoba. If it were not for international trade and to a certain degree some domestic trade, that industry would not be anywhere near what it is today. We all benefit, not only immediate communities but the entire country as well.

I often talk about New Flyer Industries, which produces some of the best hybrid buses in the world. The company is thinking into the future. It produces more buses than we could ever use in Manitoba. We need trade.

Our government has been able to achieve a significant number of agreements in the last four or five years.

We can talk about the internal trade agreement that was achieved with the provinces a few years back. Canadians will often say international trade is good but we need to work on interprovincial trade, and we have done that. Our government has been able to move forward on that particular file.

There has never been a government that has been as successful at signing off on international trade agreements as this Liberal government has been in the last five years. We can talk about the European Union. We can talk about the trans-Pacific agreement. We can talk about Ukraine, not to mention the World Trade Organization. A few years back a bill was introduced that dealt with well over 100 countries around the world.

This government and our Prime Minister understand. From day one, our priority has been to enrich Canada's middle class and those who are striving to be a part of it. One of the best ways to do that is to provide opportunities through trade. It is not just what is released in a budget or other legislation. A government has to do a multitude of things in order to achieve success at serving Canadians.

The types of agreements that our government has been able to sign off on have made a tangible difference in Canada.

We often hear about children and seniors having been lifted out of poverty over the last number of years. We have been very successful at doing that.

We do not hear much about the number of jobs that have been created by this government, and it is a wonderful story that needs to be told. I am talking about full-time jobs in most cases, well over one million jobs. It might be 1.1 million net new jobs. That is a significant number of jobs.

We talk about how we can try to grow the economy, provide more choice for consumers and add more value for businesses and entrepreneurs, and Canada has some of the best entrepreneurs in the world. One of the best ways we can achieve that is to look at ways we can secure markets into the future. Because of this government, we are now in a position in which we have agreements with all of the G7 countries. I invite members to name another country in the world that can say the same. We have recognized the value of trade as being one of those critical aspects of development required in order to advance the interests of Canadians in all regions of our country.

I am sensitive to the fact that, whenever we have a trade agreement, there are always going to be areas in which it would have been nice to have been able to achieve something a bit different, but as I pointed out at the beginning of my speech, it would be absolutely naive to believe that we could go in and win on all counts and get everything that we want.

President Donald Trump wanted Canada to dismantle, get rid of, supply management. He is the individual who made it very clear that his administration was not prepared to accept the old agreement. They wanted a new agreement, or they would get rid of the old agreement. A part of that also incorporated the thought that they wanted to see the ripping apart or taking down of supply management.

I am very proud of the supply management system. We have production controls, import controls and price controls. As a direct result of that, we are able to produce things such as the best milk in the world, dairy products and much more. Supply management has been very effective. It is a tool that was actually put in place many years ago by another Liberal government, and I can tell members that it is this government that is protecting the future of supply management.

That is absolute, because there is very little doubt in my mind. I think it was the leader of the People's Party, who had been a member of the Conservative Party not that long ago, who was espousing that we should get rid of supply management. I suspect he was not alone among the Conservative benches. I sat in opposition a number of years ago when there was always the thought that the hidden agenda of many Conservatives was to get rid of supply management.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

They got rid of the Wheat Board.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

The member for Yukon is right. It would have been much like they got rid of the Canadian Wheat Board.

If we would have—

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

There is some going back and forth on a lot of issues. I know that people are getting really excited because there is only about four minutes left of the speech and they are anxiously awaiting to ask questions. I would ask that they hold on to that for a second, write down all of what they want to ask and there will be time, 10 minutes of it.

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, the point is that when the Deputy Prime Minister, Canadian diplomats and negotiators sat at the table, we knew that supply management had to survive or there would not be an agreement. As a result of Canada taking that tough stand, we have a future of supply management. This agreement might not be perfect in every aspect, but I recognize, as I believe a vast majority of Canadians do, just how valuable this agreement is to our economy and that when we say there are safety measures in place, there are in fact safety measures that will be there to protect industries well into the future.

I want to highlight a couple of other things. I thought cultural exemptions were really important in this agreement, just in terms of the billions of dollars in that industry alone. I would argue that would not have been there if it were not for our persistence. For the first time, the new NAFTA has a new enforceable environmental chapter, ensuring good air quality and fighting marine pollution. Rights are being protected. Enforceable provisions will protect women's rights, minority rights and indigenous rights. It also includes labour obligations regarding the elimination of employment discrimination based on gender. The investor-state dispute resolution has been done away with. Imagine the millions of dollars that have been saved by getting rid of that.

The provisions to protect labour are the strongest in any Canadian trade agreement to date. There is labour value content that levels the playing field. The new auto rules of origin would directly secure the future of auto workers in cities such as Windsor and Oshawa. The agreement provides assurances on government procurement. There is the whole issue of the aluminum industry. Yes, we are concerned about industries. We are being criticized because there was not a high enough percentage guarantee. The last agreement had a 0% guarantee; this one has a 70% guarantee. We should all be talking about this agreement in a very positive way because it would have the desired outcome that would enhance and build Canada's middle class. It would make our economy stronger and allow for more secure markets into the future. That is what Canadians, businesses, entrepreneurs and individuals who have so much vested in making sure we get this right deserve. I can tell those people the government has it right and we will see the dividends once this bill passes.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Madam Speaker, I watched my neighbour from Winnipeg North give a rather—

[An hon. member]

Rousing.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

No, it was not rousing; it was more grating. I am trying to put it into the proper context. I encourage the member for Winnipeg North to take a little drive. He does not even have to leave the Perimeter Highway. I know often in the city he only has perimeter vision and only sees within the city of Winnipeg itself, but he does not even have to hit the Perimeter Highway. He can go and visit Gord Grenkow, a dairy farmer who lives on the edge of his riding and in my riding. I know he would get an earful about how the government sold out the dairy industry.

Not only did the government allow the Americans to have more access to the market here in Canada by another 7%, which means that dairy farms are going to have to produce less and they are not going to be as profitable, but it also signed a deal with the Americans, who said they were going to restrict exports from 55,000 metric tons down to 30,000 metric tons. That is global exports, not just with the United States. The Americans are saying that we cannot send Canadian dairy products, like our great cheeses and ice creams, around the world because these guys signed off with Trump to allow them to curtail our dairy production. That is despicable.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I find really quite amazing that on this side of the House, we have been very strong advocates for supply management and that principle has not changed. Whether we are in government or in opposition, that has been a consistent principle we have had. That same consistency could not be said about the Conservative Party.

I have visited dairy farmers. It might even be the same dairy farmer the member made reference to. I am not 100% sure. Just outside of my riding I went and visited one of the dairy farmers. I can tell members that the dairy farmers that I have had the opportunity to talk to see this agreement as a positive thing. They see that this agreement does, in fact, protect supply management and they also understand that hidden agenda from the Conservative Party. They might not want to hear that, but that is the reality.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague from Winnipeg North. He reiterated his support for protecting supply management a number of times. He also mentioned that nothing was perfect.

The Bloc Québécois is giving him the chance to redeem himself. On February 24, my colleague from Bécancour—Nicolet—Saurel introduced Bill C-216 to amend the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Act to prevent more breaches in supply management.

I would like to know whether my colleague will support this bill that will prevent future breaches in supply management.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to the debate that will eventually take place inside the House when the private member's bill comes forward.

I can assure the member that the principle of supply management, as I spent a great deal of time talking about, is something that Liberals have supported for many years. As I pointed out, we were the party that introduced supply management to the House of Commons and Canadians by working with different industries. This is a party that will continue to ensure it is there for future generations. It has been well demonstrated by this particular agreement.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I do want to get to the member's comment about New Flyer and the great work that it does. I was surprised to hear the member say that he has been talking to dairy farmers who think this is a great deal. Having been there for virtually the entirety of the committee hearings and having heard from a lot of people in the dairy industry, I want the member to know that I think if he looks at the record he will find that dairy farmers are actually rightly quite upset with the contents of the deal for them. We heard that loud and clear. We heard that many times over. He can believe what he wants about the deal, but I do not think he should believe that dairy farmers are satisfied with the treatment they got in CUSMA. That would just be an error.

I notice he mentioned New Flyer in his remarks. It makes a great product. It sends that product all over North America. One of the challenges for New Flyer has been that it continues to have to shift jobs out of my riding of Transcona to the United States because of the buy America policy. There is no protection for Canadian businesses from the buy America policy.

Does the member want to provide some reflections on that, particularly in light of the U.S. announcing an intention to leave the procurement provisions of the WTO?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very much a trade advocate, as I believe that when we see these formal trade agreements entered into, it supports our industries throughout our country by securing markets.

When we start talking about local promotions of buy American or buy Manitoban or buy Canadian or something of this nature, we always have to be somewhat careful in terms of the potential consequences of repercussions and so forth. At the end of the day, I believe that the trade agreements are a very positive thing.

In regard to the dairy industry, I have talked to a couple of dairy farmers, and at the end of the day, everyone believes that it could be improved upon. I was very satisfied with the overall discussions that I had.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise today. I have been listening to the hon. member across the aisle for Winnipeg North. In Saskatchewan, there is a radio show that is on every day, the John Gormley show. It has a frequent caller, and his name is “Conspiracy Kevin”. I believe we have our own version of “Conspiracy Kevin” in the chamber today. We have heard of the Conservative hidden agenda and many not-so-accurate comments coming from the member for Winnipeg North.

When the Deputy Prime Minister went down to the States in the middle of the new NAFTA negotiations and blatantly made fun of the President of the United States at one of their talks, does the member think that helped or hurt our industry in the trade deal going forward?

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Order, please.

Before we go to the hon. parliamentary secretary, members should not be doing things indirectly that they are not permitted to do directly. I appreciate that the member was trying to skirt around that and I give him full marks for attempting to do so.

We will now go to the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, let me give a conspiracy for the member opposite. There was a prime minister whose name was Brian Mulroney. He is the original author of the trade agreement. I am sure members on that side will know him, as they applaud. Having seen them applaud that, I wonder if they would applaud his remarks when he said that this is a good deal for Canadians.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I always find the parliamentary secretary's speeches quite entertaining, but there were so many factual inaccuracies there I just do not know where to start. I am on the committee as well and have listened to the witnesses.

One of his comments was really concerning to me. He said that this is going to be a better deal for the auto industry. That is what the Prime Minister said and that is what the Deputy Prime Minister said during the election, but the government's own numbers on this agreement show that it is going to be a $1.5-billion hit to the auto industry, which will decrease production about 1.7%.

When the Liberals took office, there was an agreement called the trans-Pacific partnership that was ready to be signed. It was the new NAFTA, which was a plus $4.3-billion improvement to our GDP, and with this agreement, C.D. Howe Institute said there is going to be a negative $14-billion hit.

How can the member stand here and tell workers in Oshawa, where our plant just closed, that it was a good deal for auto workers, especially given the numbers that his own government took until the very last day to tell Canadians were valid on the economic impact studies? How is a $1.5-billion hit a good deal for automotive?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we could talk about the new origin rules that are within the agreement, which I believe will protect many of the workers into the future. It is important we recognize the loss of any jobs in any industry in Canada is something that we are very much sympathetic to, and we try to do the best we can to provide support.

Having said that, if we draw a comparison to what we have been able to do in the manufacturing sector, particularly in Ontario, we see that the manufacturing sector took its greatest hit during the time of Stephen Harper, when hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost in that industry. I will compare our record to the Harper record on the manufacturing industry any day. There are protections for auto workers within this agreement.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Abbotsford, who has a long history in trade. During his time as trade minister, 51 agreements were completed. Therefore, I am honoured to share my time with such a financial wizard of trade.

North America has a trade history. If I go back to the Blackfoot Confederacy and my riding, the nations traded west through the Bow River corridor into B.C. They traded south into Wyoming. They traded into Montana. Therefore, we have had international trade going on in North America for some time with the indigenous people.

The Hudson's Bay Company showed up and traded across the country and exported all over the world. We are an exporting country. We survive because we export. We are tied to it. We have to trade.

Back in 1854, before we were a country, reciprocity with the U.S. was an issue. There was a reciprocity agreement in 1854, because we were dependent on trade with the U.S.

In the times after Confederation, with Macdonald, Borden, Mulroney and Harper, we continued to build trade agreements because we knew we were an exporting nation. However, there were challenges in those decades. As the U.S. became more intertwined in the later decades of the 1890s into the 1930s, we had the Smoot-Hawley agreement. The U.S. realized trade deficits with Canada were really detrimental to it. Therefore, it began to build trade tariffs, one after another, over those next 40 years.

Following the Second World War, Canada was constantly going back to the U.S. for exemptions to deal with trade under the Smoot-Hawley agreement, which was very protectionist. We were begging for exemptions. We did get the Auto Pact. When Nixon became president, he decided the U.S. was done with exemptions for Canada. He left us the Auto Pact, but that was the only thing he left us.

The next decade began with the building of NAFTA. We realized we were so intertwined economically with North America that we needed a better deal than what we had. As that grew, Mulroney was elected. Who did he use as a spokesman to build the NAFTA agreement across Canada? Premier Lougheed of Alberta. He was the gentleman who went across the country and the United States to get support for this agreement and to get people to understand how good NAFTA would be for them. It was an incredible experience for the premier of Alberta to show what with North America meant, not just for Alberta but for the whole country.

Once the NAFTA agreement was in place, it worked for decades. Now we are faced with one that has its challenges.

Several times today, members have mentioned the dairy industry and what it has lost in the new agreement.

Aluminum will be an interesting challenge. We know what has happened in Mexico. It is not as good as the deal we have for steel. We have a great aluminum industry in the country. I do not know why we did not work more to protect it, because it is such a green industry, both on the west coast and in Quebec. It is one of the greenest industries we have. It should have been protected more. It is an example of a green industry.

The cattle industry still has issues with cross-border trading. Moving live animals is a problem. Washington State is now looking at COOL, which is country of origin labelling. It is already developing some legislation. Trump likes that kind of legislation. Our cattle industry is very concerned because hundreds of thousands of live animals and products move back and forth in North America. COOL was very detrimental, but we managed to get it out. Now it is coming back. We have to deal with that. Our agriculture industry is absolutely paranoid about the cost of that.

We did not deal with softwood.

There is something else interesting in my riding. It is the only sugar beet industry left in Canada. We produce sugar beets in Canada. My grandfather was involved in bringing that industry to southern Alberta from the United States. He brought it up and we have irrigation. The sugar beet industry is very strong in my riding. It employs up to 200 people a year when those sugar beets are harvested. There was access to the U.S. market under the previous NAFTA, and the sugar beet industry was very concerned about what might happen. It was protected and it is still there, so that is a positive piece under the current NAFTA.

Somebody here mentioned the Wheat Board, and I cannot resist that because that was a problem. It put shackles on western Canada as far as trade for our prairie farmers. I have very successful farmers in my riding who knew that they could trade better than the bureaucracy of the Canadian Wheat Board. They would load up their trucks and take them across the border to deliver a Canadian product, because they knew they could trade better than a bureaucratic Canadian Wheat Board. Those people went to jail. They spent months in jail for driving across the border delivering a Canadian product that was wanted in the United States for trade. Canadians went to jail because they wanted to trade, but that is what we do. Some of those people continue to be leaders in their communities today. That jail record did not keep them from doing the good things they needed to do. It is just an example of what we believe about trade. We believe in western Canada how good it is, but it is trade all over the country.

Most recently, for example in Newfoundland, people have learned how to develop the eggs that come out of sea urchins for the Japanese market. We trade all over this country because we are tied to it.

This agreement is done and it has been signed, but there are things that need to be fixed. There were concessions made, one after another, to get it done out of fear of what Trump would do to us. Out of that fear, we got an agreement. It is not an agreement that is going to be fixed easily, but it is something that we need to do.

Do we agree with trade? Do my constituents want trade? Absolutely they do, but they want certainty. They need to know where those markets are because we are traders. We are entwined with the U.S. and Mexican markets. We have to trade. We need to get our products to market. The deal will be done and we will support it, but there certainly are losses in this one.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages (Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency)]

Mr. Speaker, I always appreciate the member's speeches, especially because he is so sensitive to indigenous people, as I have noted in the past, and I really enjoy that. Perhaps the member could comment briefly on the fact that, for the first time, indigenous rights are in this agreement. I am sure he would agree with that.

More important, the member talked about the green aluminum industry. Anything he could add as to what his party would do on green industry would be great.

While he is thinking of the answer, I just want to mention that he said there should be improved protection for aluminum, but there is a huge increase in protection for aluminum in this agreement. The regional value content in cars increased from 62.5% to 75%. In the past, there was no protection on aluminum parts purchased by automakers. Now, 70% must be North American and 7% of the core parts of a car must have 75% regional value, and of course a number of those parts have aluminum. This can be reviewed and improved any time.

If the member could talk about green industry and his party's plan, that would be great.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's input in the House and his speeches as well. He represents a great part of our country.

Regarding green industries, and agriculture is one of them, a United Nations committee stated that we need to remove cattle from the prairies because they are destroying our environment. I could not believe that one. The cattle on the prairies are a critical piece of our environment. They replaced the buffalo. Without those cattle on the prairies, we lose our natural prairies and we lose the green environment. It is so wrong that people in other parts of the world who do not understand the environment, do not understand that cattle do the same thing today as the millions of buffalo that roamed and worked the prairies. We have an industry that needs trade, and it is the cattle industry, but they make the environment greener on the prairies.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, as the NDP trade critic, I have been following the debate very closely.

Conservatives mentioned a couple of issues multiple times. One is the lack of an economic impact assessment, or the late delivery of that document, getting it only a day before the conclusion of the committee's study. A second concern, and I think a legitimate concern, is about having to give notice to the United States of negotiating an agreement with a non-market country, which really means China.

The NDP was successful in negotiating some policy changes with the government, namely that the government would be required by its own rules to table an economic impact assessment with the ratifying legislation, that it would be required to give three months' public notice, here in Parliament, of an intent to negotiate with any country, and that it would give notice of its negotiating objectives.

That is sound policy, and it helps in addressing some of the concerns about the process for this agreement by making public the notice that the U.S. would get anyway and by ensuring that economic impact assessments would be tabled with the ratifying legislation.

Would the member comment on those provisions?

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member brings such depth to his questions and interest in this House. I always appreciate it when the member stands up to address the House.

The member talked about transparency, and transparency is the issue. We are dealing with the coronavirus. I am going to go a different way on this, but members will understand why in a second. We have had a party dealing with this, but it has been dealing with it in a very closed fashion.

When the Conservatives dealt with SARS, was it just the committee of the cabinet that was dealing with it? No. The leaders of all opposition parties were included at 10 o'clock every day. It was transparent and it was dealt with as a team, because those things need to be dealt with by a team.

This is the same as what the member was saying about dealing with a team. We are dealing with the coronavirus and we are out here having to ask questions about what is going on. If the Liberals would include the opposition, as Conservatives did with SARS, we would have transparency and much better information sharing. We would then be able to make better decisions.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to engage in this debate again. What I am going to speak to is a story of betrayal, incompetence, weakness on the part of the Prime Minister, hubris and recklessness. It is a story of opportunity lost because we did not even have to engage in this negotiation the way the Prime Minister engaged in it.

Our Prime Minister assumed that because President Trump said that he was going to tear up NAFTA, somehow he needed to reach out to him and say that he gladly would renegotiate this agreement. Anyone who knows anything about the American trade system knows that the President cannot unilaterally tear up a trade agreement. He needs to have the consent and the approval of Congress.

Think about this: 35 of the American states have Canada as their number one export market. Show me the representatives, senators and governors from those states. Do colleagues think they will ever agree to tear up the old NAFTA? Of course not, but our Prime Minister marched into this negotiation and said, “President Trump, what do you want from us?” That is how it all started, and then President Trump said, “Well, I've got this huge trade deficit with Canada.” That is fake news.

The truth is that our trade with the United States is virtually perfectly balanced. One month it will be one way, a couple of billion dollars, another month the other way. The reality is that our trade is as perfectly balanced as any two countries could expect. The President's target was Mexico, but somehow our Prime Minister did not figure that out.

The Prime Minister said that he was going to bring back a win-win-win. It was three wins, one for Mexico, one for the U.S. and one for Canada. Did we get a win out of this deal? By any reasonable measure and standard, we lost, and we lost big time. Let me explain why.

What are the wins? We did get a digital economy chapter out of it, because back when NAFTA was first negotiated we did not have a digital economy. Today it is ubiquitous, so it makes sense to have a chapter for that.

We did synchronize some of our intellectual property rules with the United States. That is okay.

We raised our de minimis amounts so that people can come across the border with a higher duty-free limit, but there were no real market access gains for Canada in this agreement, except for maybe a little bit of sugar. That is about it, honestly.

Earlier Liberal speakers defined success in this agreement by what Canada did not lose. They said we were able to defend things. We were able to preserve chapter 19. What a great win. We preserved what we had before. That is not my definition of a win. My definition of a win is that we gain something from the United States, not just security or simply a marketplace that will not be disrupted because we do not have an agreement.

Let me now talk about the concessions we made. Can members imagine that after five years of negotiations our Prime Minister agreed to President Trump's demand that there be a six-year sunset clause? In other words, in six years either we decide to carry on, or the deal falls dead. That is the first time Canada has ever done that, by the way.

The aluminum industry in Canada was not provided with the same protection against dumping, primarily from China, that the United States got, so we sold out the aluminum industry.

Then there are export caps on the auto industry for parts and vehicles being exported.

We conceded Canadian sovereignty on milk pricing. Never before have we done that, where we said, “President Trump, if we want to change our milk pricing regime, we will come to you, cap in hand on bended knee, and beg you for permission to do this” to defend our supply management system.

We did the same thing with our sovereignty with regard to negotiating other trade agreements. Can members imagine that? We agreed with Donald Trump that if we ever want to negotiate a trade agreement with a non-market economy like China, we will have to come to him and ask him for permission to do so. Sly fox that he is, he has already negotiated his own deal with China, at least a phase one deal, so he does not have to come to us cap in hand, but we have to go to him that way to try to compete on a level playing field with China. Do members think he will ever approve that? Of course not. We got snookered.

It gets worse. We conceded double the amount of new dairy access that the Americans will have to our market than our Conservative government had negotiated under the TPP. That is a massive failure, and it gets worse. The Liberals actually imposed export caps on our ability to export value-added milk products. For example, in cheesemaking in the milk industry, there are by-products that used to be washed down the drain, but we had some smart Canadian companies there. One of them is in Abbotsford, British Columbia. It is called Vitalus, and we had Phil Vanderpol from Vitalus at committee. We asked him about the export caps.

The U.S. wanted us to limit our exports of these value-added unique products not only to the United States, which might have been fair, but also to other countries all around the world. We said to Donald Trump, “You know what? We are not going to be able to export beyond those cap limits.”

I asked Mr. Vanderpol at committee if he got a chance to talk to the minister and the trade representatives about this. He said that yes, they had a meeting, and they told him in no uncertain terms that export caps were not on the table. When the agreement came out, guess what? Caps had not only been on the table, but had been negotiated away by our Liberal government.

That is the betrayal part of this agreement. That is a betrayal, and Mr. Vanderpol was very upset about how his industry had been sold out by this Liberal government.

I will now talk about the process that the government undertook to apprise Canadians of what this deal really meant in economic terms.

The United States did an economic impact assessment, and I have it here. There are 400 stinking pages of it that explain the impact it will have on the U.S. economy, and it is a positive impact. The assessment says that the U.S. made major gains against Canada. Ours was a 73-pager, and it did not even compare the old NAFTA to the new NAFTA; it compared a universe without NAFTA at all to the new NAFTA.

Fortunately, there is an organization in Canada that did the work that this Liberal government failed to do, and that is the C. D. Howe Institute. It actually compared the impact of the new NAFTA to what the old NAFTA delivered for Canadians in economic terms, and it is a sad story. It is a story of failure on the part of the Liberal government. The C. D. Howe Institute concluded that Canada is going to sacrifice about $14 billion of economic activity every single year going forward. That is a $14-billion GDP hit that we are going to take as a result of this agreement. Is that a responsible agreement?

The Liberals used to say that no NAFTA was better than a bad NAFTA. Now they are saying that it is better to have a new NAFTA than no NAFTA at all. They do know what they are talking about.

They talk about win-win-win. They talk about delivering a better deal for Canadians. At the end of the day, after we look at this agreement, and I do have some experience in trade, we see this is a big fail for Canadians.

I wish we had better news for Canadians, because we can do so much better. The previous Conservative government would have never made the concessions that were made in this agreement. There are things in this deal that Canada has never agreed to before, yet this Liberal government made those concessions. That is a sad story.

It is a story of failure.

[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]

Mr. Speaker, in listening to the member opposite I would like to remind him that inside the House for the very first time, and maybe the member across the way can correct me, we have an agreement in which the Bloc, the NDP, the Green Party and the Conservatives, including the member who just spoke, are going to be supporting the bill.

If the deal is that bad, can he explain why the Conservatives never achieved what this government has by getting virtually unanimous support for a trade bill, something the Conservatives were never able to get?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is amusing. Every time the member stands I have a good chuckle at the way he is able to stretch the truth. I want to remind him it was the Liberal government of the day that voted against the original Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. The Liberal government members of the day said they would vote against the original NAFTA and when they were elected, they suddenly changed their minds. They had a conversion on the road to Damascus. These are wannabe trade-meisters.

What the Liberal government has left this Parliament with is no options at all, except for one. We are supporting the agreement, but by any stretch or measure, this is a worse agreement than we had before. The C.D. Howe put an exclamation mark on that assessment.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, is my understanding correct that a future Conservative government would make no concessions on supply management in a future trade deal, whether Canada-U.K. or another deal?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what I can assure the member of is that a future Conservative government would never sell out the industry the way the Liberals did under this agreement.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want the member to try to imagine that he is a Liberal. If he was negotiating this deal, but he knew on the other side that there was a member who had negotiated 51 free trade agreements, would he have involved that person in those trade negotiations that would have made it better?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is the best question I have heard in the House today. Our former Conservative government negotiated free trade agreements with 46 different countries. We had five to start with and we ended up with 51. That is a record I am very proud of and I know the member is very proud of. Can I imagine being a Liberal? Never, never in my life.

However, can I imagine a future Conservative government doing much better than the Liberal government especially on the trade file? Absolutely. In fact, I can guarantee it.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages (Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency)]

Mr. Speaker, the member referred to a report. I wonder, as there have been many reports done and analysis, if he could refer to any others.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the only report the government came up with on the value of this trade agreement was a bogus report. I am glad he asked the question. What the Liberal government did on the last day that the committee was reviewing this agreement, two weeks ago, was table-drop this economic impact assessment. The members of the committee had no ability to review the impact assessment. The committee had officials of the government there, but had no ability to ask them questions about the impact assessment. Then, once we reviewed the impact assessment, we realized that it was bogus anyway because it was comparing the new NAFTA to a world where Canada did not have a NAFTA at all.

That should be an embarrassment to the government. Liberals talk about transparency. The member for Elmwood—Transcona raised that issue of transparency. There was none here. They certainly did not consult with us.

As Conservatives, we take great pride in being the great champions of trade. Do they think they walked across the floor to ask if they should do this or that? No, they just went their merry way and conceded everything. They were snookered by Donald Trump.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Yukon.

I am pleased to rise in the House this afternoon to speak in support of Bill C-4. It is important to restate that Canada did not choose to renegotiate NAFTA. When confronted with the reality that our major trading partner was intent on replacing NAFTA, our government put in place a negotiating team that positioned Canada well as we began the process toward a modernized free trade agreement that, as my colleagues have stated in the House from time to time, has the overwhelming support of the House of Commons.

I have listened to much debate in the House and have heard various criticisms of parts of the renewed trade agreement, but members have not offered how they would have negotiated differently in those areas. While it is easy to pick apart points and say, “We would do it better”, Canada is a country of some 38 million people and our largest trading partner is a country of well over 300 million people. The official opposition would have Canadians believe that we could have simply gone to Washington and dictated to the U.S. every term we wanted in the agreement.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Ridiculous.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

It is ridiculous. Trade agreements are negotiated between multilateral partners and countries. This particular one was between three countries, obviously: Mexico, Canada and the United States.

Canada, more than most, is dependent on trade. As a country of 38 million people, rich in natural resources, agriproducts and seafood, we depend on selling products worldwide in a competitive marketplace in order for Canada's economy to grow and succeed and to pay for the many programs that we as Canadians take for granted.

In these negotiations, I have to compliment the team that our government put in place to negotiate, at a critical time, a historic new agreement that will put in place, for Canadian businesses, Canadian farmers, Canadian fishers and Canadian workers, a secure framework as we move down the road and continue to grow and expand the economy.

Imagine for a moment standing here today in an environment with no agreement. Where would our industries be positioned? It is important to consider, in any particular trade agreement, which partner has more to lose and which partner has more to gain. For Canada, being a very small country compared to the U.S. in population and market size, it was extremely important that our negotiating team recognized that we had to have an agreement that served Canadians well and served Canada's economy well.

I have no problem going on the record to state that this agreement is a win for Canadians, a win established by a strong negotiating team that understood the dynamics and fundamentals of Canada's economy and ensured that the parts that had to be protected were protected.

I will not go into detail on the economic impact of this particular agreement, because it has been well debated in the House by earlier speakers. However, there is no question that Canada will be better positioned to move forward when the agreement is ratified than it would be if we had no trade agreement at all.

It is important to go back to how we arrived here. It was with a president intent on removing a trade agreement that had worked for a number of years, serving both countries well. That has been documented by speakers on both sides of the House. The agreement has served Canada and the U.S. well over the years.

It was extremely important that our government, being the smaller country population-wise in these trade agreements, secure an agreement that would be beneficial to all those sectors.

A couple of the last speakers basically portrayed the scenario that it was all wins for the U.S. and none for Canada. I believe that most fair-minded analysts would take a look at the agreement and say that Canada won on a lot of points, that Canada's team succeeded in a difficult environment and scored some big wins for us.

One of those wins that has been mentioned time and time again was that, from the outset, this government's line in the sand was always that supply management would remain in place. That was a major win in these trade negotiations, because at the start of this the U.S. administration was intent on seeing Canada's supply-managed system dismantled. That was a position that our government clearly would not waver on. There was room for negotiation, and at the end of the day we still have a sector that enjoys the benefits of operating in a supply market system.

My riding of Egmont is in the province of Prince Edward Island. Prince Edward Island is to Canada what Canada is to the U.S. Prince Edward Island is a province with a small population, and we depend on trade for our agri-products as well as seafood products. We very much depend on our national government to ensure that we have competitive trade agreements so that our goods move to market in a profitable manner and Prince Edward Island's industries remain protected that require it. Those industries that operate in a free market system do much better under this agreement, as was pointed out with the other agreements we signed with Europe and are now being negotiated with the Pacific Rim.

It is easy for opposition members to say that we should have done better in some areas, and we could have done better in some sectors, without offering what they would have exchanged to get to where their preferred position would have been, yet that is the role of the opposition. The opposition members can pick away at the government without offering up what they would do in our place. However, the government has a responsibility to ensure that at the end of the day Canadian entrepreneurs, farmers and fishers operate in a stable market environment with ensured protections. Some of the key areas that were protected are dispute settlement mechanisms, investor-state dispute resolution and the area of supply management.

As I indicated, Prince Edward Island is very small, and our dairy industry is very competitive. During this process, I met extensively with the dairy farmers in my riding. Let me read into the record a fact. Prince Edward Island has 1.7% of Canada's total dairy quota, and that quota has been growing at 3.5% annually, compared to the rest of Canada's at 2%, because the demand for domestic supply is moving. Over six years, that realized a 21% increase in market demand for Prince Edward Island's milk in a supply market system.

The industry is still growing and expanding. I recently had the honour of sitting down with some of the dairy farmers, the largest processors in my riding and the Minister of Agriculture and discussing what areas we had to continue to improve on to ensure that this industry remains competitive and small, medium-sized and large processors are competitive on an international market place.

I am pleased with this agreement. I certainly will be supporting it. I look forward to when this very important deal, which trumpets the accomplishments of this country, will be ratified in this House.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague across the floor asked what Conservatives would have done differently. There are far too many things to list in a question, but certainly one of the things that should have been done was to treat our negotiating partners with respect. There are a number of examples, whether it was the Prime Minister in a press conference or the then foreign affairs minister attending an event, that seemed to draw the ire of the people they were sitting down at the negotiating table with.

To answer his question, that is one thing that would be done differently, among a whole host of other things. How does the member think it was appropriate to basically insult the people our negotiators had to sit across the table from and try to get an agreement done? In some cases, insults had been flying hours before.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Mr. Speaker, very simply, who was complimented in the final agreement? It was our lead negotiator, the then minister of foreign affairs. She was complimented by her trade counterpart from the U.S. and by the President of the United States. That answers the question of our position on how our trade people were treated in the U.S. Likewise, the end result of a successful agreement addresses that particular issue.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the dynamics of the discussions on this agreement are quite interesting. There is a rare unanimity among opposition parties, all of which concur that this agreement is far from perfect. In fact, it is supremely imperfect, but it seems that we are stuck with it.

I somewhat agree with my Conservative colleague. I felt compelled to speak when our colleague opposite said that no member had explained how things would have been done differently if others had conducted the negotiations instead of the government. First, we would not have touched supply management as they did. We would not have sacrificed the security of our farmers and dairy producers. We would definitely not have allowed the U.S. government to impose export tariffs on our dairy producers for goods exported to countries that are not even party to the agreement, nor would we have forgotten to provide the same protections to the aluminum sector as were provided to the steel sector. It took weeks of Bloc Québécois questions to the Liberal Party to finally have a semblance of agreement. It took a long time. I admit that it was a great achievement and that is why the Bloc Québécois will finally support the agreement.

In what way does my colleague opposite consider the points I have just made to be a good thing for the sectors we are discussing, namely, aluminum and dairy?

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure that if we checked the records of debates on this topic in the Mexican assembly and the U.S. Congress there would be opposing politicians criticizing their governments for not doing enough in their various jurisdictions. We had the same comments in the three countries that we positively did not go far enough in one area or the other. The fact is that this agreement did protect Canada's supply market system and did protect those farmers who participate in it.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I sit on the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans with my colleague, and I know he cares as much about shipping lobster as I do about shipping salmon and the other species where I live.

The member talked about governments doing things differently. Clearly, we are happy to see the government adopt our policy to change the policy on tabling treaties here in Parliament.

The Canadian government must act now. I really want to give a huge shout-out to my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona for working with the government and bringing this forward.

However, to give 90 days' notice of Canada's intent to negotiate a trade deal, to table negotiation objectives 30 days before negotiations commence and to provide an economic impact assessment along with ratifying legislation are basics for openness and transparency. Does my colleague agree that for transparency and openness in this deal, these should have been done in the first place?

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Mr. Speaker, let us cut right to the end of the discussion. The proof is in the final document. We have strong unanimity in this House for supporting this agreement, so obviously we arrived there in a transparent and open process.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages (Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency)]

Mr. Speaker, because I do not have enough time, I will not give my speech on all of the benefits. We have heard from all parties today the many benefits of this agreement. Instead, I will comment on some of the points that have been made about the agreement.

One was related to reports. There are many reports that talk about the benefits of this agreement. A couple of the parties mentioned one report, but there have been many, and I will talk about a couple. RBC said, without disagreement, that the GDP would have gone down a huge amount, 1%, and affected 500,000 workers. Scotiabank said the Canadian economy would stand a strong chance of falling into a recession, without disagreement.

Another item that came up was the ability to export formula and skim milk type powders, saying they were cut off and we could not trade them anymore. That is not true. At a certain quota level, there will be a tariff, an increased charge, but we do not even export that much right now, so it will not have any immediate effect.

Something else that was said during the debate is that aluminum could be dumped into Mexico because of this agreement. There is nothing in the agreement that allows that. It has always been a concern of ours. We have always worked against that. In fact, thanks to the Bloc, we have strengthened the agreement in that respect.

There was the issue of government procurement. As members know, we have deferred government procurement to the WTO. Before we only had access to federal procurement through the WTO provisions and now we have access to 37 states, so that is a great improvement. Members talked about the announced intention of the United States to withdraw from that. That has been a rumour for years, but, as far as I know, there has been no official announcement related to that.

The Conservatives mentioned the benefit that we have increased the amount that can be brought across the border without taxes or duties, but we also protected business by having much lower amounts than the United States has.

We have to remember where we started in this agreement. The fact was that the United States wanted no agreement at all and the business community and most Canadians realized how devastating that would be for the country, so it is a great win that we have gotten this far. Some people have suggested that Trump could not tear up the agreement, but Mr. Trump achieved a lot of things that people did not think he would be able to achieve through the U.S. system.

Another item related to data for the large interactive computer providers, such as Facebook. Canada has its own laws about what is permissible and what can be watched. The safe harbour part of the agreement for these companies is only related to civil liability. If someone posts something, it is user-generated data only that companies are protected from. If it is not appropriate and not right, they would have to take it down. CUSMA will not prevent Canada from regulating online platforms or the use of administrative penalties. Canada can continue to regulate illegal content, including hate speech, and enforce criminal law.

Another point that was mentioned was the number of trade agreements this government has entered into. I would like to put on the record that in 2018, we approved the CPTPP, involving 11 countries; in 2016, we entered into the CETA with 27 countries; in 2016, we signed the agreement with Ukraine; and now we have this agreement. We are now the only G7 country with trade agreements with all of the other G7 countries, which is tremendous for our economy.

I was here for most of the debate today and those issues were raised as concerns.

The last one would be the auto industry. Today, I mentioned all the provisions that would help the auto parts providers, and they are very happy about that. When we increase Canadian auto parts businesses and the number of workers so more has to be made in Canada, the price of the vehicles go up. There was some lessening of the total sales, but the manufacturers of auto parts in Canada are much better off as is the industry because of this agreement.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Economic Development will have four minutes remaining in his time when the House next gets back to debate on the question.

The House resumed from March 10 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 third time and passed.

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Economic Development has four minutes remaining to conclude his speech.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages (Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency)]

Mr. Speaker, we are on the traditional territory of the Anishinabe Algonquins and my constituents, like other Canadians across the country, will receive great benefits from the ratification of this agreement.

Yukoners, like others, are great traders. A lot of our exports are minerals, and Yukoners will benefit from the lower prices when tariffs are taken off many of the products they buy. This is especially important for low-income people.

In the first six minutes of my speech yesterday, I dealt with the concerns brought up by the other three parties in the House. I appreciate that members of all parties are working together in a non-partisan way to support Canadians in this great endeavour. It is not just here in the House where we have such co-operation and support, but across the country.

Premier Moe of Saskatchewan said that a signed CUSMA trade deal is good news for Saskatchewan and Canada. Premier Jason Kenney of Alberta said that he is relieved that a renewed North American trade deal has been concluded, and Jerry Dias of Unifor has said that this is a much better deal than the deal that was signed 24 years ago.

The reason CUSMA is so important, and why people have such positive views of it, is its many benefits. It makes products from the three countries tariff-free in Canada. It helps low-income people, as I said. It has updates that modernize the agreement, with new chapters. It has benefits for business workers, communities, labourers and the environment, including marine and air protection. I do not think anyone would argue against that.

CUSMA has benefits for the automotive trade. The agreement has a dispute resolution mechanism, which was at risk. It protects our culture, which is related to 650,000 jobs in Canada, 75,000 in Quebec alone. It protects energy, agriculture and agri-foods. It includes language on gender and indigenous job rights, but removes the investor-state provisions so that companies cannot sue the Canadian government anymore. That was an improvement many Canadians were looking for.

CUSMA includes gender equality, enforcement of women's rights, benefits for small and medium-sized businesses and a number of technical trade procedure improvements.

There are a number of things that are brand new in this agreement that we did not have in other agreements related to the environment, women and labour. They all benefit from this agreement.

As I have mentioned at other times when I have spoken about this, there are three or four benefits for the aluminum industry in Canada. I have mentioned a number of reports that talk about the benefits and the tremendous possible damage of not having this agreement for Canada.

I would just like to finish by giving a huge shout-out to our negotiators who were so professional and worked so hard to get this very successful agreement for Canada.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, my thanks to the hon. parliamentary secretary for finishing his speech and remembering to acknowledge territory, as he does whenever he stands to speak. It is much appreciated.

I will say that I am voting in favour of the ratification. I think this is a much better version of NAFTA than the original NAFTA that we have been under all these years.

Now that we have trumpeted the accomplishment of removing the investor-state provisions of chapter 11 of NAFTA in the new version of CUSMA, can the parliamentary secretary tell me whether the government is prepared to examine the other investor-state provisions in other agreements?

Particularly egregious is the secret deal done by the Harper administration with the People's Republic of China, which binds Canada for three decades to secret lawsuits from state-owned enterprises in the People's Republic of China.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, at this time, I am not familiar with the trade minister's agenda on that, but I will certainly pass on that question for the member.

[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, my colleague knows that we have had a government in the last number of years that has been very progressive and strong on the whole trade file. Today we are debating the trade agreement among Canada, Mexico and the U.S.A., but we have had other trade agreements over the last couple of years, in particular the European Union, the TPP, agreements with Ukraine and other world trade organizations. All of this comes together as an important issue for Canada. It helps create jobs through trade.

I am wondering if my colleague can provide his perspective on how important trade is to our economy.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, this would not be such a huge issue in other countries' parliaments, but trade is such a big part of the Canadian economy, bigger than in the United States economy. It is instrumental to our success, and that is why people were very worried at the time that this would disappear.

Now, as the member suggests, we have agreements with 11 countries under the CPTPP, 27 countries under CETA, with Ukraine, and as one of the three countries of CUSMA. We are the only country in the G7 that has trade agreements with all of the other countries in the G7. This is critical to our economy and that is why the ratification of this will be such an important success for Canada.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, I ask the member for Yukon if this is such a great trade deal, why did the government wait until the 11th hour to release the economic impact analysis, which would actually demonstrate that it is a bad deal? The C.D. Howe Institute released a paper undertaking an analysis in which it pointed out that Canada stands to lose $14.6 billion in GDP under the new deal, compared with the old deal.

I wonder if the member could comment.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, as I alluded to in my opening remarks, and as I said specifically yesterday, there are a number of studies on this. Most of them show great benefits to Canada. I will mention that RBC said that Canada's GDP could go down a massive 1% without this agreement and it could affect 500,000 Canadian workers. Scotiabank said that the Canadian economy would stand a strong chance of falling into a recession. The benefits of free trade agreements are pretty common knowledge. That is why there is unanimity in the House. All of those studies, with the exception of the one the member mentioned, reinforce that point.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague cited the number of trade agreements that the government has been able to negotiate, but maybe the member could speak about the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and climate targets. We have not seen, and maybe he can correct me, that these have been priorities in any of the trade agreements.

Does the member not see that these should be priorities in any trade agreements moving forward?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, for the first time in history, we have the environment in this agreement, with much protection for the marine environment and air quality. That is a great step forward, so I agree with that.

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

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak today on Bill C-4, the Canada–United States–Mexico agreement implementation act.

I would specifically like to thank my colleague, the member for Elmwood—Transcona, for his work on this file. Through extensive negotiation with the government, I am so proud that my colleague secured more openness and transparency for Canada's trade process.

Too often the opposition says that the NDP does not understand trade, but this could not be further from the truth. What we do not support is the neo-liberal trade agenda. New Democrats understand the importance of our trading relationship with the U.S., our largest trading partner, and we believe that a better NAFTA could improve the welfare of all North Americans. We believe that all trade agreements must be transparent, inclusive and forward-looking. They must address important issues, like income inequality, sovereignty and climate change. Above all, they must strengthen human rights. They must be transparent and fair for everyone.

Too many trade agreements are approached with the idea of how to make the rich richer. They focus on growing the wealth and power of those who already hold a great deal of wealth and power. They do not consider bettering the lives of all Canadians.

Certainly, people in southwestern Ontario, in my riding, know all too well what Liberal- and Conservative-negotiated trade agreements have created for them and their families. We see what were once highly productive manufacturing hubs now boarded up. One only has to drive along Dundas Street in London, Ontario to know the history of these trade agreements, and what it means to workers in my riding.

The original NAFTA was negotiated by Conservatives and signed by Liberals in 1994. People were promised jobs, rising productivity and secure access to the largest market in the world. It seemed like we were on the cusp of a dream, and all we had to do was sell our soul to cash in.

What happened was far from that dream, and instead Canadian workers faced a nightmare. Canada lost over 400,000 manufacturing jobs and its textile industry. In addition, Canada paid millions of dollars in court fees and penalties when sued by corporations under the ISDS resolution mechanism.

Despite some improvements, this NAFTA continues a disturbing trend of giving more enforceable rights to corporations in trade agreements than to the real people involved and the environment. Over the last 25 years, because of NAFTA, our North American auto and manufacturing industry has become highly dependent on the integrated supply chain. In fact, automobiles and parts will often cross our borders hundreds of times before a vehicle is completed.

Since 2001, after we lost the Auto Pact, 44,000 Canadian auto jobs were lost. After this devastating announcement at GM in Oshawa a few years ago, Canadians are learning that no amount of language in free trade deals, including the new NAFTA, will stop corporations from leaving Canada and heading to Mexico, where they are taking advantage of a low-wage economy and a country that does not respect the environment.

Workers are left to fend for themselves, despite the fact that the Liberals will say that this agreement is good for the automotive sector. In fact, Liberals also ensured that GM Oshawa had no ties to Canada once they provided a multi-million-dollar bailout, and let the corporation off the hook from ever paying Canadians back.

The Liberals were nowhere to be found when those GM auto workers were fighting for their jobs in Oshawa. They were certainly not on the front lines, desperately searching for answers about their future or their livelihoods.

Interestingly, the Liberals claimed they were working hard for auto workers by signing the new NAFTA last spring. They insisted that the deal was fantastic and no improvements could be made. Funnily enough, the American Democrats proved them wrong. It would seem that the Liberals were not the skilled negotiators they claimed to be.

At every step of the process, the Liberals have said the same thing, that this trade agreement is a great deal. First, they said they were happy with the original NAFTA and did not want to renegotiate. Then they said the first version of CUSMA was the best we could get, and now they say this latest version is the best that they can get. Well which one is it?

When the NDP called on the government to wait to ratify the first version of CUSMA so the Democrats in the States could improve it, Deputy Prime Minister said:

Mr. Speaker, what the NDP needs to understand is that reopening this agreement would be like opening Pandora's box ... It would be naive for the NDP to believe that Canadians would benefit from reopening this agreement.

However, the Liberals are now keen to brag about improvements made by Democrats in the United States.

Income and wealth inequality in Canada today is at a crisis level with 46% of Canadians $200 away from financial trouble. Working people, like people in London—Fanshawe, are struggling to get by and the wonders of this new NAFTA, like the old NAFTA, will not materialize for the majority of people in my riding. The fact of the matter is that neo-liberal trade agreements do not work for workers.

New Democrats have been consistent in our calls for a transparent trade process in Canada that makes the government more accountable and allows Parliament to play a greater role than that of a simple rubber stamp.

The Liberals over-promised and under-delivered on holding meaningful public consultations on this agreement.

The NDP believes that in all trade negotiations, the government should consult Canadians and their members of Parliament from all parties in a meaningful, comprehensive and public way.

I would like to address some of the concerns that I have about chapter 11, the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism. We are pleased with the elimination of chapter 11; there is no doubt about that. However, it has been replaced with mandatory regulatory co-operation, and further influence has been given to corporations. While, in principle, international regulatory co-operation has the potential to raise standards, experts argue that under the new terms, corporate influence has increased at the expense of public protections, and it limits government's ability to regulate in areas such as toxic chemicals, food safety, rail safety, workers' health and safety, and the environment.

This agreement would give corporations advance notice of new regulations and ensure that they are allowed a consultation process before any regulation goes through a legislative process.

Regulatory co-operation is subject to dispute resolution. This means corporations can still directly challenge government actions, which is the highest form of regulatory chill. Regulators have to vigorously defend proposed regulations and are even required to suggest alternatives that do not involve regulating. They have to provide extensive analysis, including cost benefits, to industry. This makes governments accountable to industry, not to people.

I would also like to address the gender concerns that I have in this agreement. The Liberals promised an entire chapter to promote gender equality, and this was not delivered in CUSMA. The Liberals appear to have abandoned their promise before it could take root. Their limited language regarding the importance of gender equality does not exist, as there is no gender chapter.

Experts testified at the international trade committee that these agreements should not just have a gender chapter, though, but that they must also mainstream gender rights throughout the entirety of an agreement, and that gender equality does not concern only the issues of women entrepreneurs and business owners.

The only chapter that addresses the links between gender and trade in any substantive fashion is the labour chapter. Otherwise, the addition of gender equality language is more superficial than substantive. Labour rights must also address injustices to women, like pay inequity, child labour and poor working conditions. The NDP believes that for an agreement to be truly progressive when it comes to gender rights, it must address the systemic inequalities of all women. The NDP believes that both a gender analysis and a gendered impact assessment must be applied to all trade agreements.

A professor in my hometown of London, Dr. Erin Hannah, testified to the international trade committee:

Overwhelmingly we've put attention on women entrepreneurs in the gender in global trade agenda. That's important.... But the lion's share of women in the developing world work in the informal economy.

We don't have very good tools for assessing the impact of all sorts of things in the lives of women working in the informal economy, but particularly trade....[There are no] methodological tools to study the impact of proposed trade deals on women who are not in the formal economy.

That raise much bigger questions, though, about whether the objective of these initiatives is to bring women into the formal economy, to transition women out of the informal economy into the formal economy. It raises a whole host of other issues. I think it's important to think about how that would change these women's lives. We have a data problem, but we also have an ideological problem.

The NDP believes that, like other socially progressive ideals that can be brought forward in trade agreements, words are not enough. For gender, labour, indigenous, environmental or human rights to be truly advanced, there must be tools in place to achieve that progress. As Dr. Hannah rightfully pointed out, Canada has a lot to do itself on the gender agenda. We do not have pay equity. We do not have universal child care. It is clear that to move forward globally and negotiate progressive trade agreements internationally, nationally we must have domestic tools in place that work effectively.

In conclusion, I would like to talk about indigenous rights. My colleague across the way mentioned that again this deal is absent of any mention of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We believe, in the NDP, that the government must abide by article 19 of the UN declaration and obtain free, prior and informed consent of indigenous people before adopting any measures that may affect them.

As was noted by Pam Palmater at the international trade committee during the conversations about Mercosur, indigenous rights should be addressed throughout the entirety of a trade agreement, not only related to one chapter. She also noted that throughout the Pacific Alliance nations, there are large numbers of indigenous people who experience a great deal of violence from transnational corporations involved in trade. That is certainly something we see in NAFTA.

These are some of the concerns I have about the trade deal, and I appreciate the time that this House has given me to discuss them. I appreciate any questions.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the intervention today by my colleague from the NDP although I do take exception with respect to one of the comments that she made specifically around the previous government wanting to basically accept any deal that was out there.

I appreciate the fact that the member was not in the House at that time, but I will tell her what actually happened. A deal was presented. This government seriously negotiated with the Americans for a number of weeks, if not months, to get the absolute best deal. To be fair, it was not the NDP but the Conservatives at the time who asked why we did not take the deal. There was a deal they said and they wanted us to take it. However we insisted on no. We felt we had to work on it and get a better deal and we did end up getting a better deal.

What we have today is a result of the hard work that was done not just by the ministry but also by the government officials who were onside, making sure that we would end up with the best deal. It is important to put that on the record.

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

Madam Speaker, I may not have been in the House but I was working for the NDP member of Parliament for Essex, who was the NDP critic for trade at the time. I do know what happened throughout that negotiation process. It was the Conservatives who were pushing for the deal. A lot of promises were made by the Liberal government at the time and it did not fulfill many of them.

When the minister came before committee, she talked about a gender chapter. She talked about an indigenous chapter. The government did not deliver.

At the end of the last session, the Liberal government put forward a signed deal that it wanted the House to accept, despite a lot of New Democrats saying no, that the government was not getting the best deal. We knew then that it could be better. U.S. Democrats insisted that the deal could be better and they made it better. I find it interesting that the Liberal government is now taking credit for that work.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Madam Speaker, I would like to quote what the vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture said at committee. He said, “Canada agreed to place a worldwide cap on exports of certain dairy products in the CUSMA, which is unprecedented in regional trade agreements. As the nation's prosperity depends on reliable access to global markets, Canada must not agree to this kind of provision in any future trade agreement.”

Could the member tell me what she sees as the dangers in Canada making this kind of concession in regard to another country limiting our own trade with other countries?

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

Madam Speaker, New Democrats have also questioned the sovereignty challenges of other trade agreements that are going forward in non-status economies, as was quoted by the deal. It absolutely deserves a lot of attention.

In terms of the agricultural sector, many farmers are looking forward to growing our ability to access those trade agreements, and I certainly support that, but it has to be fair and equitable.

I certainly do not disagree with fair trade, but I agree in the neo-liberal agenda as it is going forward with free trade.

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have heard a couple of comments and questions to the member about the Liberals saying they did a great deal and that the Conservatives wanted to push them forward to accept any deal.

When the NDP called on the government to ratify the first version of CUSMA, we were asking to get a better deal. However the minister at that time said, “Mr. Speaker, what the NDP needs to understand is that reopening this agreement would be like opening Pandora's box.” And yet the Liberals are now keen to brag about improvements made by U.S. Democrats.

Why should Canadians believe the Liberals had anything to do with the changes that increased protections for workers and guard against higher drug prices?

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his work on this file as well. These trade agreements have also hurt his community in Hamilton.

It is true. The Liberals were willing to take the deal as it was before and we were constantly pushing for something better because we knew there was something better. My colleague from Elmwood—Transcona has ensured that this deal also has something better through a lot of hard work and pushing the government to go even further and better itself, not just sign off on Conservative already created trade agreements.

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize we are on the traditional territory of the Algonquin people, and I thank my Liberal colleagues for sharing this speaking time with me.

The Green Party will support the new CUSMA. We believe in fair and equitable trade that improves health, safety, labour and environmental standards. I would like to congratulate the Canadian negotiating team for getting this deal done with the Trump administration in the White House. Things could have turned out much worse.

CUSMA is not a perfect agreement. It is still a corporate model of trade. There are deficiencies. Climate change is not mentioned. The softwood lumber agreement has not been fixed. The good regulatory practices chapter could be very problematic. The extension of copyrights was not necessary. Indigenous rights and title are a particular area of concern in both Canada and Mexico. Aluminum was not properly covered in the rules of origin. The dairy industry faces increased imports and constraints on its exports. The negotiating process could still be a lot more transparent and consultative.

However, there are significant wins. The proportionality clause for energy exports has been removed. Labour standards have been improved in Mexico. The rules of origin have been improved. Supply management has been protected. The environmental rules have been strengthened. The cultural industries remain protected.

In my view, removing investor-state dispute settlement provisions, or ISDS, is the biggest win. We need to remove ISDS from all our trade and investment agreements. ISDS gives foreign corporations extraordinary powers to bypass national court systems and challenge domestic laws in a private tribunal system. It gives foreign corporations rights that domestic corporations do not have. Foreign corporations can demand millions and even billions of dollars in compensation from governments for the loss of potential profit when domestic laws and regulations get in the way of their profits.

These secretive tribunals take place behind closed doors, with no public scrutiny or participation from some of the affected parties. Under some treaties, such as the Canada-China FIPA, the public may never know that a tribunal took place or that a Chinese state-owned corporation received financial compensation from Canadian taxpayers.

These are not real courts. Trade tribunals are made up of three corporate lawyers who work for major private law firms and earn $1,000 per hour or more. These lawyers switch roles in different arbitration cases. Sometimes they work for the corporation, sometimes they defend government and other times they act as the deciding judge.

I know the Conservatives are big supporters of investor-state dispute settlements, so I would like to correct some of what I have heard from them on this subject.

No Canadian corporation has ever been successful in bringing an arbitration case against the United States. ISDS has not been a helpful tool for Canadian corporations under NAFTA. Canada's laws and policies have been challenged by NAFTA investor-state rules 48 times, and we have lost eight of the 17 cases that were completed. Canadian taxpayers have paid out hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign companies for the loss of potential profits, not for real expropriation.

For example, Canada banned imports of gasoline carrying MMT, a known neurotoxin, to protect the health of Canadians. The U.S. company that makes MMT, Ethyl Corporation, went to a NAFTA tribunal and received $13 million in compensation from Canadian taxpayers.

Bilcon v. Canada is another egregious case. The Nova Scotia government told Bilcon it was open for business. Bilcon wanted to build a quarry and a shipping terminal and blast rock for 50 years in the vicinity of the calving grounds of the North Atlantic right whale. Bilcon failed the environmental assessment. It then bypassed Canadian courts and received $7 million in compensation from a NAFTA tribunal. It should have received nothing.

The U.S. government has not paid a penny for an arbitration case because it has not lost a single case under NAFTA. It won all of the 21 claims against it. We need to remove investor-state dispute settlements from all trade and investment agreements.

One of the most problematic of those agreements is the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement, or FIPA. This is an ISDS agreement that will be impossible to change.

NAFTA had a six-month notice clause for abrogation or renegotiation. The Canada-China FIPA is locked in for 15 years, and then there is a one-year notice period, after which corporations that invested get a further 15 years of investor-state. It is 31 years in total. The Canada-China FIPA locks in the discriminatory practices that China had in place at the time of signing. The Canada-China FIPA was negotiated in secret, and signed and ratified without a vote in the House. It was ratified by an order in council by the Harper Conservative government while there was an ongoing court challenge by the Hupacasath First Nation. Let us imagine that. It is complete disrespect of our judicial system and of first nations.

The Canada-China FIPA does not have a national security carve-out or exemption, so if Canada blocks Huawei based on national security grounds, then Canadian taxpayers could be on the hook for billions of dollars for the loss of potential profits that Huawei claims, and we may never know that there was an arbitration case or payout, because both parties would have to agree to make that information public. That is another egregious part of the Canada-China FIPA: secrecy.

Canada has FIPA agreements with the A to Z of small-market and developing countries, from Armenia to Zambia. This is where Canadian companies are using ISDS successfully. Canadian companies have won $2 billion in compensation from developing countries, and there is another $10 billion being sought through ISDS, predominantly from extractive companies. For example, the Canadian mining company Gabriel Resources is seeking $4 billion after the Romanian government, under massive public pressure, blocked a project that would have levelled four mountains, destroyed three villages and turned a valley into a toxic, cyanide-laced tailings pond. This is under the Canada-Romania FIPA.

Imagine if that happened in Banff. Imagine a state-owned mining company taking up Alberta on its open-for-business approach and putting in a proposal to level four mountains, relocate Banff and turn Lake Louise into a toxic tailings pond. Then imagine paying that corporation billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded compensation for the loss of potential profit when Albertans reject the project. Imagine that arbitration case and payout being kept secret.

The legal firms that specialize in ISDS shop these arbitration suits around to hedge funds and finance companies that also reap massive profits from these cases. The Wall Street hedge fund Tenor Capital invested $35 million in the Crystallex v. Venezuela case and got a whopping 1,000% return on its investment when the Canadian mining company was awarded $1.2 billion in compensation. The Crystallex case also came under a FIPA agreement. Indigenous people in Venezuela objected to the mine because it was destroying their community and territory. In this era of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, we are going to see more challenges to destructive extractive projects not just here in Canada but around the world.

Canada has signed trade and investment agreements with some countries that have terrible human rights records. The Harper government negotiated and signed the Canada-Honduras Free Trade Agreement after a coup toppled the democratically elected government.

Is that how we reward anti-democratic behaviour? Should trade not lift all boats? Should the improvement of judicial systems, the rule of law and democratization not be part of these agreements? Should trade agreements not improve the health, safety, consumer, labour and environmental standards of all concerned? The Green Party believes so.

Investor-state dispute settlement, by its very nature, is anti-democratic and should be removed from all of our trade and investment agreements. I would like to applaud the Canadian negotiating team for getting rid of ISDS in CUSMA. Our work is cut out for us: one down, many more to go.

[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, first and foremost, let me congratulate the members of the Green Party for recognizing that this agreement is better than what was there in the first place and is ultimately in the best interests of Canadians.

The member pointed out some of the benefits, which are part of the reason we are getting support in the House from the Green Party, the New Democrats and the Conservatives. All members seem to want to support this bill. There is also a great deal of support across the country from different levels of government, labour unions, entrepreneurs, big corporations, big businesses and medium-sized businesses. There is a wide spectrum of support for the trade agreement.

What are the member's thoughts on how important it is to have this trade agreement put in place?

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is really important to get rid of investor-state, so the sooner we get this ratified the better. People who know me would be surprised that I am supporting a trade agreement that still follows this kind of corporate neo-liberal model, but I think the wins in this agreement are significant, especially with respect to investor-state.

As I outlined, it is an egregious part of the trade and investment agreements that have been signed by Canada and other countries around the world. There are some 3,000 of these investor-state agreements around the world. It is really a system of corporate capture that is fundamentally anti-democratic and blocks governments from doing things that are in the best interests of their citizens. I applaud the negotiating team and the government for getting rid of investor-state in this agreement.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for putting an emphasis on the investor-state provisions, which we both dislike. We do not support this corporate model that ignores the rights of workers and indigenous rights.

Not having climate targets in this deal is of huge concern. I would like the member to talk about what could have been done if we had included climate targets and how trade could become a tool for reducing emissions so we can follow the IPCC report. The report identifies that we will have catastrophic changes if we do not make huge changes to our lifestyle today.

Could he also talk a bit more about how important the indigenous rights piece is? He cited the Hupacasath, and I applaud them. They have stood up for indigenous rights. He also cited how the government failed again. It failed to do adequate consultation and implement UNDRIP in this deal. There was an opportunity to do that. In fact, it was the U.S. Democrats that got us most of our gains in this deal, not the Liberal government, which is patting itself on the back. It would have settled on this agreement way before any of these changes were put forward, so we owe appreciation to the U.S. and certainly to the Hupacasath and all the other players who are standing up for really important values.

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, investor-state is a huge problem for dealing with climate change. Given the number of investor-state dispute settlement agreements around the planet that are going to impede climate action, we are going to have to deal with this through article 20 of the WTO to try to solidify something that overrides the investor-state dispute settlements that have been signed in multilateral and bilateral agreements.

In terms of the Hupacasath and their challenge, as the previous speaker said, article 19 of UNDRIP should have been taken into consideration and there should have been proper consultation with first nations about this. In the case of the Canada-China FIPA, to have it ratified in the middle of a Federal Court case is egregious.

I would agree that we have a lot of things to work on. We have a lot of fights ahead of us to deal with the spiderweb of investor-state that surrounds this planet and deal with the climate crisis to make sure we are able to fight it clearly, without corporate influence and blockage.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Madam Speaker, to pass this legislation swiftly, as all stakeholders and constituents had requested, so the vacuum of uncertainty would be lifted on our trade relations with the U.S., our official opposition made many suggestions as to ways we would gladly co-operate with the government.

Knowing that the federal election was coming up in October, the Conservatives offered to begin a pre-study on the original legislation, Bill C-100, in May of this year. That way the government would only have to deal with clause by clause later on, but it declined. When the revised agreement was signed in December, the Conservatives offered to come back early from the Christmas break to begin work on the bill. Again, the government declined.

The international trade committee had approximately 200 requests come in on CUSMA, and the amount of work to do on the legislation had not changed. We consistently offered to commence that work earlier, but the government declined.

The Conservatives ultimately offered to complete clause-by-clause examination by no later than March 5, under the assumption that the government would not be recalling the House of Commons during the constituency break. Again, the government declined.

A unanimous motion was passed at the international trade committee, requesting that the government release its economic impact analysis for CUSMA. It was not provided until one day before committee conducted its clause-by-clause review and the government's economic impact report compared CUSMA to not having a NAFTA deal at all.

What this said was that the government wanted Canadians to believe that any trade deal, no matter how unbalanced or restrictive, would actually be better than nothing at all.

Thankfully, the C.D. Howe Institute released a report comparing CUSMA to the old NAFTA deal on February 21. It affirmed that CUSMA would reduce Canada's GDP by $14.2 billion. Canada's exports to the U.S. would fall by $3.2 billion, while our imports from the U.S. would increase by $8.6 billion. The C.D. Howe Institute's report shed some light on why the government said it was important to support the new agreement moving quickly and then balked at every opportunity we gave to expedite the passing of the legislation.

We are here now dealing with the issues around what was not good in the agreement. With those 200 organizations and individuals who wanted to come and talk to the committee, we were able to process through 100 of those.

The Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters said, “If we want Canada to take full advantage of this agreement, the government must take steps to insure Canadian manufacturers' productivity levels are equivalent to that of other OECD countries so they can succeed on North American markets and globally.”

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce said, “The CUSMA, as signed last autumn, was in imperfect but necessary agreement to provide greater predictability in our relations with Canada's largest trading partner.” Predictability was lost to such an extent that we were to the point where people were saying that we needed to just get this done.

Last week, I met with my own chamber of commerce and also held a town hall, with the shadow minister for agriculture, in my riding with a number of farmers from the area.

Agriculture and agri-food producers, manufacturers, exporters and all the support services of small businesses in my riding are experiencing the serious impacts of uncertainty with which the government has plagued our economy: increased costs and a loss of customer base because of the punitive policies of the government: an uncertainty of our relationship with our biggest trading partner, plus the shutting down of supply routes due to strikes and lack of railcars because oil is flowing on our tracks instead of safely through our pipelines; barricades that created dangerous situations and prevented products from being shipped; carbon taxes on heating and cooling systems that are necessary for manufacturing; and increased payroll taxes and red tape.

People feel they have been attacked and ignored by the government. They know that CUSMA is an imperfect, but necessary agreement to provide better predictability in our relationships with Canada's largest trading partner. Therefore, we are here ready to pass Bill C-4.

The Aluminum Association of Canada said, “As part of the ongoing collaboration between the Government of Canada and industry, we intend to initiate discussions with the government to encourage Mexico to implement a similar measure, which would help limit the arrival of products that do not comply with the rules of the agreement between our three countries.” Canada's aluminum industry is concerned by the government's failure to secure the same made-in-North American provision for aluminum as was given to steel. Canada is North America's largest producer of aluminum.

While the 70% rule of origin included looks good on paper, in reality the failure to include a smelted and poured definition, which is what the industry is asking of in Mexico, will leave the North American industry vulnerable to dumping from overseas, particularly through Mexico.

As well, the government needs to report on the status of the $2 billion in tariffs, the revenue that it has collected thus far, to ensure it actually was used to support Canadian businesses impacted by those tariffs. The manufacturers in my communities were very discouraged by what they saw in the government's behaviour when they were facing shut downs, including its suggestion that it help the manufacturers deal with it by giving more EI. They did not want more EI; they wanted to keep those people working.

As well, there is an urgency to develop a strategy to market Canadian aluminum as the greenest in the world to help shore up our competitiveness in existing and emerging markets. This is part of the Conservative environmental plan. It looks at showcasing and bragging to the world about what Canada already has done and how we can help to impact the global issues on climate change that have impacted so many other countries that are not as clean as Canada.

Then there are our dairy farmers.

The largest group left behind by the government during the negotiations is Canada's dairy sector. The government has managed to simultaneously shrink the opportunities for dairy producers and processors at home, while also limiting their ability to grow by exporting.

Canada agreed to place a worldwide cap on exports of certain dairy products in CUSMA, which is unprecedented in regional trade agreements. As the nation's prosperity depends on reliable access to global markets in every market, but specifically in dairy, Canada must not agree to this kind of provision in any future trade agreement. Why would the government say yes to giving the U.S. that kind of power over our sovereignty and our opportunity to trade as we wish with other countries?

This concession is an affront to our sovereignty and there is no excuse or rational argument for this capitulation to go hat in hand to the U.S. to ask if we can please have its permission to export dairy to any country with which we choose to trade.

There are so many areas that are faulty in this agreement, which stakeholders brought to the attention of the committee, and we were able to create recommendations for the government to move forward and to rectify a lot of those issues.

Regarding government procurement, we have no chapter on being able to secure Canada's access to the U.S. market.

Regarding auto, Canada's exports of motor vehicles to the U.S. will decline by $1.5 billion relative to the current trade regime under NAFTA, and imports would decrease by $1.2 billion. In light of the hardships faced by Ontario's auto sector, which were compounded by the punitive actions of the government against our competitiveness, it must fulfill the auto sector's request to delay the implementation of CUSMA for the auto sector until January 2021 to allow it to adjust to the new climate of the deal.

Regarding forestry, so many mills have closed and support services, small businesses and whole communities have been brought to a standstill by the government's indifference. They do not deserve this attitude from their Prime Minister, whom they expect to re-engage right now with the United States trade representative to find a solution to this issue.

Regarding cultural exemption, the price of protecting it in CUSMA was to open ourselves up to retaliatory tariffs not limited to that sector. For example, if Canada decides to implement a digital service tax for a company such as Netflix, the United States would be within its right, as per CUSMA, to place a tariff of equal commercial effect on any Canadian export.

These are just a few of the examples of where the government has capitulated to the U.S. The U.S. reply to the whole document is a huge document of all of its successes. Ours, from what I understand the previous minister of trade on this side of the House said, was 72 pages long. Clearly, Canada has not come out on the best circumstances here, but as stakeholders have said, we just need to get this done and move on, hopefully in the future with better arrangements.

[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 have a difficult time with the Conservative Party's approach to the whole issue of trade.

The Conservatives say they are going to support the bill. Then they go absolutely all over the place about why it is such a bad trade deal. If we follow their logic, it is almost as if they were going to vote against the trade agreement.

I really take exception when the Conservatives try to come across as the protectors of supply management. This is from the Conservative Party, the same party that destroyed the Canadian Wheat Board. Prior to doing that, it said that it would do nothing to hurt the Canadian Wheat Board. If the Conservatives were in government today, they would not have protected supply management. Many farmers recognize that fact.

What gives the member's party credibility when it has been so inconsistent on this trade agreement?

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Madam Speaker, the inconsistency is on that side of the House.

The Liberals voted against the very first NAFTA agreement. We are the party of free trade. The other trade agreements that the Liberals were championing today, the ones they signed their name to, all of that work was done by this Conservative Party when we were on that side of the House.

That member has nothing to say to me about free trade. We are very proud of the fact that we do very good deals. It is unfortunate, quite honestly, from my perspective, that we have to vote in favour of this in light of these issues. This has been done so poorly, but all our stakeholders have said that we need to deal with this and move on from here.

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Madam Speaker, when the first NAFTA agreement came out under the Conservatives, 400,000 jobs were lost. I know that in the city of Hamilton, many manufacturing jobs were lost. The city was collapsing at that time.

Under the first agreement, investor-state dispute provisions were negotiated that would allow investors to sue our country. Now that this has been taken out under this agreement, does the member not feel this is a better agreement than the original one?

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Madam Speaker, from what I see in feedback from the stakeholders in the auto industry, there is a lot of angst around issues with this agreement. That is why they have requested that it not be implemented for the auto industry until 2021.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is always difficult to look back. I know people tend to forget what happened in the 41st Parliament.

The passage of the Canada-China investment treaty is one on which we really need to focus. People forget that it exists. I have heard so many members speak to the issues we have in CUSMA, now that we have gotten rid of chapter 11, the investor-state dispute settlement provisions, that allowed the U.S. government to sue us in secret.

However, it was under Stephen Harper that we are now obligated, for decades, to secret tribunals, where the People's Republic of China state-owned enterprises have the right to lean on the Canadian government in secret, first for six months, and then bring secret arbitration cases, if we do anything that hurts the expectation of profits of corporations from the People's Republic of China.

Would the member be willing to look into the implications of that, which was passed in secret, in cabinet, without a vote in Parliament?

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Madam Speaker, I cannot answer that. However, if we were forming government, we would be far more careful about the way we encourage investment from China in our country going forward.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Madam Speaker, my colleague from Yorkton—Melville mentioned the delays by the Liberal government in allowing Parliament and the opposition parties to study the bill. We asked for that in October and December.

Could she explain why the Liberal Party continually blocks Parliament from proper oversight of such an important deal?

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Madam Speaker, clearly there is a problem on the other side of the House.

Quite often we see the Liberals making announcements and then trying to figure out the implementation of them. In this case, the deal took so long and was so poorly constructed that the Liberals, realizing they had conceded so much, tried to avoid any kind of scrutiny and simply tried to get it through the House.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence]

Madam Speaker, I am thankful for this great opportunity to share some wisdom on this very important bill, Bill C-4, on CUSMA, which is the Canada-U.S.-Mexico agreement.

However, before I get into the bill, I will speak about the economy. Trade deals are linked to the economy, and the economy here in Canada after five years of Liberal government is very strong compared to what it was when we took office.

Let us look at what has happened. What has changed in the last five years?

We have seen 1.2 million jobs created by Canadians. We have seen over one million people lifted out of poverty, with 353,000 of those being children, which is over 20% of the poverty rate in Canada, and 75,000 being seniors, mostly women. These are big and important numbers.

As well, we are seeing the lowest unemployment rate in 40 years. These are the factors that are clearly stating how strong this economy is and how strong our government is, which has been focused on tax cuts and helping the middle class and those who want to join it.

Trade deals are extremely important to Canadians, and every province and territory is very happy with this trade deal. We had a trade deal before, but this one is new and improved.

We also have the CETA trade deal, which encompasses half a billion people. In that trade deal we have seen 98% of the tariffs removed, whereas in the past it was 25%. Members can imagine how the business community feels about that trade deal today. I know what the business community has to say about it my constituency.

As well, there is the CPTPP, the trans-Pacific trade deal, which, again, encompasses half a billion people. Between the three trade deals, we have a market of 1.5 billion people. In the Asia-Pacific deal most of the tariffs have been removed and 100% of the seafood tariffs are gone. Members can imagine that in my region of Atlantic Canada and in Nova Scotia this is a great opportunity to increase our exports, and it is extremely important.

How important is CUSMA, the Canada-U.S.-Mexico deal? It is $2 billion per day, which is an enormous sum, and 80% of Canadian exports go to these countries.

Who is supporting this trade deal? It is not just us. The premiers are saying they are behind this trade deal, which is important, and I will talk more about it, but we know that Premier Moe, Premier Kenney and company, as well as Brian Mulroney, do. The business community is happy. The unions are happy.

However, they say Trump is a good negotiator. Let us look at the three things he wanted.

First, he wanted a sunset clause at five years when we would have to renegotiate or the deal would be dead. However, that is not in there. We took that out and it is now 16 years.

Second, he wanted the end of supply management. We are the party that introduced supply management, and we are the party that is promoting supply management. We will continue to support supply management because it is important to Canadians.

Third, Trump wanted a dispute resolution tribunal where there would be American judges and courts. Do members think we would have agreed to that? Maybe a Conservative would have, but we did not agree to that. We then added another important piece where the Americans could not stop and must participate in tribunal panels, where in the past they could say no.

These are three key areas where our government has been very successful in negotiating with the Americans.

Let us bring it back to Nova Scotia. What does this trade deal represent to Nova Scotia? It is extremely important, because $3.7 billion is spent by Americans in Nova Scotia. That is an extremely important investment yearly, as my colleagues can imagine. That is 68% of all our trade products leaving Nova Scotia and going to the States.

That means there are 18,000 jobs directly related to this trade deal for Nova Scotians. That is 18,000 directly related jobs; I forgot to mention the 7,000 indirect jobs. Colleagues can imagine how we feel in Nova Scotia. The premier, Mr. McNeil, said that this is a great deal for Canada and a great deal for Nova Scotia. That is a very clear message.

I want to talk about a company in my riding just down the street from me, Marid Industries. It is a steel industry, and today it knows that with this deal it will be able to be competitive and move its products to the States and Mexico without tariffs. That is extremely important. That is making sure that it can move forward. These are great-paying jobs for the people who work in that industry.

Catherine Cobden from the Canadian Steel Producers Association said:

CUSMA is critical to strengthening the competitiveness of Canadian and North American steel industries and ensuring market access in the face of persistent global trade challenges and uncertainty.

That shows good, strong support from the steel industry.

Of course, we are seeing the strongest amendments in this trade deal when it comes to labour and environment, two major areas that Canada is pushing forward. We are making sure that we have some criteria around strengthening labour standards as well as enforcement and inspection standards. That means that wages being paid will create a level playing field. It also affects work hours and conditions. Those are essential pieces to ensure that the playing field is level, which is extremely important.

In the environment, as colleagues know, we have added some obligations in the fight against marine pollution. The other piece of it is air quality.

I must also mention pharmacare, because in the last amendments we were able to remove the 10-year restriction on generic drugs, which is extremely important.

We have added new chapters protecting women's rights, minority rights and indigenous rights and chapters that provide protection against discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation. These are all important chapters that are in this trade deal and are so essential.

As well, there are cultural exemptions, which help all Canadians, including those in Quebec. That is very important.

We have work to do. We know that in a trade deal there is a bit of trade here or there. The poultry and egg industries have opened up a small percentage, 2%. We are compensating them not only for loss, but also supporting them so that they can purchase better and more up-to-date equipment. The products will then be better able to be traded internationally, opening up that potential market as well.

This is a very important deal. I am extremely proud to support this. The people in my constituency are just waiting for this to be ratified as soon as possible.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's wonderful speech.

Perhaps he could speak about the softwood lumber industry in B.C. and about the aluminum industry in Quebec, as people are suffering.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Madam Speaker, as members know, tariffs have been removed from aluminum and steel. We have also added in this deal that the amount of steel used in cars would be 70% between the three countries. In the past it was zero, so that is a big victory.

I want to share with my colleague some of the things his colleagues have said. Jason Kenney said he was “relieved”. I imagine it takes a lot to relieve him, but he is “relieved that a renewed North American Trade Agreement has been concluded.” Wow, he is relieved.

Let us talk about Brian Mulroney, a former prime minister of the country and chief negotiator. He said that Canada got what it wanted and that we got a great deal.

I know I have sat in this House for a couple of years and listened to the Conservatives saying to sign, sign, sign and not worry about negotiating because it is $2 billion a day. We have a much better deal today than we would have had if we had listened to the Conservatives. In the last 10 years before we took power, we know what we got.

[Louis Plamondon, Bloc, Bécancour—Nicolet—Saurel, QC]

Madam Speaker, I listened to my colleague's powerful speech.

This infamous document raises many questions about the agricultural sector. For instance, we know that dairy producers have been using a lot of fat for the past few years, so much so that they have a lot of protein left over for export.

Going forward, the United States will be deciding how much of those dairy products we can export. That will be 55,000 metric tonnes in the first year of the agreement and 35,000 in the second year. In subsequent years, those limits will increase by only 1.5% or 2%, although we were exporting up to 100,000 metric tonnes a year when there were no restrictions. How can the government put our supply-managed agriculture to work for the U.S.?

Furthermore, we conceded 3.9% of our supply-managed market to the U.S., and that is after dairy farmers' incomes had already been reduced by 8% under the first two agreements. We can only imagine what will happen with this added on.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

I realize, as my colleague should also realize, that you have to give a little to get a little in any negotiation.

One thing is certain: We were able to preserve supply management, which the U.S. President wanted to eliminate, as I explained in my speech. In Canada, we all know, as does my colleague, that supply management is extremely important. It is too bad that our former colleague Maxime Bernier is not here, because he opposed supply management and he certainly would have something to say.

Under this agreement, Quebec will receive $57 billion as a result of exports to the United States. This is definitely a very important agreement for Quebec, too.

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Madam Speaker, I always enjoy listening to my colleague.

He mentioned some provisions, which the government is taking credit for, about protecting women. According to sources, the renegotiated deal originally included provisions for improving conditions for working women, which included workplace harassment, pay equity and equality issues.

However, that was in the scrub phase. These provisions disappeared in the scrubbing process. How does this protect women, and what happened to these provisions?

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Madam Speaker, there is no question that when there are provisions, it creates more discussion as we move forward. The door is not closed right now. What is important is that we have the strongest chapters on labour and environment that we have ever had in any trade deal, and we have the protection of women and indigenous people included in there. Those are key points.

These have never been in there before, so now that they are there, the members are saying they are not perfect. No, they are not perfect, but we are starting to build a strong foundation so that Canada can continue to prosper as we move forward.

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

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Fredericton, Health; the hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith, Seniors; the hon. member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, Infrastructure.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise this afternoon to speak to Bill C-4, an act to ratify the new free trade agreement among Canada, the United States and Mexico, sometimes referred to as the new NAFTA. Whatever one wishes to label the agreement, one thing is clear, and that is, for Canadians, it falls far short of a win.

Before I elaborate on some of the shortcomings with respect to the new agreement, it is important to provide some context in terms of the history of how we got to where we are.

In November 2016, President Trump was elected, and it is no secret that President Trump was no fan of NAFTA. Indeed, he called it the worst trade deal ever. In the face of that, it was a little surprising that the Prime Minister pre-emptively invited the President to renegotiate NAFTA. The Prime Minister, ever so confident, stated that he would get a better deal. The Prime Minister boasted about a win-win-win: a win for Canada, a win for the United States and a win for Mexico.

It is no surprise that given the President's position on NAFTA, he took the Prime Minister up on his offer at the earliest opportunity. What did the Prime Minister do once he got his wish? Effectively, he put forward a whole series of non-trade issues that alienated the United States. During the course of negotiations, we saw punitive steel and aluminum tariffs levelled against Canada that had a devastating impact that lasted for more than a year.

The Prime Minister spent a lot of time doing what this Prime Minister does: virtue signalling while Canadians paid. The United States concluded that Canada was not interested in reaching a deal. The United States negotiated a deal with Mexico. Most aspects of this agreement were negotiated between the United States and Mexico, including steel provisions and other components of the agreement. Canada was invited in at the eleventh hour when there were few items to resolve. In that respect, it was a fait accompli. The government was left with very little choice, either to sign the agreement or walk away. In the face of that, it is no surprise that Canada signed the agreement.

As a result of the Prime Minister's lack of leadership, what we got was not the better deal that the Prime Minister promised, but a worse deal. Instead of a win-win-win, a win for Canada, a win for the United States and a win for Mexico, we have an agreement that is a win for the United States, a win for Mexico and a loss for Canada. It is no wonder that the government was so reluctant to reveal its own economic impact analysis on this agreement until the eleventh hour. It did so one day before the trade committee went clause by clause on Bill C-4.

If this trade agreement were as good as the government would like Canadians to believe, then surely the government would be very eager to reveal its economic impact analysis to demonstrate what a good deal it was for Canada. However, the government did not do that.

Why did it not do that? Very simply, despite the rhetoric on the other side, the government knows that it is not a good deal and the Prime Minister did not get a better deal as he promised.

When we saw the economic impact analysis, the government's analysis compares the new deal to no deal at all. The appropriate comparator is not between the new deal and no deal at all, but between the new deal and the old NAFTA.

While the Liberal government quite deliberately did not undertake that analysis, in terms of what it has revealed publicly, the C.D. Howe Institute did undertake such an analysis. What the C.D. Howe Institute determined was that, under the new deal, Canada stands to lose $14.2 billion in GDP. Not only that, Canada stands to see a reduction in exports to the U.S. market in the sum of $3.2 billion, while Canada stands to import more American products in the sum of $8.6 billion. That is $8.6 billion more in U.S. exports, and $3.2 billion less in Canadian exports. Again, it is a good deal for the United States, and a bad deal for Canada.

Despite the fact that this agreement falls short, we on this side of the House are prepared to support the government, support the passage of Bill C-4 and support the speedy ratification of CUSMA. We support it because, at the end of the day, this deal is better than no deal.

We have heard, as the member for Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook noted, that the business community and premiers want to see certainty. They want to see continued access to our most important trading partner, the United States. We know there is $2 billion in bilateral trade between Canada and the United States every day, and $900 billion in bilateral trade a year. To put that in perspective, that is nine times more than with our second-largest trading partner, China. Seventy-five per cent of Canadian exports are destined for the U.S. market.

In light of that, it would be irresponsible not to support the ratification of this agreement. If we were to not do so, there would be a risk of no agreement, which would benefit no one. However, while we support the ratification, we do so on a qualified basis. We will continue to remind the government of the shortcomings of this agreement.

The Liberal government opened up 3.6% of the dairy market, and got nothing in return. The government was not able to get the same protections for the Canadian aluminum industry that are in the agreement for the steel industry. We know that the government got nowhere in terms of buy America. Mexico got a chapter on buy America, but Canada did not. The consequence is that it leaves Canadian companies out of the opportunity to bid on large government procurement projects in the United States. The government also sold out Canadian sovereignty by requiring permission from Washington to negotiate new trade agreements with non-market economies, such as our second-largest trading partner, China.

While this is a deal that we will support, let us make no mistake about it: It is better than no deal, but it is not a good deal.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will start by saying that I understand the role of the opposition is to challenge a government and to always push for something a little better. I get that and I understand that. However, to hear a number of Conservatives say today they are supporting this because it is better than no deal, and they have to do it because Canada needs something, is absolutely disingenuous at best. The reality of the situation is that Conservatives need to vote for this because they cannot be seen as not voting for it. They cannot go back to their electorate and try to explain why they did not vote for it.

The member tried to explain, after all the horrible stuff that was said about the deal, why he was still going to vote for it. Meanwhile, about a year and a half ago, Conservatives wanted to capitulate over anything, saying Canada should sign a deal. They were willing to go along with signing a deal back then, but now that the deal has improved, they are suggesting that it is still not good enough, even though we should have signed it back then.

Can the member explain what about the deal now is worse than the deal that we had previously, in terms of not meeting the standards he has for a deal?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, various sectors of the Canadian economy have spoken and they have said it is an adequate deal. It is a good enough deal, but it is not a great deal. I could quote many people on that.

Is the member for Kingston and the Islands happy that Canadian aluminum producers do not have the same protection afforded to steel producers, opening up dumping from China via Mexico? Is the member proud that we opened up our dairy market, resulting in compensation that the government is now rolling out because it did not get a good deal to protect our supply-managed sectors of the economy? Is the member proud of the fact that we got rid of the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism, leaving Canadian businesses at the whim of U.S. courts?

I am not proud of those things. There is a lot of room for an improved deal. This is far from a good deal.

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Madam Speaker, in his speech earlier, the member mentioned that Conservatives are not happy with the deal, but they are going to accept it. I agree there could have been a better deal. However, there are major improvements in certain areas from the original deal, and getting rid of the investor-state provisions was a good thing. It allowed the investors to actually sue our government.

Does the member believe that this is a better deal than the original deal, or does he feel the original deal was better and we should have stayed with it?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, we believe that the old NAFTA deal was a better deal than this deal. That is clear. The Prime Minister invited the President to renegotiate a deal that had, on the whole, been good for Canada and that created five million Canadian jobs. NAFTA was a good deal. This deal is an adequate deal, but one that falls far short.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence]

Madam Speaker, it has been really difficult to follow the Conservatives the last three or four days on this deal. Just a couple of hours ago, I heard them saying this was the deal that they negotiated. They said the Liberals were passing the deal they negotiated. Then the member says this is the worst deal that has been done. We have to get our facts straight. The Conservatives in caucus have a responsibility to shape up their argument. It would be nice if they could do that, because it was not very clear for me.

Let us look at this a couple of ways. Would my colleague not agree that going from zero aluminum and steel to 70% is much better? Would he not agree that the labour and the environment clauses and chapters we put in are an improvement? Would he not agree that the Americans cannot block the arbitration panel? Even his colleague said we won more sugar. It is a much better deal with the sugar. These are very positive things for our country.

I would like the member to share his thoughts with me, and give me some sugar in his answer.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, with respect to aluminum that the member made reference to, it is with respect to parts from aluminum. At the end of the day, sources from a country such as China can be dumped into the North American market by Mexico. The agreement falls far short in terms of our aluminum producers.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Madam Speaker, the Bloc Québécois has always been in favour of free trade. The free market allows for growth that would never be possible in a closed market. Quebec needs free trade agreements to help all of its economic sectors grow and innovate.

For example, after the original NAFTA was implemented in 1994, exports of Canadian fruits and vegetables and fresh fruit to Mexico and the United States increased by 396%. The majority of the exports were to the United States. It is essential that we retain this access.

The new CUSMA will ensure that businesses have continued access to the American market, and it will have benefits for many producers. We recognize that. Some producers will come out on top, in particular grain producers. The improved definition of grain is a positive.

A few minutes ago, my NDP colleague mentioned eliminating the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism. That is another positive. A number of organizations are therefore calling for this agreement to be ratified quickly.

However, there are some sectors that do not benefit from the agreement. They sometimes benefit very little, or not at all, yet they are the economic mainstay of our rural areas, the pillars that support the dynamic use of our vast land. Like culture, these sectors may need an exception. As members may have guessed, I am, of course, talking about our supply management sectors.

We in the Bloc are working constructively and will be long remembered for the solutions we proposed for the aluminum industry. In fact, our Conservative colleague just mentioned that. At some point, the same thing must be done for the sectors under supply management, but we first need to focus on when the agreement will be ratified.

In this agreement, Canada agreed to allow the United States to restrict its exports to third countries. That is unprecedented. We are talking, of course, about milk by-products. I think members are starting to realize that. Milk by-products, such as milk proteins, powdered milk and infant formula, are restricted. Approximately 110,000 tonnes of these products were exported in 2019. The Trump administration managed to include a provision that limits these exports to 55,000 tonnes the first year and 35,000 tonnes the second year. That is unbelievable.

Not only is our dairy sector already losing 3.9% of the market, but all supply-managed sectors are losing market share. Furthermore, restrictions placed on our farmers make it difficult for them to make up their losses by exporting their surplus solid protein to third countries.

Something will eventually have to be done about this, but the first step is to make sure the agreement is ratified after May 1. If the agreement is ratified in April, the clause explains that the agreement will enter into force on the first day of the third month. That means it would enter into force in July.

If the agreement is ratified in May, however, it would enter into force in August. That would make a world of difference, and people need to realize that. The dairy production year starts on August 1. If the agreement starts on July 1, that means the first year of the agreement will only be a month long. Farmers will only have a month to export the 55,000 tonnes. It makes no sense. That is why we have to make sure the agreement is ratified after May 1.

This will not delay the implementation of the agreement, and I am not suggesting that we postpone the ratification of CUSMA until after this session. That is not the issue. The issue is to make sure the agreement enters into force after August 1 so that farmers can start recouping their losses. We will see what we can do after that. Everyone knows that the Bloc Québécois can be creative. We will need to find a solution to this harmful and unacceptable clause.

On another note, we were pleased to read in the news that dairy farmers have begun receiving compensation. Everybody is happy, even the farmers, although it would have made them prouder to produce milk and feed Canadians, which is all they really wanted.

However, certain sectors are still not getting compensation. They are the supply-managed sectors, including the poultry, turkey, hatching egg and table egg sectors.

Representatives of those organizations acted in good faith and were very patient. They sat down with government representatives and presented their numbers. They reached an agreement on the amount of compensation needed last April. This is now March, so it has been almost a year. Nothing has happened since, no sign of anything. There were some meetings last summer, in July and August, maybe because our Liberal Party colleagues wanted to make a campaign announcement. That certainly helps, but nothing ever came of it.

What is holding up this file? Unlike people in the dairy sector, who asked for cash compensation, people in these sectors are asking for compensation in the form of innovation programs and infrastructure upgrades. They also want the option to run a marketing and promotional campaign and funding to support it. It varies from one sector to the next. I listed the four earlier.

I have a question for the House. Is the Government of Canada in the best position to know exactly what each of those sectors needs? Would it not make more sense to give people in those sectors the right to say what they want, what their needs are and what, in their opinion, will help their industries stay competitive and ensure their long-term viability? I think the answer is self-evident: it is up to the people in those sectors to decide.

People in those sectors do not understand. The Bloc Québécois does not understand why there is never any progress. The budget will be tabled soon. We would like to see some numbers. We want to see numbers for this. We want to know what the budget for this is. The government promised compensation for all supply-managed sectors. Settling matters with dairy producers is good, but dairy is just one of five supply-managed sectors, which means there are still four more. We want answers that demonstrate respect for the people working in those sectors, compensation that offsets losses and is comparable to what dairy producers got.

During questions and comments I would like people from the Liberal Party to tell me where we are on this file, because there are some people who are a bit anxious, who are waiting and have concerns. Yesterday, I met with representatives of these sectors, together with my distinguished colleague from Joliette. We want answers. Today, I am asking for answers.

Once this compensation has been paid, we will have to reflect collectively on the importance of these supply-managed industries to the economy, to our rural areas and to the dynamic use of the land. We have to understand the direct impacts these farms have as part of our supply management system, that is, in a protected market that allows us to have quality products, stable income, and food security. We also have to understand the secondary impact on industries that supply goods to these people.

Representatives of these supply-managed sectors told me something that I quite liked, and I want to share it with you. They told me that they are thought of as privileged, when in fact they indirectly pay the rent of the vendors and purchasers they do business with and they provide stability to the economy, a stability that also translates into food security.

The system is already seeing signs of neglect. I hope no one in the House would dare say that the Canadian market is protected. Once the agreement is implemented, 18% of the market will have been ceded to foreign producers. If that is considered a closed market, then I would like to know what an open one is. I think that the supply-managed sectors have done their fair share and it is high time we had legislation to protect them.

We are happy to hear the government's promises. It has assured us that it will not back down and it will be watching Brexit and Mercosur very closely. Still, the government has made similar promises in the past. Unfortunately, public confidence wavers when the government breaks its word. The public then demands more guarantees. Those who made verbal promises but did not keep them are asked to put their promises down on paper and sign them. This paper can then be brought out again. In this case, the paper I am referring to is the bill that my colleague and I introduced to protect supply management.

[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, whether it is the dairy industry in my home province of Manitoba or the dairy industry in Quebec or anywhere else in Canada, we all have a responsibility to ensure its health and well-being. I understand and appreciate just how important supply management is. I am very proud of the fact that this trade agreement virtually guarantees supply management well into future generations. Whether people are dairy farmers or others impacted by the supply management chain, they will see this as a positive.

We need to remember that President Trump wanted to dismantle Canada's supply management. For many years, that is what was being advocated. Yes, there are some concerns and we have recognized we are going to be looking very closely at the impact and there will be compensation, but let us not promote any sort of misinformation to try to give the impression that supply management, in the long term, is going to be harmed by this particular agreement. We are, in fact, guaranteeing its long-term survival.

Would the member not agree it is in the best interests of all Canadians by having that guarantee for the future?

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague very much for his comments. I am indeed very pleased to hear what he said. I will try to remember it, since the member just told me that it is very important to guarantee the continued existence of supply management. I imagine that the member agrees with protecting the supply management system through legislation, given that there is no guarantee that the system will continue under future parliaments.

We are often told that Mr. Trump wanted to dismantle the system and we are aware of that. That is why we want to protect supply management through legislation. My colleague spoke about compensation, and that is great. However, the government should announce something, because the four production sectors I mentioned are waiting for answers.

My colleague spoke about disinformation. I would like to know what part of my speech was disinformation because I had all the statistics to back it. There was no disinformation in my speech.

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Madam Speaker, Quebec is one of the biggest aluminum producers in North America and an excellent, well-paid workforce. It does not have the same protections under the aluminum strategy as it did with the steel industry. Does the member fear, because the rules are so vague in the aluminum industry, that there is going to be a massive job loss in Quebec?

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very pertinent question.

Yes, we are afraid. That is why we made such a ruckus over the aluminum issue. We will remember that when the Bloc Québécois raised the aluminum issue in the House, we were told by just about everyone that we were off track, that we were raising a problem that did not exist. We even had to explain the problem to government officials because they did not understand what they had signed. Next time, it would be advisable that they read all the provisions when they sign a contract.

Yes, we are concerned. That is why we went to the mat on this issue. The commitments obtained from the government are the most we could get. Naturally, we will remain vigilant to ensure that they are applied to the letter.

We are indeed worried.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Madam Speaker, my question for my esteemed colleague and riding neighbour has to do with what the government representative said a few minutes ago.

He said that there could be no better protection for supply management than what was negotiated in the new NAFTA. However, members will recall that supply-managed sectors took a hit in each of the last three agreements that were signed and, on top of that, now there are the concessions made under WTO, which represent a market loss of 18%.

Does he think that the best way to protect supply management is to sacrifice part of the market in every agreement? If not, what can we do?

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will try to answer the excellent question asked by my esteemed colleague and riding neighbour.

I will show a lot of good faith in my answer. I think that what we need to remember about what our Liberal colleague said is that supply management was threatened and they did what they could.

I think that all members of the House can agree that, from now on, we need to protect our supply-managed sectors through legislation. We will give the Liberals the opportunity to do so and to prove to all the farmers in their ridings that they are really standing up for them.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, the Conservative Party is the party of free trade and free markets. We recognize the importance of the U.S. and Mexican markets for Canadian exporters, which is why the Conservatives have been clear that we will support the swift passage of the new NAFTA deal. However, while a deal is better than no deal, Canadian industries are bracing for the impact of the changes to come.

Ironically enough, the Liberal government's economic impact report compares CUSMA to not having a NAFTA deal at all. This is baffling, since almost any trade deal, no matter how lopsided, would have been better than having nothing at all.

The C.D. Howe Institute discovered that CUSMA would reduce Canada's GDP by $14.2 billion. Its recent report found that after the implementation of CUSMA, Canada's exports to the U.S. will fall by $3.2 billion, while our imports from the U.S. will increase by $8.6 billion, with the worst impacts being felt in our agriculture and dairy sectors.

I have heard from many farmers in my riding who operate businesses in supply-managed industries, and they feel that the Liberal government has literally sold the family farm. The Conservatives are committed to Canada's supply management system, but the Liberal government's weak leadership and ineffective negotiation tactics have continued to erode the system's integrity. Concessions have been made to the U.S. without our receiving anything meaningful in return, and stakeholders are speaking up.

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with turkey farmers in British Columbia. They indicated that market access concessions made as the result of CUSMA are going to hurt turkey farm families across the country. Not only that, this change would greatly hinder Canadian consumer access to locally farmed products.

What would this impact look like? Under CUSMA, the market access commitment calculation for turkey will be modified to a 29% increase in new market access for the U.S. into Canada. It will allow the U.S. to export an additional 1,000 metric tons of turkey products each year for the next 10 years above current access levels, with potentially more in the future.

Canadian dairy farmers and processors are also set to lose market access to the Americans. Before the international trade committee, the Dairy Processors Association of Canada shared that at full implementation, the access granted under CUSMA, in addition to the existing concessions from other agreements, namely CETA and CPTPP, represent about 18% of the Canadian market. When considering the three latest trade agreements, Canadian dairy processors will lose $320 million per year.

On top of the market access concessions, CUSMA includes a concerning and unprecedented clause that will impose export caps on worldwide Canadian shipments of milk powder, protein concentrates and infant formula. For example, for skim milk powder and milk protein concentrates, a cap of 55,000 tonnes will be imposed for the first year and 35,000 tonnes for the second year.

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture is also sounding the alarm. In addition to the market access concessions, supply-managed industries are anxiously waiting for government to fulfill its commitment to quickly and fully mitigate the impacts of these trade agreements, action that is necessary, though insulting to many of my constituents who work in these industries.

Before the international trade committee, Mr. Dykstra, a New Brunswick dairy farmer, stated:

I now want to touch on the compensation package promised, and partly delivered, for CETA and CPTPP. I haven't heard anything about the remaining years and how it will be paid out. That in itself concerns me. The compensation package is bittersweet. Most farmers, including me, received a payment in December of last year for those previous trade agreement concessions. As far as I am aware, no concrete timeline has been set for the next payments. We, as dairy farmers, have always prided ourselves on getting all our money from the marketplace. This is how the system is supposed to work. This is how it did work. The government trading away excess and then offering compensation is not what we want.

In addition to the previously mentioned market access concessions, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture has raised two other issues causing serious industry concern.

First, the Liberals have relinquished Canadian sovereignty on critical internal policy development and export control functions. CUSMA commits Canada to consult with the United States before making changes to Canadian dairy policies. This should have never been surrendered.

Second, as mentioned previously, the Liberal government also agreed to cap dairy sector exports of milk protein concentrates, skim milk and infant formula to CUSMA and non-CUSMA countries, and approved an export charge on exports over the cap. This is disturbing on several fronts. Canada has long argued against the use of export tariffs to regulate trade. It also sets a dangerous precedent by allowing a regional trade agreement and a party in that agreement to control the trade of another party to countries outside of that agreement.

This is why the Conservative Party is standing up for these Canadian businesses and calling on the Deputy Prime Minister and the Liberal government to amend the agreement. Export thresholds for milk protein concentrates, skim milk powder and infant formula should only be subject to trade between the CUSMA signatories, not to other countries that are not party to the agreement.

I will give a real-world example of this from a company that employs hundreds of people in my riding, Vitalus Nutrition, whose CEO, Phil Vanderpol, presented at the trade committee.

Vitalus processes milk supplied by Canadian farmers into high-quality cream and butter, milk protein concentrates and milk protein isolates that have superior quality, nutritional value and functionality. It planned and anticipated demand and, up to this point, was capitalizing on the growth in the global market for nutritional value-added dairy ingredients. The federal government, or at least Western Economic Diversification Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, recognized Vitalus' economic promise and even invested significant funds in the company in the previous Parliament. However, that same federal government is now pulling the rug out from under the company and, ironically, its own previous investments. The Liberal government has managed, in this case, to simultaneously shrink the opportunity for Canadian dairy producers in the Fraser Valley while limiting their ability to grow by exporting.

Turning to forestry, Canada's forestry industry is also disappointed in the Liberal government's inability to protect its sector, since CUSMA does not prevent the United States from applying anti-dumping and countervailing duties to Canadian softwood lumber. Yes, Canadian forest product producers want a speedy ratification of CUSMA, even though it will provide no relief for their uncertainty. They want this in the hope that the federal government will start providing their industry the attention it requires. Businesses are going under, families are hurting and more than 20,000 forestry workers have suffered layoffs. The Liberal government must take immediate action to solve the softwood lumber dispute. It is unconscionable that a sector so significant was not part of the agreement.

I do not have time to address all of the shortcomings I have outlined that are in this new trade agreement, but I note that I would have liked to see the list of professionals admitted under temporary entry for business persons expanded to include the jobs of the 21st century. There are a lot of problematic issues regarding the rules of origin for automobiles and the new quotas in place. Also, buy America was not addressed.

When I was a graduate student, I participated in the North American forum for young leaders in North America. I had the opportunity to work with American and Mexican students at some of the top universities in our continent. On a personal note, we have so much untapped potential between our three countries, and I look forward to seeing labour mobility provisions changed during my lifetime, of course with strict immigration protocols, to meet the untapped potential we have with our trading partners.

With that, I would say that the new NAFTA deal put forward for ratification by the government is, overall, a disappointment, which I know because I represent the supply-managed industries in Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon. It would leave Canadians worse off than they were under the prior agreement and would relinquish our sovereignty. Our economy depends on free trade, and we need a federal government that signs agreements for the benefit of Canadians. It seems in this case that Canadians were sold out on so many fronts. We need ministers like my old boss, the member for Abbotsford, at the helm of international trade.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I heard the member and a number of Conservatives say, “We are the party of free trade.” Please, with all due respect, this is not the Conservative Party of Brian Mulroney and Flora MacDonald. This is a much different operation. Members opposite may have hijacked the name and the brand, but it is certainly not the same party that the Progressive Conservative Party was in the 1980s and 1990s, when this deal was contemplated and came along.

I will touch on the member's comment that this deal is not good enough. In reality, the Conservatives were continuously telling the government about a year ago to take any deal. The member says it is not fair to compare this deal to no deal, but the reality of the situation is that Donald Trump had made it clear he wanted out of NAFTA unless a new deal was created.

To compare this deal to the old deal is not realistic, because we knew that the old deal was off the table. Rather than capitulating to Donald Trump, our position was to find a deal for Canada and in the process make it a better deal. That is what we ended up getting. We took care of a lot of issues that we experienced before. I hope the member will recognize this as the reality.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, I remind the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands of a moment in the last Parliament, when the Deputy Prime Minister called over the member for Abbotsford and congratulated him. She embraced him in the House and thanked him for the excellent work he had done on the free trade agreement with the European Union. That does not happen every day. That happened because of the amazing work the previous Conservative government did to support free trade in Canada.

Turning to this deal, I note that all of my constituents who raised concerns about the new NAFTA have been vehemently and unanimously opposed to it. There are so many young farmers, like the dairy producers who were in Ottawa just a few weeks ago, who feel the Government of Canada sold them out. For the first time they are taking a paycheque from the government when they and their families prided themselves on maintaining the supply management system. That will be lost in a big way under this agreement.

I will make no bones about challenging an agreement that erodes Canadian sovereignty and that demands the Government of Canada to share its policies on dairy production with a foreign government. That is unacceptable.

[Louise Charbonneau, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to commend my colleague for his very enlightening speech on supply management, particularly with regard to dairy products. In a way, he shares the same view as the Bloc Québécois. I commend him for that. I was very surprised to hear him mention turkey farmers.

Can he tell us more about that? What impact will CUSMA have on that sector?

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my Bloc Québécois colleague for her question.

I am not quite comfortable answering a question in French, but I will get there.

I was at the B.C. poultry AGM last week and heard that right now in Canada unfortunately we are consuming less turkey. Turkey producers across Canada have launched a new campaign to share the benefits of eating turkey meat at times outside of our Thanksgiving holiday.

The concessions that were made regarding turkey producers are like a double whammy to them, because they have already seen a decrease in their quota allotments over the last number of years. They will especially feel the impacts of CUSMA more than other supply-managed sectors.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise and speak to the bill to ratify CUSMA. We are at third reading; things are moving fast. I am glad this is moving forward, but it is important not to rush. We need to take the time to properly study and debate this bill.

The job of the Bloc Québécois is to represent the interests of Quebeckers. That is why we are here. We agree with free trade agreements in principle. We need free trade. In economics, Quebec could be described as a small, open economy. We have a large territory with a population of about eight million. We need to trade with the rest of the world. Our areas of expertise include aerospace, artificial intelligence and computer science. We are proud of our farmers and our forestry workers in the regions. We are well positioned to trade. In essence, we support free trade agreements.

Obviously, no agreement is ever perfect. NAFTA was not perfect. Did we really need a new agreement like CUSMA to replace NAFTA? Our neighbour to the south demanded it. I would say this agreement is fairly good for the Canadian economy. The government did pretty well for the auto industry, for example.

There is one thing I find disappointing about this agreement and other agreements Canada negotiated recently. Generally speaking, an agreement should benefit the majority of the population, Canada's population in this case, but somebody always gets the short end of the stick. I do wonder—though not for long—why sectors that are important to Quebec's economy are always traded away.

In this agreement, concessions were made with respect to supply management. That happened with the trans-Pacific partnership too. Quebec is nowhere near the Pacific Ocean, but a significant chunk of the economy was traded away. The same thing happened with the Canada-EU free trade agreement. It seems that when Canada negotiates, it is all too ready to give up Quebec when it needs to offer something in exchange. Canada would like to protect Quebec's interests, but when it has to choose, it sacrifices part of Quebec's economy.

We saw the same thing happen when China joined the WTO. That killed our textile sector. It is still around, but as a shadow of its former self. The government did nothing to support that sector. Many women who had worked in the industry all their lives were left out in the cold, empty-handed. In contrast, the United States supported its textile industry and managed to save more jobs.

The same thing happened with our shipyards. The agreement with northern Europe ended up putting shipyards in Montreal and Sorel out of business, with neither compensation nor support. What a shame.

That being said, this agreement may not be perfect, but we think it offers a great opportunity to resolve the softwood lumber dispute. Quebec's forestry system was overhauled from top to bottom to ensure that the U.S. would have absolutely no reason to say it is subsidized and that we could do business on softwood lumber with our neighbour to the south.

Sadly, the new agreement did not resolve that dispute. The U.S. strategy is to drag out the dispute as long as possible and levy taxes to cool down this industry's market. Once it is on the verge of collapse, we will sign on the cheap. So far, this has not been done. I lament the fact that the Prime Minister has never spoken up in defence of Quebec's forestry industry. Forestry companies are paying more for lumber, since the price is determined by a market mechanism, and on top of that, they get taxed at the border as well. We did what was needed to fix that, but the government did not do its job at the federal level. As a result, our industry is paying twice. That is truly deplorable.

Given all that, we decided a year ago that the Bloc would support CUSMA on two conditions. The first was full compensation for supply-managed farmers. I am quite proud that I asked for the unanimous support of the House for full compensation for the last three agreements before ratifying this agreement. Naturally, we had to wait for the former member for Beauce to step out to go to the bathroom, because he was fiercely opposed to supply management. After all, he could have held it in. When we saw the support in the House we decided we could support this new agreement since half our conditions had been met.

The other condition was to have the illegal taxes on steel and aluminum cancelled. There are indeed steel producers in Quebec, as my colleague from Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères confirmed. However, we were mainly concerned with the aluminum sector because 90% of the aluminum made in Canada comes from Quebec. There has been long-standing trade with our American neighbours when it comes to aluminum. I went to Washington and I wrote newspaper articles there. We held several meetings, we all pitched in and managed to get these taxes lifted. We thought that was it.

On December 10, 2019, after Mexico and the United States had signed the agreement, the House decided to move forward and the Liberals were patting themselves on the back. However, when we saw the final version of the agreement, we saw that a key section of Quebec's economy had once again been sacrificed. There was a disparity between the protection given to steel, which is primarily manufactured in Ontario, compared to aluminum, which is primarily manufactured in Quebec. Once again, Quebec got a last-minute surprise in the House. Quebec's economy did not receive the same protection as Ontario's. That is unacceptable. Since the United States and Mexico had already ratified the agreement, it was very difficult to go back and renegotiate provisions so that Quebec would have the same protections.

There was all kinds of pressure from the government and various stakeholders to sign the agreement, and we were made to believe that it could no longer be amended. My colleagues from Lac-Saint-Jean and Jonquière immediately rallied stakeholders in their regions, elected officials, workers, unions and businesses. They said that they could not allow this to happen and that they would do something. We were being told to sign the agreement because it was good for the rest of the economy. We were being asked to forget that supply management and the aluminum sector were being short-changed, and to think about the sectors that were gaining something.

We nevertheless decided to fight this and to stand up for the aluminum sector. We did not know how to proceed, but we managed to make significant progress with the help of stakeholders and—credit where credit is due—the Deputy Prime Minister.

We now know that the problem caused by last-minute changes to CUSMA was that steel was being given significant protection. The “melted and poured” provision of the agreement required that most of the automotive parts made in the territory of the agreement were to be made with North American steel. This clause did not apply to aluminum.

Many automotive parts are made in Mexico, which imported aluminum from China, the dirtiest aluminum in the world because it is made at coal-fired plants, compared to Quebec's aluminum, which is the greenest and made at the most energy efficient plants in the world. All Mexico had to do was process the Chinese aluminum to make it North American aluminum. Even the Prime Minister acknowledged that the dumping of Chinese aluminum is unacceptable and illegal in international trade.

We obtained a commitment from the government that it would ensure that Mexico applied the same traceability measures as Canada's to track Chinese imports and the portion of components made with Chinese aluminum. If a problem arises, we can then revisit the “melted and poured” clause. I have been led to believe that the Americans agree with us and that very soon they will implement traceability measures to prevent Mexico from using dumped aluminum.

I will stop here, as my time has expired.

[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 appreciate the comments, and I really appreciate the fact that the Bloc has decided ultimately to support the legislation, which makes it unanimous among the parties.

The provinces of Quebec and Manitoba have a lot in common. We can talk about the textile industry, and some of the things that were to the detriment of the textile industry a number of years ago, supply management, our garment industries, our aerospace industries, and how much we love and want to protect our culture and arts. Much of this stuff is in fact protected within the trade agreement.

When we have these types of negotiations, as I am sure my colleague would recognize, there is give-and-take. I made reference to some of that give-and-take with the last presenter from the Bloc. I said that President Trump was determined to dismantle supply management. Here, at least, we have now guaranteed it into future generations. I see that as a positive thing for the dairy farmers and others in Manitoba and Quebec.

I wonder if the member could provide his thoughts in terms of that particular guarantee.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments.

I will acknowledge that in the past, Manitoba and Quebec shared a number of cultural connections. One such example is the great Louis Riel. I think that his tragic fate was what ultimately led to the development of Quebec's national conscience.

Back in the early 1900s, French was still dominant in Manitoba. Clearly, our culture still needs protecting in Manitoba. That is for sure.

Donald Trump obviously wanted to get rid of supply management entirely, so the government eventually agreed to open a crack. We feel that this crack is still too much, because it is the third time, in three consecutive agreements, that it has happened. That is unacceptable.

In closing, I remind members that the American agricultural industry is also protected. The same sectors in the U.S. are protected, along with the sugar industry, and I do not think that the Americans made any concessions.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, I commend my colleague on his speech.

He spoke about the aluminum industry, which we were very concerned about. We also stood up for the aluminum industry in the House.

Unfortunately, I think the Bloc Québécois is being quite naive. It was satisfied with the Deputy Prime Minister's stated intention to perhaps do something with the Americans to protect our aluminum industry, to provide for traceability measures.

These negotiations unfortunately never materialized. They are yet to happen, and the Bloc Québécois seems to be taking the Deputy Prime Minister and the Liberal government at their word.

Earlier the parliamentary secretary spoke about give-and-take. Where is the give-and-take in all of this?

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Madam Speaker, first of all, I find my Conservative colleague's comment pretty ironic because the Conservative Party was quick to vote in favour of the new NAFTA at second reading and at all subsequent stages even before we had these enhanced protections.

Second, elected representatives, union members and workers in Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean are all very pleased with what we achieved.

We targeted Chinese aluminum and proved that dumping is illegal, and we ensured that measures will be implemented, as is the case in Canada for what enters Mexico. That sends the right signal.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

I would really like my colleague to stop interrupting and let me speak.

We are well aware that the U.S. government agrees and clearly wants to make sure that aluminum entering Mexico is traceable.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Before I recognize the next person, I would like to remind members to be respectful and listen to the answers. We must show others the same consideration we would hope to receive.

If members have another question to ask, they must wait for the next round of questions and comments.

The hon. member for Markham—Unionville.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Madam Speaker, I come from the private sector and I am really glad to speak to this very important subject.

For Canadian businesses, when it comes to finding customers, Chicago and Toronto are separated by only 800 kilometres. Vancouver and Toronto are separated by 4,000 kilometres. For businesses in Vancouver, customers in Seattle are much closer than even customers in Calgary.

To put it into perspective, 66% of Canadians live within 100 kilometres of a border. It is closer to ship to the south. Geography is a part of it, but over 325 million potential customers is a powerful reason for businesses to look south before they look east or west. For any growing Canadian company, it is just a matter of time before it looks to expand south.

Business is just one part of this equation. Customers in the United States demand Canadian products and Canadians demand American products.

In terms of trade, no relationship compares to that between Canada and the United States: 75% of Canada's trade is done with the United States and $2 billion worth of goods crosses the border every day.

Just because trade is mutually beneficial does not mean it is easy. Trade can be complex, with different regulations, safety concerns and government help to the industry in different countries. Free trade is never free of rules. That is why agreements need to be reached.

When Canada and the United States began to trade, we did it piecemeal until 1992. That is when Canada, led by then prime minister Brian Mulroney and the Progressive Conservative Party, signed the North American Free Trade Agreement. That created the world's largest economic trading zone. That agreement was an overwhelming success in growing our trade in both the United States and Mexico.

The deputy prime minister put it into perspective when she said, “Today, Canada, the United States and Mexico account for nearly one-third of global GDP despite having just 7% of the global population.”

The clear benefits of NAFTA have helped establish free trade as a foundation of Canadian conservatism, a foundation that former Prime Minister Harper built on by signing trade agreements with South Korea, Jordan and Columbia, among others. Let me remind everyone that the new European Union trade deal was negotiated almost entirely under the previous government. Simply put, the Conservatives understand that.

I am here to discuss the next stage of our trade relationship with the United States and Mexico, the Canada-United States-Mexico agreement, CUSMA, also known as the new NAFTA.

We all know how we got here. On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump promised Americans a better deal with trade. Millions of Americans were concerned that jobs were flowing south to Mexico because of low wages, little regulation and few rights for workers. President trump told them that they were right. On election night, many analysts pointed to these words as the reason that President Trump was able to carry the rust belt states. That delivered him the presidency.

Unfortunately for Canadians, as soon as President Trump was elected, it became clear that calls for a new deal were more than just hot air. Renegotiating NAFTA was a primary goal for his presidency. That meant Canada would be back at the negotiating table.

The talk around the negotiating table was not comforting. Statements made by the Canadian government made it look like it did not take the situation seriously. The Prime Minister threw personal attacks at President Trump, which showed an interest in scoring political points rather than securing a good deal for Canadians.

On the other side, statements by the President about Canada were often not true. At times, it seemed as if Canada was an afterthought, as President Trump focused on Mexico.

The good news is that the deal is done. After years of uncertainty, businesses can once again begin investing in Canada, and investors can be assured that trucks, ships and planes carrying goods between the United States, Canada and Mexico will not grind to a halt due to the repeal of NAFTA.

Many businesses and industries as a whole have made it clear that they want this deal signed, and they want it signed soon. Premiers across the country have also added their voices to that message.

I have already made it clear that the Conservative Party supports free trade. We understood that billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs, if not millions, were at stake. We wanted the best deal possible for Canadians.

As my colleague from Prince Albert put it, we wanted a good dealt that would last for the next 50 years, but that is not what we got. Instead, Canadians have a deal with new red tape and other barriers that hurt Canadian businesses, a deal that ignores ongoing problems and mutually beneficial economic opportunities.

The barrier I find most disturbing involves trade deals with other nations. Under CUSMA, if Canada continues expanding it free trade network, it will have to seek permission from the United States. This overreach into Canadian sovereignty is a hard pill to swallow. Canada should be free to pursue its trade interests with anyone.

That question of American oversight also made its way into the rules about dairy products. Canada gave up 3% of the market to American suppliers in the deal, but the concessions did not end there. Milk protein exports are now something the United States government has a say over. The Canadian government also negotiated away milk classes 6 and 7. With all these drastic changes, it should not be a surprise that the dairy industry will need help. That help will most likely come in the form of subsidies or payouts for which Canadians will be on the hook.

The new rules around aluminum have also raised concerns. Canada is a massive producer of aluminum. Globally we are the fourth-largest producer in the world. When CUSMA was being negotiated, it was clear we had to protect our market share in the United States, which, according to the Financial Post, is “just over half of it.” The new rules protect our steel industry but do nothing for aluminum.

As I mentioned before, one of the problems with this deal is the issues that were ignored. The issue that comes to the top of mind is the buy America policies. We failed to get rules in CUSMA that would stop the unfair boxing out of Canadian companies from government contracts in the United States. Mexico was able to strike a deal.

As for the lingering softwood lumber dispute, it was ignored and left in the hands of the World Trade Organization, an organization that has struggled to make any progress on the issue at all.

In terms of opportunities lost, a glaring example was not including more professions under section 16. That would have made it easier for companies to bring in high-demand low-supply professionals who they need to grow their businesses.

Instead of the 50 years of certainty, the new NAFTA gives 16 years, 16 years before we are back at the negotiating table, and that is if we can make it past the six-year formal reviews of CUSMA.

While there are many flaws, a deal is better than no deal, and we need to focus on the next steps. The agreement has put many industries at risk. There needs to be discussions on how Canada is going to ensure CUSMA is not a crippling blow for them. Unfortunately, that means Canadian taxpayers are once again facing new costs because of poor decisions by the Liberal government.

[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 have had the opportunity to listen to a number of Conservatives speak, and it has become quite obvious that there is a Conservative spin such that no matter what would have been achieved, the Conservatives would have been highly critical of it. I believe we did get a good deal. That is one of the reasons we have received the support we have throughout the nation.

One of the things the Conservatives continue to bring up is the C.D. Howe Institute. They will say, for example, that Canada's GDP has gone down, so they draw the conclusion that this agreement is a bad deal. What they do not mention is that it actually affects the GDPs of the U.S.A. and Mexico as well. All three go down. That is partly because of the issues surrounding the protection of our automobile industry.

Does my colleague across the way not believe that it is worthwhile to protect our automobile industry here in Canada?

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Madam Speaker, when we talk about the industry, the negotiation, etc., this deal was negotiated by Mexico. The Prime Minister was calling the president names, and vice versa. That did not help. The deal was negotiated between Mexico and the United States. We signed it at the end of the day because we had no choice. There are many flaws.

As I said earlier, I come from the private sector and I believe in private enterprise. Dairy products, the softwood lumber industry, the aluminum industry and many other industries will suffer with this new deal.

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Madam Speaker, my friend mentioned earlier some of the issues with this deal, but I have heard from many major stakeholders in the steel industry, the president of the Canadian Labour Congress and the president of Unifor that although they are not really entirely happy with this deal and are disappointed, they feel it is a much better deal than the original deal. Does the member agree with those comments?

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Madam Speaker, back in 1992, if my memory is correct, when NAFTA was created, most of the unions and many other people said it was a bad deal, that it would never happen, that it would take jobs and many other things. However, at the end of the day, it was one of the best things the Conservatives did back in 1992. In today's deal, as I mentioned, there are many flaws.

I wish the Liberals had asked for advice from the member of Parliament for Abbotsford, who negotiated with the European Union and many other countries. The Conservatives could have given them advice at no cost, but the original NAFTA was the best deal possible for us.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

Generally speaking, what I am noticing this afternoon from my Conservative colleagues' comments is a wilful blindness with respect to protecting aluminum. They seem to have difficulty understanding that my Bloc Québécois colleagues, our leader and I worked very hard with the Deputy Prime Minister to negotiate an agreement that includes the traceability of aluminum. Today, the greenest aluminum in the world is protected thanks to the efforts of the Bloc Québécois. Of course, this remains to be seen, but time will tell.

The Conservatives agree that we relinquished 3% of supply-managed markets in this agreement in addition to what was lost in previous agreements.

Today we are talking about compensation. Could my colleague tell us what compensation might be offered?

In his view, what is 3% of the dairy market worth and how much should we give farmers in the coming years?

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Madam Speaker, yes, I agree with you that Quebec produces the greenest aluminum. That was left behind because the deal was not negotiated with Canada. The deal was negotiated with Mexico, and we ended up signing the deal for the sake of signing a deal.

As I said, I come from the private sector, where we would rather have this deal than no deal, but the deal was not negotiated with President Trump in good faith and at the end of the day we took what he gave us.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I want to remind the member that he is to address all his comments and questions to the Chair because he started his intervention by addressing it directly to the member.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Jean.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am very happy to be rising in the House again, this time to speak to Bill C-4 and also the aluminum industry.

I first want to acknowledge all those who worked hard to ensure that the Bloc Québécois could support the agreement. This includes elected officials, such as the mayor of Alma, Marc Asselin; the mayor of Saguenay, Josée Néron; union representatives, in particular Éric Drolet, Sylvain Maltais and Alain Gagnon; as well as economic stakeholders.

People were indeed expecting us to vote, but they wanted us to be voting for gains. Instead of ordering us to shut up and vote no questions asked, they instead chose to work with us, which worked out really well in the end.

Indeed, it was a pretty good idea. We used the full power of our positions to ensure that the fundamental interests of Quebec and its regions were protected. We were not simply criticizing without making any suggestions.

It may have been a long shot back in December, since the House seems to have forgotten that an opposition can do more than oppose for the sake of opposing. We had to believe that it was possible to make gains. Clearly, our belief ultimately paid off.

I will come back to the steps that finally led me to say that I would vote in favour of Bill C-4. I think they are worth mentioning, mainly for those who are watching at home and who are wondering what happened between two days before CUSMA was ratified and now regarding the loss of protection for aluminum.

On December 10, we learned that aluminum was no longer protected, as my colleague from Joliette so clearly pointed out. The government abandoned the aluminum industry even though aluminum is Quebec's second-largest export. What is worse, the government considered the matter to be closed for the next 10 years. That was a disaster for us and for many stakeholders in Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, the North Shore and central Quebec.

On December 12, we clearly announced our intentions. We would not vote in favour of the agreement unless aluminum was given the same protections as steel. Even the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord was on our side. He told the media that he planned to vote against the agreement. He issued a press release with us, which basically said the following:

There are some good things in the agreement, but the lack of protection for the aluminum industry is unacceptable...my constituents will always come first. The aluminum industry was not respected...and unless something is done to secure our place on the North American market or unless export programs are put in place, I am seriously considering voting against the agreement.

That has changed, but that is what he was saying not too long ago.

I imagine that he trusted us to do the rest. The following week, on December 19, we took part in a demonstration, without him, but with many unions, business owners, and municipal and provincial officials from all across Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean. More people turned out than for LNG.

Aluminum has been a big industry for us for 100 years. What is more, the aluminum produced in my region and in Quebec is the greenest in the world.

Fundamentally, however, what everyone needs to remember is that when all this started, the Bloc Québécois were the only ones saying aluminum had not received the same protection as steel, because we were the only ones who had read the agreement carefully.

Curiously enough, the steel industry is concentrated in Ontario, and the aluminum industry, as we now know, is almost exclusively located in Quebec. In fact, 90% of Canada's aluminum is produced in Quebec, and 60% of that comes from Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean. It is no surprise, really. Quebec is starting to get used to being used as a pawn in international treaties and being sacrificed for the sake of Ontario's auto industry and western Canada's oil industry.

We were the only ones saying it, while the Liberals kept trotting out the same old convoluted talking points. After repeating our arguments and proving them in debate, we eventually got the NDP and the Conservatives on our side. However, the Liberals continued to deny the sad truth. Unlike our colleagues in the other opposition parties, we could not let down our aluminum workers. We could not vote for the implementation of the agreement. There was just no way we could do that.

I may have mentioned this before, but I stuck a little note to the side of my nightstand that says, “Who do you work for?” It is the first thing I see every morning. The answer to that question is that I work for my constituents, for the people of Lac-Saint-Jean and for Quebeckers as a whole.

What do we do in this situation?

Some people said we were on our own. They did not reckon on the courage, strength and determination of our people. Our people mobilized, and we supported them politically and technically. We were not alone, and they were no longer alone. They all came here, to Ottawa, at the end of January, to air their concerns. Elected officials, workers and economic players from our regions came here to share their concerns, and they brought a study with them.

Basically, the study said that 30,000 jobs would be at risk if the expansion phases did not go through. Investments worth $6.2 billion were in jeopardy. That would have been $1 billion in economic spinoffs every year for 10 years gone if the agreement was not changed and a real solution not found. We needed a concrete proposal to provide better protection for aluminum.

Considering those massive numbers, should we have just sat there twiddling our thumbs?

We are talking about the vitality of our regions and of Quebec as a whole. We are talking about our families and our children, and that is why we all took a stand.

We did more than just criticize; that would not be our style. We also proposed a solution. Initially, no one on the other side of the House was listening to us. Life is like that, but only a fool will not change his mind. In the end, the Liberals did listen to reason. I will give them that, and I thank them for it.

The Liberals agreed to negotiate, and we finally reached an agreement. At the end of the day, some of my hon. colleagues were able to set partisanship aside and put the interests of their constituents ahead of the interests of the parties in the House.

There are many things that divide us in this place. For instance, I strongly believe that Quebec should become a country, and as soon as possible. Despite the obvious differences in our political perspectives, we were able to secure a win and ensure that aluminum would be better protected. It was a Bloc Québécois proposal, but it was the Deputy Prime Minister who brought that proposal to Washington. I thank her for that.

Imagine what would have happened if we had just remained in our seats and voted in favour of implementing the agreement without making any demands. It is not complicated. If the Bloc had acted like all the other parties in the House, our aluminum workers would have been left out in the cold. The regions in Quebec would have been abandoned. Quebec's economy would have once again been the big loser in another international treaty signed by Ottawa.

This House was then able to see the principles that guide the Bloc Québécois. Above all, we are guided by our conscience. There is no denying that we have had a positive influence on how work is done in the House. So much the better if the other parties represented here are inspired by our approach. In the end, it is the men and women we represent who come out on top.

Who do we work for? I know. Now it is up to all my hon. colleagues to answer that question.

[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 can attempt to answer the question in terms of who I work for. I represent the wonderful, fine residents of Winnipeg North, but the residents of Winnipeg North believe that the well-being of the nation is really important to all of us, no matter what region of the country we live in.

Appreciating the importance of Canada's middle class is of the utmost importance. In providing different types of programs, whether it is health care or public education, the role that the national government can play is important. I would argue that my constituents are very similar to the constituents of all members of Parliament in all the different regions of our country.

When I look at the trade agreement as a whole, I see that it is in the best interests of my constituents, based on the type of feedback I receive from them. Would the member across the way not agree that this trade agreement is in the best interests of his constituents, as it is to mine?

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague would not be making that speech if he were the member for Lac-Saint-Jean. Obviously, the people of my riding were not really happy with this agreement.

The aluminum sector is one of the biggest economic engines in my riding, the biggest even. Right from the start, I will have to disagree with my hon. colleague.

Second, we worked with the Liberals on getting improved protection for aluminum because there was work to be done. When the agreement was ratified in December it was not as good as it is today. We collaborated in order to improve the agreement.

The people in my riding are knocking on my door to say that they are not happy and they are concerned for their job, their children, their family and their future. Clearly, I cannot agree with my hon. colleague.

[Emmanuel Dubourg, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Madam Speaker, first, I would like to commend my colleague for his speech.

He very eloquently defended the interests of his constituents. I also want to tell him that there were many factors to consider in the negotiations.

Does my colleague recognize, like other elected provincial and municipal officials in Quebec, that the agreement that will be signed contains significant gains for Quebec?

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, there are good things and bad things in this agreement, as there are in any agreement.

That being said, I woke up one morning and realized, as I read the paper, that the aluminum industry, the economic backbone of my region, was being threatened. The Bloc Québécois worked hard to develop a proposal and persuaded a lot of people. Premier Legault also said that the way the aluminum industry was being treated was unacceptable. Of course, he had his own concerns and so he wanted the agreement to be signed. If we had sat back and failed to use the means at our disposal as MPs, we would not have gotten what we did. I agree with my hon. colleague that there are good things in any agreement. There is no doubt about that, and that is what we have been saying from the beginning. We simply needed to stand up and fight for our constituents, which is what we did. I am very proud of that.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, since my colleague is so familiar with what happened on the aluminum file, I would like him to explain how the Bloc Québécois and the Liberal Party managed to come to an agreement. I would like the entire House to be able to hear his answer.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, we certainly played our cards well. We maintained the same public stance by holding the government's feet to the fire and voting against Bill C-4 at first and second reading.

We negotiated with the government behind the scenes while keeping the pressure on it publicly. Ultimately, we made a great proposal. The government had no choice but to accept it and acknowledge that it was good. The collaboration started then. The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs went to Washington, and we got a commitment from the government. All in all, I am pretty proud of the strategy used by the Bloc Québécois. We proved once again that we can get the job done.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-4, which I will be supporting, as it turns out.

I am very satisfied with the work my political party did in the spirit of openness and collaboration. However, I would say this victory was bittersweet, because an economic sector was once again left out of this agreement. I am referring to softwood lumber. The forestry sector gets no respect from the Canadian federation and is constantly overlooked. That is holding me back from fully celebrating our victory on aluminum.

At a meeting of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources, the Canadian negotiator told me that he did not include softwood lumber in CUSMA because he had to focus on other priorities. I think the phrase “focus on other priorities” says it all. It is the Canadian mantra. What are the priorities of Canada's economy? Ontario's auto industry and western Canada's oil industry, the same as for the past 25 years.

Is it perhaps because of a power imbalance? The Bloc Québécois now has 32 seats, and I feel like things are changing. However, Quebec's economic sectors are consistently ignored. The expression “focusing on other priorities” makes me think. Negotiations with the United States on softwood lumber are always pushed back.

This makes me think of an expression I often hear among federalists: “The fruit is not ripe enough.” When we talk about constitutional negotiations, many federalists use this somewhat perverse rhetoric: “The fruit is not ripe enough.” It appears to me that the fruit of federalism is currently rotting on the tree when it comes to softwood lumber and our role within this federation.

I do not want to only play the blame game, but I would like to come back to the importance of Quebec's forestry industry. It is important to note that Quebec has 2% of the world's forests, an area of 760,000 square kilometres, or the equivalent of Sweden and Norway combined. The industry provides 58,000 direct and indirect jobs in Quebec. The forestry industry is currently the economic driver of 160 of our municipalities.

If you look at Canada as a whole, the forestry sector provides 600,000 direct and indirect jobs, which is not insignificant. I cannot stress enough that we are facing global warming, and many experts have identified the forestry sector as our best shot at fighting climate change.

Our greatest misfortune, however, is that the United States is our main trading partner in the forestry industry, taking in 68% of our forest product exports. I find that unfortunate because I have the impression that the Canadian government has never really made much of an effort to develop new markets.

I am always amazed when I go to France and I see all kinds of infrastructure, bridges and big buildings built of wood or glulam even though France lacks the primary resource that is wood. We have it, but I feel like we are not doing anything with it.

Since the 2000s, the forestry industry has gone through tough times because the pulp and paper industry has gone through tough times now that less and less newsprint is being sold. We need to find new market opportunities. All this was exacerbated by a string of crises during negotiations with the United States.

During a Standing Committee on Natural Resources meeting, Beth MacNeil, Assistant Deputy Minister for Natural Resources Canada's Canadian Forest Service, told us that the forestry industry is at a crossroads. I thought that was very interesting. If my girlfriend told me we were at a crossroads, I would definitely be afraid because that would mean I had not taken care of her and had a lot to make up for.

The Canadian government is now at a crossroads with the forestry industry because past governments, both Liberal and Conservative, have chosen to focus on the oil industry in the west and Ontario's auto industry, not on the softwood lumber industry at all.

I see two big issues here. We have these trade agreements, which sometimes create barriers for the forestry sector, but we also have research and development. I find one statistic particularly interesting: From the early 1970s to the late 2000s, Canadians collectively invested $70 billion in the oil sands because that technology was not profitable. My father would call that a pretty penny, not to mention it was a raw deal for us. Of that $70 billion, $14 billion came from Quebec.

One thing of note that is troublesome and that I want to focus on is Dutch disease. A few years ago, PricewaterhouseCoopers reported that when the Canadian dollar appreciates by one cent, there is an immediate domino effect and the forestry industry loses $500 million. It is an export industry, which requires that it be competitive. Investing $70 billion in the oil industry is a blow to the forestry industry. The circumstances are different today and I hope that the government will take action.

I would quickly like to review the impact on the forestry sector of the two main downturns. The first downturn, which began in 2003 and ended in 2008, resulted in the loss of 11,329 forestry jobs in Quebec alone. From January 2009 to January 2012, 8,600 jobs were lost. The government of the day took no action. I remember that the Conservatives promised to provide loan guarantees for the forestry industry in 2005.

What is troublesome is that the U.S. strategy is to ensure that major forestry producers are worn down. When that happens, they end up signing a cheap agreement. I believe that this happened often. There has been no agreement since 2017. Thus, I believe that this is happening again. They want to wear down the forestry industry so it accepts a cheap agreement. In the meantime, the government is not taking action. It is not offering loan guarantees. Neither Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions nor Export Development Canada has brought forward a strategy for developing new markets. There is no investment in research and development. No, the government prefers to focus on the usual sectors, the oil and automotive industries.

To sum up, from 2005 to 2011, Quebec's forestry industry lost 30% of its workforce, going from 130,000 workers in 2005 to barely 99,000 in 2011. From 2004 to 2005 and from 2012 to 2013, there was a 38% drop in jobs in silviculture and in timber harvesting, which reduced job numbers to a little more than 10,000 in those areas. It is disastrous for Quebec and again the government did not learn from its mistakes. In the CUSMA negotiation, it preferred to deliver that famous speech about the fruit not being quite ripe enough. At some point, we are going to take matters into our own hands and harvest our own fruit. We will become our own country.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Madam Speaker, I have sat here and listened to the attack on other industries in this country, and it is just so wrong. I have heard this time and again from the Bloc Québécois. I am just not going to sit here and listen to it anymore. To attack the oil industry is absolutely wrong. I hope the member knows that with respect to equalization, over the last five years, $52 billion went to the Province of Quebec. Where did it come from? It came from higher wages in Alberta, oil in Newfoundland and Labrador, and fossil fuels in B.C. If those industries are healthy, we are all healthy.

I agree we need to do more for forestry, and we have done a lot for forestry over the years. There is the spruce budworm, the pine beetle and other things that need to be dealt with. We need to do that, but for heaven's sake, let us not try to make gains in one industry by attacking another in this House. We are all Canadians. We all need to be healthy with respect to the economy, and we need to do everything we can for all industries in this country so our economy can grow.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, if being ridiculous is not fatal, then my colleague will surely live.

It is rather surprising to begin by saying we must not sow division in Canada and end by talking about equalization. As far as I know, Quebec pays into the equalization program. Alberta pays $2 billion annually into the equalization program, whereas Quebec spends $3 billion to buy your oil. We can give you your $2 billion back and keep our $3 billion.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I would remind members that we are in debate. When someone has the floor, they must not be disturbed.

I would remind the hon. member for Jonquière that he must address the Chair and not the member directly.

The hon. member for Hamilton Mountain.

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am really concerned about one particular issue with respect to this agreement, and that is the aluminum industry. The interpretation is very vague as to what protection there is.

I am wondering if the member is concerned that this will allow the doors to be opened for dumping aluminum through Mexico and there will be a loss of jobs in Quebec.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question, which was far more sensible than others.

Will the current agreement allow aluminum dumped by China to be processed in Mexico?

The mechanism we managed to negotiate with the government will ensure that if any dumping occurs, we will be able to demand that aluminum receive the same status as steel and put an end to it.

Such a mechanism already exists. Every six months, checks are done to determine whether Mexico is importing aluminum from China or other countries tariff-free. If that is shown to be happening, we will be able to demand the same protection as steel gets, with the blessing of the United States, which is aware of the process.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Madam Speaker, the member might want to double-check his facts when he talks about equalization and transfer payments, because I am pretty sure Quebec has been on the receiving end for quite a while in very large amounts, not paying out.

My question is with regard to jobs. The Prime Minister likes to talk about all the Canadian jobs he is supporting. Could the member elaborate on whether jobs would be supported with this deal in his area or not?

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, in my speech, I made it clear that the federal government is not supporting jobs in the softwood lumber industry with this agreement.

To come back to what you said about transfer payments, I would like you to know that we account for 21% of Canada's fiscal capacity but only 13% of federal public service employees.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Again, I would remind the member for Jonquière to address his comments and questions to the Chair.

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Niagara Centre.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure this evening to rise in the House to speak to the modernized NAFTA, specifically to the important outcomes contained in the labour chapter.

The Canada-United States-Mexico agreement preserves, as well as modernizes, the North American Free Trade Agreement, or as we know it NAFTA, by carrying forward key existing elements and improving outcomes in areas that will enhance our most important trading relationship. Moreover, the amendments agreed to in December 2019 strengthen enforceability provisions in this agreement, including new mechanisms specific to the implementation of labour obligations, which make a good deal even better.

Through the new labour chapter, the agreement seeks to protect and enhance workers' rights and improve working conditions and living standards across North America. Canada's practice is to negotiate comprehensive labour provisions in the context of its free trade agreements in order to promote and uphold strong labour standards.

Trade and labour protections are mutually supportive. Canada strives to demonstrate internationally that a competitive economy includes safe, healthy and co-operative workplaces. The original NAFTA includes a side agreement on labour called the North American Agreement on Labour Co-operation. The new NAFTA includes a comprehensive and robust labour chapter that is fully enforceable and represents a significant improvement over the original NAFTA, its side agreement and other language.

In particular, the new labour chapter includes commitments to protect and promote internationally recognized labour principles and rights as set out in the International Labour Organization's 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, including the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining. The chapter also includes a non-derogation clause that prevents parties from deviating from their domestic labour laws in order to encourage trade or investment.

These commitments are all subject to the state-to-state dispute settlement mechanism that is contained within this agreement. Importantly, the new labour chapter has a number of key provisions to ensure that trade does not come at the expense of workers' labour rights. For instance, it includes enforceable obligations to address issues related to migrant workers, forced or compulsory labour, and violence against union members. To address labour rights violations in Mexico, it also includes an annex with specific requirements on worker representation and collective bargaining.

The terrible practice of forced or compulsory labour still exists in many countries. The International Labour Organization estimates that in 2016 approximately 25 million people worldwide were subjected to forced labour, and a disproportionate number of them were women and young girls.

The new NAFTA is a landmark deal, because it is the very first free trade agreement to include an obligation that commits parties to prohibit the importation of goods produced by forced labour. This is a milestone provision that will support workers' rights and human rights around the globe.

While these inclusive trade provisions will largely help workers outside of Canada, the modernized agreement will also help workers here at home. North American free trade has been an enormous benefit to Canadian businesses, workers and the overall economy. It means more good-quality jobs here at home and more affordable goods and services available domestically as well as internationally.

I will give an example of how the agreement will protect Canadian interests and help to curb the outflow of jobs. The rules of origin chapter addresses automotive manufacturing wages in North America by including a labour value content requirement.

Basically, this means that 40% of the value of a vehicle must come from a plant where the workers earn an average of at least $16 U.S. per hour in order for the vehicle to be considered as originating from a NAFTA country. The provision, together with the labour chapter provisions on collective bargaining rights, may create upward pressure on wages in Mexico and help to level the playing field for Canadian workers, as well as businesses throughout our great nation.

It is also important to note that the labour chapter is subject to the dispute settlement chapter in instances of non-compliance to ensure that all labour obligations are well respected. The agreement provides an opportunity for parties to take the necessary actions and measures to enforce the agreement's obligations if prior attempts to resolve the matter through consultations prove ineffective.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Unfortunately, I have to interrupt the member, but he will have four minutes to complete his speech the next time this matter is before the House.