Bill C-18 (Historical)

Canada—United Kingdom Trade Continuity Agreement Implementation Act

An Act to implement the Agreement on Trade Continuity between Canada and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

This enactment implements the Agreement on Trade Continuity between Canada and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
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 10 to 15 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 and contains a transitional provision.
Part 3 contains a coordinating amendment and the coming-into-force provision.

Canada-United Kingdom Trade Continuity Agreement Implementation Act

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that wonderful speech.

He talked about how important farmers are to Quebec. I know they are important to his region. They are important for mine too. In the Lower St. Lawrence, the dairy industry adds up to about 572 farms, seven plants, 5,895 jobs and a GDP contribution in excess of $400 million.

In light of these facts, I would like my colleague to explain to us why it is important, essential even, that Canada not give up additional quota for cheese or other supply-managed products when negotiating trade agreements like the CUKTCA.

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

Mr. Speaker, supply management is a proven system that works. I would rather talk about promoting supply management than about defending it.

Supply management is based on a very simple principle. Agriculture cannot be treated like any other commodity. It is as simple as that. Agriculture is too important. We are talking about our food sovereignty, what we have in our fridges and on our plates. We need farmers three times a day.

Supply management tells us that we cannot treat agriculture like one factory among many, that it cannot be treated the same way as any other product under the laws of supply and demand. We need to wholeheartedly defend supply management and fight for it tooth and nail. This system has prevented overproduction crises. It has prevented farmers from being wiped out financially, even when they are in very precarious situations.

This must be a fundamental battle in every respect. We will continue to wage that battle until the future of supply management is secure.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in the virtual Parliament to speak to the agreement that was signed between Canada and the United Kingdom, what they are calling a “trade continuity agreement”, and the legislation that would implement that here in Canada.

It has been a bit of a rocky road to get here, and there are a number of problems with the way this has unfolded and that do bear description here in the House. However, I want to start by talking a bit about the nature of trade.

This is another agreement in the vein of corporate globalized trade that we in the NDP recognize has not been good for workers. Canada has signed a number of these free trade agreements, whether the original NAFTA or CETA or the TPP, and various reforms at the WTO. All of these have coincided with a period when a lot of well-paying jobs that fed families and provided the kinds of benefits that Canadians expect as part of a good quality of living, whether that is a decent pension, health benefits or other things that come with a good job, left the country. It is not a coincidence that this happened as these agreements were signed which made it easier for big corporations and some of the biggest economic players to move their capital and operations around to find places with the lowest standards for how they treat their workers and the planet. All of that was done in a context where the taxes these folks pay were continually being reduced as well. Therefore, what we saw was a period when working Canadians lost a lot of their good employment that provided them with a good livelihood, while the people at the top were able to move their assets around and keep more and more of the economic pie for themselves.

It has not worked out well for everyday Canadian workers, and it is why we do not like the model. That does not mean we do not like trade.

The NDP is very well aware of all of the opportunities that exist for Canadian businesses, including some of our small businesses, when trade is done right, for them to be able to expand their reach. We just want to see agreements that allow those opportunities to translate not into gross profits for a few Canadians at the top, but into more good-quality jobs for Canadian workers who will produce the things that get traded with other countries. However, if it just means that all of the value-added work goes somewhere else, that is not in the ultimate interests of Canadians, and there is a fair bit of evidence to suggest that that has been the trend over the last 30 years or so.

Why am I talking about that? Trade between Canada and the United King is as old as Canada, and at least with Europeans. We have had a long-standing trade relationship; it is an important one. A lot of the similarities and affinities between Canada and the United Kingdom provide for creating a real gold-standard trade agreement. If we listen even to the conservatives in the United Kingdom, they talk more about climate change and have put more emphasis on putting climate change at the forefront of their new trade agenda than even the Liberals here have done. There is a real opportunity to work with them and others in the United Kingdom to create a gold-standard deal that takes seriously the impacts of globalized trade for climate change and seeks to control and reduce those impacts.

We have an opportunity to create a gold standard deal that takes seriously the rights of workers and human rights and seeks to actually incorporate those into the deal, not in a side letter that is not enforceable but actually into the core of the deal, to ensure that workers will be fairly treated and that if there is additional wealth created by an increase of trade between our two countries, it will find its way to workers and not just to the people at the top.

I would also hope that our good relationship with the United Kingdom will allow for an agreement that recognizes and takes seriously the rights and role of indigenous people in Canada, so that we do not run roughshod over those in the way that an agreement is concluded.

However, we do not have that here with this agreement. What we have, after knowing this was coming for a long, long time, is effectively a carbon copy of CETA, which was agreement in the corporate model that I just described and that we do not agree with. We did not agree with it at the time because we knew that an agreement like CETA and its intellectual property provisions was going to put upward costs on the price of pharmaceutical drugs in Canada when we already pay among the highest price for prescription drugs in the western world.

Why would we conclude an agreement that makes those drugs more expensive? Why then would we carbon copy that agreement when we have an opportunity to do something different with our largest trading partner in the European Union, representing about 40% of our trade with Europe? That does not make sense to New Democrats, who have been elected to Parliament on a mission to reduce the price of prescription drugs for Canadians.

It does not make sense when we think about the integrity of our democratic institutions. These same corporate trade deals have also put serious limits and inhibitions on democratically elected governments to regulate in the public interest. That was also a part of the reasons for our initial opposition to CETA, the investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms. Now, I recognize that those would not be coming into force immediately upon the passage of this legislation, but I find it shocking, frankly, that they are even in there at all, because we have not heard the British government talk about the need for investor-state dispute settlement clauses.

Those are the clauses that have allowed foreign corporations to sue the Canadian government for hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 30 years. Those are the same clauses the Deputy Prime Minister herself said in the House last June were one of the biggest achievements she was most proud of from the CUSMA negotiations. In her words, "the investor-state dispute resolution system, which in the past allowed foreign companies to sue Canada, will be gone.”

Here they are again, not because our trading partner was asking for them. How did they even get into the agreement? If Britain does not want them and Canada does not want them, why are they there and why is possible for them come into effect, which is the default incidentally, after three years if another decision is not taken in the meantime?

We object to these being present at all, and I am interested to know who at the table was concerned to put them in there, given that our government was trying to take credit for having signed an agreement with the United States and Mexico that finally got rid of them, which we thought was a good thing.

The other thing CETA did that we oppose was further attack the supply-managed sectors in Canada. We heard comments earlier that I agree with completely. The way we procure our food and supply our food is not as if it were commodity like any other, and so we want to make sure that our agricultural producers are compensated fairly for what they produce and that we can support those local producers and that our food supply chain is secure.

All of these agreements tend toward a more globalized food supply chain. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that when it comes to the things that really matter and that we cannot do without, we should not be depending on international supply chains. Supply management in Canada is a great tool to ensure that our local producers are paid fairly for the work they do, can stay in business and that Canadian consumers can get the products they need to eat at a fair price reliably.

Those were things we did not like about CETA. We had lots of time, and, frankly, when it came to signing CETA in the first place, it was a mystery to us in the NDP that the government rushed ahead with it. The Conservatives had negotiated this deal, the Liberals came to power, and in the meantime Britain decided to hold a referendum on whether to remain in the European Union. New Democrats thought it might be significant to the nature of trade between Europe and Canada whether the United Kingdom was a part of Europe or not, considering that it represented about 40% of our trade with Europe.

It still strikes me as totally ridiculous that the government decided to go ahead and pen a deal with Europe when we did not know if the United Kingdom was leaving the European Union, which we subsequently found out it was, and that 40% of trade with Europe was not going to be captured by that deal. It does raise problems. We will see what happens as we try to negotiate a successor agreement and what that will mean for the supply-managed sector. New Democrats are very concerned that there are further concessions in the offing. We will believe it when we see that that it is not really on the table for the Liberals, because we have seen them break that promise before.

The other thing that bears mentioning when it comes to CETA is the following quote from a report called “Taking Stock of CETA: Early Impacts of the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement”. It states:

Between September 2017 and May 2019, total Canadian exports to the EU, measured monthly, were essentially flat. Meanwhile, over the same period, total imports from the EU increased by over a third (33.8 per cent). This imbalance has resulted in a doubling of the monthly Canadian trade deficit with the EU, from –1.51 billion dollars in September 2017 to –3.43 billion dollars in May 2019.

In recent decades, the United Kingdom is the only major European country with which Canada has consistently run a trade surplus. But since September 2017, the Canadian merchandise trade surplus with the U.K. has shrunk significantly (falling by two-thirds), with exports declining by 32 per cent while imports rose 14 per cent.

That is an assessment of the deal on whether it is working for Canada. The government did not bother to negotiate a different agreement. It is asking for a carbon copy of an agreement that has seen Canada's trade deficit with Europe increase. Even the empirical evidence on the deal so far suggests that this has not been a wondrous deal for Canada.

I have a lot of sympathy for Canadian businesses that want certainty in an uncertain time. I think the government really let them down in terms of the process, but it did not just let them down in November and December when it failed to get this legislation before the House and passed before December 31. The government let them down a long time ago, when it walked away from the negotiating table and was not even trying to negotiate the kind of gold-standard deal that I spoke about earlier, or any kind of different deal at all.

Here we find ourselves, past the deadline. These businesses have already gone through that jarring uncertainty and what it means for their business models, so I understand their disappointment. I think the government ought to have behaved in a way to try to provide a lot more certainty about what was coming, but I think it is a disappointment that, in addition, all we are getting is the same as we had in CETA with all of the problems that were there, and with all the evidence that shows that this has not been a deal that is working out very well for Canada.

I would say perhaps one of the only redeeming aspects of this entire farce of a process around negotiating our post-Brexit trade relationship with the United Kingdom is that it afforded an opportunity for certain committees of the House to reaffirm our commitment to the Good Friday Agreement, which Canada played an important role in brokering. New Democrats, my colleague from Saint John—Rothesay at the foreign affairs committee and I, presented a motion at the international trade committee and the foreign affairs committee that passed, I am glad to say unanimously, affirming Canada's support for [Technical difficulty—Editor] wants to be part of a trade relationship with the United Kingdom that in no way jeopardizes the Good Friday Agreement and, in fact, seeks to reinforce that peace, which was hard won in the nineties.

That is maybe one of the only silver linings to what otherwise was a terrible process. There was no real meaningful consultation with businesses, with unions or with Canadian civil society on what this trade relationship ought to look like. I stress this again, because the government likes to talk as if the deadline snuck up on us or as if we did not know it was coming. We have known for years that Britain was leaving the EU, and it was incumbent upon the government of the day to do the work so that whenever that deadline came there was actually something in place, yet there was no meaningful public consultation process on this.

The trade committee, on its own initiative, held some hearings in Parliament but, of course, like many things due to the pandemic, these were severely interrupted. It does not explain why there was not some effort by the government, in the years leading up to that, to try to engage people meaningfully on the question of the Canada-U.K. trade agreement or to try to involve Parliament, for that matter.

I would like to add that while we are talking about the abomination of process that is this deal, it bears mentioning that the government will talk about this as a transitional deal. I think that is misleading.

I get that our partner in the United Kingdom and the Canadian government perhaps committed in good faith, and it is in the agreement for all to read that they are going to start negotiating toward a successor deal within a year. I think there is some expectation that within three years the deal will be concluded. A couple of things will get more difficult after that three-year time horizon if a successor deal has not been concluded.

The fact remains that a transitional deal implies a temporary deal. The fact that it is a transitional deal, and the fact that it is essentially a carbon copy of CETA, are the reasons the government is saying that we should not be too concerned that there has not been a great process around it all: “Do not worry, we are going to negotiate another deal and it is really just like what we had.”

However, there were problems with what we had. The NDP is not satisfied with CETA. The NDP does not agree that CETA is the be-all and end-all of a trade agreement anyway, and I can tell members that a lot of Canadian workers across the country feel the same way. That fact notwithstanding, when we talk about a transitional deal it implies a temporary deal, and there is nothing temporary about this deal.

This deal has already been signed. The government has done the deed and the legislation, I gather from the debate today, is going to pass. New Democrats will be voting against it, but it is going to pass, and in a timely way. We all know, after what we just went through with Donald Trump, the pandemic and everything else, that three years is a long time in politics. A lot can change, and good intentions sometimes do not bear the fruit that people thought they would.

If, in three years' time, Canada and the U.K. do not conclude a successor agreement, this is what we are stuck with, and we will have been stuck with it after no meaningful engagement with the Canadian public or the Canadian Parliament except for this debate and whatever process will ensue at committee, which is something we are being asked to hurry up with and rush. The government has created a context where there is a legitimate need to act with some swiftness, because Canadian businesses have not had an opportunity to plan for an alternative, even though I think an alternative could have served Canadians better.

There is no sunset clause in the deal. There is no sunset clause in the legislation before us. In other words, there is nothing that compels Canada and the U.K. in any strong sense to conclude a successor agreement that might realize the potential for that gold standard in trade rather than repeating the same old corporate model that has not been serving Canadians well over the last 30 years. To me, that is a real disappointment, and I caution Canadians that this is not just some kind of transitional thing that is going away any time soon. It will only go away any time soon if it becomes a priority of our government and the government of the U.K., and political circumstances allow them to conclude a deal.

If we think back to where we were three years ago, nobody would have predicted what has happened in the interim. It would be a shame if this is the deal that Canada gets stuck with to define our trading relationship with the United Kingdom, because I think we can do a heck of a lot better.

I think we can do better when it comes to not having any provisions at all, like the investor-state dispute settlement provisions that cost Canadian taxpayers money and limit the ability of their democratically elected governments to regulate in the public interest.

I think it would be a shame if we did not get an agreement with the U.K. that takes climate change seriously and tries to mitigate the effects of globalized trade.

I think it would be a shame if we did not get an agreement with the U.K. that recognizes, in some kind of meaningful and enforceable way, the rights of indigenous people in Canada.

I think it would be a shame if we did not get an agreement that took upward pressure on prescription drug costs seriously. At the very least, if the Liberals are going to continue to sign deals like this, they could get a national pharmacare plan in place and help to do something that would bring those pharmaceutical drug prices down for Canadians, both their out-of-pocket costs and the incredible costs on provincial government ledgers for those pharmacare programs that do not benefit from the purchasing power of the entire country.

I hope we are going to get there, and that is certainly where our emphasis is going to be, but in the meantime, it is hard to say yes to a deal that is unimaginative and part of a broken international trade culture.

[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, Canada is a trading nation. We need international trade. We cannot underestimate the importance of that global trading market.

I am not surprised, but a little disappointed, that the NDP consistently votes against trade agreements. The party seems to be of the opinion that the way we get a trade agreement is to say what we want and then wait for the other country to agree to it, or we do not have an agreement.

My question for my friend and colleague from Winnipeg is this. Would he not recognize the actual value of international trade for Canadian society as a whole, and indicate to those who may be following the debate what trade agreements, historically, the NDP actually stood in this place and voted for?

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

Madam Speaker, it seems to me the hon. member has the memory of a goldfish. The last trade agreement that was before the House, the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, was an agreement that New Democrats voted for. There were tangible wins for Canadian workers. We got rid of the investor-state dispute settlement clause I was just talking about, which somehow reappeared here. It is not because the British government was asking for it, so who was? Presumably, it was the only other partner in the agreement: the Canadian government. Otherwise, I do not see why it would be there.

We also got rid of the energy proportionality clause, which never should have been signed in the first place and was a serious problem when it comes to Canada's energy sovereignty. That is something that has been the subject of a lot of debate in the House recently. Of course, Conservatives did not care a whit about Canadian energy sovereignty when they negotiated NAFTA back then, and I was glad to see that go.

Therefore, yes, when we can point to tangible wins for real Canadians, not just the guys at the top, we are prepared to vote for agreements but, man, do they ever come sparsely. It is because we have both Liberals and Conservatives who are happy to run around the world figuring out how quickly they can sell out everyday Canadians to do a solid for their corporate buddies. The trends are there. One just has to look at the evidence.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Madam Speaker, I enjoyed working with my colleague on international trade, on the very agreement he was speaking about, the CUSMA. He brought forward initiatives for greater transparency in trade agreements, which Conservatives supported him on.

With the CUSMA, we asked to see economic impact studies and the government refused. Even yesterday, I think the Prime Minister was still saying CUSMA was a better agreement than NAFTA even though C.D. Howe said there would be a $10 billion hit to our economy and a $1.5 billion hit to our auto industry. I am wondering, because I am no longer on that committee, if the member has seen any change as far as openness, transparency and engagement of important Canadian stakeholders.

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

We do not have interpretation.

I think that is what the hon. member for Beauport—Limoilou was trying to tell us.

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

Madam Speaker, the sound quality is very poor. Could my colleague bring the microphone closer to his mouth so that the interpreters can hear?

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

He has a headset, but I think it is his Internet connection that is causing the problem, since the sound cut out several times.

I would ask the hon. member for Oshawa to repeat his question.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Madam Speaker, I enjoyed working with my colleague on international trade.

My question was about openness and transparency. He moved different initiatives forward to improve openness and transparency in consultation on trade agreements. I remember, with CUSMA, we found out after the fact that the new CUSMA would be a $10-billion hit to the Canadian economy and a $1.5-billion decrease in auto exports. Even as of yesterday, the Prime Minister was saying it is a better overall agreement for Canada.

Has the member seen any changes in the new agreement as compared to the CUSMA? Has anything been put in place to improve the process?

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

Madam Speaker, the answer is that the process around this deal has been very bad. For me, the frustration is that the justification for the fact that there was not a lot of public consultation or engagement about the deal was that we were maintaining the status quo for now, and were going to get a new deal. That, to me, suggested all along that it really would be a temporary deal, and I was shocked to see that there was no sunset clause.

I have heard Liberals at committee say a hard deadline creates drama, but they could have set the timeline at whatever they wanted. It could have been three years or five years. If they are confident that they are going to conclude a deal, then ending this deal automatically should not have been an issue, and that provides the real incentive that one needs to get a successor agreement. I am concerned that we have had a very bad process now for what could end up being a permanent agreement. I want to see the government acting soon on the changes that the NDP negotiated to our trade process and giving notice to Parliament so we can get that process under way.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question about transparency for my colleague. I recall that we were the only ones to vote against CUSMA because of the unacceptable status of aluminum.

The NDP abandoned us along the way because it supposedly had a deal with the Deputy Prime Minister to be notified of the government's intent to enter into new negotiations 90 days in advance and to be informed of the objectives for negotiations 30 days in advance.

I am wondering if my colleague now feels that he was taken for a ride with the deal he made with the Deputy Prime Minister.

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

Madam Speaker, I think the proof of whether the government was negotiating in good faith or not on this agreement is going to be in the pudding. To come back to the frustration I was referring to earlier, the Liberals would say the process for this was not very good and they were already negotiating long before, which was true. However, they suspended negotiations. It is not clear whether a new negotiation was started in August of last year or they were resuming a previous negotiation that was already under way. The waters are muddy there.

It is important that the government begin to follow the process from early on with respect to this new agreement. It is also important that this agreement be a temporary agreement. If all those other things are true that this was not a great process and was just about maintaining the status quo until we get a successor agreement, the government should not be signing what is for all intents and purposes a permanent agreement. To me, that is the real—

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

The hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona is a very important voice in international trade, and I want to thank him for his work and expertise and for mentoring me on this file.

He started his intervention today by describing the deal as bad for workers and said that this deal allows for a race to the bottom that creates increased inequality that benefits big corporations but hurts Canadian workers.

How would the member propose we better protect workers in Canada? How would this trade deal be improved if the government had done what it promised and consulted extensively with Canadians, Canadian workers and the opposition parties, like the NDP?