Bill C-13

An Act to implement the Protocol on the Accession of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership

This enactment implements the Protocol on the Accession of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, done at Auckland and Bandar Seri Begawan on July 16, 2023, by updating how that Agreement is defined or referred to in certain Acts and by amending other Acts to bring them into conformity with Canada’s obligations under that Agreement and Protocol.

An Act to Implement the Protocol on the Accession of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, this is a critical moment for Canada. We need to create different free trade ties with our partners and other countries. We need to build new relationships.

More specifically, this bill seeks to expand the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership by adding another reliable partner. This is good news for exporters in Quebec and across the country, as well as for British investment in businesses and projects here in Canada.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to split my time with the hon. colleague from Edmonton Manning, a great parliamentarian to work with, a thoughtful guy and a friend.

Today, we are debating trade, if members have been paying attention. There are few issues that are closer in the minds of Canadians at the moment. Across the country, Canadians are worried about their families and their savings and whether they will be able to make it to the end of the month. Some have already lost their jobs, and I think many are wondering if theirs are next. This is a reality that Canadians are facing. Some of it is entirely outside of their control, but many also understand that much of it is possibly within their control.

I want to be super clear about something as we dig into this. Canadians are not the ones failing. I think they are being failed. They go to work every day. They support their families. They contribute to their communities. They are learning new skills and just trying to create a better life. If anyone is failing them, it is the government, which fails on the promises it makes.

I will say this: Conservatives support free trade because we are a trading nation. That is very obvious. Our prosperity depends on selling goods and resources to the world, and for many of us in this place, we have no idea what life was like before free trade, especially with our biggest partners.

We also support, though, fair trade. This is where I want to focus in on the discussion. Fair trade means ensuring that Canadian producers have real access to markets that are open here at home. It means standing up for Canadian ranchers and farmers and producers when they are treated unfairly. I know there are a lot of people in this place who believe that food comes from a grocery store, but there are a whole lot of people who get it there, like those who raise cattle, those who grow our food and those who get it onto our tables. For them, this is what brings us to the conversation of the U.K. and why we should pay attention to this.

Under the trade continuity agreement, the U.K. imposed non-tariff barriers on Canadian pork and cattle that are not rooted in science, and that is a problem. The U.K. refuses to accept something called carcass wash, which is used safely in Canadian slaughter plants, and it has regulations against Canadian beef about the way that we do things in terms of our own regulations here. These measures have effectively kept these products out of the U.K. market. When we are talking about trade, it has to be equal.

The result of this is a glaring imbalance. I know that our agricultural critic has these numbers off the top of his head, but I had to look it up at the Library of Parliament. Britain exported 16 million dollars' worth of beef to Canada in 2023, $42 million in 2024 and $28 million in just the first half of 2025. Meanwhile, Canada exported only 85,000 dollars' worth of beef in 2023, $25,000 in 2024 and none at all in 2025.

The story is the same with pork. Britain exported in the millions of dollars' worth, while Canada exported no pork to the U.K. in 2023 and topped out at just about $120,000 in the last year. This is not fair trade, and anybody who looks at the numbers can understand that.

After nearly a decade in power, there is real, big talk now of trade from the Liberal government. It failed to resolve these issues, and that matters. It matters for our producers, and it matters for people who consume those products here in Canada. This is about far more than agriculture. It exposes, I think, a deeper failure of the government and one that should make anyone question this new, big talk on trade. This is where we sort of get into the nitty-gritty details. Now the government is asking Parliament to approve the United Kingdom's accession to the CPTPP without reversing these barriers and without making it fair. It appears the government is preparing to grant new access to the Canadian market while leaving our farmers locked out of the U.K.'s. That is not strong negotiating, and everybody understands that.

There is another issue that the government has ignored. Despite the member's raising it, they are actually getting into this without resolving it, and that is the more than 100,000 U.K. pensioners who live in Canada. Unlike pensioners who retire in countries like the United States, their pensions are not indexed to inflation, and we all know what has happened with inflation over the last couple of years under the Liberals' watch.

The pensioners have been raising the issue for years and asking for the same treatment as pensioners in other countries, because that is only fair. Given the close relationship between the Prime Minister and his counterpart in the U.K., one might have expected the government to use these negotiations to advocate for Canadian farmers and for those 100,000 pensioners who are living here in Canada during a cost-of-living crisis. Instead, those issues remain unresolved.

Today, we are talking about Bill C-13, and the conversation in the House would lead us to believe that this is a brand new trade agreement, or that this is some major breakthrough. It is not. Bill C-13 is not a new trade agreement. It is simply legislation to update Canadian law, years after a deal was already negotiated. In other words, Parliament is not debating a new strategy on Canadian trade. We are being asked to stamp changes required for negotiations that took place years ago. Even though the government managed to delay the process, and I can understand the urgency now, this is participation medal stuff. This is not where we need to go in order to expand our markets at a critical time.

The Liberals often speak about the importance of trade diversification, yet Canadians were among the last CPTPP members to ratify the U.K. accession, and that delay matters. It matters for Canadian businesses, who waited longer for access to the U.K. market that this membership could have provided them with.

While the government celebrates the technical amendments of a trade agreement, the reality is that Canada's most important trade relationship remains deeply unstable. More than 70% of Canada's exports go to the U.S. We all know that, yet today that relationship is clouded, obviously, by uncertainty, tariffs, unresolved disputes and the lack of a serious trade strategy that does not ignore reality.

For Canadians, a lot of questions remain: Where are we in all of this? What is the plan? What does the Prime Minister think when it comes to American auto, or resources, or really everything? We may never know. We have news of the minister heading down to Washington and then radio silence about the whole thing. Canadians need an update, otherwise they get more of these debates in the House about technical amendments about accession to an agreement that was negotiated a long time ago.

I will add one more point. Trade agreements are important, but trade agreements alone cannot solve Canada's deeper economic problems. They cannot compensate for an economy that has been made less competitive with higher taxes and more regulation. Over the past decade, we have seen falling investment per worker and weak productivity growth compared to our peers. These are not abstract statistics that we talk about when we talk about trade, because trade is all about attracting partners here and getting our products elsewhere. They also translate directly into fewer jobs, slower wage growth and fewer opportunities for Canadians. When businesses decide where to invest and whether to expand at home or move elsewhere, those factors really matter. Building a competitive economy actually matters in all of this: one that rewards work, encourages investment and removes the unnecessary barriers to growth, which is how we get ahead in trade.

We intend to support expanding markets for Canadian products. We always have and we always will, but we will also scrutinize the government's failure to secure real wins and real results for Canadians, which is what this debate is about. We do not quite understand why we are signing on to something that makes us worse off. Why did the Liberals let something languish to the point where our pork producers, our beef producers and 100,000 U.K. pensioners are all worse off, and this still goes ahead?

Canadians deserve an agreement that works for Canada. That means for this agreement and every single other one. We are not going to celebrate with a participation medal something that should have been done a long time ago. That is why I wanted a say in this debate.

[Kody Blois, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, I will remind the member that the issue of British pensions extends back to far before the time of this government. The Harper government was not able to resolve it. We agree with what she is saying, and we are continuing to push.

The member is the deputy leader of the Conservative Party. She is certainly a fair dealer, and I am going to ask this question with the desire of getting an honest answer.

The government is doing a lot of work around the world to build relationships. I asked the last colleague this question as well: Is there a country that Canada has either signed a trade arrangement or worked with that the Conservative Party does not agree that we should have? If the answer is China, I am curious as to what she would say to farmers in the western provinces about why the government should not have engaged to remove canola tariffs.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know this is supposed to be a gotcha question, but this is the party of free trade. This is a party that signed more free trade agreements and had the richest middle class before the Liberals took over more than 10 years ago. We support expanding trade, but the matter here is that free trade has to be fair for all of the participants.

We also cherish our values of freedom, democracy and the rule of law, and we are going to lead with those values in every conversation we have around the world.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the Liberals brought up the issue of China. The government operations committee today heard of hundreds of millions of daily attacks on the government's cyber system. The Communications Security Establishment points its finger at China as our number one issue.

I wonder what my colleague thinks about the government's focus and obsession with China as a strategic partner while, at the same time, its own security agency is saying it is the number one threat to our cybersecurity.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot written and said about the government's new focus on China. I think our U.S. counterparts would also be rather concerned.

The matter at hand is the difference between securing a trade relationship, opening markets to farmers, and creating a strategic partnership with a country that does not share our values or our national security interests and, frankly, has kidnapped Canadians and reached out its arm of transnational repression to our people here.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, we all know the leader of the Conservative Party has made the decision to finally go to the U.S.A. to talk about issues in Canada. Another Conservative member, the member for Bowmanville—Oshawa North, has already gone to the States. We will remember that he met with the President and the Vice-President, and then he came back and said that Canadians are having a hissy fit.

When can we expect the member's current leader is going to be meeting with the President and Vice-President, and will he come back and provide an informed report too?

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, last week, the Leader of the Opposition went to the U.K. and Germany, and that visit was received very well. The Leader of the Opposition spoke to the Prime Minister about his visit to the U.S. and stands ready to help. He is going to go to Michigan to speak about auto and to Texas to speak about our resources, to ensure that jobs are kept in Canada. We look forward to that visit.

I know the Prime Minister spoke to the Leader of the Opposition, and we stand ready to help in this relationship whenever possible.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Mr. Speaker, one thing I can never get over is that the Liberals, in the last two questions, took an opportunity, instead of talking about what Canada is going to offer and do for Canadians, attempted a gotcha moment and heckled us. Unfortunately, we are talking about a trade agreement that is going to enhance Canadians.

I asked the member for Winnipeg North this morning if there is anything in this agreement for Canadians, and he answered no. Can the member reply to that?

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, once in a while the member for Winnipeg North tells the truth in this House. I will leave it to them.

I laid out very clearly that free trade needs to be fair trade. Access of products to our market and fairness for U.K. pensioners should be at the centre of this conversation, and they certainly have not been.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure in the history of Canadian Parliament there have been bills with longer names, but we have to admit this one is a mouthful: an act to implement the protocol on the accession of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is a very long name for a trade agreement. This does not flow easily off the tongue. I should think some bright staffer could have come up with a snappier title, something like the “let the U.K. join the club act”. I guess we will just have to refer to it as Bill C-13.

The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the CPTPP, is a free trade agreement enforced between Canada and 10 other countries in the Indo-Pacific region: Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. In 2023, CPTPP parties signed an accession protocol with the United Kingdom. The CPTPP will enter into force for the U.K. once all the CPTPP members and the U.K. complete their respective ratification processes. Bill C-13 is a part of the ratification process.

Once the agreement is fully implemented, Canada will have duty-free access to CPTPP countries for 90% of Canadian agriculture and agri-food product exports, 99% of Canadian industrial product exports, 100% of Canadian fish and seafood product exports, and 100% of Canadian forest product exports. This is indeed good news for Canadian business. It is also good news that the U.K.'s accession would provide broader services access for construction, legal and veterinary services and longer visa durations for business visitors and investors than were set out in the Canada-U.K. Trade Continuity Agreement that was negotiated following Brexit.

It is not good news that the Liberal government has failed to address some of the outstanding trade issues with the U.K.

The CPTPP would provide limited practical gains for Canadian beef and pork exporters who want to access the U.K. market. Canada secured additional duty-free volumes for pork and beef into the U.K. over the previous agreement, but Canadian export volumes are unlikely to increase, given the U.K.'s non-tariff barriers relating to sanitary measures. It is worth noting that the Canadian Cattle Association and the Canadian Pork Council have both indicated opposition to the U.K.'s accession to the CPTPP due to that country's non-tariff barriers to Canadian pork and beef producers.

The U.K. is Canada's third-largest trading partner and ally, and with this new relationship I can see the opportunity for increased trade. However, there have been missed opportunities, and not only with pork and beef, but I will finish my speech after question period.