Good morning, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks to the committee for at least beginning to investigate the security and prosperity partnership. As you know, it's the umbrella for a vast array of security- and economic-related initiatives under way to further integrate the North American market. It is a NAFTA-plus, or a deep integration, initiative. As David said, it's not a grand bargain type of negotiation, as NAFTA was; it's an incrementalist project. It's an executive branch to executive branch project. Legislative change is not expected, at least not directly, but despite its incrementalist nature, the cumulative effect of the SPP, over time, could be profound. It could be even more significant than NAFTA, depending on how far and how fast it goes. That's why I think it's important that you're focusing on it.
Like many others, I'm concerned about the process. You will hear from some of them in the coming days. I'm concerned about the lack of transparency and the lack of pubic input. I'm concerned about the privileged access that big business has under the new body, the NACC, established by the SPP. We have superficial information about the project, about the SPP, but not a sense of what's really going on.
I'm sure lots of useful and important and beneficial work is being done, but I'm also concerned that hidden by the sheer size and scope of the project, things are under way that may not be so beneficial and that they may privilege private interests over the public interest. In any case, neither Parliament nor Canadians can debate this until we have a better idea of what's going on.
I'm also concerned about substance, namely the free market model of integration that's being pursued. All the rhetoric we hear around the SPP is about ever-deeper market integration to increase competitiveness. It's about the integration of energy markets and reduction of regulatory burdens--regulation is always described as a burden. All of this is to enhance business freedom; I never hear talk about measures that would encourage upward harmonization of labour standards or environmental standards, measures that would encourage productivity gains to be distributed fairly to workers, tax measures that would prevent corporations from engaging in transfer pricing, or tax measures that would discourage shifting of profits to tax havens. This type of cooperation is not on the SPP agenda, and it begs the question: prosperity for whom?
Finally, I'm concerned about the shrinking of Canadian policy autonomy under the SPP. The SPP is a process of convergence or harmonization of policies and regulatory regimes for the purpose of reducing impediments to business. Given the huge power imbalance between Canada and the U.S., I can't help but think that harmonization means, in most cases, that Canada will bend its regulations or simply adopt U.S. federal regulations, and I ask this question: at what point does the narrowing of policy room to manoeuvre fundamentally compromise democratic accountability in our political system?
Those are some of my general concerns. In the few minutes I have left--and you'll be hearing from others about a range of issues from water to energy, etc.--I want to focus a bit on regulatory cooperation, which is really, as I said, about regulatory harmonization. It's proceeding on two tracks. One is the comprehensive track, which has been discussed. Then there are a number of sectoral regulatory initiatives, from energy infrastructure to pesticides, biotech, and pharmaceutical processes. I really hope you will be requesting briefings on the status of these initiatives.
There are a couple of specific concerns. Both the SPP leader statement on regulatory cooperation back in 2005 and subsequent statements make it clear that it's mainly about cost and competitiveness considerations. The considerations of protection--I'm interested in public interest regulation here--are given a subordinate place, so it's the regulated industries, not the regulators, that have a privileged place at the table with the NACC. That's of concern to me.
It's another manifestation of a shift that's been going on in the last four years under the smart regulation initiative, which is really a deregulation initiative. It involves a shift of the basic philosophy to regulation, which is called the precautionary principle, the primacy of protection, toward a risk management approach, which gives equal weight to business cost considerations. There has been a serious weakening of the precautionary approach. This has occurred over the objections of many environmental and health groups. Most recently, it has been embedded in the government's new regulatory policy that was revealed a few weeks ago, the government directive on regulations. So now the structures are in place, and I'm concerned that they will facilitate a regulatory harmonization process in a direction aligned with the Bush administration's aggressive deregulation agenda and that this will further compromise the precautionary approach and accelerate deregulation within Canada.
My other concern, for purposes of my presentation, has to do with the outsourcing of regulatory functions to the U.S. The business advisory committee on smart regulation in 2004 advocated taking advantage of what it called the superior scientific and regulatory capacities of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and focusing its scarce resources on strategic priorities.
The trinational business report on North American integration in 2005 advocated immediate adoption of a tested-once policy for biotech products and pharmaceuticals, whereby a product tested in one country would automatically be accepted as meeting the standards of the others.
So my question is, is the SPP moving toward a tested-once policy for pharmaceuticals and biotech products? Does it mean a downsizing of our own testing and research capacity and accepting those of the U.S. FDA? How wise would it be to outsource such a vital government responsibility to a U.S. body whose safety record has been widely criticized and which is seen as under the sway of the U.S. pharmaceutical lobby? It seems to me that this is tantamount to importing deregulation.
Thank you.