Okay. I appreciate that.
Polls have consistently shown that there's fairly high support for the idea, or the general idea, of a trade deal with the European Union. We've seen this in the range of 70% to 80%. We got those same numbers when we polled Canadians in November. We decided to ask a few extra questions around some of the more controversial aspects of the deal, because we felt that those polling numbers showing high support don't actually get behind this. They might be concealing more than they're telling us.
I'll focus on procurement, investment, and pharmaceuticals.
For example, in procurement rules in the Canada-Europe trade deal, they will essentially force Canadian municipalities, crown corporations, and other provincial agencies to treat all bidders on public contracts equally, regardless of whether they're from Canada or from Europe. Not only that—I would say that's a minor part of it—they will prohibit covered public entities, which will include cities according to the technical briefing note, from putting local content requirements into contracts, no matter who is bidding on the projects, or from considering other offsets that would increase local development benefits from public spending.
Together these changes will stop communities from being able to give extra consideration, or perhaps extra points in the RFP process, to firms that can guarantee more economic activity in Canada or more jobs being kept in Canada.
We asked Canadians how they felt about that: Should municipalities retain the right to prefer bids from local or Canadian companies? In fact, an impressive 77% of people said they should hold on to that right. That was highest among NDP and Green supporters. We had 87% of NDP supporters, 82% of Greens and Bloc, 76% of Liberals, and even 71% of Conservatives agreeing that local preferences on public spending are important.
This is also, we find, the sentiment of a lot of municipalities in Canada, including the municipality of Toronto. They want to be excluded from the deal and specifically these procurement rules. The technical briefing note suggests that they have not been excluded.
I would say that this is odd when the federal government itself acknowledges that buy Canadian policies work. They acknowledge this specifically in military procurement. It's backed by several studies, including one called “Canada First: Leveraging Defence Procurement Through Key Industrial Capabilities”. Let me quote from that study for a moment:
The significant number of success stories in Canada demonstrate clearly the value of a supportive, proactive procurement strategy and the exceptional long-run economic impact that can result when government investment is well-targeted.
The report talks about the use of offsets, requiring companies to invest a certain amount of the money and the profits they make back into the economy. It talks about getting the best return on investment by using these buy local conditions, about high-value Canadian jobs, high-growth companies, all these things encouraged in military procurement and yet now banned forever through this Canada-Europe trade agreement for municipalities or crown corporations or provincial entities. I would suggest there's a contradiction, if not a hypocrisy, in banning that very successful policy from our municipal governments.
We asked about pharmaceutical policy changes. I won't go into that in much detail, simply because the previous speaker dealt with it in his presentation. Suffice it to say that I think 65% of Canadians, according to our poll, oppose extending patent protections in the trade agreement with Europe. It was highest in Atlantic Canada, at about 70%. It was high among earners in the high-income bracket: 74% of people whose incomes fall between $100,000 and $1 million would oppose that, as would 55% of Conservative supporters.
Now, the federal government acknowledges that there will be additional costs to public health plans and has promised to compensate provinces, but like the previous speaker, I would argue that this is simply transferring the money around. It's transferring the public cost around. Essentially we're padding the budgets of these already highly profitable brand-name drug sectors without really producing any jobs here in Canada in the process.
The third polling question we asked was around investment protection. I think this is again the sleeper issue in the CETA negotiations. This is the NAFTA chapter 11 that allows companies to pursue governments in private tribunals when they feel their investments have been impacted by a government decision. Despite the obscurity of the issue, 54% of Canadians don't like the idea of including this with the CETA negotiations.
Canadian negotiators have suggested at this committee that they've learned the lessons of NAFTA and that the CETA investment chapter will make frivolous cases less likely. But as you heard a few weeks ago from Howard Mann at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, in fact CETA might give investors more opportunities and more rights than ever before, even more than existed in NAFTA, and he says this was done knowingly and deliberately.
I would argue that the international trend is moving in the opposite direction. For example, we've seen South Africa cancelling investment treaties with European countries, finding no economic benefit but a large risk of costly lawsuits against public interest legislation. We've seen Australia not including this process with its deal with the United States as Canada has and still resisting it in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Of course Brazil in Latin America attracts more foreign investment than any other Latin American country, but it does not have any of these treaties ratified. Clearly there is not a good connection between investment quantities and the existence of a treaty.
Right now the commission itself has paused its negotiations with the European Union, at least on investment, while it holds a public consultation. I would argue that this committee and the federal government in general should probably use this opportunity, and I would encourage them to use this opportunity, to review Canada's policy of signing these investment treaties and including investor-state dispute settlements in free trade agreements as the European Union is doing right now. There would be broad support for this. Again, our poll found very high support among Green and NDP supporters to oppose NAFTA-like investment rules, and even less than half of Conservative Party supporters actually support the idea of a right to sue, a right for corporations to take these challenges outside the courts before private arbitrary tribunals, with little accountability and no accountability to voters, we should say.
To sum up, our poll also asked about the idea of holding a public consultation. A previous speaker mentioned this as well. It's great that we're having this discussion now on the technical briefing. It's not enough information to make an informed decision regarding how we feel about the deal. I would urge that probably the whole text should be made public. There is 80% support across the board, across political parties, for cross-Canada public hearings when that happens. Before the deal can be signed, after which we know it's impossible to make any changes—and it's going to be a knock-down vote in Parliament after a little bit of debate—Canadians are asking that this deal be brought to them, that you go out across Canada, hold public consultations and have those consultations actually be able to affect the outcome of the agreement before it's signed.
I'll wrap up there. The alternative course of action for the government if they don't do this is basically to tell Canadians that a deal that was negotiated without their input is going to be finalized without their consent. I think that's not a good alternative. I think it's best if we do take this to the public at some point in the next few months.
Thanks very much.