I'm sorry about that. That's what happens when you try to get through in 10 minutes.
We realize that the federal government has indicated that it would offset some costs, but the reality is that it's still going to be taxpayers who will be offsetting the costs if we do see high rates or costs of pharmaceuticals.
On a national issue, we fully support the congress' opposition to the inclusion of an investor-state arbitration mechanism. It's very similar to chapter 11 of NAFTA, which allows investors to bypass the court system and seek compensation for alleged harmful public policies and regulation. The mechanism can be used by corporations to attack public interest regulations in both Canada and Europe.
Under NAFTA's chapter 11, it hasn't worked in the way that many experts thought. Canada is now the top target of NAFTA investor-state litigation. The country faces eight active NAFTA investment claims, all launched by U.S. companies, and if successful the claims could cost Canadian taxpayers more than $2.5 billion. There have been over 30 investor-state claims against Canada under NAFTA, and we're fearful that this could be something that could come out even broader with the CETA agreement.
On government procurement, CETA may constrain the ability of local governments and crown corporations to use local procurement as a stimulus for economic development. Our economy is doing fairly well in the HRM, but the concerns we have and what we've been developing and working on now for the last number of years is rural Nova Scotia. Government procurement is a big issue for small communities and we're very concerned about how the agreement can undermine this.
Exclusions are present for procurements below a certain value, and governments can specify the need for relevant experience and can include social and environmental criteria in contract requirements. There is limited regional economic development in exclusions for the three territories, the Atlantic provinces and Manitoba, Quebec and Ontario, to retain 25% of Canadian value, and that's for procurement of public transit vehicles.
Public services is another big area, because it's a large employer in this province. CETA binds any government decisions to shift to private delivery of publicly provided services. Health care, public education and social services are excluded, but in many of these areas government policy has been blurring the line between public and private, leaving provinces open to challenges by investors. We do not support privatization of any public service that leads to lower wages, less money for our economies, and more job safety concerns.
Labour mobility is an issue that's a major problem with the high unemployment we have among our young people today, and the mutual recognition of provincial qualifications included in trade deals like CETA leads to the lowest common denominator becoming the standard, rather than the mutual recognition of the lowest standard in place. The labour movement in this country through the CLC and provincial federations have called for the upward harmonization of labour regulations, qualifications, licensing and other standards.
CETA also contains commitments for the temporary entry of workers—the most ambitious ever in a trade agreement, according to the CETA agreement in principle. Our federation is very concerned about the inclusion of contract services suppliers in the commitment regarding temporary entry of workers. Localized shortages of skilled trade workers means that some employers would be extremely keen on having temporary workers coming from European countries, where unemployment is higher.
The temporary entry commitment will also make it easier for employers to engage in the practice of inter-corporate transfers. This practice was exposed this year in Canada, when the Royal Bank used it to lay off Canadian workers from professional IT jobs. We cannot afford more unemployment in Canada.
Sustainable development, the environment, and labour are the last areas that I want to touch on. The details, so far, only call for weak and mainly voluntary measures to protect the environment. There would be no binding obligations, penalties, or trade sanctions for non-compliance. The word “voluntary” is one of the major concerns we have with this.
The labour provisions appear to be similar to the labour cooperation agreement negotiated in recent free trade deals by Canada. The dispute settlement process, while it might include the civil society advisory group and a mechanism by which the public can raise concerns, remains unclear.
With regard to the fisheries, again it's kind of a yea/nay with us, because there is potential there, but because we don't know what's in the deal, there's a lot of concern. Does it mean we're going to get more exports but those exports will be raw product and be processed in Europe? Or does it mean we're going to be exporting more of the finished product? I'm not a paranoid person; I don't look under my bed every night, but I would say that tied in with that is the fact that Europe is going to have port capabilities with this agreement, which would lead me to think there could be more export of raw product rather than processed product.
I know I'm getting very close, so I guess, really, the last statement would be that we really want to see this before it's finalized, and we would urge this committee, as we will be urging our provincial government, that we need the veil of secrecy and confidentiality to be lifted from the CETA text so that we can have meaningful public consultation and debate on the agreement's costs and benefits before the provincial government or the federal government finalize the deal.