International Trade Committee on April 19th, 2016

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you for that.

On the flip side, we've heard from some professional organizations here in Canada that are eager to provide their services in other countries that are part of the TPP trade agreement. This labour mobility cuts both ways.

Do you think the detriments to Canadians would be offset by the benefits that Canadians working overseas would have?

[Gil McGowan]

I'm skeptical that the agreement would be truly reciprocal, and I say that based on our experience with other trade agreements.

The federal youth exchange program, for example with countries like Australia, has been skewed heavily towards workers coming to Canada with only a handful going the other way. While this may open some opportunities for a handful of professionals, I think there is a real risk that we're going to see an adverse impact on our labour market.

As union leader here in Alberta, I represent literally tens of thousands of people in the broadest category, professionals, technical workers, and tradespeople especially. We saw what happened here in Alberta during the most recent energy boom when the temporary foreign worker program was dramatically expanded to facilitate more workers to come into the province. In fact, we had some fast-track streams within the temporary foreign worker program specifically for tradespeople, and they didn't have to offer the jobs to Canadians first or prove they were paying a prevailing market wage. What we saw when those kinds of safeguards were eliminated was a tidal wave of people coming into the country as temporary foreign workers. They displaced Canadian workers and they were used to drive down wages. We saw it with iron workers and we saw it with welders. You're playing with fire.

This is even worse because the temporary foreign worker program was a program of the federal government, so if we change the government or if we put pressure on our elected officials, they could fix the program, and some Conservatives might argue that they did in response to Canadians' concerns. The problem with this trade agreement is that, even if we could convince our elected officials that there is a problem that needs to be fixed, because it's entrenched in an international agreement, they won't have the same latitude and ability to respond.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you. Your time is up. That's it for the Liberals in this section.

We're going to move on to the NDP and Madam Ramsey for five minutes.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

I'd like to drill down further into labour mobility because we haven't studied it in depth in this committee, and I think the implications are very real.

Sitting here in Alberta, I certainly don't have to tell you how fraught with problems the temporary foreign worker program has been, especially with the unemployment rate you currently have in Alberta and the number of temporary foreign workers who are working here in your province. It's a real issue for working people to be able to seek that work and not have to face the issue of whether it will be them or a temporary foreign worker, because of the serious problems with that program.

It's clear that you feel that the assessment by the chief negotiator is not accurate, in particular around the fact that people coming in would receive a wage that's commensurate with the prevailing wage.

If you can, I want you to speak a little about how chapter 12 of the TPP will reduce the wages of Canadians.

[Gil McGowan]

The mechanisms that will allow the TPP to suppress wages are similar to the mechanisms that allowed employers to use the temporary foreign worker program to suppress wages. But I think it's worse, and that's why in my presentation I said that the TPP is essentially the temporary foreign worker program on steroids.

The labour mobility provisions in this agreement could be used by employers to suppress wages simply because they will be able to bring in a significant number of foreign workers, and in many cases, as I said, in unrestricted numbers and for indefinite periods of time.

Those safeguards that were in place under the temporary foreign worker program were not particularly well enforced. The record clearly shows that, but at least the rules were there. There was a rule that employers had to pay temporary foreign workers the prevailing wage in order to stop employers from using them as pawns to drive down wages. However, for every single category of worker that will be allowed to be brought into the country under this program, those same safeguards simply do not exist. There's no protection for prevailing wages. There's no requirement that employers will have to offer the jobs first to Canadians. There are fewer requirements about training. This is going to be a system that's rife for abuse.

As an Alberta trade union leader, I'm particularly concerned about how these provisions will be used in the construction trades. We've seen it with the temporary foreign worker program, and I should point out that in many countries around the world, construction trades, which used to provide well-paid, family-sustaining, community-sustaining jobs, have been degraded by labour mobility. Whether in the Middle East or in South America or even increasingly in Europe, what used to be good jobs in construction have been degraded because people from around the world, the cheapest workers, can be grabbed and plugged in there. I don't want to see the same thing happen to our construction trade sectors here in Canada.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

We've heard here at the committee that this only affects business persons, but you were breaking that down a bit in your presentation. Can you speak a little more about what that definition of business person is, because I think you said that it's essentially anyone from a TPP country.

[Gil McGowan]

Yes, in many ways the categories that have been outlined in the TPP agreement are misnomers. They talk about business persons and investors, but as I said in my presentation and as we outline in our legal opinion, it's clear that the business category actually includes or could include many more people than just those coming to Canada to conduct business.

In fact, the definition is so broad that it basically says that any citizen of a signatory nation could be considered a business person for the purposes of the labour mobility section of the act. The definitions are so broad under this agreement as to be almost completely meaningless, and they certainly don't provide the kind of safeguards that I think Canadians would expect from this kind of agreement.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Could this apply to people with permanent jobs as well? In the past, with the temporary foreign worker program, they tried to say it was about only temporary jobs, but could this end up displacing Canadians in permanent jobs with these workers coming in?

[Gil McGowan]

Yes. When the agreement explicitly provides for the indefinite extension of what are ostensibly temporary permits, then you run the risk of actually having people coming here indefinitely, and they would be in a position to fill jobs permanently as opposed to on a temporary basis.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you, Mr. McGowan.

Thank you, Madam Ramsey. Your time is up.

We're going to move over to the Liberals.

Mr. Fonseca, you have five minutes. Go ahead, sir.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Young, Ms. Azocar and Mr. McGowan for your presentations.

We've been delighted with the demand and interest from the public members who have wanted to come in to speak to our committee. That's what we're doing. These are public consultations. The number one job of parliamentarians is to hear from you and to be voices for our ridings and our communities but also for Canadians, and to look at the TPP to see if it is of net benefit to Canada and to Canadians.

Mr Young, you brought up many concerns with the TPP. I don't want you to go through all of them, but if you could prioritize, what would be your major concern for Canadians and for Canada with ratifying this agreement?

[Matthew Young]

My major concern about the Trans-Pacific Partnership is that it is an improvement on NAFTA from one perspective, and not an improvement from another perspective. It's an improvement from an investor perspective. The concern is the fact that the ISDS mechanism is a mechanism that's placed in the governance system, and it shouldn't be there. It doesn't improve the system. Information flow in governance often isn't improved by creating control points in that system, and that's what it is. The ISDS mechanism is a control point between legislators and enforcement of regulation.

Now, I understand that it doesn't actually prevent us from creating legislation, but when I know that I can get a traffic ticket for speeding, that does affect my behaviour. In the past the government has changed regulation when they were faced with lawsuits over ISDS. This is about sovereignty and our ability to protect ourselves.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Mr. McGowan, in your presentation you talked about the temporary foreign worker program. I agree with you, it is a mess, and it has to be fixed.

You talked about how within that temporary foreign worker program, companies would bring in what would be an unlimited number of temporary foreign workers. Looking at it through that lens or with that premise, what kind of provisions do you think would need to take place to avoid this happening?

[Gil McGowan]

I could spend some time talking about provisions to protect the interests of Canadian workers and to make sure that these provisions in the agreement weren't used to distort the Canadian labour market. However, and correct me if I'm wrong, I'm told that the government now is facing essentially a yes or no proposition. There is no room for renegotiation. The parties that got together behind closed doors over several years have done their work, so this government has to ratify it or not.

From our perspective, on balance, because of the tremendously negative impact this agreement would have on the interests of working people and the structure of our labour market, you just need to say “no”.

I would like to say, go back to the table and renegotiate, but that's not in the cards. Given the choice between thumbs-up and thumbs-down, it's clear to us that it should be thumbs-down in order to protect the interests of working people.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

You think it was poorly negotiated at that time when it—

[Gil McGowan]

I think it was poorly negotiated. I think that a lot of these problems could have been dealt with if the previous government, the Harper government, had taken a different approach to negotiations. We know, for example, that during that whole multi-year period when they were negotiating with other TPP nations, there were all sorts of people other than governments behind closed doors with the negotiators. There were as many as 400 corporations and business organizations. There wasn't a single member of civil society there. There wasn't a single representative or spokesperson from a union or the labour movement.

If that had been the case, we could have flagged this early on and wouldn't be facing the prospect of either turning a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to this agreement. This could have been avoided if civil society had been behind those closed doors. They were not, and this is the mess that we have to deal with now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you very much. Your time is up, Mr. Fonseca.

That's the first round, so we're going to start off with our second round now and we're starting off with the Liberals and we've Madam Ludwig first.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

All I can say is, wow! They were very interesting presentations, all slightly different, but certainly spoke directly to the complications and issues around the TPP.

I'm just going to pull the discussion back a little bit from Alberta and take it from the Atlantic-Canadian perspective. As my committee colleagues can vouch, I don't typically do this.

Regarding the temporary foreign workers program, that program is under review. I'm pleased to say that there's another parliamentary committee that is looking at it and the direction of that ministry. But certainly in some areas of the country, foreign workers are essential. When we look at bringing in people either through immigration or the temporary foreign workers program, if we're only looking at it from a numbers side.... Let's say we're looking at Atlantic Canada—and lots of people do—we see that the unemployment rate there is 10% or 11%. Taking into consideration the fact there's no public transit to some of our fish-processing plants—you have to have a car to get to a ferry landing, and there has to be a ferry to get to an island—it's not pretty work. As a result, we have been very fortunate with foreign workers.

The challenge for us in a local perspective has been that there's no path to citizenship for temporary foreign workers. That would probably be a common complaint that we hear about the temporary foreign workers program.

We also live in a region of Canada that is desperate for immigration because our population is stagnant. We are not expanding.

So I do hear your concerns, certainly, regarding temporary foreign workers, and that they should never be brought in to displace local workers. Working together with the provinces through the LMIA, there is that provision there for protection. If it's not working, we should be working more diligently in looking at that.

In terms of suppressing wages, are there studies that have been done on that, Mr. McGowan, that you could present to the committee?

[Gil McGowan]

The short answer is, yes, there have been many studies, and I can provide them to the committee. I won't go through the whole list, but I can provide you with probably seven or eight studies done by credible academic sources that demonstrate quite conclusively that the temporary foreign worker program has been used to suppress wages, and that it has increased unemployment rates in areas of the country where employers have used that program most aggressively.

To your earlier point, in defence of the temporary foreign worker program, I want to make it clear that we in the labour movement recognize there is a place for a program like the temporary foreign worker program, as long as it's used sparingly and that the workers brought into the country are used only to supplement the Canadian workforce as opposed to replace it. We are talking about the TPP right now and the labour mobility provisions included in that agreement. We're not talking about the temporary foreign worker program. The distinction I make—and there's a big one, a very important one, that should be front and centre in the minds of legislatures such as yourselves—is that this is a question of control.

We've seen previous governments not get the temporary foreign worker program right. We see the current government struggling with it, but at least you can control it, because it's a federal program. You get to fix it. You get to tweak it. You get to respond to Canadians' concerns. That will not be the case with the labour mobility provisions of the TPP. Once the agreement is signed, then this new approach for bringing temporary foreign workers into the country will no longer be under the control of the federal government. It will be subject to the terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an international agreement that's binding. You won't be able to fix it.

Please, if you're going to bring temporary foreign workers into the country, do it sparingly, and do it in small numbers, but keep it under the control of our elected representatives rather than handing it over to an international treaty that we cannot fix or amend—certainly not easily.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

You have a minute left.

[Karen Ludwig, Liberal, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

My other question is for Ms. Azocar regarding the pharmacare program. If the federal government did introduce pharmacare, as well as work together with the provinces on a national health care strategy, do you think that would be a benefit?

[Sandra Azocar]

That's what we have been asking for. Around 91% of Canadians support a national pharmacare program. However, the reason we support a national pharmacare program is that it will lower the costs, but if the TPP is implemented, we're not going to see the kind of savings we were hoping to see under a national pharmacare program.

[The Chair, Liberal, Mark Eyking]

Thank you.

We're going to move to the Conservatives now. We have Mr. Van Kesteren, for five minutes.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for being here.

Mr. Young, thank you for your service.

[Technical difficulty—Editor] on both sides. We've heard the pros, and we've heard the cons, and that's life. You're going to look at both sides.

Yesterday we had testimony from an architectural association that saw the need for this free flow of workers to outside of Canada. Of course, you're representing the side that is going to be coming to Canada. It's a different perspective, and I think it's something we have to examine as well.

Going back to the temporary foreign workers, if I follow your line of argument—and I want you to make this clear to me, because this is something that I want to be.... The opposition, in both instances, talked about the fish workers in Atlantic Canada, when there is a high unemployment rate in the region. Wouldn't it follow from that line of reasoning that we should be opposed to that as well?