Thank you, Chair.
On behalf of the members UFCW Canada, I thank you and welcome the opportunity to appear before the Standing Committee on International Trade to comment on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Before I begin however, I would like to bring greetings and regrets from our national president, Paul Meinema, who was unfortunately unable to appear here today.
UFCW Canada is Canada's leading private sector union. Together we are more than a quarter million Canadian workers strong. Together we are building a stronger future for UFCW Canada members, their families, and communities while protecting and promoting employees' rights, social justice, and equity for all.
UFCW Canada is a leading force for workers in the retail, food processing, and hospitality sectors. As part of Canada's most progressive union, our members live and work in communities from coast to coast in every province. Our members are your neighbours. They are your grocery clerk or the cashier you have gotten to to know. They work in meat-packing plants and hotels. Some work in nursing homes, drugstores, food-processing plants, and many other sectors of the economy.
Quite literally, our members help feed Canada. Whether it's moving livestock, picking the vegetables, or helping you with your groceries this week, it's our members who carry out that work.
UFCW Canada believes the Trans-Pacific Partnership is not a good deal for our members and Canadian workers. I'd like to outline a few of the concerns that led UFCW Canada to take this position.
With regard to industry, we're concerned about Canadian job losses. Some of those jobs would be our members and their families. The TPP will give foreign poultry and dairy producers an even bigger share of our market, which to us means that processing and production jobs in those industries are at risk. While owners and producers have been promised compensation packages, there has been no such commitment to workers.
Another concern is the Canadian auto sector, as we have members in the auto parts sector. A study by our friends at Unifor found that the TPP could lead to the loss of as many as 20,000 jobs in the Canadian auto sector by eliminating incentives to manufacture vehicles in Canada and increasing incentives for companies to source auto parts from low-wage countries.
Also, chapter 12 of the TPP lays out the labour mobility provisions in a way that undermines the interests of Canadian workers. This provision takes the worst aspects of the temporary foreign worker program and then strengthens them. The agreement prohibits Canada from imposing any limit on the number of foreign workers entitled to enter the country as long as they fall under one of the broadly defined categories of workers that Canada has agreed to admit. Canada is further prohibited from administering a labour certification test before the worker can be given a work permit. This agreement allows companies to bring in foreign workers to Canada to take jobs that Canadians are ready, willing, and able to fill. These workers will not be immigrants. They will have no path to citizenship. They won't fall under the existing temporary foreign worker program. Under the existing temporary foreign worker program, employers have to pay those workers the same wages as Canadian workers, and train and certify up to Canadian standards. The TPP will not even give these modest protections to exploitable foreign workers.
We also take issue with the higher drug costs. Canada already has the second highest per capita drug costs in the world. The TPP gives even more monopoly patent protections to drug companies than they currently have, meaning it will require more money from Canadians should they require drugs. It also puts a real strain on unions' collective bargaining when trying to negotiate future drug plans. Yet, the big pharmaceutical corporations will continue to fill their pockets and expand their bottom lines.
Finally, the TPP is an affront to Canadian democracy. Through its investor-state dispute settlement provision, corporations are able to directly sue democratically elected governments. Further, the TPP restricts an elected government's ability to pass any new legislation that may negatively affect a corporation's bottom line. This includes expanding public services like pharmacare.
UFCW Canada is not against trade. We also understand the nature of negotiations and know that we might not get everything we want, but we are against trade agreements that benefit global multinational corporations to the exclusion of Canadian workers and their families. We would prefer agreements that are more balanced and fair. While we have other concerns with the TPP, we will speak to those in our formal submission, which is on its way.
So far, through our analysis, it is our opinion that the cons far outweigh the pros in the TPP, and for those reasons we oppose it.
I would like to mention one final concern, which is the fact there have been no government impact studies on the TPP from what I'm told, and it's been very difficult to get some of the information on what the agreement really means for Canada and Canadians. If there is still time I would urge the government to consider these types of studies, especially in regards to this agreement.
Thank you.