Thank you very much for inviting us to speak today.
Trade Justice PEI represents 20 island groups and hundreds of individuals on Prince Edward Island who oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The idea that eliminating all barriers to trade will bring prosperity to us all is falling on hard times. Evidence and opinion are mounting against it. Most recently, Tufts University reports on both the CETA and TPP confirm that benefits from these deals accrue to the corporate elite rather than to workers, and also that seeking to boost exports as a substitute for domestic demand is not a sustainable growth strategy for Canada.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in Prince Edward Island where the agenda is driving unsustainable agricultural models, and at the same time taking away our democratic rights to legislate in the public interest. We have fish kills in many of our rivers year after year, and estuaries that go anoxic on a regular basis because of heavy inputs of nitrogen-based fertilizers.
Our current strategy for agriculture is weighted towards producing massive amounts of potatoes. This requires monoculture of a crop that is heavily dependent on high inputs of chemical fertilizers and pesticides that have devastating effects on our environment. P.E.I. ecosystems simply cannot support any more of this type of agriculture.
Our concerns with the TPP include its adverse impact on supply management and rural communities, the locking in of privatization, and also the single-minded focus on expanding industrial agriculture.
Today we want to talk about three issues: health care, ISDS, and labour rights. Loss of democracy is a thread through all of these three topics.
The requirement that Canada extend patent protection for pharmaceuticals blocks any future attempt by a government to control drug prices. It is estimated that it will cost islanders between $2 million and $3 million annually in increased drug costs. On P.E.I., services such as dialysis and emergency services in rural areas have recently been threatened due to budget cuts. An increase in drug costs will put further pressure on P.E.I.'s health budget, putting services at even greater risk. The rights given to corporations through the market access rules and investor-state dispute provisions create barriers to strengthening medicare. Bringing services such as pharmacare, dental care, and home care into the national public program would be exposed to challenge.
Investor-state dispute provisions in the TPP give corporations extraordinary rights to sue taxpayers whenever public interest legislation gets in the way of their profits. The tribunals which hear these cases are outside of the Canadian legal system and can order governments to pay corporations millions of dollars. It amounts to a huge transfer of risk from corporations to the public purse. That's unfair and it's anti-democratic.
As Atlantic Canadians, we're close to three NAFTA cases which demonstrate well the effect of ISDS on public interest legislation: the Bilcon case in Nova Scotia; ExxonMobil versus Canada, involving a Newfoundland job creation policy; and threats to New Brunswick's efforts to introduce public auto insurance in 2004.
P.E.I. is a very fragile ecosystem. Our only source of water is our groundwater, and demands from the community for policies protecting our land, rivers, and shellfish industry include a moratorium on hydraulic fracking, no drilling of oil in island waters, controls on land use, and a moratorium on high-capacity wells. These policies could all be targets of ISDS.
Under the TPP, companies doing business in Canada will be freer to transfer skilled trades workers and technical employees to Canada, even when Canadian workers are available to perform the jobs. In a high unemployment region such as P.E.I., this provision is particularly offensive.
Pro-TPP studies project tiny economic gains, and the models used are highly unrealistic. Critical studies using more realistic models predict increased inequality and job losses. Already 93% of Prince Edward Island exports to TPP countries are tariff-free.
