Thank you.
My name is Tony Reddin. I'm a volunteer with Sierra Club here on P.E.I. As hopefully you already know, Sierra Club is the oldest environmental public interest organization in North America. I want to speak especially about environmental issues, and in particular climate change and how the TPP will have a negative effect on action that we can take to mitigate climate change which, as we understand it as citizens, is a big priority for this federal government.
To begin, I think it's worth remembering that our planet is in trouble. Widespread deforestation has accelerated and creates biodiversity loss and soil erosion. World fisheries are on the verge of collapse. Climate disruption stands to destabilize world food supplies, undercut economic development, and threaten communities with extreme weather and sea level rise. It already does threaten communities, and we've seen many examples of that, including here on P.E.I.
As we move toward these planetary tipping points, strong climate policies, ambitious environmental laws, and decisive government action are desperately needed, and “action” is the key word here. I appreciate this chance to speak and have you listen, but action is what we need, and the sooner the better.
Unfortunately, right when we need active policy-making most, investment rules in these trade agreements such as the TPP are restricting the ability of governments to set policies in the interest of the public.
While foreign investment in international trade can help to drive economic development, current rules go way too far in granting broad privileges to corporations at the expense of public welfare and the environment, and the most harmful of those rules are due to be expanded in the TPP.
The Sierra Club in the United States has done some terrific documents on these issues, and I'll forward you the main one that I'm quoting from. It's on the TPP and various environmental agreements, especially multilateral environmental agreements that Canada and the U.S. have signed. The TPP environment chapter fails to honour those agreements. They're international agreements we've signed, and yet the TPP could weaken or destroy those agreements which are critical for environmental protection.
I won't talk about all of them, of course. There's the agreement on climate change, which we are all familiar with. It was signed in Paris. There's a standard that's set for agreements like this, and earlier ones, in terms of whether we're going to honour them. For that, it would require countries to live up to their commitments in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that was signed in Paris, or is in the process of being signed. It would require them to explicitly protect the ability of countries to adopt, maintain, and implement rules and policies to address climate change, including greenhouse gas emission standards, feed-in tariffs, a carbon cap or tax, and any related border tax adjustments, renewable energy programs, government programs that cultivate local production of clean energy and green goods, and energy efficiency standards or labels.
The TPP environment chapter doesn't even mention the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and yet, as we can clearly see, increased trade, as is expected, would significantly increase climate-disrupting emissions because it would spur increased shipping. It would increase consumption, which is again going to increase emissions, and would increase fossil fuel exports. There are some really enlightened examples of this that I hope to get to. Despite those connections and the likelihood that the TPP would increase emissions that cause climate change, the TPP fails to even mention the words “climate change”. An earlier draft did include that, but it was changed in the final agreement.