In our recent budget, the government predicted, just based on its own budgetary decisions, that the unemployment rate in this province is going to rise to almost 20% within the next five years, that the labour market is going to be reduced to the same numbers that it was in the year 2000, and that economic growth will slow down, obviously, because of that. We are already seeing signs of that. We are already seeing the closure of some manufacturing places. Scotsburn dairy just closed down last week, throwing 300 people out of work.
That's happening anyway. Obviously, in a resource-based economy, the price of oil and the decisions the government makes are having an impact on that. When you throw in what can happen....
We already, as a nation, export a lot of raw materials. When we talk about diversification, we are talking about how to change that. How do we export things that are already finished, value-added? That will be restricted under the ISDS. Anything that has local procurement or, from our point of view, anything that will make it a little easier to employ Newfoundlanders and Labradorians will be challenged and has been challenged already under previous trade agreements.
Besides the actual loss of employment that we see predicted from this, the other thing is the downward pressure on wages from things like an influx of temporary workers or skilled workers from the countries that signed the TPP. Although they talk about labour standards, there is nothing written in the TPP that's going to ensure that those labour standards ensure a good quality of life: there are no minimums there, and there is no enforcement, or the enforcements that are mentioned are very weak. Those things in the trade agreement are real signals for us that it is not going to benefit workers in this province.