Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for the opportunity to offer input on the trans-Pacific partnership agreement.
My comments today will briefly speak to the devastating implications of this so-called free trade agreement. I'm broadly going to touch base on five basic topics: public services, jobs, human rights, state-owned enterprises, and legislative and regulatory authorities.
The TPP impacts public services such as environmental protection, energy provision, intellectual property, education, and child care. It also covers how other services are governed and regulated. These are all considered tradeable commodities. Investor state agreements erode democracy by transferring decision-making from the elected representatives to unaccountable negotiators and arbitrators. They protect multinationals against restrictive trade measures—that is, laws and regulations that are specifically designed to protect important public issues like the environment, health, safety, and financial stability.
With regard to jobs, the TPP will have long-term implications for jobs in Canada's auto and dairy industries.
It will benefit a select few by opening up our auto industry to low-wage competition at the expense of ordinary working families. The auto manufacturing sector will be especially hurt by the TPP, which includes significant reductions in local content requirements for vehicles and automotive parts. With the Canadian auto industry already reeling, it will now be forced to compete with low-wage parts sourced from other countries, which further leads to losses of thousands of good manufacturing jobs.
The impact on Canadian dairy and poultry farms is also of great concern, because the TPP threatens farmers' ability to continue to make a decent living wage while providing good, safe food for Canadians.
As for human rights implications, the investor state agreements will make it far harder to address climate change from a public policy perspective. Indigenous peoples who have been victimized by centuries of colonization and marginalization will be further marginalized as problems around poverty, lack of housing, lack of clean water, and lack of educational opportunities will be forced into more private sector solutions. Public opportunities for local development and training will be viewed as unfair trade barriers and will become market-driven and inaccessible. Social enterprises like Aki Energy, run by first nations in Manitoba, could be challenged as trade barriers. Instances of precarious work and inequality will increase. The more privatization is facilitated, the more the social, health, and cultural services we now take for granted will be sacrificed because a multinational can profit from their provision.
State-owned enterprises play an important role around economic development, regional development, social and cultural enhancement, and infrastructure development. The Canadian federal government has about 45 crown corporations, and they are targeted in the TPP in a way that facilitates their privatization. The negative listing provision makes it very difficult for governments to create new crown corporations or to expand the mandate of existing ones. New state-owned enterprises may be created to meet national or global emergencies, but only in a few specified instances. Rules requiring compliance with the rest of the TPP still apply. Existing privatization approaches, where they exist, are locked in for good.
Strong regulation over both public and private services is crucial for democracy, development, and the public interest. The TPP contains measures that control how public services ought to be governed. These measures restrict the right to legislate and regulate federally, provincially, and locally. Municipal water, municipal waste, electricity, and public transit are in greater danger of being privatized. Privatized services are more expensive and more arbitrary, and despite the rhetoric of risk transfer, the public still shoulders the risks, as well as long-term unaccountable debt.
In conclusion, for all the reasons outlined so far, we say no to the TPP. Signing this agreement will result in irreparable damage to our democracy, lost battles in ensuring the survival of the planet and the welfare of its human inhabitants, and a deepened and enshrined inequality.