Thank you very much.
Thank you for inviting me here to speak on behalf of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, or CUPE. CUPE is the largest union in Canada. We represent over 700,000 workers across the country in about 2,000 different local unions working in diverse sectors for both public and private sector employers.
CUPE welcomes the improvements to the updated NAFTA, but we believe that some flaws remain, ones that create barriers, for example, to effective climate action and for protection of public services. Furthermore, one that we don't think there's enough information about is the language on regulatory co-operation.
In our view, the agreement falls short of a progressive deal. Instead, it could be better thought of as moderate improvements to an outdated and ineffective model of trade and investment treaties.
We do applaud the changes to the intellectual property chapter that House Democrats in the United States were able to negotiate in December. That will avoid projected cost increases to medicines. Under the initial text, we would have been required to extend data protection periods on biologic medicines from the current eight years to 10 years. Those longer data periods extend the time it takes for cheaper generic versions of biologics to be available. That will be helpful when we introduce a universal national pharmacare program, making it more affordable to do that. The IP chapter also allows for domestic regulation of evergreening now, which was a practice where drug companies made small and medically inconsequential changes to medicines to obtain a new patent. The previous version had not allowed regulations to prevent that, but now we will be able to regulate against that practice, which inflates drug prices at no benefit to patients. We're really glad to see those particular changes, as we think that a national pharmacare program is really important.
Labour rights have been strengthened through the new rapid-response mechanism between Canada and Mexico. As you know, if a specific workplace is suspected of violating freedom of association or collective bargaining rights, which are constitutional labour rights in Canada, an independent panel of labour experts can investigate. One gap in this mechanism is that it's restricted in terms of what work it covers. The facilities that are covered don't include agriculture, forestry and fisheries, which are where a lot of labour rights violations involving migrant workers would occur. This rapid-response mechanism basically leaves out migrant workers, even though migrant workers rights are in the full chapter on labour rights.
We're encouraged that the burden of proof for labour and environmental violations has shifted; all violations are now assumed to impact trade and investment unless proven otherwise. What had been shown in United States history is that in including that little clause, you had to prove it was connected to trade violations. That made it virtually impossible to ever meet that burden of proof. Removing that gives the potential for the labour chapter to be enforceable. We'll have to see how that plays out, but it's definitely encouraging. It's a significant improvement over the original NAFTA labour side deal. It includes clear language that commits each country to implement policies that protect workers against wage and employment discrimination on the basis of sex, including with regard to pregnancy, sexual harassment, sexual orientation, gender identity and caregiving responsibilities, which is really important. This mainstreams a gender lens into the labour chapter.
We're encouraged that the environmental chapter now recognizes the obligations that nations may have from some international environment treaties. We think that what often tends to happen is that we sign these international treaties, but we can't be held to them; they're not as binding as a trade treaty and so a trade treaty always trumps the environmental treaty. If we can include references in our trade treaties to the importance of these environmental treaties or labour treaties that we've signed onto, that would help balance the playing field. It's problematic that the Paris climate agreement is not one of the recognized treaties. That means that NAFTA continues to ignore the threat of climate change and limits government responses to deal with the crisis.
We know that Canada has to act quickly to respond to the climate crisis and that transitioning the economy in a fair and rapid manner will require expanded public services, increased public ownership and revitalized not-for-profit sectors. There would also be benefits to a much stronger role in government regulating the economy and providing direction through green industrial strategies, for example, as Ontario tried to do but was not able to because of trade deal restrictions in procurement.
We definitely think that, for a new generation of trade to transition quickly, we need to look at how trade agreements are putting barriers in place.
The regulatory co-operation chapter locks in Canada's current approach to regulating. It gives multinational industrial interests several entry points into Canada's regulatory system. One of the key issues is the focus on regulating based on scientific evidence. This sounds like it's good but limits your ability to use the precautionary principle, which is what Europe uses in order to regulate health and safety. If you can imagine, make a case for why something could possibly cause harm if you can't regulate it until you've let it out into the marketplace and it has actually caused harm. We think that's problematic.
We think that, overall, our approach toward trade and investment should be to view it as means to enhance our financial and social well-being, not as an end in its own right. We think that proposals for a progressive trade agenda, as we're going forward, should be judged against principles such as human rights—including social, cultural and environmental human rights—and that people's rights and their environmental rights should have primacy over corporate and investor rights. There need to be legally binding obligations on transnational corporations. These treaties should not just be about the rights of transnational corporations; they should also enforce their responsibilities.
Democratic governments need to maintain their policy space to pursue and prioritize acting in the public interest. We're often told that we're able to, but again and again we come up against governments that say they cannot do something because they've signed a trade deal and are restricted. When that is the case, there's a conflict there. A climate friendly approach should be adopted whenever we're pursuing trade and investment. That's absolutely unquestionable from this point forward.
We're also disappointed that there will not be a full and transparent public process of consultations prior to the federal government's ratifying the deal. We recommend that, in the future, the committee's deliberations should be informed by an independent analysis of the deal's impact on our economy. The analysis should look at the critiques of the current CGE model for economic assessment, and it should look at, as was pointed out in the previous section of the panel, what you are comparing it to. Are you comparing it to no NAFTA or to what we had before?
Thank you very much.