Please, I'll explain. When we were first invited, we also asked if Hector could join us and split our time. That's what we've decided to do. We'll do five minutes and five minutes, and that will make up Unifor's time. I only learned about the extra 10 minutes today, so it was too late to fill in the blanks on the comments. I'll go first, if you'll indulge me; then we'll go to Hector.
Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the committee. As was said, my name is Angelo DiCaro. I am the national director of research for Unifor.
Unifor is Canada's largest union in the private sector, representing more than 315,000 workers in nearly every industry, from coast to coast to coast.
I want to thank the committee for the invitation to speak today on Bill C-4 and the implementation of CUSMA, and I bring greetings from our national president Jerry Dias and national secretary-treasurer Lana Payne.
I also want to thank the committee for allowing me to share my time with Hector de la Cueva, a friend and an ally of our union, who is with us on video conference from Mexico City. Hector is the general coordinator of Mexico's Labor Research and Trade Union Advisory Center, and he has been a key point of contact for us throughout these NAFTA negotiations.
I want to open my remarks by stating what's probably the obvious. NAFTA has been a very challenging deal for working people, with many negative effects over time.
lt was an agreement built to limit democratic controls over trade and investment and tie the hands of government policy-makers. lt was one of the first agreements to establish private tribunals that investors could use to challenge Canadian regulations and potentially sue governments for unlimited sums of money. lt conceded sovereignty of Canada's energy production to the United States. And despite the obvious competitive pressures that “free trade” would put on workers in all three countries, NAFTA and its negotiators simply paid no mind.
A generation later, we have seen the outcome: a manufacturing trade deficit with Mexico that has ballooned from $3.5 billion at its onset to more than $27 billion today—half of that in the auto sector alone, including parts.
We've seen a workforce pressured by wage cuts and threats of job loss to low-wage right-to-work states or Mexican export processing zones. If you want examples, you don't have to look too far, considering the recent struggles we faced at Nemak, in Essex, and of course our fight with General Motors assembly operations in Oshawa.
These job dislocations happen largely because of NAFTA. They happen because businesses have unconditional access to markets. lt's why companies can sell here but have no obligation to build here.
In light of that, it's almost impossible for our union to be fully satisfied with the outcomes of CUSMA. Unifor members in Kitimat and in Saguenay, for instance, are rightly upset about the unequal treatment the aluminum sector received regarding aluminum content rules for automobiles. It's a problem that needs addressing.
Our members in the softwood lumber industry are still disadvantaged by unfair duties on exports, deepening our already challenged forest industry.
But while we are paying close attention to these concerns, there are, without a doubt, important advances in this deal, led by Minister Freeland and her team, that deserve support.
ln CUSMA, for the first time, tariff-free auto trade is now conditional on high-wage production. It's not a silver bullet, but it is a new tool to help stop the bleeding of investment to low-wage factories and an attempt to incentivize an upward pressure on low-wage production.
ln CUSMA, for the first time, Canada has scrapped its investor-state dispute settlement system, or ISDS. This is very good. Frankly, we would encourage the federal government to go one step further in its implementation efforts and direct the removal of ISDS from all other trade agreements that Canada currently has.
CUSMA also reclaims our energy sovereignty. lt maintains our cultural carve-out and reverses course on certain bad cultural policies enacted under the Harper government.
Most importantly, it establishes important fixes to pre-existing language and groundbreaking new provisions that address workers' rights—provisions that have been made even stronger, thanks to recent changes outlined in the protocol of amendment.
CUSMA's labour provisions not only exceed the terms of the original NAFTA, but they exceed provisions in any trade agreement negotiated ever since—provisions that I, personally, would have thought impossible to achieve even three years ago.
Now, we are not so naive as to think that CUSMA, by itself, fixes the deeply entrenched anti-worker practices in Mexico. If anyone thinks that, then they don't have a clear read of the problem in Mexico.
The implementation of this agreement must come with clear commitments that Canadian officials will work with their Mexican counterparts to finance rights-based community support projects and fully resource a proactive investigative approach to the rapid response mechanism.
All of this must be done in consultation with trade unions and worker advocacy groups in Mexico, like Hector's.
With that, I will pass the rest of my time over to Hector for his comments.