Good morning.
The Réseau québécois sur l'intégration continentale (RQIC) is pleased to have this opportunity to share its point of view on the Canada—United States—Mexico agreement (CUSMA). My name is Claude Vaillancourt, and I am president of the Association québécoise pour la taxation des transactions financières et pour l'action citoyenne (ATTAC-Québec). Accompanying me is Normand Pépin, union research advisor at the Centrale des syndicats démocratiques (CSD).
The RQIC has been in existence since 1985, but took its current name in 1994. It defines itself as a broad multi-sectoral coalition bringing together Quebec social organizations from labour and community groups as well as those involved in international development. RQIC member organizations represent more than one million people.
RQIC's objectives are: to propose a vision of development that respects social rights, workers' rights and human rights, and to promote democracy, participation, respect for the environment and the elimination of poverty.
In terms of CUSMA, we at RQIC can only be pleased for Canada about the chapter on foreign investment protection, the infamous chapter 11, being removed. It gave companies the right to sue states for government measures that could harm their profits, even if those measures were geared toward protecting people and the environment.
However, we are disappointed with the Canadian government's attitude in the negotiations, because removing chapter 11 was a requirement of the Trump administration, whereas Canada wanted to keep the chapter until the last moment. That chapter was nothing more than a threat to the sovereignty of states.
That is a strange attitude for a country that, of the three NAFTA members, was the one that was the most sued—41 suits out of the 85 identified under NAFTA—and whose governments had to abandon enacting any public policies for fear of being sued. The deleterious effect of this chapter is not just about the millions of dollars to be paid in the event of a conviction. It is also about the regulatory chill when governments dare not take action to protect or improve the lives of their people.
RQIC is also pleased about the removal of the energy proportionality clause, another of its long-standing concerns. This clause forced Canada to basically never decrease oil exports to the United States, which of course limited our energy sovereignty, a situation that is not good for any country.
In addition, RQIC can only celebrate the fact that the general exception for cultural products has been maintained in the new agreement. This exception ensures that cultural products will not be considered like other products in CUSMA, and it will enable Canada to put in place the necessary measures to protect our artists and their productions.
As for the environmental and labour issues, we have significant differences of opinion with Minister Freeland. While we agree that it was essential that those two issues be included in the agreement as a separate chapter rather than as side agreements with no functional enforcement mechanisms, we need more than that before we can call this agreement progressive. Minister Freeland was here a few days ago to state that CUSMA requires signatory parties to “maintain high levels of environmental protection and robust environmental governance.” What we are seeing instead is that CUSMA is not doing nearly enough to address climate change. Chapter 24 on the environment mentions some good intentions in this regard, but it remains insufficient and completely inadequate in terms of responding to the climate emergency in which we find ourselves. The words “climate change,” “warming” and “emergency” are actually absent from this chapter. There is no mention of the Paris agreement. There are no targets and no binding measures against the major polluters.
CUSMA continues to promote a type of economy based on massive exports and long routes, which favours major movements of goods and high consumption of hydrocarbons. There are no measures to support the energy transition we need. On the contrary, it will require new regulations that go against the immediate interest of some corporate polluters. Chapter 28 on “good” regulatory practices—we will come back to this later—will, in our opinion, have a deterrent effect that will place heavy constraints on governments wishing to adopt regulations to protect the environment and allow a shift to green energy.