Good morning. I would first like to thank the Standing Committee on International Trade for this invitation.
The Réseau québécois sur l'intégration continentale, or RQIC, is a multi-sectoral organization of Quebec social organizations from the labour, grassroots and international development communities. The network focuses on free trade issues. RQIC's member organizations represent more than one million people.
I would like to begin with a necessary reminder. The World Trade Organization, the WTO, has a long history. This organization has been for many years, and rightly so, a major target of social movements around the world. The WTO has been the subject of major opposition. Think, for instance, of the WTO Seattle Ministerial Conference, which is associated with the birth of the anti-globalization movement, or those in Cancun and Hong Kong, among others.
The WTO has been criticized on many accounts, such as its lack of transparency, negotiations in favour of very large companies only, negotiations under strong constraints for the countries of the southern hemisphere, a lack of interest in social inequalities and environmental issues, an objective of privatization of services provided for in the General Agreement on Trade in Services, the very negative effects of WTO policies on small-scale farming, and so on.
Reforming the WTO is therefore a project that requires great ambition. Since the failure of the Doha Round, the WTO has operated in slow motion and has not proposed anything of real importance. Yet there has been no collapse or chaos in international trade, contrary to what was predicted.
Many have asked this question: is the WTO really useful if the path of multilateralism does not allow for a better hearing of the concerns of many southern countries and civil society organizations around the world?
One thing is certain; in order to reform, the WTO has a long way to go and a steep hill to climb. In this sense, Canada's proposals in the Ottawa Group seem to us insufficient to effectively reform the WTO. Indeed, strengthening the dispute settlement mechanism, revitalizing the negotiating function, and strengthening the deliberative function of the WTO will not bring about the much more fundamental reforms we expect of the WTO.
The WTO's problems are not about the functioning of its internal mechanisms and will not be solved by what we see as somewhat superficial changes. The Ottawa Group's plan unfortunately looks like a headlong rush and a refusal to listen to the many criticisms levelled at the WTO since its founding. What we are suggesting are changes, not to the form, but to the substance of the WTO's role.
The reformed WTO must completely overhaul intellectual property protection. By delaying the entry of generic medicines into the market, the WTO has reduced access to essential medicines for a large part of the population, especially in the south.
COVID-19 makes it more necessary than ever to remove WTO intellectual property constraints, as called for by, among others, Doctors without Borders, India, South Africa and many experts from around the world. Canada must support this demand, rather than oppose it as it has done. The lifting of these constraints should be allowed in any other emergency situation as well.
The reformed WTO must abandon its desire to systematically address non-tariff barriers. Rather than seeking to attack regulations, specifically environmental regulations, and often viewing them as protectionism, they should be encouraged. It is impossible to address a problem as grave as global warming by advocating unconstrained open markets and unrestricted movement of goods.
COVID-19 also made us realize how important it is to develop an economy focused on short circuits and to manufacture essential products locally.
More stringent regulation must also be developed in certain vital sectors, such as finance, to avoid, for example, a crisis like the one we experienced in 2007-08. This regulation must also apply to the Web giants and e-commerce.
The reformed WTO must exclude certain sectors from trade negotiations from the start. Canada has signed the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, recognizing that the protection of culture is incompatible with the liberalization of international trade.
Other sectors should also enjoy similar protection and be removed from the WTO negotiations, including agriculture, health and education.
The reformed WTO must address tax competition among states. Although the OECD already addresses this issue at the international level, we believe it is necessary that this issue also be addressed by an organization dealing with international trade. International competition clearly distorts trade competition and has the effect of attracting investment to the most tax-friendly countries, thereby increasing social inequalities and penalizing countries with the best social policies. The WTO should, among other things, defend a minimum tax rate for all member countries.
The task of reforming the WTO is thus considerable. It is clear that its original mandate to make international trade as free as possible no longer holds today and is leading to disaster. In the 26 years since its creation, social inequality has exploded and global warming has become one of the greatest threats we face.
COVID-19 revealed how neglecting the environment and weakening public services, direct consequences of WTO-backed liberalizations, have contributed to the spread of the pandemic. It is also clear to us that if the Doha Round had been completed according to the will of the WTO, we would be living in an even worse situation than we are now. We therefore hope that the Government of Canada will have the courage to propose real changes to the WTO and challenge an original mandate that cannot stand today.
In closing, I would like to point out that the time frame we were given to prepare this brief was quite short and our working conditions were quite difficult. We would like to have a longer time frame in the future.
Thank you very much for your attention.