Madam Speaker, the purpose of the amendments brought forward by New Democrats today is to commit the government to reporting to Parliament regularly on its activities in the World Trade Organization and especially on the progress toward the development of a social clause to the WTO. In this way we can keep the momentum going for a social clause by ensuring that the public spotlight is kept on the government's policy on this important issue.
A social clause is needed so that the WTO can address not only classic trade disputes between nations but also the problem of what has become known as social dumping, that is a nation's competitive advantage that results from unregulated labour markets and lack of environmental protection regulations.
During the Marrakech conference where the Uruguay round of the GATT negotiations drew to a close, expectations were high that the final text of the agreement would include a social clause.
Although the Americans and the French were pushing hard for one, nothing came of those negotiations. The Minister for International Trade was quoted in the press at the time as saying that he was lukewarm to the idea.
The purpose of the amendment is to get a categorical commitment from the government to be actively involved in the development of a social clause in the WTO agreement.
The idea of a social clause is one which enjoys wide support around the world as a necessary counterweight to the liberalization of investment. As a constitution for the new world order of the global marketplace, the WTO agreement as it stands is remarkably one sided in its defence of the rights of investors and silent on the rights of workers. It pretends that labour, social security and the environment are not trade issues.
It is eloquent about the multinationals' right to intellectual property and to the free movement of capital but says nothing about the workers' rights to form trade unions or to have a safe workplace. It speaks loudly about level playing fields but is silent about the most important playing field of all, the one between the employer and the employee.
A social clause is needed to strike a balance between the market efficiencies of liberal trade and investment practices and the social solidarity of all communities that want basic human rights and decent employment practices enforced everywhere where capital is free to come and go.
The multinationals can and do now operate outside the regulatory reach of individual states. We must in partnership with our trading partners establish some way of restoring the abilities of communities to set the ground rules for the marketplace. An unregulated global market effectively allows the multinationals to hold an auction to see which countries will bid the cheapest and least regulated labour and the most lax environmental standards in order to get their investment.
If we do not establish some basic rules about the labour markets and environmental protection, globalization will certainly remain what many observers have called a race to the bottom.
This is the view of the International Labour Organization secretariat which earlier this month recommended to the governing body of the ILO that there should be a social clause to the WTO. This is also the view of the joint committee that recently reviewed Canada's foreign policy. Its report included a recommendation that there should be a co-ordination of international labour and social standards.
I look forward to hearing the views of the members of the committee who can support this amendment as a way of putting their recommendation into action.
During the recent visit of Team Canada to China and the Prime Minister's attendance at the APEC conference in Indonesia, the Prime Minister claimed that the best way to address the problem of human rights abuses in China, Indonesia and elsewhere was to engage in trade to open up these societies. There is nothing in the WTO that prevents countries from joining the WTO, trading with member states and continuing to abuse human rights,
denying workers the right to join independent unions, or allowing child labour.
Support for a social clause which would link trade benefits to basic human and social rights is the only way for us to begin a true commitment to using trade as a way of improving human rights situations in many countries. Without such a clause, the WTO legislates a turkey shoot where the multinationals and their allies in some developing countries can exploit the most vulnerable.
Support for a social clause is the obvious response to globalization by anyone who is not hypnotized by the neo-Liberal rhetoric that the development of world markets unfettered by democratic control is the inevitable and unstoppable result of new technology.
The new technologies in telecommunications and in information technology certainly make it possible for capital to move instantly around the globe or for technologies to be transferred between states very easily. It does not mean that it is necessary for us to let the elites in the multinationals use that technology without any obligations to the communities where they operate.
Globalization as it is now occurring with multinationals glorying in their freedom from democratic responsibility is not an impersonal force of technological innovation. It results from the deliberate choice of governments to liberalize trade and investment policies, to hand over to the multinationals a carte blanche to design a world order that suits their wants and interests. We should not let the free market rhetoric blind us to the fact that we can choose to win back some measure of our ability to impose some community standards on the trade and investment practices of the multinationals.
The idea of a social clause to the World Trade Organization has been opposed by some governments of developing countries as a baldly protectionist measure to deprive developing countries of their competitive advantage in low labour costs and general lack of regulation.
If it is protectionist to protect children from exploitation as virtual slaves, to protect workers who do not enjoy the basic human rights of forming unions or having a safe place to work or to protect the environment from rapacious multinationals then we have no embarrassment in saying that we are protectionists. We have to resist the way that the rhetoric of free trade has perverted the word protection so that any public intervention to protect any public good whatsoever is deemed to be a threat to prosperity.
A social clause to the WTO however would not even fall under the conventional definition of protectionism as regulations that unfairly restrict the legitimate economic opportunities of another country. The proposals that have been made by supporters of a social clause, like the ILO, France and the United States, simply call for a set of minimum standards of the rights of workers to form unions. The effect of such a clause would not only be to respect the rights of workers around the world but also to bring economic benefit to the entire world economy.
It is astounding that advocates of market liberalization trumpet the growth that supposedly results from open world markets during a time when liberalization has led in the developed countries to chronic high unemployment and falling income for workers.
The introduction of a social clause would be an important step forward in raising global demand, thereby stimulating investment and consumption. The advocates of the liberalization of world markets assumes that as developing countries become more prosperous internal social pressures are generated from a maturing and self-confident workplace to insist on higher wages and better working conditions as happened in the industrialized countries.
This assumption fails to recognize that the vast pool of unemployed workers in rural sectors in the economies of east and south Asia for example creates a huge drag on the ability of wages to rise at a reasonable level. Moreover it ignores the fact that workers in many developing countries do not enjoy the basic democratic right to form unions that would allow them to improve their condition. An essential ingredient to raising global demand is therefore to intervene in the world labour markets and to let natural economic forces raise wages. We can thus begin a process of transforming globalization from a race to the bottom into an upward spiral in the living standards of all people around the world.