Mr. Speaker, the president of Mexico's address to Parliament has given the Liberals one more chance to sing the praise of the NAFTA, the free trade agreement they were elected to oppose.
Canadians who were suspicious about the NAFTA during the last election still ask who really benefits from the NAFTA. Ordinary Canadians? No, wages have not been falling fast enough for investors so Canadian manufacturing jobs continue to move to low wage Mexico. Just ask the workers cast off at Kenworth in Montreal.
Have ordinary Mexicans benefited? No, their standard of living was decimated after the peso crisis and, as reported today by the Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America, human rights abuses continue to plague the political system, and not just in Chiapas.
New Democrats speak for those who want to build a North American prosperity that is widely enjoyed by all the citizens of our countries, not only by the financial markets. At the very least the Canadian government needs to press the Zedillo government to respect human rights. The NAFTA needs an enforceable code of
labour rights and enforceable environmental standards that would hold up a basic standard of responsible corporate citizenship.