Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be participating today and I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Windsor—St. Clair.
I will begin by reading the opposition motion:
That this House calls upon the government to respect the spirit of the evidence given by the Minister of International Trade before the Foreign Affairs Committee, who stated “I can assure you that we are not seeking an investor-state provision in the WTO or anywhere else”, by refusing to sign any trade agreement, such as the FTAA or the GATS, that includes a NAFTA Chapter 11-style investor-state clause.
I was very proud of the federal New Democratic Party for being in Quebec City at the peoples summit, particularly our opposition to chapter 11 of NAFTA and our concern that chapter 11 would essentially find its way into the free trade area of the Americas. Our underlying concern is the loss of democratic leverage in favour of a purely commercial agenda.
We allege the free trade agreement, NAFTA, and now the FTAA have been written by and for multinational corporations and not for people. The FTAA has been referred to by doubters as NAFTA on steroids. A Saskatchewan farmer some 80 years old refers to the FTAA as standing for fleeced and trampled all over again.
We heard most recently from the Conservative member who preceded me about our concerns with Metalclad v Mexico. It had tried to ban a toxic waste dump site but under chapter 11 Metalclad won. The parliamentary secretary challenges us to talk about democracy and point to any other trade agreement that is more democratic. With the investor state provision decisions are made behind closed doors by a tribunal. No arguments come outside those doors. I cannot think of anything less democratic than chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
There are other examples. The member for Cumberland—Colchester talked about UPS suing Canada Post because Canada Post owns 96% of Purolator. United Parcel Service is arguing that is an unfair trade advantage and is seeking many hundreds of millions of dollars in retribution from Canada Post. We have many concerns with chapter 11 of NAFTA being extended into the free trade area of the Americas.
Chapter 11 allows investors rights to challenge environmental laws and regulations, as in the Metalclad case, before international tribunals and to sue governments for compensation for profits lost due to government action to protect the environment.
Another example which springs to mind is Ethyl Corporation and the MMT decision that affected Canada. We paid out more than $10 million in damages to Ethyl. Never mind pristine water or a green environment, in our view this is mostly about greenbacks, especially American greenbacks.
It was examples like Metalclad, UPS and Ethyl that have caused us concern with chapter 11. As was stated earlier, we got a commitment from the Minister for International Trade that there would be no chapter 11 in the free trade area of the Americas. That was before Quebec City. The Prime Minister had lunch with Vicente Fox and George W. Bush and now says that chapter 11 is not so bad, and away we go. We appear to be not only stuck with it in terms of NAFTA, but I believe we will find at the end of the day that it is embedded in the free trade area of the Americas.
As Dalton Camp noted in a recent column in The Hill Times , chapter 11 was never designed for people. It was designed for corporate folk who own the media, some politicians and a few economists. Tens of thousands of protesters who were in Quebec City certainly know that chapter 11 was not designed for them.
Our critics and the Minister for International Trade say that anybody who is opposed to it is living in the last century. As I indicated earlier, one of the most underreported stories from the behind closed doors heads of state meeting in Quebec City was when an audio feed was inadvertently left on for part of what was supposed to have been a closed session. There were several leaders from smaller, poorer countries who spoke in that closed session and challenged the idea that unbridled capitalism was the best way to nurture democracy.
Just listen to the words of Alfonso Portillo, the president of Guatemala, who said in that closed meeting: The small economies are not the same as the big economies. Just to become the equals of big brothers, we will need to be treated accordingly.
The democracy clause was a big deal, probably the big deal, of the summit leaders. It was certainly flaunted by the Prime Minister. Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, said behind those closed doors that if democracy did not provide land, if it was concentrated in the hands of 2% of the population, they could not speak of democracy.
How can it be democratic when ordinary people in the streets are out there protesting, the vast majority of them very peacefully, but the corporations are buying their way inside the summit gates to curry favour with heads of state by paying a mere $500,000 or so?
Some of those elected leaders were saying what people outside were saying, that is, more than half of the population of the Americas, of which there are 800 million, live in poverty, and it is our contention that the free trade agreements have tended to widen, not narrow, the inequalities.
In fact, I just saw some documentation this morning. The essence of it was that over five years after NAFTA in Mexico the average wage has fallen some 20 cents or 30 cents an hour. Believe me, having lived in Mexico, I know what the hourly wages are in that country.
We do have a great deal of concern with regard to chapter 11. The New Democratic Party wants fair trade. We in the NDP say that there is a world of difference between fair trade and free trade. We want rules that reflect the common concerns for the welfare of all and the sustainability of our environment. It is our belief that when more people become more hungry or more impoverished, we are indeed all impoverished.
I also want to absolve the people who were arrested in Quebec City. There is the idea that those arrested were all the bad actors. We acknowledge, as I said earlier, that there were a few, but certainly not all who were arrested. Many innocent people were picked up, arrested and detained. I encourage people to look at the comments of Daniel Turp, a former esteemed member of the House in the last parliament, who was there watching over human and civil rights. He was quoted by the public press.
Let me just attempt to close by identifying with a statement by Paul Wellstone, the senator from Minnesota, that is, we are not against global trade but we are against greedy corporations that dominate that global trade. That is the essence of our concern with chapter 11 of NAFTA.