Mr. Speaker, I want to start my comments today by welcoming this opportunity. It is a continuation of the speech I was giving yesterday on the water bill and the exposure that these types of trade agreements have meant to Canada.
The first comment I want to make is with regard to the report published in the last year and a half on the negotiations that went on around the MAI. The report I want to make specific reference to, because it seems to be very appropriate given the motion before the House today, was prepared by Madam Catherine Lalumière, who is a European member of parliament.
In her report she goes through some analysis of what happened leading up to the dismantling of the negotiations on the MAI. She credits a number of the non-governmental organizations that raised opposition to it. Of course as we all know that ultimately culminated in France withdrawing from those negotiations and the negotiations collapsing.
She has prepared a report out of that and has made a number of recommendations that I believe are very appropriate and timely for the discussion today. One of those is a blanket recommendation that says there should be no investor state claims. She analyzed what happened with NAFTA, looked at the cases that have been repeatedly mentioned today and said no to investor state claims.
The report goes on to say there should be no general treatment clause given to foreign companies so that they have an integral and constant protection. There is to be none of that. It says to impose limits on expropriation claims—so those are some of the rules the parliamentary secretary seems to be referring to—in order to prevent their use against all regulation or public legislation that reduces the economic value of economic foreign investment. The report says that effectively that is what NAFTA did. The report recommends just the opposite.
There are many more than the four recommendations I will mention, but one final one is a recommendation for continued governmental rights to establish performance requirements. By that they mean public benefits from foreign investment.
Because of my own ethnic heritage I want to talk about the European Union model and its impact on the state of Ireland. Again, that model is fundamentally and philosophically different from the free trade agreement, from NAFTA and from the FTAA, should we ever, God forbid, get to that.
I was in Ireland in the mid-nineties just as the effect of the capital transferred from the European Union was beginning to allow the economy in that country to develop. I watched as it progressed over the last half dozen years to where it has become a much more vibrant economy. However, that is an entirely different model. It allowed that country to move forward. It allowed it to in effect move from somewhere back in the twenties or thirties as far as the development of their economy was concerned into this millennium in a very short period of time. If we had applied the NAFTA rules there, none of that would have happened in Ireland, nor would it have happened in Portugal, which has had a very similar experience.
As my colleague has already mentioned, there was perhaps from the perspective of the government the unfortunate experience of someone leaving a button turned on. The international trade minister was quoted, as we have heard in some of the comments from our colleagues in the Alliance, as to how the trade agreements are the miracle solution to poverty. The trade minister was quoted as saying “It is not the market or trade per se that can eliminate inequality”.
Even the international trade minister recognizes that these treaties and agreements are not the be-all and the end-all. Again as my friend has already indicated, all we have to do is look at the Mexican experience. He was struggling at one point for the dollar figure. Let me quote it because I do have it available. Remember that NAFTA came into effect in 1993. Between 1994 and 1999 wages dropped in Mexico. The average hourly wage dropped from $2.10 an hour to $1.90 an hour. That was the experience Mexico had.
There are a number of other indicators, the maquiladoras probably being the best example, of the type of consequences of those agreements where there are no protections for labour standards, human rights or the environment, all of which are protected and guaranteed in the European Union model.
I will spend a moment on the Auto Pact. I have long time personal experience with that particular trade agreement which was done away with as a result of one of those rulings by those faceless bureaucrats who make these decisions.
If we look at that as a model, we are constantly being accused as a party and as a movement of opposing trade. Nothing is further from the truth. That agreement had the support of our party since its inception. What did it do? It allowed cities such as Windsor, London, Oshawa and a number of others to develop very vibrant economies and well-paying jobs for the labourers who worked in those plants. We did not have that as a result of the FTA or NAFTA. That was all there before.
We also constantly hear the government talk about the $1.2 billion a day of trade that goes on. A great deal of that preceded the FTA and NAFTA and was related to managed trade in the form of the Auto Pact.
I will move to some comments that have come out in the last couple of days and which cause us great concern around the issue of the use of chapter 11.
Specifically, in the Edmonton Journal this morning Mr. Bill Turner, a businessman and interestingly the natural resource advisor to the governor of New Mexico, said:
Canadians will some day consider water a prized commodity rather than a natural, protected resource. And all it will take, all it will take is court action to loosen Canada's grip on its envied supply.
If we read between the lines, he is talking about a chapter 11 application.
We will see that come unless we do something as a government and as a society to stop that. However that is what we will be faced with unless we do away with the chapter 11 type of protection for multinational corporations in the private sector.
It is very clear that the motion before the House is not a motion that opposes the liberalization of trade. It is about a policy that will require this government and future governments to protect Canadians' rights to have an economy that is not based just on profit for multinational corporations, but a society that will allow people to develop their environmental concerns, their labour standards and their human rights in a safe and protected manner.