Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to enter the debate on Bill C-32 regarding the Canada-Costa Rica free trade agreement. I think it is quite well known that the NDP party has great reservations about liberalized trade agreements, about the way Canada enters into these agreements and about the terms and conditions that are either within or fail to be within the agreements.
Our position is quite clear. We do not think Canada should enter into any free trade agreements or liberalized trade agreements that do not enshrine basic labour rights, environmental standards or human rights. We believe there is a role within trade agreements to deal with those social issues. We reject the argument that there is no other place for those other issues within trade deals of that nature.
I point out the irony that we should even debate or consider this bill in the legislature or in parliament. These free trade agreements are specifically designed to bypass freely elected legislatures and parliaments around the world. It is part of their job to provide a charter of rights and freedoms for corporations that bypass freely elected governments. Some of our ability to control our destiny within this country is taken away by these free trade agreements.
It may sound like a strong statement, but Ruggiero, the former head of the WTO, said that there was a surplus of democracy in the world that was getting in the way of the free movement of goods and services and capital. That is why we need free trade agreements to bypass this tedious democratic process that we spend our lives representing.
That in a nutshell sums up what the NDP's concern is about free trade agreements. There are people who actually believe that there is a surplus of democracy in the world which is interfering with the free movement of capital and investment. It is a frightening thought.
The Canada-Costa Rica free trade agreement resembles in many ways NAFTA, the FTAA, the GATS agreements and other free trade agreements. There are many similar features in it. There are no noticeable improvements. In other words, all the things we pointed out as flaws or omissions in those other agreements are not dealt with in this new Canada-Costa Rica free trade agreement.
Canada as a nation is dealing with challenges under the current free trade agreements under which we are living, NAFTA challenges, et cetera. I point out some cases where we are vulnerable to these challenges, one of which is dealing with the bulk sale of water. We just heard eloquent and passionate debates about Canada not getting into exporting bulk water, or the bulk sale of interbasin transfer of water.
The Americans, through the free trade agreement, are challenging Canada now. Sun Belt California is a company that is challenging Canada, saying that we have denied them economic opportunity by refusing to commodify our water resources. This is the kind of thing to which we are vulnerable.
Another issue is our postal service. We have chosen to have a federally owned postal service to deliver our mail. However, American companies such as UPS, have challenged that. They have said that this is a service they wish to provide and that they have a right to offer free competition in that arena. Because they want to provide the delivery of mail service, they have said that Canada cannot give Canada Post a monopoly on its courier service.
This is an example of where we are losing our ability to control our own destiny and shape the kind of country as we want it because of the free trade agreements we have entered into at times.
At the onset of my speech I mentioned that we are critical of any liberalized trade agreement that fails to recognize core labour, environmental standards and basic human rights issues. When we raise that, we are often told that by trading with less developed nations, those standards will be elevated by some kind of osmosis and that they will naturally come up to our level.
In other words, we will not go to the lowest common denominator, they will come up to ours. There is no empirical evidence anywhere in the world where that has been the case. In fact, the opposite has been true. The harmonization has been a downward trend, except in places where it is specifically contemplated and dealt with, such as the European Union.
The EU was a free trade agreement that the NDP could probably have endorsed. Over 20 years they carefully set out the terms and conditions that would not harmonize to the lowest common denominator. In fact, the less developed countries were brought up to a mean average at least.
We look at examples like the APEC meetings in Vancouver that resulted in riots and the pepper spray incident, et cetera. We objected to inviting somebody like Suharto to our country. We considered him an international criminal, a butcher. Yet we hosted him in our country. When we raised that as an objection the government said that by dealing with people like that and trading with them, we would pull them into the democratic world and would elevate their standards of labour conditions.
When we ended up pepper spraying our own citizens for having the temerity for a peaceful protest, it looked like we went down to his level. That kind of harmonization to the higher common denominator does not seem to happen. We are very critical of it.
There are specifics in the bill that I should deal with. First, the preamble of this hefty piece of legislation is written in such flowery language. It is almost poetic. It is almost beautiful to read the principles being espoused in that preamble. Unfortunately those same principles do not find any room within the actual text of the document.
It says that the Government of Canada and the government of Costa Rica have entered into this agreement to strengthen the special bonds of friendship among their peoples and to contribute to the harmonious development and provide a catalyst for broader international co-operation. They are all very lofty goals and wonderful principles that anybody would be happy to be associated with, until we see what it really translates into.
If our interest is really to elevate the standards of living conditions for people around the world and if it is true that the globalization of capital is supposed to bring with it the globalization of the rule of law, the globalization of human rights, the globalization of foreign labour standards, then where is it in this document? Where is it in the empirical evidence around the world where these trade agreements exist? It does not exist. It is a fraud. We are being sold a bill of goods here that do not translate into elevating anybody's standards. In fact, it has had a reverse effect. It has had a negative effect on wages and working conditions. It serves only one interest and that is the interest of global capital.
The NDP is concerned. I should make it clear there is nothing anti-free trade about the NDP or our party's policy. We are very much for free trade. Other speakers mentioned that we are more interested in fair trade. The world should develop and evolve, toward a fair, rules based trading mechanism, not a free hand in the market shall prevail and good luck.
Labour standards are of particular concern to me as a former trade unionist and labour leader. We have watched Costa Rica for many years. Frankly, Costa Rica has a terrible reputation for labour standards.
One of our criticisms about this trade agreement is the same as with NAFTA. It relegates labour issues to a side agreement. They are not found within the actual text of the document. All those annoying labour issues will be dealt with by a separate tribunal, which is slow, tedious, cumbersome, bureaucratic and has not given any satisfaction to the working people who object or have a legitimate grievance.
Costa Rica is notorious for its persistent denial of basic labour rights, especially the rights of freedom of association, collective bargaining and the right to withhold services.
All this agreement requires the parties to do is enforce their existing labour legislation. There is nothing in here about enhancing current labour legislation to bring it up to the highest common denominator. It just says that there is a requirement to enforce whatever labour legislation they have.
Costa Rica's labour legislation is woefully behind western standards or standards within the free world. It is another one of those countries, through no fault of its own but through its desire to bring economic development to its country, that has bought into this idea of free trade zones or economic trade zones. They are called export processing zones, or EPZs, in Costa Rica. These are areas that are excused from the pathetic legislation that exists in that country. These particular zones, these fenced compounds, do not have to live up to those regulations. It is a cowboy attitude toward labour standards.
We have watched Costa Rica develop over recent years. Whether it is Central America, South America and Costa Rica, there is no exception, they have what we call anti-worker Solidarista movements or phony union movements. They are unions of convenience, much like CLAC, the Christian labour alliance, in Canada. By voluntarily signing a contract with CLAC, real unions are prohibited from organizing in a particular workplace. These dummy unions have been organized nationally and are put place to try to keep bona fide unions from organizing. This was a conspiracy to deny people basic union rights and freedoms.
If we were sincere about elevating the standards of wages and working conditions of people in developing nations and using trade agreements to help do that as an instrument, then we would require our trading partners to adhere to the same standards of freedom and rights to association for collective bargaining that we give our workers. The agreement is completely and deliberately silent on that. We object to that. If nothing else it is a missed opportunity for those of us who do genuinely care about international development and moving society forward in a global way.
This is not the instrument to do that. Once again, this is an instrument of exploitation. If we do not say it here, there is certainly no opportunity for the working people of Costa Rica to object. This is happening above and beyond any input from them.
I stand in solidarity with my fellow working people in Costa Rica to object to this agreement and to any so-called free trade agreement that does not recognize core labour standards, the right to free collective bargaining and the basic principles that we take for granted in this country.
People say that trade unionists object to free trade agreements for selfish reasons because they are worried that their standard of living will be dragged down. Frankly, if labour and commodities are cheaper in one of our trading partner's country, there is nothing to stop Canadian or American companies gravitating to that country for manufacturing purposes.
I resent that and object to that position. I also resent the argument that we are worried about losing our good paying manufacturing jobs. We are worried. We would be crazy if we were not. The only sensible thing Ross Perot ever said in the election in the states was with regard to the great flushing sound of Canadian and American jobs racing to Mexico with the first free trade agreement. We noticed that and have not fully recovered from all the promises that those blue collar jobs would be replaced with better paying jobs. That has not happened among the neighbours that I know.
We are watching Canada negotiate badly on our behalf. Every time it enters into a trade agreement we are dumbfounded. What kind of negotiators are these people who negotiate on our behalf, go into these closed door meetings and sign deals like this?
When I was in Quebec City, I was outside the fence protesting while the negotiators were inside the fence signing yet another free trade agreement. There is kind of a cruel irony there as well.
This bill falls short of any of the lofty goals and principles that are talked about in the preamble of the bill. If the government were serious about doing something to move the global community forward in terms of bringing less developed nations up to our standard of living, I could endorse it.
The NDP caucus would happily buy into any kind of agreement that would move society forward in that way. Bill C-32 and bills like it keep people back. It does nothing to elevate the human condition on the planet.
I put it to the House that the Canada-Cost Rica a free trade agreement is less about eliminating trades and tariffs and more about institutionalizing a freedom that global capital enjoys today. It enshrines it in such a way that even freely elected democratic institutions like parliament cannot touch.
Members are made irrelevant by agreements like this one. Renato Ruggier, head of the WTO, said that there was a surplus of democracy in the world that was getting in the way of the free movement of goods, services and capital, and that therefore we needed free trade agreements to bypass annoying nuisances such as legislatures, parliaments, et cetera.
The best example is Ethyl Corporation. I am sure hon. members heard this case cited before in the House of Commons. We as a nation decided that it was bad to have MMT in our atmosphere and environment. MMT is poison as a gasoline additive; it kills people and causes cancer. We decided to ban and outlaw it.
However Ethyl Corporation which produces MMT said that we could not do that. It said that we were interfering with its right to capitalize on selling MMT. In other words there was a lost opportunity. It sued the Government of Canada because it had nation state status under the free trade agreements.
A company can sue a country because we allocated a nation state status to a corporate entity and it won. We had to back off. We had to pay it damages for lost opportunity because we as a nation decided that for our children's benefit we would ban a toxic chemical as a gasoline additive.
It was ruled that we could not do that any more. Somebody traded our right away. Some bright eyed negotiator on behalf of the Canadian government signed away our ability to protect our own environment in a free trade agreement.
It is not being alarmist to raise these issues. These are legitimate concerns and I am horrified by that. What did these people agree to? It is like sending Jack to the market with a cow and he comes back with three beans. There is no guarantee that any of those beans will even sprout. It is a serious concern and a legitimate issue.
Our NDP caucus, along with a significant number of Canadians who are concerned about the globalization of capital and the free for all interest in the free trade agreements, is disappointed. Speaking on their behalf, we are very concerned that we have failed to represent the real issues at hand.
If it is our goal, duty and obligation as elected members of parliament to elevate the human condition and to move society forward, how can we knowingly sign on to something like this which has the reverse effect? It broadens the gap between rich and poor by enshrining bad behaviour. It institutionalizes irresponsible corporate behaviour and locks people in developing nations into that situation and holds them back.
There is a missed opportunity here. This free trade agreement should specify that if a country wants to trade with Canada its standards of labour conditions have to be elevated in harmony to those of Canada. Otherwise Canada would not trade with it. If it wants to do business with Canada it must do something about the abominable, wretched labour conditions in its country.
We would then be using our position of privilege as a nation to help raise standards in that country. However there is no mention of that here. When we raise it we are told that it is a deal between economies, not countries, and that it is not our job to deal with social issues.
We are told that we cannot do anything about child labour, but if those children were burning bootleg CDs the economic community would intervene in a minute. It would be down there in a second to protect its intellectual property. In some cases it acts very quickly. In other cases it says child labour is not its issue. We should wait until child labour is bootlegging CDs to see how quickly it acts.
Bill C-32 does not deserve our support. It does not achieve what it should achieve as a free trade agreement. If the government were serious about free and fair trade this would be a far different bill.