Mr. Speaker, the House is considering putting in place a complex system for Canadian manufacturers of goods in order to lodge formal complaints if they believe they are receiving unfair competition from imports of similar goods made in the People's Republic of China. It is called Bill C-50.
How do my hon. colleagues think there could be fair competition between Canada and China, where workers' rights and job safety are far behind that of Canada, where child labour is still widespread, where permits and regulatory control are routinely bypassed by means of graft and corruption of government officials, and where environmental protection is far behind that of Canada?
Long time foreign service representative to China, Mr. Brian McAdam, described China as a climate of corruption. I wish to thank him for the input he has made to some of the questions I put forward to him, it was very insightful.
The American chamber of commerce in China has stated that the average industrial wage in China is about $4 an hour. Literally nobody in Canada makes such a low wage. How can the government expect our companies and our people to compete against such a system?
All of the above factors mean that a company in Canada, where workers have many rights, where child labour is no longer practised and has not been for years, where job safety is a major concern of everyone, and where environmental protection and regulations like building codes are taken seriously, would find it more costly to produce an item than a similar company in China.
One of the biggest differences is that prison labour is a fact of life in China. No matter what we like to think here or where we hope this goes, prison labour is a way of life in China. There are millions in prison for being pregnant without permission, shouting “Free Tibet”, working for women's rights, seeking religious freedoms to practice Falun Gong, and protesting the lack of investigation of the tragic events of the Tiananmen Square massacre which took place on the night of June 3 to June 4, 1989. That still has not been addressed to the satisfaction of the world stage.
Amnesty International has provided me with the following information:
Torture has been reported in the full range of state institutions, from police stations, detention centres and prisons to administrative “re-education through labour” camps and enforced drug rehabilitation centres. It has also been inflicted by officials working outside the criminal justice system, sometimes publicly, to humiliate, threaten or coerce. Methods of torture include severe beating, kicking, electric shocks, hanging by the arms, shackling in painful positions, exposure to extreme heat or cold, sleep and food deprivation.
Prison conditions are harsh, often with long hours of forced labour and inadequate medical care. Some dissidents not known to have psychiatric problems have been sent to psychiatric institutions where they have been forcibly injected with drugs. Reports of torture increase during periodic "strike hard" campaigns against specific crimes and during high-profile political campaigns like the current crackdown on the banned Falun Gong organization.Groups at particular risk include ordinary criminal suspects and migrant workers, religious and ethnic minorities, labour activists and political dissidents.
If this is what is going into in the agreement, I have to wonder what we are really doing here.
We all know that under Chinese law torture is prohibited in most circumstances. China has been called before the world stage a number of times with regard to these issues.
This is from Amnesty International's backgrounder: Jigme Sangpo has spent most of the past 40 years behind bars. He was first arrested in 1960 and sent to a re-education camp for allegedly subjecting the students to corporal punishment. He was arrested again in 1970 and sentenced to 10 years for his political activities. His latest period of detention began in 1983 when he was given a 15 year sentence for spreading counterrevolutionary propaganda after he put up a wall poster calling for Tibetan independence. The sentence was extended for five years in 1988 after he shouted slogans and a further eight years in 1991 after he shouted “Free Tibet” during a visit to the prison by the Swiss ambassador to China.
I have to wonder exactly where we are going. According to Amnesty International, at least 2,960 people have been sentenced to death and 1,781 executed in the last three months of China's strike hard campaign against crime. Amnesty International said today that more people were executed in China in the last three months than in the world for the last three years.
When we go into these types of agreements we should be looking very closely at the practices in these other countries. I do not want anybody here to get the idea that I am against free fair trade. I want to emphasize the word fair, fair not only in the marketplace but also fair to the people of the country with which we are willing to do business.
I have to wonder what is going on when we go into these agreements and these issues are not addressed. We like to stand here and say that if we do this, maybe the country of concern will come to the same understanding for their people as we do here in Canada. To me the word maybe is a big gamble.
I especially have to wonder when, in all sincerity, our trade with China is actually a deficit. We import approximately $10.5 billion from China yet we export a very small fraction of that. When we do this with a country whose movements against the Falun Gong, Protestants, Catholics and other religious groups and its lack of commitment to internationally agreed upon standards for human rights, one would think that all of us in the House should be concerned, especially when we consider the fact that our trade with China is so relatively small.
I have to wonder if our speed on this might have something to do with the fact that the Prime Minister's son-in-law is the chairman of the Canada-China Trade Council. Probably the largest company in China with any interest in China at all is the Power Corporation and it also has ties.
The government members are proud of saying that they support human rights. They like to stand up and say that they are caring and sharing and that they will not support regimes in one place or another that impact upon human rights, workers' rights, religious freedoms and free speech, and yet we still go down this road without those things being addressed, which causes me grave concerns.
The idea of a country the size of Canada, with a population of approximately 32 million, trading with a country with a population of over 1.5 billion people, should in all cases open up doors for trade expansion in Canada. Unfortunately, when we look at the reality, the country to which we will be opening our doors and competing against is a country that still believes in forced child labour and still practices forced prison labour, which puts our companies in dire straits for competition in the marketplace. Instead of waiting to address some of these issues, they should have been addressed before we went there.
I want everyone in the House to understand that there is nothing wrong with trade as long as it is free and fair. When practices, such as those that go on in China today, are not perceived as being free or fair, particularly as compared to our standard of living, I have to question the wisdom of where we are going.