Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak in the House today at third reading on Bill C-9, An Act to implement the Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States (ICSID Convention). The NDP is opposed to the bill and I will outline some of the reasons that we are opposed to it.
This is a bill that, on the face of it, looks fairly innocuous. It deals with a dispute mechanism. It involves the World Bank. It involves the status of multinational corporations when they are dealing with investment in foreign countries and ensuring there is a dispute resolution process.
On the face of it, it looks fairly reasonable, but when we dig a little bit deeper we find that this just skims the top in terms of what the bill represents in terms of a global regime that has seen over the last 20 years a massive transfer of power from governments to multinational corporations under the World Trade Organization under these trade agreements.
I would note that the Deputy Speaker, the member for Elmwood—Transcona himself, as a member of the House, has played a very active role. Mr. Speaker, I know you have been very involved with the NDP over the years when we fought the multilateral agreement on investment and the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas in Quebec City. Now we are dealing with the so-called security and prosperity partnership agreement that involves Canada, the United States and Mexico.
Mr. Speaker, I know you are very familiar and have a lot of credibility and a long record on dealing with these massive trade agreements that impact and undermine the democratic rights of Parliament and other states, and creates an enormous gulf in terms of the ability of citizens to organize themselves to have an impact on how these agreements come about and how they are dealt with in terms of disputes and the decisions that flow from them.
When we looked at Bill C-9 and had discussions in our caucus, we came to the conclusion that we could not support the bill.
The ICSID, as it is called, is part of an international trade and investment regime that has come under very harsh criticism from civil society because it does confer unprecedented powers to multinational corporations through bilateral investment treaties.
One of the concerns that I raised earlier today is that through this agreement there is no place for third party testimony. There is no accountability, no transparency and no openness or disclosure that would allow local organizations in an affected community or a labour union to come to the table and be part of the dispute resolution mechanism that is contemplated in this agreement unless there is consent by both parties involved in the arbitration, which is probably very unlikely. It makes it very inaccessible to local communities and third party stakeholders who would be impacted by the decisions being made. We believe that is a problem with the bill but that is just the tip of the iceberg.
A question was asked in the House yesterday by a Conservative backbencher who was congratulating the Minister of International Trade on his announcement that Canada has now concluded a free trade agreement with Peru. The Conservative member for Kelowna—Lake Country was asking the Minister of Labour whether the agreement with Peru would now provide labour rights protection in Peru. Not surprisingly, the Minister of Labour stood in the House and crowed that the trade agreement with Peru would deal with an improvement in labour rights, that everything would fine and that we should not worry about it. The Conservatives were patting themselves on the back.
I raise that issue because it is a very current example of the nature of these agreements and how they completely violate and undermine labour rights. They do nothing to be proactive in protecting very serious labour situations.
Yesterday the Minister of Labour claimed in the House that this international trade agreement with Peru will give protection to labour rights. On January 18 information came from the Peruvian workers' union denouncing the fact that over 3,000 workers have been dismissed in that country for organizing trade unions. Labour rights are virtually non-existent. Something is not right with this picture.
Ministers are trying to assure the public that people's basic human rights around labour, child labour, the environment and social standards are being protected and yet we have very concrete examples to tell us that in places such as Peru, which is just one example, there are very serious situations. Workers in that country are being undermined and their rights are being violated all the time.
In October 2007 the International Trade Union Confederation prepared a report for its general council and reviewed trade policies in Peru. This is a very current report. It is quite clear about the fact that there are very serious problems in that country. The recommendations in the report made it very clear that the government of Peru should amend its legislation to conform with the International Labour Organization's conventions 87 and 98. Convention 87 has to do with the freedom of association. Convention 98 has to do with the right to organize and the right to collective bargaining.
I find it contradictory that on the one hand a minister of the Conservative government is trying to assure us that everything is okay and that he has negotiated something that is going to protect those workers and yet the representatives of workers in that country are portraying a completely different reality. That is something of concern to the NDP.
We in the NDP believe that as parliamentarians we have a responsibility to not only uphold these international conventions that protect labour, human rights and the environment in our own country, but we also have a responsibility to speak out in the international community to make sure that those rights are upheld. We expect the Government of Canada to do the same. We expect the Government of Canada to show leadership on those questions.
To come back to the bill that is before us today, that is the very reason we find it to be very contentious. It is the very reason we find this bill to be completely missing the point about what is taking place on a global scale.
The members in our caucus have participated in many forums, discussions and educational workshops. It is quite incredible, given this global situation of opening up the floodgates to the transfer of capital with virtually no rules, that citizens have taken it upon themselves to become informed and educated as to what it is that is going on. These are not easy matters to get a handle on. These are very complicated agreements set up under the WTO. We learned that from the MAI. We are learning that now from the security and prosperity partnership.
We know that agreements are put together in secret. They are done at places like Montebello where leaders meet behind closed doors. The connection to the public, the ability of civil society to have any input or to be able to say anything is limited. In fact, security forces go to great lengths to ensure that kind of dialogue does not take place.
Our caucus has a lot of experience in dealing with these agreements. We understand the implications they have for a democratic society. Fundamentally, we express our concern in the House as well as in the community that we see it as a shift from making decisions in a democratic process in Parliament to a secretive process where we have no access. We do not even have access to that as members of Parliament.
If Canadians were asked what is the purpose of government, what are we here for, our constituents and members in our community would say that the purpose of government is to protect them. The purpose of government is to ensure that they have health care, education, income security and that the country is safe.
Over the years under these neo-liberal and neo-conservative policies, we have seen a massive shift in the role of government. That power has been transferred from government into the hands of undemocratic, unelected, unaccountable, non-transparent multinational corporations. These trade agreements have facilitated that process.
We should be standing up very strongly against these kinds of agreements. What we are most concerned about right now is the security and prosperity partnership that is taking place between the countries on the American continent: Canada, United States and Mexico.
We have been very outspoken. The member for Burnaby—New Westminster, our trade critic, has done an amazing job. He has travelled across this country. He has already gone to 12 communities. He is travelling to another 12 communities where we are holding public hearings on the SPP.
There is so much deep concern in the community about what that agreement will do and the fact that the government, as the previous government did, is signing on to this agreement with virtually no public disclosure. It will impact every aspect of domestic life in Canada. It will impact on the ability of Parliament to do its job. It will impact on the delivery of services. It will exacerbate the privatization of services. It will exacerbate the deregulation that is taking place in our society. At the end of the day these are things that begin to affect the quality of life. It becomes a race to the bottom.
We recognize the connection that this bill has in dealing with the dispute mechanism and its attachment to the World Bank, how it is completely complicit and tied into this move to globalization that is shutting down the democratic process. We strongly object to that. We intend to do everything we can not only in Parliament but in the broader civil society to see that these agreements are opened up, changed, that they are refuted.
We understand that trade is obviously going to happen. Trade is an important part of our economic activity in life, but we want to see fair trade. We want to see trade that is based on agreed to and implemented around core standards that set out labour rights, that set out environmental rights, that set out a social contract and social conditions so that the workers in the south are not being exploited and that Canadian workers are not losing their jobs as a result of these trade agreements.
We have seen a loss of over 300,000 manufacturing jobs. The Canada-South Korea trade agreement is under development. All of these things are taking place with virtually no debate or understanding. All this takes place behind closed doors.
The bill before us today is at third reading, but we believe it is not a good bill. It does not deal with realities that are before us in terms of what is happening with these trade agreements. We have to be incredibly skeptical about what the Conservative government is doing and what its agenda is.
I will use another example. Yesterday in the House we heard a minister of the government say that international treaties will be brought before the House which will be tabled, discussed and debated. On the face of it, it sounds reasonable, but if we go back a couple of years to September 2004, the then leader of the official opposition, who is now the Prime Minister, actually made a commitment with the other opposition leaders, including the leader of the Bloc and the leader of the NDP, that international treaties should be voted on in this House.
That was an actual commitment. It was part of a package that was brought forward in that first minority Parliament. We agreed that there should be a vote in the House of Commons on international treaties. Already we have seen the Conservative government break its promise just by its announcement yesterday that there will not be a vote, that there may be some debate or notice. That is a clear violation of the commitment made in September 2004.
I will close by saying that members of our caucus have reviewed the bill very thoroughly. We have debated and discussed it with our partners in the labour movement, in the Canadian Labour Congress and other places with members of civil society. There is no question that the approval of the bill would reinforce a regime of trade and international practice that gives massive powers to multinational corporations at the expense of the democratic process in places like the House of Commons.
On that basis we cannot support the bill. We urge other members of the House to also show the strength of representing the public interest, because that is what we are here to do, to represent the public interest, and to vote down the bill.