Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to follow my colleague from Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, as associate of the trade committee, to talk about Bill C-57.
As we know, this was tabled just this week. Therefore, within the space of a few hours, we have been able to take a look at the bill and at the many clauses, both of the free trade agreement itself and, more important, the issue around the investor state protections, which is part of the template that our international trade ministry brings to every trade agreement that we sign, and two other side agreements that have no real obligations contained within them.
It is a lot of material, but it is fair to say that, at a glance, this has the same approach we have seen from the Conservative government many times before, despite the fact the NDP, and I think most Canadians, has been very clear what we would prefer to see is a fair trade approach on trade. This is why the fair trade sector is booming in our country. Millions of Canadians are making the choice every day to buy fair trade products.
Despite the fact the NDP constructively continues to bring these amendments forward, the government just does not seem to understand that Canadians, and much of the world, have shifted in their approach to trade.
The most egregious part of the lack of a Conservative overall trade strategy is no evaluation is done. No evaluation is ever done on the impacts of these trade agreements. No evaluation is ever done as to the potential for trade with a particular country. No evaluation is ever done about the downsides of that trade agreement. No evaluation is ever done about the situation in the country as a whole.
There is never a due diligence, ever, done on these bilateral trade agreements. That is the tragedy because Canadians expect a lot more.
What is the result? If we look at the last 20 years and at all the trade agreements that were supposed to bring prosperity, starting with the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement, and if we look at the analysis and data provided by Statistics Canada, and this data is open to every member of Parliament, we will see that two-thirds of Canadian families have seen their real income fall over the past 20 years.
We hear a lot of cheerleading about these agreements bringing massive prosperity, but the facts speak for themselves. Two-thirds of Canadians have seen their real income fall. The entire middle class has seen their income erode considerably. This explains why the debt load of the average family has doubled over the past 20 years. This is a crushing debt burden because real income has fallen. Expenses have not gone down, they have increased. Canadians are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet.
It gets worse when we go to the lower income categories. The poorest of Canadians have seen their income collapse, losing about a month and a half's income over the course of a year. That is why it is no surprise why tonight we will see, tragically, about 300,000 Canadians sleeping out in parks and along the main streets of our country. It is because this so-called free trade regime, with all of the right-wing economic policies that go with it, and I am not only blaming the Conservatives, the Liberals brought these policies in, have led to most Canadians being much poorer. Free trade has come at an enormous cost when most people are earning far less than they were 20 years ago.
If any Conservative or Liberal MP had chosen to look at the facts and figures of an analysis done, they would have to say that this policy has not worked very well and there has to be adjustments.
We in this corner of the House have been saying that. This is why our numbers keep growing. The fundamental reason why our numbers keep growing is Canadians trust we will actually do the due diligence and ask the tough questions when it comes to legislation brought before the House and when it comes to free trade agreements.
We see increased poverty in the country, so it is clear the overall thrust of free trade agreements has failed.
Let us look at the purported intention of stimulating exports. Here again, if we do the analysis and look at the facts, in a lot of cases, after signing a bilateral trade agreement, Canada's exports to that particular market, the market that was targeted by the free trade agreement, actually fell.
I know politicians love to go before the cameras and cut ribbons, but the act of presenting a free trade agreement does not necessarily even lead to an increase in exports to that market, so there is something fundamentally wrong there. Why? What are the causes?
We have some very clear indications from testimony, even in the last two weeks, before the international trade committee. We had the beef and cattle industry come forward and testify that it received pennies in product promotion support from the federal government compared to the tens of millions of dollars given by other countries. Australia was cited as an example, with $100 million in product promotion just for the beef, cattle and pork industries alone.
Now let us take all the product promotion from all sources in Canada. Unfortunately, the federal government puts in less for all products in all markets in a larger economy than Australia invests just for its beef, cattle and pork industries. I see your surprised expression, Mr. Speaker, but that is the fact. Australia spends many times more for one sector than Canada spends in all sectors. That would explain why our exports fall in a lot of these cases where we sign bilateral trade deals.
The idea that these bilateral trade deals are part of a strong export policy is simply false. What we have are Scrooges on the other side of the House who have been nickel and diming our important industrial sectors to death. Not only do they not have any sort of industrial strategy, but they are not even willing to put the investments in that other countries are.
Just taking the wine sector, the European Union spends $125 million, about four to five times more than all Canadian product promotion put together. Australia spends half a billion. We spend a few million dollars.
If we look at the pork industry, it is the same thing. The pork industry came before the international trade committee. A few million dollars a year is what it gets, when countries such as the United States spend tens of millions of dollars.
The reason why these bilateral trade agreements do not even necessarily lead to an increase in exports to those markets is here is no export strategy by the government. There is no trade strategy. There is no evaluation ever of the impacts of the agreements it signs. The Conservative politicians simply show up for a photo op, cut the ribbon and then they go on and pretend they have provided for some meaningful economic strategy. It is simply not true.