Mr. Speaker, the truth of the powerful NDP words again is having some impact on the Conservative side of the House. Thank goodness. I just wish they would put more of what we say into action.
That is the fundamental reality. We see exports fall. We see a lack of support for important strategic sectors and then we see deals signed that actually undermine those key sectors.
We had the EFTA deal before the House. We had pleas from hundreds and hundreds of shipyard workers across the country, including from Quebec, Nova Scotia, Vancouver, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Ontario, all saying that it would have a profoundly negative impact on what should be a strategic industry. They said that the EFTA deal would kill their industry. That was the testimony before committee. A very clear message was delivered. Yet we had other parties vote to put that deal into place even though they had been told that essentially it would hit our shipyard industry hard.
Therefore, we have a fundamental problem about the approach in trade, the lack of evaluation. We have a fundamental problem with the fact that we simply do not do an evaluation on a market to market basis, that there is no export strategy overall and certainly not the resources allocated to our export industries that should be and that other countries do.
Therefore, let us get to the template on the Jordan agreement. Canadians who are listening can download their own free trade agreement from the DFAIT website. It shows how appalling simple-minded the approach is on trade. We have a template that has existed for 20 years, while other countries are updating their trade model, improving their trade model to bring concrete results. We have the same model that has sat around for 20 years. People can download it and sign it with their neighbours. It is absurd.
These templates, of which Jordan unfortunately is part, are simply investor protection and investor state provisions coupled with some tariff reduction and then coupled with meaningless side agreements.
The side agreements unfortunately never impose any obligation. Other countries have moved way beyond that. They have binding obligations around human rights, social and labour standards, but not our template. Our 20-year-old Ford Pinto, which is the trade model Conservatives like to bring forward, does not do any of that. What it does is offer investor state protections.
This goes back to the NAFTA days and the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement days. What happened after we signed this agreement? The House knows that provinces, municipalities and many Canadians have great difficulty with the chapter 11 provisions in NAFTA. They allow companies basically to rip off the public purse in order to get compensation for products that endanger the health, the environment for whatever reason, if the government acts to stop these companies from providing these horrible products. Then they get to sue taxpayers and they get a fancy cheque. They get to take the money right out of the wallets of taxpayer, even though Canadians want the government to intervene to stop the product from being put forward.
We have seen this with the domestic pesticide ban in Quebec. We now have a company that can use these investor state provisions to go after the Quebec government, a government that has taken a democratic decision, in the interest of its citizens. Now potentially taxpayers will have to pay for the government taking care of them. This is absolutely absurd.
After that clause was included in NAFTA, and this was only for the NAFTA agreement, the United States moved right away from it. The United States realized that this undermined the ability of parliaments and legislatures to take actions to protect their own populations.
The U.S. has never signed a similar agreement since. It has moved away from it. It has allowed for environmental, health and safety overrides. Canada, as I mentioned, has that old 20-year-old Ford Pinto that still allows for companies to gouge Canadian taxpayers if any action is taken and impinges on their profits.
Tragically that 20-year-old model is in the Jordan agreement. Therefore, we see the same kinds of problems that have come up in the past, problems about which so many people have spoken. The same people who have raised this issue right across Canadian society have not been heard.
The old Liberal Ford Pinto has been taken over by the Conservatives. They do the ribbon-cutting ceremony and then they move on. If it were about economic development, we would see some muscle, some investment behind a real export strategy, which is what the NDP has been calling for and has been pushing.
Just this week an NDP motion passed in the committee on international trade, calling on the government to address the historic underfunding to the beef and cattle industry and to really work for a level playing field with out competitors. Australia and the United States are investing many times more in product promotion for that sector.
Beef and cattle ranchers can now say that it is because of the NDP that there will be a push to finally get more money out of the Conservative government to really support the beef and cattle industry. That has been what we have been calling for historically.
So, we have an agreement with no strategy. We have investor state provisions within the Jordan agreement that simply are inappropriate. Now we need to look at the provisions, the so-called side agreements on labour and the environment, that are kind of thrown in as an afterthought. They do not impose any obligations on the country. There is a process. There are a lot of meetings and bureaucrats get to drink a lot of coffee, but in the end there is nothing binding in this agreement on labour rights, human rights or the environment.
Then we need to know what the situation is in Jordan if we are not pressing on any of these issues? If we just have this cosmetic paper that we killed a couple of trees to pretend there has been some action but there is nothing binding in those provisions, then we need to look at what is actually happening in Jordan.
Now Jordan is not Colombia. Colombia is outrageously bad. Paramilitary thugs and drug pushers are all connected to the government and all supported by the Conservatives. Jordan is not like that but there are some causes for concern. Obviously, the committee on international trade will need to take some time to look at the possible implications from the lack of any sort of binding obligations on the Jordanian government.
I will reference the U.S. Department of State's 2008 human rights report on Jordan. Some of the elements are positive but some are clearly negative.
The first is on arbitrary or unlawful deprivation of life. As we know, in Colombia we are talking about hundreds of people massacred every year by right wing paramilitary thugs, the Colombian military, but in Jordan's case, it states:
In contrast with 2007, there were no reports during the year that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings. The government completed investigations of allegations made in two 2007 deaths....
So, we do see action from the Jordanian government there.
Second is on disappearances. In Colombia, that has been a horrible and constant tragedy. Disappearances In Colombia occur on a daily basis, but for Jordan, the 2008 human rights report states:
There were no reports of politically motivated disappearances.
Third is torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Now on that there is some cause for concern. The report states:
Although torture is illegal in the country, an October report by the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), "Torture and Impunity in Jordan's Prisons," concluded that torture remained a widespread practice. Interviews with 66 prisoners in seven of the country's 10 prisons produced allegations of ill-treatment, which HRW concluded often amounted to torture.
Next we move to arbitrary arrest or detention. The report states:
Some human rights groups continued to voice concern over the 2006 Prevention of Terrorism Act, complaining that its definition of terrorism might lead nonviolent critics of the government to be arrested or detained indefinitely under the provisions of the act. However, the government had yet to make use of the act at year's end
Section e, “Denial of Fair Public Trial” states:
The law provides for an independent judiciary. In practice the judiciary's independence was compromised due to allegations of nepotism and the influence of special interests.
There are also very clear concerns of abuse around women, domestic workers imported from outside Jordan. There have been calls within the United Nations and by human rights organizations about this.
It is clear that our work has begun on this. Real concerns have been expressed by our party and by many in civil society. If Parliament chooses to refer this for further study to the international trade committee, it will need to take a long look at the implications of this agreement and of the possible impacts having this agreement put into effect.
On that basis, of course, we have legitimate concerns. We will continue to push the government to bring in fair trade legislation and we will continue to work on this bill so that it becomes more fair trade in nature.