Madam Speaker, there has been a wave of anti-union repression in Panama, resulting in several workers killed, over 100 injured and over 300 arrested, including the leader of the SUNTRACS and CONATO trade unions. This was the government of Panama's brutal reaction to protests against new legislation restricting the right to strike and the freedom of association, including provisions to jail up for up to two years any workers taking their protest to the streets. This simply proves that the labour protection agreement will not provide any real protection of labour rights in Panama as it lacks any effective mechanism for enforcement and the Panamanian government clearly intends to ignore it.
This is but one reason why we against this trade agreement. I will give more reasons why we oppose this trade agreement.
We are engaging in a NAFTA-style trade agreement with a country that is also an offshore banking centre that acts as a platform for multinationals and a conduit for opaque banking activities and tax evasions.
We heard recently in the news media about Canadians who were avoiding taxes. Panama is just one of these countries where Canadian corporations can take the profits they have earned off the backs of Canadian workers, Canadian workers who have paid their share of the taxes to improve society as a whole so the poorest Canadians can live better. However, these companies are taking their profits, which may be millions or even billions of dollars, and investing them in Panamanian banks where they do not pay any income taxes.
We are building a so-called free trade platform that would provide front corporations with additional powers and incentives to challenge Canadian regulations and standards and shape trade to serve their needs and not the public interest, and I want to expand on this a bit.
We just finished a year-long strike in my community. A foreign company challenged Canadian regulations and standards by using scabs to perform the work of striking workers, by using intimidation, by firing people just for expressing the fact that the company did not want to negotiate, by ignoring bylaws in our community, bylaws that were set in place to protect the people of our region. The company was housing scab labourers in office buildings. They were sleeping in those buildings. This is completely against the bylaws of my community of Sudbury. The company had the gall to take our municipality to court over this. The company was breaking the bylaws, but it was the one that was taking our municipality to court. That is why I want to repeat this: Canadian regulations and standards and shape trade to serve their needs and not the needs of the public.
We are making it easier for Canadian and foreign corporations to move to Panama, flaunt Canadian labour laws and pay their workers in Panama an average of about $2 an hour, and not have to pay pensions, benefits and sick days. Pensions, benefits and sick days are the core values of Canadian workers and they should be the core values of any Panamanian worker.
Canadian laws state that workers enjoy certain minimum workplace safety and benefits. Corporations in Panama do not have to do any of this. Imagine if we did not have any safety laws in Canada. Imagine what would happen to the workers who worked in deep underground mines if there were no Canadian laws to protect them so they could go home to their families at night. We are encouraging companies to invest in Canada and flaunt our Canadian laws.
This agreement is without a labour co-operation agreement, without any vigorous enforcement mechanism. The same template was used in the Canada-Colombia agreement, “kill a trade unionist, pay a fine”. The labour side agreement does not deliver an effective mechanism for the protection of labour rights. The side agreement on the environment has no effective mechanism to force Canada or Panama to respect environmental rights.
The agreement commits both countries to pursue environmental co-operation and to do work to improve their environment laws and policies, but it can only ask both parties to enforce their domestic laws. If they do not, there are no consequences. In other words, Panama can do anything it wants to the environment and there are no consequences.
Why is the Conservative government in such a rush to move more jobs overseas and enhance the capacity of multicultural corporations to evade taxes and leverage additional power over Canada's government and Parliament? With this agreement, we will move more jobs out of Canada, the same as the Brazilian company that bought Inco and moved jobs out of Canada. When jobs are moved out of Canada, there is no net benefit to the Canadians.
We are not against free trade agreements. We are not against foreign ownership. We are against losing our jobs in Canada. We want these agreements to be beneficial, not only to the Panamanian people but also to Canadian people.
The Canada-Panama agreement is another marginally improved copy of the George Bush-style approach to trade. It still puts big business before people, with no effective enforcement of human rights and pays lip service to the environmental protection without any real, tough measures or dispute resolution mechanisms.