Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise on Bill C-23. I will get to this particular trade bill, but I want to address a couple of comments that have come out in recent discussions.
The member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour was referenced with respect to his comments relating to buy America. As vice-chair of the Canada-U.S. Parliamentary Association, I have been to Washington many times and have met with many different congressional and state representatives, as well as senate representatives, heads of committees and so forth relating to buy America and Canada's position. Many of them have argued that Canada should have had a reciprocity clause with respect to buy America by having our own buy Canada act as part of a defence that would have negotiated the removal of buy America because we have now seen it grow even further. What the government does not understand is that there is buy America and buy American. There are two acts that actually have protectionism in them.
Most recently we have seen it happen again where, despite the minister going down to Washington, we actually have more problems because we will see more legislation. There is another piece of legislation that has been tabled in the House that actually calls for the buy America act to be involved in the transportation sector, which it was not before. Therefore, there are more barriers coming up and they come with a series of issues.
Cross border trade was noted as well and the prosperity deal that was signed last week by the Prime Minister and President Obama. What is interesting about that deal is that it concentrates mostly on petroleum and pushing our oil in Washington, and not looking after our manufacturing sector and other trade. Our trade and manufacturing jobs have gone down to the lowest level since we have been actually taking those numbers and making them public in the 1970s. We have the lowest amount of manufacturing jobs left. That is because the government has been obsessed with oil versus that other value-added trade.
What happened today is very important with respect to the announcement last week. We learned that the Minister of Transport failed to move on legislation to protect a new border crossing in my riding at Windsor-Detroit where 40% of our trade goes to the United States every single day. It goes along a two-mile corridor. We are trying to build a brand new border crossing, a new public bridge. It has been blocked along the way by a private American citizen who has literally bought up the Michigan legislature. He has spent over $1 million in donations and has blocked the actual construction of that bridge.
Therefore, when we are talking about trade with Jordan or with the United States, it is important to note who our number one customer is, that being the United States. The way that we have been signing deals and arrangements has actually been lowering us. We have put ourselves in a trade deficit. That is the reality. New Democrats are interested in trade. We are interested also in making sure it will be done in a fair and balanced way. There is nothing wrong with that.
There is no way a Canadian can compete here, which is what we are asking for, with sweatshops in Jordan, some of which are Canadian companies. I will give a specific example later on. These sweatshops take offshore labour, often from Sri Lanka and other developing countries, 75% of them women, house them and put them in deplorable conditions to produce clothing.
How is the textile industry in Montreal able to compete with that? Will we accept that? Should we as citizens accept to wear cheaper garments produced by people who have been put into abusive situations and who are being taken advantage of? That is well-documented.
It was interesting to hear the criticisms about us saying that the labour movement is in favour of this now and that we are offside. The United Steelworkers originally supported the 2000 agreement between the United States and Jordan with respect to a trade deal. It is one of the situations I will be looking at with respect to amendments to get that undone. The United Steelworkers went on a fact-finding mission to see what happened because it had labour and environmental agreements and a whole series of things that were included but were voluntary. It found very little change. There was very little substance to the differences it was experiencing in the past because there was no enforcement.
This week we saw how our environmental enforcements are often not working within our own country. Therefore, we can just imagine what the rights of people in a kingdom like Jordan, which is not a democracy, can subject them to.
There is a responsibility and, generally, an interest for us to find some common ground and move some of those serious issues to closure. Surely we do not want the abuse and mistreatment of women fleeing Sri Lanka to increase because Canada has signed a free trade deal with Jordan. I would hope that is not the case. We want some measures in this agreement to make sure we can eliminate those issues. Perhaps there is an opportunity.
Side issues to bilateral trade, such the environment and labour, are often very much weakened because there is no regulatory enforcement, but we can build that into the legislation, and New Democrats will be looking for that. It is a carrot and stick approach. There is an offer to Jordan to improve trade and improve access to markets, theirs and ours, but at the same time we will be seeking improved humane labour standards, improvements we all think we can agree on.
Would anybody want to diminish those things? That question has to be asked. If we were to fuel further problems, would that be something we would support and be proud of as a country? We see that we have turned a blind eye to this in many respects when we look at what has happened across the world more recently with Libya and other states. We often turn a blind eye to some of these things for corporate interests. At a certain point we need to talk about global trade and all that kind of stuff, where there is no room for rights, the environment or other things; however, we need those things to be in place to improve our lifestyles and improve our planet. There has to be some balance.
Jordan may not be able to reach our standards right away. As consumers, we will demand that manufactured goods meet certain standards. When we buy a sweatshirt, a product with a zipper, or clothing, we want those products to meet certain standards, but at the same time we allow people to work for 14 hours a day, not have time off and be housed in warehouses and unclean areas. We have to address this issue. If that is the difference in getting a sweater or sweatshirt a couple of dollars cheaper, it is wrong.
We have a moral responsibility to address this issue while we can. If we take the blind eye approach, we are actually victimizing them, because we are aware of the standards we have in Canada. We do not allow child labour in Canada, so we should not be ignoring those issues with Jordan and other states.
There are issues because of a side agreement, but the conclusion in the environmental assessment that was done under the Canada-Jordan Free Trade Agreement was this:
Even if dramatic increases in bilateral trade flows occurred as a result of the implementation of the Canada-Jordan FTA, the economic effects of this Agreement would be modest relative to Canada's overall economic activity given the relatively low levels of bilateral trade and the size of the Jordanian economy. As a consequence, related environmental impacts in Canada are not expected to be significant. Moreover, environmental impacts, if any, will be addressed and managed by the existing environmental management programs in sectors that stand to gain in the FTA such as forestry and agriculture.
What is going to happen is that there will be no new regulatory oversight or repercussions related to this deal. It is interesting because the Conservatives talk about these issues in these trade agreements as if they are going to expand increasing markets, but their own research is telling them it is going to be relatively modest. What makes it really ironic and rich is that although the Windsor-Detroit corridor has 40% of our daily trade, $1 billion, flowing through the border, we still have a problem with securing a new site; meanwhile, the government is talking about putting this deal as a priority. It has tabled legislation for Jordan, but when the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities was advised by his own department to table legislation to protect our number one trading partner and border crossing in Canada, he did not do it. The government's policies in this last session of Parliament have been to drive Canada down and apart, not build it up.
The government was advised specifically to take action because we are at high risk when it comes to the Windsor-Detroit crossing, since 40% of the trade crosses there, private American citizens own the bridge, and it is 80 years of age. Our manufacturing value-added system is at risk. We have watched a watershed of jobs leave from Ontario, Quebec and other places, including jobs in manufacturing across the country, and what has the government been focusing on? Panama and Jordan.
That is what the government has tabled as legislation. Our number one trading partner, our number issue, is the United States. The Prime Minister goes to the United States, signs a border agreement and talks about infrastructure. Meanwhile in Michigan, the new border crossing is languishing because the government has not passed a law. The government's own minister was advised in his briefing book to actually act on the Windsor-Detroit crossing to stop lawsuits and prevent it from being blocked. He never did it.
Instead we have this bill, and we have issues with it. It is important to note that when we have these issues, there has to be proper follow-up. We will see if that is going to happen.
I will give a good example. In 2011 Jordan signed the international convention on domestic work. It provides for some protection for workers on the international level. Jordan signed that agreement and adopted it, but has yet to ratify it. Even when Jordan has been out there in the world trying to promote improvements and saying to the world that it is going to do some things, it has yet to ratify that agreement.
How long does that take in the Jordanian system? It probably does not take long. It is a kingdom. The legislative process will not take years. That is one of the things we should be demanding. We should be asking when it will be ratified, when it will be implemented, how things are to be measured, and how Jordan will ensure that workers are going to be protected.
I want to talk a little about those workers and those conditions, because Canada is connected there. I am talking about Nygard, Dillard's, JCPenney, and Walmart, which are linked to human trafficking, abuse and the Jordanian sweatshops.
It is really important to note the United Steelworkers looked at a number of specific plants in different areas. They sent a fact-finding mission over there. What they found is that there are 1,200 foreign guest workers trapped in the IBG factory, and nothing helped when they actually signed the U.S.—Jordanian agreement.
They went back and found that they still had problems. The east factory has about 600 workers: 300 from Sri Lanka, 200 from Bangladesh, and 100 from India. That is an example from one of the factories. I have pictures here. It looks like a warehouse. It looks more like a place for agriculture warehousing or something like that.
An estimated 75% of the guest workers are women between the ages of 18 and 30. It is a young workforce, predominantly women, in conditions that are absolutely abysmal.
Why do we not take this opportunity to say to Jordan, “Fine, we are open to trading and improvement, but we do not want those goods and services provided through abusive behaviours. We do not want them. In fact, if you do not fix some of the stuff you are doing now, then we are not going to move forward on this agreement”.
Alternatively, we could set benchmarks with enforcement tools or ways to peel back parts of the agreement if Jordan does not meet those benchmarks, unless the objective is to turn a blind eye and allow foreign workers to be abused so that we can get cheaper clothing.
We might as well just say that if that is the way it is going to be. If we are going to ignore the photos, ignore the visitations, ignore the pleas from the workers who have actually smuggled out a number of different tags, some from Canadian companies, at their risk, and ignore their cries for help, then we might as well just say that is what we are going to do.
These side agreements on labour and side agreements on environment are not enforceable, although there are some lofty words in some of these agreements.
With regard to the issues on labour, I will provide a good example. The real problem is that they have the words in there, but there is no final accountability. The side agreement is a good example. Under “corporate social responsibility”, it says:
Recognizing the substantial benefits brought by international trade and investment, the Parties shall encourage voluntary best practices of corporate social responsibility by enterprises within their territories or jurisdictions, to strengthen coherence between economic and environmental objectives.
It is so vague it does not matter, and there is no enforcement. It is not worth the paper it is printed on. It does not help the worker from Sri Lanka who is killed in one of the sweatshops. They have pictures here. It does not help the workers who are abused on a regular basis.
It is interesting, too, because when they go to Jordan, there is a process. They are processed. This is the sad and scary thing about this situation. There is a process taking place with the full consent of the Jordanian officials.
Do members know what happens? Guest workers are trafficked into Jordan, stripped of their passports and held in slave labour conditions. Workers' passports are confiscated. Their routine is 16-hour shifts, seven days a week. They work in the factory 111 hours a week. They are cheated out of half their legal wages. Workers are slapped and threatened with deportation. There are reports of sexual harassment and abuse. If, for whatever reason, a worker misses a shift, that worker is docked two days' pay and punished. They live under miserable, primitive dorm conditions lacking heat, with only sporadic access to water and infested with bedbugs. In fact, one was actually brought back to the University of Ohio to confirm that the bedbugs were actually feasting and gorging on those people in that environment. The due diligence has been done to investigate the conditions in Jordan.
Here is a routine shift they work: 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., they work two hours; 9.a.m. to 9:15 a.m., they have a 15-minute tea break; 9:15 a.m. to 1 p.m., they work for three and three-quarter hours; 1 p.m. to 1:30 p.m., they have a half-hour lunch break; 1:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., they work for six and a half hours; 8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., they have a half-hour supper break; 8:30 p.m. to 11 p.m., they work for two and a half hours. They have 16-hour days.
We need to address these issues if we are saying to Jordan that we want it to be our partner. If we are extending our hand, it is our responsibility to say something about these issues. It is our responsibility to ensure that bilateral trade is fair. Do we want these conditions to get worse for them, or do we want them to get better? Do we want them to stay the same?
I would argue it is economically impossible for us to compete in this way anyway, because it is not fair if they are using slave labour. All those who invest in the textile industry in North American, particularly in Canada, are going to get the short end of the stick no matter what. It does not matter how much they invest or how much they train their workers. It does not matter how much they have given back to the community. It does not matter what they have done over a number of decades: they cannot compete with those standards. They cannot compete with people basically used as slaves.
What does it say to those people who are actually investing in Canada--people who actually believe in proper work hours for their staff, believe in contributing back to the community and value the people who are employed by them? We are insulting them by doing that.
We are not doing anything to be proud of as a country if we are saying those things are all acceptable so that we can get a cheap sweater or lower-cost merchandise or fill the shelves at Walmart with cheap clothes. These are the things we have to look at.
To conclude, I want to say that we are interested in trying to make this bill work, but it has to be done with responsibility. Turning a blind eye is not the ethical or right thing to do.