Mr. Speaker, I stood in the House on June 18, 2012, and posed a question in response to the announcement from the Conservatives that Canada would join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which followed on an announcement of a new advisory panel on international trade issues. At that time, the Minister of International Trade announced the formation of a trade committee and he appointed panel members, all of whom represented a one-sided ideological approach to trade policy. This panel has no representative of organized labour, no representative of environmental organizations, no representatives of human rights organizations and not a single representative from our supply-managed industries, a sector that will be the subject of much discussion in trade talks, especially the TPP.
Now the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a multilateral trade and investment agreement being negotiated among nine countries: the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Chile, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, with the U.S. leading the negotiations. The aim is to create a new template for future trade deals modelled on U.S. interests. Fourteen rounds of TPP negotiations have already taken place with the next round in New Zealand in December of this year. The negotiating text is under tight secrecy, though draft versions of the investment chapter and the U.S. position on intellectual property have been leaked.
Canada has been lobbying for years to join the negotiations but there has been stiff resistance from the U.S. and other trade partners, such as New Zealand, that are concerned about Canada's position in specific areas including protection of supply-managed agricultural sectors. On June 19 of this year, the Prime Minister announced that Canada had been invited into the negotiations but there is significant concern with the price of admission. It appears the Conservative government has acceded to U.S. demands that would dramatically curtail Canada's negotiating rights and powers.
These demands include that Canada would have no ability to change anything that the nine original TPP countries have already agreed to. In other words, Canada has agreed to the existing unbracketed text, sight unseen and without input. Second, Canada would not have any veto authority over any chapter. This would mean that should the other nine countries agree on terms, Canada would be required to accept them. This context has led commentators to characterize Canada's entry into the TPP as being with “one hand tied behind our back” or having second-class status.
Canada already has free trade deals with four of the current TPP members: the U.S., Chile, Peru and Mexico. The other six countries combined account for less than 1% of Canada's exports. With limited opportunity for significant new market access for Canadian exports, the deal raises alarm bells regarding other aspects of the deal in areas of sensitive policy regulations, such as investor-state provisions, supply management and intellectual property, chiefly in pharmaceuticals and copyright. Canadians want to see what the advantage would be and how much it would cost.
Half of us on the trade committee were in Japan two weeks ago where we were presented with information from Japanese economic modelling that suggested that without Japan in the TPP there would be no benefit economically to any country in the TPP. With Japan in it, there may be.
In terms of the investor-state provisions, there are serious concerns being raised. Just last week, Canada faced two new suits against Canadian governmental regulations and legislation passed concerning the regulation of fracking in Quebec and concerning the development of wind turbines in Ontario. Essentially, because of investor-state provisions, investors are suing the Canadian government and subjecting taxpayers to millions of dollars of liability, simply because the Canadian government has legislated in areas that these investors think may impact on their profits. Australia has adopted a position that investor-state provisions are not part of its trade template, and I urge the government to follow that lead.
Showing up late has put Canada at a serious disadvantage in negotiations. Will we have to give up on supply management and on copyright protection? Given the seemingly negligible benefits of the deal, we have to ask ourselves whether this deal would really be in Canada's best economic interests, or is it simply a vehicle to slip through right-wing policies that are not about trade and that Canadians would not otherwise support?