Madam Speaker, over the last two Parliaments, I think this is my third or fourth time speaking to the Canada-Panama free trade agreement.
I have to say that this is an agreement that has not improved with age, nor has the debate on this issue, frankly. I continue to be struck by the inability of both the Conservatives and the Liberals to differentiate between free trade and fair trade. We in the NDP are not against trade. We recognize the important role trade plays in our economy, but it is not good enough to just keep bringing forward a series of bilateral trade agreements as if such agreements will somehow magically give us a coherent and smart industrial and economic strategy.
On the contrary, there has been no economic strategy, no real focused trade strategy, and the result has been that most Canadians are worse off now than they were before.
The government simply cannot keep doing these ribbon cuttings for free trade agreements and expect that the job is done. This is no small issue. When we look at the last 20 years since the implementation of the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement, we see that the real income of most Canadian families has gone down, not up. The real incomes of the two-thirds of Canadian families who constitute the middle class and those of the poorest Canadians have gone down, right across the country.
The only people who have actually profited and seen an increase in their real income over the past 20 years since the first of these agreements was implemented have been the wealthiest of Canadians. The wealthiest 10% have seen their income skyrocket. One-fifth of Canadians, the wealthiest 20%, now take home most of the real income in this country.
For the Conservatives, that is entirely fine. In fact they are completely unapologetic for having espoused the principles of the robber barons of the 19th century. Listening to their speeches, I am surprised they have not quoted John D. Rockefeller, who said, “The disparity in income between the rich and the poor is merely the survival of the fittest. It is merely the working out of a law of nature and a law of God”.
It is certainly a sentiment that is deeply imbedded in the Conservatives' free trade agenda and in that of the Liberals before them. However, Canadians deserve better. They deserve fair trade instead of free trade. Fair trade puts an end to the race to the bottom by delivering on the promises of sustainable livelihoods and opportunities for people in the poorest countries in the world.
Poverty and hardship limit people's choices, while market forces tend to further marginalize and exclude them. This makes them vulnerable to exploitation, whether as farmers and artisans or as hired workers with larger businesses. That two billion of our fellow citizens survive on less than $2 per day despite working extremely hard makes it painfully clear that there is indeed a problem.
I want to put this into context by quoting extensively from an article from October 2010 called, “Back to the 'Good' Old Days”. It was published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Although it is focused on Asia, its observations and conclusions directly relate to the issues in Latin America. It begins with the legacy of the robber barons that I alluded to earlier. It then goes on to state that the first 60 years of the 20th century were focused on curbing the worst excesses of unfettered free enterprise through government regulations, minimum wage increases and the growth of the labour movement.
It says:
Strong unions and relatively progressive governments combined to have wealth distributed less inequitably. Social safety nets were woven to help those in need.
Corporate owners, executives, and major shareholders resisted all these moderate reforms. Their operations had to be forcibly humanized. They always resented having even a small part of their profits diverted into wages and taxes, but until the mid-1970s and '80s they couldn’t prevent it. Now they can.
Thanks to international trade agreements and the global mobility of capital, they can overcome all political and labour constraints. They are free once more, as they were in the 1800s, to maximize profits and exploit workers, to control or coerce national governments, to re-establish the survival of the fittest as the social norm.
This global resurgence of corporate power threatens to wipe out a century of social progress. We are in danger of reverting to the kind of mass poverty and deprivation that marked the Victorian era. Indeed, this kind of corporate-imposed barbarism and inequality is already rampant in many developing countries.
It is worth pausing here to reflect on the submission made by Dr. Teresa Healy, senior researcher for social and economic policy at the Canadian Labour Congress, during the Standing Committee on International Trade deliberations on the Canada-Panama free trade agreement.
She pointed out that Panama is a country with a population of about 3.4 million people. It is currently recording relatively high growth rates, but it is the second most unequal society in the region. Forty per cent of the population is poor and 27% is extremely poor, and the rate of extreme poverty is particularly acute in indigenous populations. Although the country has endured extensive structural adjustment, liberalization and privatization in recent years, this has not translated into economic benefits for the population.
This should give all Canadians pause to think. It was not that long ago that our forebears were mistreated in workplaces, and the prospect of a reversion to Victorian social conditions should alarm all of us. The CCPA article I was citing earlier reminds us what the conditions were like in Canadian workplaces in the 1800s. Conditions in the mines were especially bad, with most of the miners dying from accidents or black lung disease before they reached the age of 35. Hundreds of thousands of children, some as young as six, were forced to work 12 hours a day, often being whipped or beaten.
A Canadian royal commission on child labour in the late 1800s reported that the employment of children was extensive and on the increase. Boys under 12 worked all night in glassworks in Montreal. In the coal mines of Nova Scotia, it was common for 10-year-old boys to work a 60-hour week down in the pits. This royal commission found not only that were children fined for tardiness and breakages but also that in many factories they were beaten with birch rods. Many thousands of them lost fingers, hands and even entire limbs when caught in unguarded gears or pulleys. Many hundreds were killed. Their average life expectancy was 33.
As late as 1910 in Canada, more than 300,000 children under 12 were still being subjected to these brutal working conditions. It was not until the 1920s, in fact, that child labour in this country was completely stamped out.
Yes, we finally did the right thing in Canada, but somehow the government wants us to believe it is okay to simply ignore the fact that such practices are still rampant in the countries with which we are signing trade agreements. The Conservative government has completely abandoned any notion of corporate social responsibility, and through its trade agenda it is giving state sanction to the continued abuse of labour, human and environmental rights in countries such as Panama. It is completely outrageous.
Make no mistake. Already in most of the developing nations, they have brought back child labour. Conditions in most factories operated by or for the transnational corporations in Asia and parts of Latin America are not much better today than they were in North America and Europe in the 1800s. Thousands of boys and girls are being compelled to work 12 hours a day in dirty, unsafe workshops for 40¢ or 50¢ an hour.
The article went on to say that in the United States another robber baron, Frederick Townsend Martin, boasted:
We are the rich. We own this country. And we intend to keep it by throwing all the tremendous weight of our support, our influence, our money, our purchased politicians, our public-speaking demagogues, into the fight against any legislation, any political party or platform or campaign that threatens our vested interests.
If nothing else, I guess we have to appreciate his honesty. At least he was upfront about the corporate agenda in his day.
It was David Rockefeller who restated the operating principle of the corporate agenda in modern times. In 1990 he said:
We who run the transnational corporations are now in the driver’s seat of the global economic engine. We are setting government policies instead of watching from the sidelines.
That is the sentiment that guides the corporate interests who are pushing our government to enter into the bilateral free trade agreements with willing partners around the world. It is a sentiment that has been blindly accepted and adopted by successive Liberal and Conservative governments that have been only too happy to oblige in the implementation of this corporate agenda.
Surely we do not all need to submit to the notion that might is right. There is an alternative vision of our economic future that believes that no one should be left behind. That is the kind of future my NDP colleagues and I have been championing in this House. It is a future that is based on fair trade, not free trade.
If we do not amend our trade agreements to incorporate the principles of sustainable development and recognition of human and labour rights, then the trade agreements are not worth the paper they are written on. In truth, we should be hanging our heads in shame.
If Canadians were aware that we are condoning practices by our trading partners that we would never condone at home, then I am certain they would call on us to abandon such trade relations. That is why I will be voting against the Canada-Panama free trade agreement.