Mr. Speaker, on October 5, we had a special visitor in Ottawa, Jada Malott, a young 12-year old girl who travelled from Windsor to bring her message to the Prime Minister that the trans-Pacific partnership was a bad deal for Canadians.
This young activist represents a generation that is standing up against unfair trade deals that have hurt its communities. Jada brought a passionate message of warning from her generation to ours, that this deal would leave 60,000 Canadians out of work, increase the cost of drugs, and empower foreign investors to sue Canadian governments in secret tribunals.
Many young Canadians visited our trade committee as we travelled across Canada, consulting on this dangerous trade deal. Young people asked us to stop the deal. They spoke of the difficulties they faced trying to find decent work and how they had seen their parents lose good paying jobs over the years, sometimes as a result of other bad trade deals.
Youth are not just the leaders of tomorrow; they are the leaders of today. In southwestern Ontario and across Canada, they speak strongly about the need to stand up for strong, healthy, and resilient communities. They speak against trade deals like the TPP, a massive trade and investment deal that would put corporate interests ahead of the interests of Canadians'.
Of the 6,000 pages in this deal and the 30 chapters, only six have to do with traditional trade.
It is not difficult to see how damaging the TPP would be to Windsor—Essex. Our region stands to lose 20,000 auto jobs. We will all suffer under the increased drug costs, jobs will be lost due to the labour mobility chapter, and the ISDS clause will allow us to be sued by foreign investors.
When the trade committee visited Windsor, it was surprised to hear our local chamber president Matt Marchand, Unifor Local 444 president Dino Chiodo, president of Windsor and District Labour Council Brian Hogan, and the Windsor Economic Development Corporation, all bringing the same message of opposition to the TPP.
This is the labour rich region that Jada Malott has lived and grown up in. She knows well what will face southwestern Ontario under the TPP. She brought that passionate message to stop the TPP to this very House, in fact, to the minister of youth, the Prime Minister. She asked the Prime Minister if he would visit Windsor to listen to them about the TPP and he responded, yes.
Will the Prime Minister honour this commitment and come visit Windsor to talk about what a truly progressive trade agenda looks like?