Debates of Dec. 12th, 2016

Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to continue debating the motion.

As I was saying earlier, I wonder if the government has a grudge against the hands that feed it every day. I am talking about the people who work on the farms, the dairy producers—in fact, those who feed our children.

The announced program of $50 million per year offers no real compensation and will not provide satisfactory protection for our supply management system. Indeed, the industry estimates that the annual losses to Canada’s dairy producers will be $116 million. Those losses come at a time when the Liberals are still missing in action on the diafiltered milk issue despite the fact that they have been promising a solution for over a year now.

More cracks are starting to appear on the issue of supply management, a system that Canada has chosen as a society to guarantee the survival of our family farms and proper land use. The region’s milk producers were not very excited by the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food's announcement.

Mr. Daniel Côté, president of the Producteurs de lait du Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, has said that his association was extremely disappointed at the plan announced by the government. It was clear that the Liberals had failed in their job. They had promised a comprehensive program to solve all of the sector’s problems, including diafiltered milk, but the announcement was only concerned with CETA, and it was for very insignificant amounts. The government says it consulted producers, but it would seem to be hard of hearing because the results are far from what our dairy producers expected. As Mr. Côté has said, the government owes it to the region’s producers to shoulder its responsibilities and keep its promises.

The agreement before us today also has shortcomings with respect to government purchasing and procurement. Many witnesses have said that they are afraid of the impact the Canada-Europe agreement will have on the flexibility of the government’s internal supply and services structures.

Witnesses representing the municipalities have pointed out the important role played by government supply policies in local economic development initiatives. They believe that the provisions of CETA risk undermining local development plans by granting new rights to European companies.

I will conclude by saying that New Democrats support trade agreements that reduce customs duties and stimulate exports but firmly exclude elements that threaten sovereignty, such as the provisions concerning investor-state disputes. We believe it is the government’s responsibility to conclude better trade agreements, particularly as regards human rights and labour standards, as well as protection of the environment and Canadian jobs.

I have serious reservations about the so-called progressive trade program of the Liberal government. When all is said and done, a trade agreement has to be assessed based on the costs it entails and the net benefits it affords.

In the past, we New Democrats have always stood in very clear opposition to agreements liable to have a negative impact on Canadians, such as the agreement with Honduras and the foreign investment promotion and protection agreement, or FIPA, with China.

Allow me to add that better processes lead to better agreements. Far too often, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have negotiated behind closed doors and kept Canadians in the dark about the process. That is notably what happened with the negotiations of the trans-Pacific partnership.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Jonquière raises a very important point about local procurement. We are in a country right now where many are suffering from unemployment or just part-time jobs. We are also struggling to try to establish our renewable-energy and energy-efficiency sector.

At a time when I know my city is trying to move forward and take action on climate change, it would be really important if we could provide local employment on energy-efficiency programs. Does the member have concerns in her own community that this agreement may mean that local communities will actually have to compete with European entrepreneurs?

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her comments. I would like to add that I too am concerned about what is going to happen in terms of the big European corporations in the event that the Canada-Europe agreement is signed.

In my riding, there are small municipalities with a population of around 700 where there are crying needs for infrastructure projects, particularly roads and waterworks. For example, we have a wastewater treatment problem. Often local companies will bid on infrastructure contracts for major projects representing a great many jobs. However, the bigger the contracts, the more European companies will be able to bid, to the detriment of our local companies, sadly.

I am worried about what is going to happen in terms of the protection of our small local companies. In its current form, the Canada-Europe agreement offers them no protection. That is why I am still worried about what is going to happen in my riding of Jonquière.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, earlier my colleague from Jonquière mentioned the fantastic cheese producers in her riding. We know that the previous Conservative government had promised that under CETA the dairy sector would be provided with $4.3 billion in compensation. Instead of honouring that commitment, the Liberals have fallen far short, and what they would provide to dairy farmers now is $250 million over five years. This would have a huge impact on local cheese producers, like those that the member mentioned in her own riding of Jonquière, and the cheese quotas.

There are so many unknowns about CETA. The dairy producers do not know whether they would be allocated those cheese quotas or they would go to retailers. That still has not been distinguished. The cheese producers are seeking that quota so that they can offset more of these losses, but the Liberal government refuses to let them know whether that is the case.

I wonder if the member can speak further to how CETA would impact those cheese producers in her riding of Jonquière.

[Karine Trudel, NDP, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, an exemplary member who is working very hard in committee on the Canada-Europe agreement. I thank her for her question and for her work.

As I mentioned in my speech, in my riding we have the Fromagerie Blackburn, which employs seven persons full-time. That may seem a small number, but those are quality jobs held by people with big hearts. This is a family farm that has existed for over 80 years. Those people are at work every morning and have won many awards for the quality of their cheeses, which have earned the distinction of being among the 50 best cheeses in the world. That is wonderful for them and we are proud of them.

However I am concerned about the Canada-Europe agreement, because unfortunately, the Liberals’ plan is not going to help those people. These are direct jobs we are talking about. Also, this cheese factory has been in operation since 2006 and is doing very well. People in the region are proud of it, but so are people outside of Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean. The owners and workers are worried about what is going to happen to them, and so am I, very much so.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to add my thoughts on a very important bill, Bill C-30. This bill will implement a proposed free-trade agreement with Europe, an agreement which has been talked about for years here in Ottawa.

Indeed, to be quite frank, never in my life have I seen an agreement be the subject of so many press conferences and ceremonial events. I remember former prime minister Stephen Harper regularly blocking the halls of Parliament to go off once again to sign the free-trade agreement with Europe.

Our new prime minister cannot stop announcing it. He sometimes takes the plane on Sunday morning to go to Europe to sign the same agreement once again. One time it was because Wallonia had given its consent. Today we are in the process of discussing a bill, because there is still no agreement.

The reason why there is still no agreement is that certain serious questions have been raised about the very signing and content of this agreement.

When we look at the details of any trade deal, we have to look at our own past track record in signing similar deals and ask ourselves why we continue hitting our heads against the wall with some of the provisions that are in here, including, in particular, the investor-state provision.

A lot of people, when the Prime Minister rushed off for the umpteenth signature of this European trade deal, were a bit surprised to find out that the Walloon parliament had thrown in its lot with this thing, yet nothing could be further from the truth. There had been a lot of promises along the way by Canada, what is going to be changed, what is going to be modified, and Wallonia had simply decided to keep its powder dry.

There is an attempt right now to push this thing through. We all know that trade with Europe is important, but trade with Europe is so important that we have to get it right. That is why we keep asking the same questions.

I have played a role in the past in various trade deals. When the NAFTA was brought together, I was the president of the Quebec Professions Board. I did a lot of work with Americans on this. It was actually helpful in bringing down trade barriers within Canada, which is something we do not talk enough about. It was such a balkanized version of the professions, both in the U.S. and here, it put considerable pressure on the professions to make sure that any rules against free movement of professional services had an overriding interest in terms of public protection, consumer protection.

That is worthwhile. That is some of the good things that can come out of these deals. It is too easy to simply say we are going to have this new regulation or that new rule and it is all about public protection. However, we have to know whether or not that is actually the case.

Here is the rub. Who gets to decide? When we talk about an investor-state provision, what we are in fact talking about is the ability for an investor to go before an anonymous tribunal to have the very question resolved, in their favour most often. Canada has an awful track record on this. We have lost 70% of the cases under the NAFTA. What we are saying is that before we turn that over to an anonymous international panel instead of leaving it with our domestic courts, let us know what we are talking about.

The government keeps on insisting that in matters of environment and health, there is going to be a carve-off. However, that still leaves the question of who decides whether or not it is a legitimate environmental or health concern.

Again, let give a real example, one that I lived when I was the minister of the environment in Quebec. I banned 2,4-D, a widely-used pesticide produced by the Dow Chemical Company. Dow turned around, under chapter 11, and immediately started suing the Canadian government, saying, “You're not allowed to ban 2,4-D. You don't have conclusive evidence that it is directly dangerous to human health when used as directed.”

If an average suburban lawn owner gets dressed up in haz-mat outfit and starts putting this stuff around, and their kids are wearing haz-mat outfits and not playing on the lawn, and Rover is wearing a haz-mat outfit out on the lawn, that argument by Dow Chemical is true, perhaps in the immediate, without talking about how much of that is going to leach into the environment.

The Canadian government, for once, did not lose, because Dow was convinced to withdraw its lawsuit because Canada admitted that there was no conclusive evidence of a direct immediate harm to human health when 2,4-D was used as directed. However, who decides? That is the key question here.

Who has the final say with respect to health and the environment?

If we made regulations prohibiting the use of certain chemicals in the textile industry, for example, would we be immediately sued by a big European corporation such as BASF, a major German chemical manufacturer? The answer is almost certainly yes, because companies will never accept being told that a government can decide that; they will call in a group of two or three lawyers from big business and commercial law firms to win the right to continue.

Despite the many announcements, the process that has been proposed was rushed, if we compare it to what exists elsewhere. An NDP political slogan comes to mind when I look at what we have on the table, which is that we have to put people before profits.

There is a long-held view in my party that we have to put people before profits, and that was never more true than in the case of something like CETA. We are giving over to corporations the ability to sue national governments if they feel that their profits are being compromised.

There is also the risk of what we could call “regulatory chill”. The people in government who are responsible for protecting the environment and public health are going to be discouraged from doing so because of the threat of being sued under these new agreements.

Let us also look at what we are going through right now to know what the future can hold.

They say that what goes around comes around. It is astounding to see our dairy farmers, who are expecting market control in the form of supply management, currently losing several hundred million dollars per year because of incompetence and mismanagement by the Liberal government, which is pursuing old Conservatives policies.

Let me explain. Supply management protects our market for milk. When a dairy product comes over the border, it is subject to duty. Cheese is not allowed to be made if it does not contain milk. A metamorphosis does actually occur; it is all very Kafkaesque. At the border, the government says this product is not milk. With another word from this same government, a perfectly identical product suddenly and magically transforms into milk when it is used in cheese production.

We were promised $4.5 billion in compensation, but that simply evaporated. We are now left with less than one tenth of that amount.

Newfoundland is losing hundreds of millions of dollars because of our decision to do away with rules requiring processing to be done here.

It will be almost impossible to bring in national pharmacare. We are protecting companies and their profits instead of protecting people. The NDP will continue to fight against this trade deal, because we are not making Canadians' lives and our environment the priority.

[Scott Duvall, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of concerns that I have been hearing in the House and have been trying to get an answer to, which is on the difference between the $4.3 billion in compensation that the prior government told dairy farmers they would be provided, and the $350 million that the new Liberal government says is all they are going to get. Members keep saying that New Democrats are opposed, opposed, opposed to free trade, and yet we are trying to do our due diligence so that we are not surprised, surprised, surprised.

My question is this. Does the member feel the same way that I do about the difference between the $4.3 billion and the $350 million, and that somehow dairy farmers might be getting milked dry?

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there is no question that my colleague from Hamilton Mountain is quite right. There are provisions in these agreements that are there to protect the companies, and we are not thinking enough about human health and the environment. Promises have been made by both the Conservatives and the Liberals that are clearly being broken, because the compensation that is on the table now is less than one-tenth of what was promised.

Let us stay with the example of Hamilton and steel. I have no doubt that Canadian companies can compete with anyone in the world with regard to steel production. However, if we are dealing with countries that do not have the same or similar environmental or labour rules, then we are allowing products in, and it is no longer economic dumping, but environmental dumping, or social dumping. That is what happens when we do not pay attention to these trade deals. We are always going to hear the same song from those in favour of all of these deals, that they are always good. That is just not true. We have been chumps in Canada for too many years, and some of these deals have not turned out to be very helpful for us. In fact, they have produced a race to the bottom.

Very often these international agreements take away good jobs and favour only those companies that push governments to sign them. This is why I am very proud to be part of a social-democrat family that asks the right questions.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like my hon. colleague to comment on the provinces’ role in the free trade agreement negotiation.

He said that Canada could be sued, or it could also be sued as the result of decisions taken by provinces. They could go in their own direction and may not necessarily agree with the free trade agreement, and as a result there could be lawsuits.

I think it is important to respect the fact that provinces can make their own decisions in their areas of jurisdiction, but these things could happen. This has been seen in cases of proposed moratoriums and other free trade agreements.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate my colleague's question, because it is extremely relevant. I gave the example of the time when I was the Quebec environment minister and banned 2,4-D.

We know that the provinces are responsible for directly regulating in health and environment much more than the federal government, even though environment is shared.

We also know that the provinces risk bearing much higher costs, especially for generic drugs, because they will be much more expensive and it will be harder to bring them to market because of intellectual property protections. Once again, the agreement is putting profits before people. We want to put people before profits.

The provincial governments should be extremely careful, because this agreement will have a chilling effect on the provinces’ ability to regulate in health and the environment. This is why, from our perspective, we need to proceed very cautiously before signing this kind of agreement.

To those who would suggest that the NDP always votes against free trade agreements, I will say that nothing could be further from the truth. In recent years we supported the Canada–Korea Free Trade Agreement and the Canada–Jordan Free Trade Agreement.

We examine these agreements on a case by case basis, and this particular agreement if far from guaranteeing provincial capacity, in particular, capacity to ensure the public is protected. And what is more important in a government’s mandate than protection of the public?

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to speak alongside our leader and my colleagues in opposition to Bill C-30. I would also like to thank my colleague, the member of Parliament for Essex, and our entire team for pushing the debate forward.

On something as important as the trade agreement with the European Union, it deserves proper debate in the House of Commons. Truly, it is only the NDP that is pushing for that debate, pushing to ensure the government is being held to account on a proposed trade deal that we find extremely problematic for Canadians.

I also rise in the House today not just as the member of Parliament for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski but also as the jobs critic for the NDP. Earlier today, we presented our federal call to action entitled “The Precarious Generation: A Call to Action”. It was based on our months long national tour, a series of national consultations in nine provinces and one territory. We heard from young people, millennials, their parents, their friends, and people from our communities across the country. They all came to share their stories, their lived experiences with respect to what was an emerging crisis in Canada, which is the rise of precarious work.

Today I was honoured to put forward the kinds of recommendations that millennials across our country shared with us, recommendations that are bold, that are hopeful, that are visionary. Those recommendations come from a place of great challenge and increasing difficulty. Millennials are facing the prospect of being less well off than their parents generation in a very real way. That is a phenomenon we have not seen in recent times in our country.

The numbers talk for themselves. The rate of youth unemployment is twice the national average. Thirty-nine per cent of workers under the age of 30 are precariously employed. Most are working in temporary and contract work, despite the fact they are currently looking for, and certainly would much rather have, full-time employment. In provinces like Ontario, 300,000 young people are working unpaid internships and, in many case, those unpaid internships do not lead to paid work.

We heard heart-wrenching stories across the country. I remember hearing from a young worker in P.E.I. who talked about the fact that he had just graduated with a Bachelor of Science in biology, and he could never imagine having a job in his field on the island. Every morning he woke up at 4 a.m. and went to work in a fish plant. Every night he worked at Best Buy.

In Newfoundland, young people talked about the fact that their provincial government had just brought in an austerity budget. They knew they came from a province where people usually had to leave to find work. Despite the fact that they thought times were getting better, once again their generation would have to leave to find work somewhere else.

In Halifax, a young woman came forward. She told us that where she came from the most secure form of employment for young men was to join the military, a real precarious kind of work.

In Winnipeg, we heard about work, particularly in the public domain. Jobs like garbage pickup, which had been done for a very long time by younger, indigenous men, had been outsourced and devolved. These men were able to support their families with the income they made, but now they were unable to make that kind of living. As a brother told us at that meeting, they were treated as disposable as the garbage they pick up.

In Regina, we met a young woman who broke down in the meeting. She talked about how she could not afford her tuition. She could not bear to think what she would do to come out of the burden of student debt that she faced. She knew she had to find work that had pharmacare benefits to ensure she had the medication she needed.

In Calgary, we had a NDP cabinet minister tell us that for many years Calgary had been the promise land for young people from across the country. Today, even if individuals are from Alberta and are young, they can barely make it there.

In Vancouver, a young woman talked about the fact that because she was in a cycle of precarious work and because housing prices were so out of reach, she, like many young people, found it heartbreaking to know she would never be able to afford a home in the community she came from, and “heartbreaking” is the word that she used.

One of the last meetings in our 14 stops was held in Windsor, Ontario. When we talked about precarious work across Ontario and across the country, people told us to go to a place called Windsor. Windsor tells a story of how our generation has been sold out. Year after year, we have seen the impact of trade agreements that certainly have not had our best interests in mind. We have seen governments that have not had our best interests in mind and we have seen where that has gotten us. An older activist talked to us about the way in which manufacturing had been dealt a blow there for quite some time. Jobs that young people would normally do and certainly hope to raise a family with that do not exist the same way they used to. At the end of that meeting, we heard from a young woman who was finishing her law degree, her third degree. She is from Windsor. She moved back home and into her parents' basement. At the end of that meeting, she said that she did not know why anyone in the room was surprised that people of her generation could not imagine owning a home, having kids, and raising a family as that was just how it is now.

Those stories inform me and the work we do in the House, as we stand to oppose CETA, yet another trade agreement set to sell us out. It is clear from the messages we heard that both our generation and people who care for the millennial generation will not tolerate further actions from federal governments that do not have the interests of young people, and all people, in mind going forward.

In recent decades, and certainly since the start of the neoliberal era, we have seen a great many good jobs leave our country. We have witnessed the erosion of our social safety net to the benefit of corporations, millionaires and billionaires.

Today, and I have witnessed this throughout recent months as I was crisscrossing the country to take stock of the working conditions of our generation, it is clear that good jobs are becoming increasingly scarce, and that the millennial generation is living in uncertainty, with no benefits and no job security. How can we have come to this point, when we were promised an unprecedented level of prosperity if we opened our borders and liberalized trade all over the world? Well, it is because, from the start, liberalization was designed for the corporations and the billionaires, not for the middle class and the working class. We opened our borders not for human beings but for money, and massive amounts of it left. The tax havens are overflowing with profits made on the backs of workers here and elsewhere. We have allowed the rich to break our social contract, and to pay for our social services we are turning ever more to wage-earners who are paying today so that their employers can be subsidized to the tune of billions of dollars. We were promised that free trade would create jobs, but where are they? I would like someone to show me the jobs that have since been created, because after 10 months of consultations, no one seems to have found them.

We in the NDP have always been skeptical of these free-trade agreements unilaterally designed for the richest people, and time has obviously proven us right. Employment today is part-time and rarely unionized, and does not allow one to support a family or future projects. That is the sad state of our society.

Is it possible to conclude agreements that promote trade and serve the interests of Canadian workers? Of course it is, and that is why we are fighting today against Bill C-30 and the free-trade project with the European Union.

Finally, I am proud to stand up with my colleagues in the New Democratic party and thousands of Canadians all over this land who are opposed to this government’s measures.

I am proud to stand with my colleagues in the NDP and in solidarity with tens of thousands of Canadians, many of them young, who call on the government to work with us in providing a better future.

Bill C-30 and the proposal before us is not in that vein. We will continue to oppose it.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the comments from my friend from Churchill—Keewatinook Aski.

I am intrigued by her embrace of the exact same phrase Donald Trump uses, describing trade agreements being bad deals for us. Yet there is a lot of evidence that these trade agreements are actually good for Canada.

In the case of the Canada-European Union trade agreement, studies were done in advance and were the basis for the negotiations that indicated a $12 billion annual boost to the Canadian economy from a trade agreement such as the Canada-European Union trade agreement. If that were the case, a $12 billion boost to the economy, that would provide the kind of growth for the young generation of workers, who she says lack hope. It would give hope that they would have jobs and opportunities under this.

Does that promise of a $12 billion boost to the economy not provide the member some encouragement that perhaps this free trade agreement with Canada and European Union is a good deal, and that we will not see all our manufacturing jobs flee to France or to Luxembourg?

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I believe, as my seat colleague will know, that I prefer to subscribe to the philosophy of Bernie Sanders, a progressive politician who has also questioned the free trade dogma.

In all seriousness, as I have relayed here today, my generation, the millennial generation is speaking very clearly with respect to the challenges ahead of us, and very clearly of the ways in which federal government decisions to sell us out, whether it is free trade deals that have gone bad, or foreign ownership that has sold us out, and I can speak to that with respect my hometown that has seen that reality and is living it, or its gusto for privatization and de-regulation.

All of these measures are coming together to make for an increasingly challenging reality for many Canadians, particularly young Canadians. We know that to be the case from the most recent Statistics Canada information. We need to change course. Opposing this trade deal before us, which is bad news for Canadian workers, is only one step in that direction.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her speech.

I heard something that really surprised me. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I thought she said that jobs in the Canadian Armed Forces are precarious. I would like to tell all Canadians who are listening that, on the contrary, working for the Canadian Armed Forces is wonderful. I did it, as did my brother, father, grandfather and great-grandfather. It is a very well-paid job.

I strongly encourage all young millennials who are watching at home to contact their closest recruitment centre and join the Canadian Armed Forces.

If the member is saying that being a member of the Canadian Armed Forces is precarious because it involves dangerous missions, I would like to remind her that statistics show that it is much more dangerous to be a fisherman in Acadie or a city firefighter than to be part of the Canadian Armed Forces.

I want Canadians to know that being part of the Canadian Armed Forces is a wonderful experience.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments.

I do not think my point has come across. What we were told is that young men and women want more choice when it comes to jobs. As we know, many do not want to move away and they want more secure jobs than those provided by the Canadian Armed Forces. Of course, it goes without saying that some do want to join the armed forces.

We must recognize that relying on the armed forces, for example, is not an economic policy that our country can support. There must be choice. Our young people must have choices. What is obvious in today's Canada is that there are fewer and fewer choices when it comes to careers or full-time jobs. We must change that, and that is why we oppose the bill before us.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House at the point of calling the question on Bill C-30, the bill that would bring in the comprehensive economic trade agreement between the European Union and Canada.

I have the honour to represent the only party in this place that has voted against all investor-state agreements. Although mostly the NDP members vote against them, they do not always. I would urge them to reconsider and ensure, for the future, that all investor-state agreements be rejected. They really have nothing to do with trade at all. I want to dive into that aspect of the investor-state agreement and touch briefly on the other aspects Canadians should be concerned about.

First, as many members in this place have already raised, it will increase the cost of pharmaceutical drugs. It is very clear that this will happen. Numerous independent studies have looked at the implications of the so-called CETA on drug prices for Canadians.

Second, it is also clear, and it has been raised by a number of groups, that the language the European Union wants in the text on the question of municipal powers for procurement will also be negatively affected by CETA, including access to procurement for municipalities, academic institutions, school boards, and hospitals. If they should decide that they want to make sure they are buying locally, they could be offending the provisions of CETA.

The third part is the most controversial. It is certainly the most controversial in Europe. It is why Canadian parliamentarians are being sold a bill of goods when we are told that there is any urgency here. I am really surprised that the Liberal government chose not to have significant review and consultation nationally. We had that on the trans Pacific partnership agreement but not on the comprehensive economic trade agreement with the European Union. This is surprising, given that there can be no need for urgency in Canada to ratify when there are 28 countries, and an additional 10 subnational groups throughout the European Union, that have yet to ratify, and given that there is still a pending decision from the European Court of Justice as to whether the comprehensive economic trade agreement is compatible with European law.

The controversy within Europe is overwhelmingly about the one piece of this agreement that I think could be very conveniently and easily removed without affecting the trade aspects at all. This takes some underscoring. What kind of trade agreement has an entire section that has nothing to do with trade? The answer, these days, is almost all of them. We are being sold, hook, line, and sinker, the notion that a trade agreement must include something called investor-state dispute resolution systems, or FIPAs, foreign investment protection agreements.

The first of these anywhere in the world was chapter 11 of NAFTA, and we have a lot of experience with it. I do not believe that even the negotiators of NAFTA believed that they were introducing anything novel when they negotiated chapter 11. As much as Canada had a national debate on NAFTA, chapter 11 never came up, because it was a sleeper provision. It might have stayed asleep, actually, if it had not been for the ingenuity of a Toronto lawyer, Barry Appleton, who decided that chapter 11 of NAFTA could be interpreted in a completely novel way.

The essence of the legitimate protection of investor interests in other countries is that we do not want a government coming along and nationalizing the assets, saying, “You have built a lovely refinery here. We are now going to say it belongs to the government of 'fill in the blank', and you, as an investor, are not going to get your money back on that.”

That is what people thought chapter 11 was initially, because it talked about protection from expropriation, but chapter 11 used some novel language. It talked about governmental measures that were tantamount to expropriation. Here is where the clever lawyering came in.

The first chapter 11 came to us when this Parliament banned the trade and use of a toxic gasoline additive, a manganese-based gasoline additive, that had a human health threat component. It also gummed up the diagnostics of the on-board catalytic converters for automobiles, so car manufacturers were worried that it would void their warranties. Environment Canada was worried that it would cause more air pollution. Neurotoxicologists, like Donna Mergler, at the University of Quebec in Montreal, was worried about it causing an increase in a disease that looks a lot like Parkinson's, but it is manganism.

Well, Parliament banned it, but because of a chapter 11 NAFTA challenge from a private corporation in Richmond, Virginia, Ethyl Corporation, Canada found itself in an arbitration case. This was just the first of many, and we keep losing them, or we keep having them settled out of court, although we cannot call these places courts, unless we use the word “kangaroo” first. These are arbitrations in hotel rooms with private arbitrators. They make money being arbitrators. They are expert lawyers. We can find Canadian lawyers who claim to be environmental lawyers suddenly selling out to be expert lawyers for U.S. corporations at these secret hearings.

The secret hearing process under NAFTA in chapter 11 is egregious. Just as egregious is the Canada-China investment treaty. I would have to say that it is more egregious, because every investor from the People's Republic of China is going to be a state-owned enterprise for the People's Republic China. Therefore, their ability to sue us is virtually unlimited. Of course, the Canada-China investment treaty never had even as much debate as we are getting on CETA. It never went through Parliament at all, because previous Prime Minister Harper approved it in cabinet, confidentially. The treaty binds the Canadian government until the year 2045 to the People's Republic of China, and its state-owned enterprises have more right to challenge decisions made in Canada than any Canadian corporation does.

CETA falls somewhere in between. CETA is being sold to us by many as the gold standard. It was the head of trade negotiations for the European Commission, Cecilia Malmström, who came up with the idea that since this investor-state provision in CETA is so controversial and is attracting so much protest from within the European Union, maybe we can make it look more like a real court and end the fact that it is so clearly profit driven.

Can members imagine arbitrators who are one day working in their big downtown law firms and the next day are essentially judges determining whether the decisions passed through parliaments around the world are going to hold up to their private scrutiny? There is no appeal, no oversight, and no room for intervenors to make the case as to why it was appropriate to ban a gasoline additive or to stop the export of PCB-contaminated waste or to not put a toxic waste disposal facility next to a town's freshwater supply. These are all real-life examples under chapter 11 where the polluters have won and the citizens have lost, and it happens over and over again.

CETA proposes some improvement, no question. It is much better than chapter 11 of NAFTA and better than the Canada-China investment treaty, which we seem to have forgotten ever even happened in this place. When I hear Conservative members getting up and asking whether the new administration under the Liberals is moving too close to China, I kind of want to run over, shake them, and ask if they do not remember that they passed, in secret, or their cabinet did, the Canada-China investment treaty, which is the worst of all of these.

Professor Gus Van Harten, of Osgoode Hall Law School, literally wrote the book on the bad investment deal with China. The book is called Sold Down the Yangtze, if members want to pick it up to find out how our sovereignty was sold out by the Harper administration.

Gus Van Harten has done a careful study of what is being offered in this so-called gold standard, and there definitely are flaws.

The arbitrators will have a more permanent roster. Can members imagine if our judicial system picked judges at random from the private sector, and they did better on cases where the rich guys won? Can members imagine how fair our judiciary would be seen to be? Well, CETA makes an improvement on that. There will be a permanent roster of such judges. They will still be drawn from private-sector work, and although they will be prohibited under the CETA terms from acting as advocates and lawyers before a CETA investment court, they will not be barred from operating as advocates and lawyers under other dispute resolutions, such as chapter 11 of NAFTA.

There is still this culture of an elite group of corporate lawyers who are literally global ambulance chasers. They find companies and tell them that they can sue a government if they want to.

The sad part, as well, is that, for a moment, Cecilia Malmström's proposal called for allowing civil society to come forward as intervenors. That part of her proposed gold standard was dropped.

My plea to the current government, and my plea to all parliamentarians, is to dig in our heels on this. I commend the NDP caucus for digging in its heels on this. We should dig in our heels and say that these are anti-democratic by definition.

There is no chance in the world that a company that emanates from the European Union is going to expropriate Canadian property in Europe, contravening all the laws and international common law practice. We are in a safe zone here, developed country to developed country. Let us get rid of the unfair investor-state provisions and fix CETA so that it is about fair trade.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is an old saying that fools rush in where wise people fear to tread. My question has to do with rushing in to sign this agreement.

We know that CETA will not be fully ratified until all 28 EU member states have passed the agreement in their own parliaments. Clearly, we have time. We should take that time.

I wonder if the member has any thoughts in regard to taking time so we can address the issue of investor-state provisions and the very clear concerns expressed by CELA in regard to environmental degradation. Of course, there are our dairy farmers and those who produce the good food we rely on. Can we accommodate those folks? Can we slow down? Should we?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, absolutely we should slow down. This is going to take a minimum of five to seven years to get through the European parliaments we are dealing with. We also still have the very substantial, some might say risk but I say hope, that the European Court of Justice will say that it is not in accordance with European law to allow Canadian corporations to sue European governments.

The shoe is on the other foot. It is something like the Ajax mine they pushed in Kamloops, B.C. that local residents do not want. It is owned by a state-owned enterprise from Poland. If CETA does not go through, the B.C. government can turn down the Ajax mine without the risk of a corporate suit against B.C. taken at the national level. Goodness knows how much money we could lose.

I have to underscore this: The decisions under investor-state provisions have nothing to do with trade. They do not involve Canada doing anything wrong. They do not involve us violating any scientific principles or acting against evidence. We just have to be shown to have cost them money. That is it. It is completely corrosive to democracy.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, many European countries had reservations about signing this agreement, and many have now signed but with the proviso that they have not yet ratified. The debate within Europe, especially about the investor-state dispute settlement clauses, is far from over.

There are other aspects of the agreement that could be positive, and there are some negative ones too.

I am wondering who the member thinks is putting on all this pressure. If the investor-state dispute settlement clauses are what risks having the deal fall through in Europe, who is pushing for them? If it is the Canadian government, why would the Canadian government be willing to risk the rest of the deal for the sake of keeping these provisions? Certainly not many of the governments in Europe are pushing for these. In fact, that is where they are getting the push-back from their own population on this deal. Who is defending these, and why is it so important to keep them in there if it jeopardizes everything else the Liberals and Conservatives say is good about the deal?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is, as they used to say on the old TV show, the $60,000 question. Adjusted for inflation, I guess it is now the $6-trillion question.

We have issues with some of the trade aspects, and I am glad my friend from London—Fanshawe mentioned the dairy threat. I mentioned pharmaceuticals. There are the procurement provisions, but even they are not primarily about trade.

What we are talking about here is increasing the powers of transnational corporations while decreasing the regulatory powers of governments. In whose interest is that? It is not in any sovereign nation's interest. It is in the interest of transnational corporations. It is the first plank of global corporate rule, and it is being advanced by the corporations.

The current Liberal government should look at who pushed it in the last round of negotiations, realize it was the Harper administration, not the Europeans, take it out, and start a rethink of all these investor-state provisions and renegotiate them so they make sense and defend the sovereign rights of governments to protect public health, safety, and workers' rights within their own countries.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise again to speak to CETA in the House, because there is a lot to talk about and I do not think we have done a good enough job yet of discussing what is in this deal. We have heard a lot of platitudes by those who support the deal and, I would say, not a lot of information. The government has certainly not provided any detailed study of the anticipated economic impact of this deal. Canadians are supposed to just take it on faith that somehow it is going to be good for them, their jobs, and their communities.

It is reasonable for Canadians to expect at any time, and particularly from a government that has promised to bring back evidence-based decision-making and a scientific approach to government, to be provided with information and analysis on the particular ways that the government thinks this deal would be beneficial. However, we have not received that at all. Instead, we get an ideological repetition of the idea that these deals must obviously be good.

The NDP, instead, has been trying to offer an example of how to look at an agreement's details, to evaluate the various clauses, and to come to a conclusion about whether, overall, it is a good agreement for the country. I do not think it is any secret that the conclusion New Democrats have come to on this particular deal is that it is not, on balance, good for Canada. I will get to why.

There is one thing we need to recognize, first and foremost, which may sound silly. When considering the positions and arguments advanced by other parties, it bears repeating that trade deals are an important part of public policy. It is not as if trade, on the one hand, is separate and divorced from all the other public policies of government, on the other hand. Trade deals have important implications for governments, particularly these kinds of comprehensive trade agreements. They set the economic framework and a number of other important rules under which government can or cannot apply other levers of public policy.

Consider, for instance, a previous trade agreement that Canada once had with the United States called the Auto Pact. It was an agreement on the trade of a particular good, in this case automobiles, across the border. The people who negotiated and concluded that agreement recognized that trade deals were public policy. Therefore, the public policy goals of that agreement were not just to create more wealth for transnational corporations. They said that if they were going to sign a trade deal, they needed to enunciate what their public policy goals were. An important public policy goal was to ensure that jobs were created within Canada and that the goods being sold in Canada actually meant that Canadians got a slice of the production of that good and received wages for the goods sold in Canada.

When we talk about trade deals of different kinds and the values that can be represented in them, here is an example of a trade deal that we should not need to approve just because it concerns trade. Let us face it, multinational corporations have negotiated with themselves, because they are advising all of the various governments involved in these negotiations. These are not negotiations in which union leaders and people represent the interests of the environment and ordinary Canadians. They are largely negotiations with government representatives and representatives of multinational corporations meeting behind closed doors and coming up with rules. Then, when they come out of that negotiating room, we are told that either we agree with trade or we do not, and that this particular set of rules that has been negotiated behind closed doors represents the best possible scenario for ordinary Canadians. That is a laughable claim. They never provide any evidence to back up that claim and we are supposed to just take it on faith. When we look at agreements like this, it is not clear what the public policy goal is.

Consider CETA, for instance. This agreement, we know, because it has been confirmed by a number of independent studies, will raise the cost of pharmaceutical drugs in a country that already has among the highest such costs. We need to go from where we are right now with respect to the costs of drugs and to find ways to bring those down, and we know that CETA would move us in the wrong direction. What gain would we be making that would offset that loss, unless the public policy goal, perversely, of the government is to fatten the wallets of international pharma?

I do not think that is a defensible public policy goal. However, if that is the goal of the government, let it say so; and if it is not, let it tell us what we are getting out of this deal that counteracts that effect on Canadians. If everyday Canadians are made to pay more for their pharmaceutical drugs, that is a tangible cost, and what tangible benefit can they expect to see in return?

There are lots of other ways we could pursue other public policy goals within the context of these kinds of trade agreements. For instance, we could say that because we want green public transportation in Canada and with our trading partners, whether they be in Europe, the United States of America, or wherever else, we want a firm commitment, with timelines and penalties if these goals are not met, to work toward a common charger for electric vehicles. That would be a legitimate thing to do. Certainly, if a trade deal like CETA can pronounce on the minuscule details of municipal procurement, we could certainly reach a deal that would bring its member parties together to pursue a common charging standard that would allow that industry to reach economies of scale, increase production, whether in Canada or the other member countries, and begin greening public transportation in those various areas.

However, we never hear about that because we do not actually get into a debate about what the public policy goals of a trade deal are. Rather, we are just told that this will create massive wealth, that it will be great for everyone, and that everyone is going to get a job after we pass this.

The evidence does not support that at all if we look at the historical record of what has happened in the Canadian manufacturing sector since the late 1980s and early 1990s when we began signing these kinds of agreements. No further evidence has been provided. When we look at the historical track record, I would argue it is not particularly good, and we are not given any contrary evidence.

We might also say that when it comes to labour mobility, for instance, these agreements tend to have lots of provisions on how companies can bring in their own workers from wherever to perform work here in Canada that ought to be performed first and foremost by Canadians who are looking for this kind of work. That is not the right way to go about this in these provisions, but we do know that there are labour mobility challenges. For instance, trade unions who have hiring halls have people here who are out of work and there are places with labour demand in the United States, and those people cannot get that work because in order to be authorized to do the work, they first need an employer and a visa. However, because there is an agreement in which the employers go to the hiring hall to fill their labour demands, the workers needs to be cleared to work at the hall first, but until they are cleared at the hall they do not have an employer so they cannot apply for the visa and cannot be cleared at the hall until they have a visa. That is a legitimate labour mobility issue.

We could be working to address labour mobility issues in that way rather than encouraging the import of temporary foreign workers who then work only for that company and who are thus, frankly, under the dictatorship of that company, because if the company decides for whatever reason that those workers are complaining too much about their working conditions or if the company does not pay them what they were promised when they came over, the workers can be sent back by the company. That is not a fair arrangement for those workers. It is not a fair arrangement for Canadians who are expected to then compete against them. There are other ways to do that, but these do not come up when we are talking about these deals.

What the NDP is trying to do in this debate is to say that there are other ways of doing this and there are other important public policy goals that ought to be taken into consideration when we pursue trade agreements. However, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have failed to do this. That is the problem. That is what we are trying to zero in on. We are trying to show that, yes, trade deals and trade is important, but there is more than one way to do it. There are an infinite number of ways. This particular way, in which we take away the ability of democratically elected governments in Canada and elsewhere to make decisions about health, the environment, and working conditions within their own jurisdiction and to put them at the mercy of trade tribunals that are more concerned about whether transnational corporations are losing money than about the substance of those issues, is the wrong way to do it. That is not to say there is not a way to do it, but it means that we have to ask more of our governments here in Canada when it comes to negotiating a trade deal.

Conservatives and Liberals alike have shown that they are not up to the task. Although we have seen a change in government, we have yet to see a change in approach. We saw the same when David Emerson switched from being the Liberal international trade minister to being the Harper international trade minister, and we saw it when the current Minister of International Trade hugged the former international trade minister on the floor of the House of Commons the day CETA was signed. There is no difference between the two.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I again thank my friend from Elmwood—Transcona for his opposition to the investor-state agreement.

Getting back to the core of this, we really do need to ask how we became so ensnared in so many of these agreements that only privilege the rights of foreign corporations. Canadian corporations cannot sue under such provisions if the Canadian government makes a decision that hurts their profits, but if we accept this agreement, companies from Germany, Poland, Belgium, or wherever, would be able to sue the Canadian government just how U.S. corporations can do now. The People's Republic of China's corporations can, and if the TPP goes through, another nine countries' corporations can bring these private cases against Canada.

Would the member agree with me that we need to reopen the whole bundle of investor-state agreements and renegotiate them globally to ensure that they fairly balance the rights of corporations versus the sovereignty of governments?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would agree with the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands that there is something fundamentally broken at the conceptual level with the investor-state dispute settlement clauses. There absolutely is. Giving foreign companies the ability to intervene in areas of domestic policy-making, which we elect democratically governments to do, is just completely backward.

The idea that somehow in order for those companies to get fair treatment in Canada we need these investor-state provisions, when we have a whole body of common law and other international agreements that give reasonable assurances to those companies they will not be treated unfairly, is also wrong. Added to that is a mechanism by which these transnational corporations can use the threat of serious financial punishment of a government in order to direct its policy behaviour. That is what is wrong about this. It is not about fair treatment. That already exists under the law before we sign these agreements. This is about whether we are going to give these companies the hammer and the threat of it use to direct government policy. That obviously is wrong and should not be a component of deals going forward.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague brought up jobs, and we need to have an understanding of what we face in terms of employment under CETA, but, unfortunately, we do not because the current Liberal government has not done any analysis. We do not know what the projected job losses could be, but we do have one study coming out of Tufts University in the United States saying that Canada would lose 30,000 jobs from CETA. It is not just Canada that is concerned. In the EU as well, just last week the European Parliament's employment and social affairs committee voted for a motion saying that the EU parliament should refuse to approve CETA because it would lead to the loss of some 200,000 jobs in the EU.

There is no evidence to back the potential number of jobs that we hear the government and the trade minister talking about all the time; but quite the contrary, what we only see going forward in Canada and the EU are job losses.

Does the member for Elmwood—Transcona believe that we should have a full analysis of the job losses that would incurred in Canada?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I think that is exactly what is required. I cannot imagine a large company embarking on a new contract with a new supplier or new partner without doing some serious due diligence. I cannot imagine that they sit down in corporate boardrooms and say they have the opportunity to have a partnership with a major new supplier or a competitor who wants to join with them and that they are going to approve the merger simply because bigger is better and mergers are good. I cannot imagine their saying they do not need to take the time to study it, they do not need any numbers, because they believe that bigger is better is a good economic principle and therefore that they just need to go ahead. I cannot imagine their saying that all of the questions are just slowing them down and that the board needs to stop asking questions about the money and the jobs and about their obligations under a new contract and just plow ahead because it is a great principle, that they run the company based on principles, not on spreadsheets or numbers.

There is not a company that would last a day in the market if it ran itself that way, and Canadians should expect better from their government.