Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-30 at second reading. This bill implements the Canada-Europe comprehensive and economic trade agreement, or CETA.
I have to say to my colleagues that, unfortunately, we will be voting against it. I would have really liked to be able to support a good agreement between Canada and Europe in order to increase trade, because we know that the European continent is ripe with opportunity for our businesses. They definitely could have benefited from a good agreement that increases trade with Europe. We do already trade with Europe, but a trade agreement would allow us to trade even more.
Unfortunately, the agreement and its implementation bill leave much to be desired. This is not simply my opinion; many Canadian and European experts have been very critical of the bill's provisions. One of the things that has been most roundly criticized is definitely the legal framework for investor-state dispute resolution. It is a parallel system that allows investors like multinationals and states to challenge our own democratic decisions made here in Canada at all levels of government. This means that we could be sued for implementing policies that could be seen as affecting the bottom line of multinationals or working against the interests of foreign states. That will be part of my speech.
I identified many other problems with this agreement. However, as I said earlier, I am disappointed that we did not manage to come up with a better agreement because Europe is a place where we must do business. If ever there were a continent we could work well with outside North America, where we live, it is indeed Europe, where there are very robust workers rights and environmental protections; very solid workplace health and safety regulations that are comparable to what we have here in Canada; and excellent food safety and product safety regulations. This is a continent that Canada can certainly work well with because of our similar rules.
Today, as we speak, many of our regulations are similar to those in Europe. It is therefore important that we increase trade with that continent. Unfortunately, the bill and the signed agreement certainly do not meet our expectations.
Bill C-30 is definitely being rushed through. It allows the government to ratify CETA in full, but does not answer key questions. For example, many measures applicable to investors and states have not yet been defined and are being staunchly opposed in Europe. Right now we have no details about an appeal procedure or how the members of the arbitration panel will be chosen. That is where things stand at the moment.
The Liberal government is asking parliamentarians to sign a blank cheque, telling us it will fill it out later. Canada and Europe tried to alleviate Europeans' concerns about CETA, but the Liberal government has yet to consider Canadians' concerns.
I want to point out four problems that I feel are really important and that must be raised. They may make government members realize there are serious flaws in the economic agreement and possibly change their mind about this bill.
I have already mentioned investor-state measures in relation to our democratic states. These mechanisms are not fair to Canada, and they are not fair to Europe, either.
That is why even European experts and politicians raised this issue. They also felt that there was a problem with allowing multinationals to challenge our laws.
Let us imagine that a political party is elected based on the promise to ban a certain product that its members felt was a danger to the public. When the party takes office, it keeps its promise by declaring the product in question to be contrary to the interests of the economy and the public. Under the agreement in question, the multinational that manufactures the product could challenge the government's democratic decision to ban it and demand compensation by saying that it sold millions of units of the product in our country.
Multinationals and corporations would thus become superior to our sovereign states, which make decisions based on their election promises. These companies could get the last word and obtain compensation under the agreement as it stands today. That is why I want to speak out against this in the House today. I want every member to understand the potential consequences of these investor-state provisions and the parallel legal system created by this economic agreement.
Even though my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot did a great job of explaining how this agreement will affect dairy producers, I wanted to mention them too because they are going to suffer major losses. That is why the previous government promised to compensate them when it was negotiating this economic agreement. The previous government recognized that dairy producers were going to suffer real financial losses and that, if it disrupted our supply management system by accepting more dairy products on our market, European cheeses in this case, the sales of our producers here in Canada could be negatively affected. The previous government therefore committed to compensating dairy producers for their losses.
The government often tries to smooth things over by saying that in exchange for allowing a certain number of European products onto our market, Canadian products will also have access to the European market. This is a market of 500 million people, and it is a tremendous market for selling more products, but in reality, because of the support that European countries give their own producers and other factors, it will be very difficult for Canadians to compete over there.
As well, obviously there are transportation costs involved in exporting products there. This sets up an uneven playing field, and it is just not the case that farmers will be able to make up their losses just by exporting and by trying to sell their products in Europe.
Another issue is the rising cost of drugs, which my colleagues have spoken about. Experts have estimated that Canadians will be faced with $850 million in extra costs. When the Liberals were in opposition, they called for a public study on the additional drug costs brought by changes to the intellectual property regime for pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately, once elected, they appear to have forgotten about this part, even though it was a prerequisite for supporting this agreement.
The fourth problem I wanted to talk about is that certain rules will prevent current or future rules from requiring greater local content. For example, municipal or other governments might want to see procurement rules encouraging a greater number of local companies to bid on government procurement contracts. These rules could also be deemed inappropriate under the economic agreement.
In closing, I will be pleased to answer my colleagues’ questions if they would like me to clarify what I have said, or anything else.