Madam Speaker, I am pleased to stand in this place to add comment on Bill C-30, Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation act
The overwhelmingly positive economic impacts of Canadian businesses gaining preferential access to the world's wealthiest trade area cannot be overstated. This deal will reduce or eliminate approximately 99% of customs duties between Canada and the European Union. This will enhance the competitiveness of Canadian businesses whenever they sell a good into the European market.
Conversely, this will make it less expensive for Canadian businesses to buy specialized goods, like heavy machinery and parts that may not be available in Canada.
A joint Canada-EU study concluded that CETA could bring a 20% boost in bilateral trade and a $12 billion increase to Canada's economy. That is why the previous Conservative government was relentlessly focused on signing trade agreements around the world.
This focus led to Canada's first trade agreement with a major Asian economy in South Korea, and the first major trade agreement with a South American economy in Colombia. These footholds are hugely important for exporters who want to export their products to Asia or South America. For an economy that relies on the service sector and exports, these deals are of paramount importance.
That is why the previous government launched negotiations for Canada's most ambitious free trade agreement with Europe in May 2009. After years of negotiations with the European Union and its 28-member countries, negotiations ended in August 2014, and a deal in principle was reached during the summer of 2015.
The Liberals were handed the CETA on a silver platter. Yet, for reasons that may never be explained, they nearly blew it. For several days after Wallonia, a small region in Belgium, announced that it would be supporting the agreement, there were legitimate fears that the deal had collapsed.
On October 25, as the minister was in the House defending her record on this deal, she stated, “when it comes to CETA, Canada has done its job.”. The argument that because Canada had worked hard up to that point and therefore it was acceptable to let Europe do “its job now”, was fraught with so many problems I cannot even begin to list them. These deals do not sign themselves. Canada must always fight for its interests, and not sit and wait and hope for the best.
Thankfully, the pro-trade powers in Europe that strongly supported this deal got it moving again. They did so because CETA could serve as a template for a similar agreement between Europe and the United States at a later date.
The Minister of International Trade has been repeating over and over that she got CETA over the finish line because she made this deal more “inclusive and progressive”. The only thing that has changed from the deal in principle negotiated by the Conservatives and the agreement we are discussing today is the investor-state dispute settlement process. Nothing else has changed.
Canada has always been recognized as a country with the strongest record for human rights, rule of law, democracy, regulation, and the list goes on. CETA has always been a progressive and inclusive agreement because Canada has always been a progressive and inclusive country. Saying otherwise would be disingenuous.
Concerning the investor-state dispute mechanisms I mentioned, investor-state dispute arbitration tribunals are made available in nearly 3,000 bilateral investment treaties. Even Belgium has investment provisions with 182 different parties. These are not new, and many work quite well.
Under the investor-state dispute settlement process, foreign investors can sue the host state before an arbitration tribunal, appointed on a case-by-case basis by the two affected parties, if they believe the treaty governing trade between the two countries has been violated. This system is used for dispute mechanisms in over 3,000 bilateral trade agreements, including NAFTA, and its strengths and weaknesses are known and understood.
Civil society groups have questioned the appropriateness of applying a dispute settlement mechanism created to resolve private-commercial disputes to international public law disputes, because it is felt to favour the companies from larger countries. Critics have also raised concerns over the potential for the arbitrator to have bias and the potential for conflict of interest.
In response to these criticisms and in preparation for negotiations with the United States on a free trade agreement, the European Union began developing the concept of an investment court after the deal in principle with Canada was agreed to in 2014. The investment court would be a primary tribunal of 15 judges and an appeal tribunal of six members. The members would be named by the EU and Canada. It would be administered by the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes.
The court of first instance would sit in benches of three members each and would decide the original complaint. As with any new process, it is hard to know exactly how this will unfold. Who within each country will be responsible for appointing judges to the court? What will their training and fields of expertise be? How long will they sit for? Will the judges be idle if there are not many challenges? Or will they be allowed to work and consult in addition to their duties on the court?
Considering Canada's population is less than a tenth of the size of Europe's, how many of the 21 jurists would be Canadian? In the case of Wallonia, how many jurists would come from that region over jurists from France or Germany? There is no common law, in international disputes between corporations and governments, that jurists could draw guidance from when deciding cases, so it is hard to speculate whether the outcomes of legal challenges would be any different.
One of the main criticisms of the investor-state tribunals is that due to their decentralized nature, the arbiters do not necessarily consider the decisions of other arbiters. Therefore, their rulings are inconsistent. However, this new system does not necessarily fix this. If these investment courts become the norm, there could be hundreds of different courts deciding trade disputes. How consistent their rulings would be remains to be seen. Furthermore, a permanent multilateral investment court would only be consistent in its rulings relative to the treaty that governs the trade between two countries.
As with any new process, as I have said, it is hard to know exactly how it will unfold. If this new court satisfies European negotiators, then it should be included as the treaty's primary dispute mechanism. The question remains, why do the Liberals believe that this has made the CETA more inclusive or progressive? The fact is that jurists on the new court will render their decisions on the evidence and the text of the trade agreement, which remains the same as what the Conservatives negotiated 15 months ago.
Quite frankly, getting this trade deal done should have been the government's first priority. Now that it is signed, I hope it will place a relentless focus on getting the trans Pacific partnership completed at the earliest possible opportunity. The more markets Canadian producers can sell into without the competitive disadvantage of tariffs, the better off we will be as a country.