Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I want to let the House know I will be splitting my time with the member for New Westminster—Burnaby. I am looking forward to hearing what he has to say once I conclude my remarks.
I am rising today to state my opposition to the trans-Pacific partnership. We could call it the CPTPP, or whatever kind of window dressing the Liberals want to add to pretend it is not just a deal that was negotiated in secret by Conservatives, ultimately to be signed by them with no real meaningful changes. However, I am not going to do that because I have more respect for the intelligence of Canadians than apparently some others in the House. I am going to call it the TPP. I just wanted to say at the outset that is something I am doing on purpose, not by accident.
I, and the NDP, have opposed many trade deals in the past. The reason I oppose this deal is that it is a deal for the few and not the many. That is the problem. There is a concept of trade in the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party that is really just about corporations being able to use resources across countries to amass their own wealth but that does not actually allow that wealth to be shared by workers in the countries that are parties to this agreement. That is just as true for Canada as it is for many other countries. Not all trade deals have to be this way, but Liberal and Conservative governments in Canada have chosen to make them this way. That is why that period of corporate globalization happens to coincide with a growing proportion of the wealth produced in those years in these kinds of trade deals. These are the numbers we see over a 25- or 30-year period.
We have seen GDP growth and wealth increase, but the problem is that it is not finding its way into the pockets of the workers who are producing that wealth. A larger and larger percentage of that wealth being generated is going into fewer and fewer hands. It is not the NDP making that claim. We have seen many different organizations track that information and report on it. There is inequity built into these agreements.
What we have been trying to highlight in today's debate are the various mechanisms and what they actually mean for a Canadian worker when we get into the content of the agreement, not just in terms of what the exports at the company they work for are going to be but the wages they are going to be paid once they are in unfair competition with workers in other countries that do not have the same standards and under agreements that do not require some kind of meaningful reciprocity when it comes to labour standards.
Likewise for the environment. What happens to the environment in Canada if we are forced into competition with jurisdictions that do not have the same regulations? What happens to the Canadian worker when the job leaves Canada because we have now given equal access to our markets to products made in countries that do not observe the same standards?
That is why I am quite proud to stand in this place and say that I oppose this deal and the many deals like it.
I look forward to the day when we have a trade deal that actually puts the interests of the Canadian worker first. I look forward to supporting that deal. I do not think we are going to see it negotiated by the Liberals or Conservatives, at least not these iterations. The Liberals had opportunities to fix what was wrong with the TPP. They passed it up. What we are hearing out of the NAFTA negotiation rounds is that they are getting ready to sell out Canadian workers in another international trade deal all over again. The track record over the last 25 years or 30 years just is not there. What the Liberals have done most recently does not show that they have learned any lessons from that past.
We talk about investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms, which is a bit of a mouthful, but what does it mean for an ordinary Canadian? What it means is that when one votes for a government that says it wants to institute certain standards for the public good, whether it is an environmental or labour standard, a foreign company could say that a provision, which might be in the public interest, does not matter, as it is going to cost them money. Therefore, one could be taken to court and sued not just for the company's loss of profits, although it gets that too, but also to block the policy change.
To add insult to injury, not only do we not get the policy that is in the public interest, but then we also have to pay money for not getting the policy, which is in the public interest.
This is not available to Canadian companies because Canadian companies do not actually have the same rights under ISDS provisions.
On the world stage, Canada is the biggest sucker for this kind of unfair treatment. I will reserve some of my more inflammatory characterizations of that for a private conversation.
Canada no doubt has been the biggest sucker for this kind of treatment. It has cost us more money than anybody else and now we are lining up another 10 countries that will be able to do that to us again. It does not make sense.
We can look at TPP and ask ourselves questions about how it is going to benefit the Canadian worker. When we look at chapter 12, which is something I have talked about many times in the House and in committee, there is nothing in there for a construction worker who is out of work.
Liberals talk about infrastructure investment and how they are going to put Canadians to work by investing in infrastructure on the one hand, but with the other hand, they are off signing a deal that is going to make it far easier for international contractors to bring in temporary foreign workforces to perform that work when Canadians are out of work. There is no infrastructure to track those workers once they are in the country. There is no infrastructure to find out what they are being paid. There is no infrastructure to figure out whether their training is adequate or if it meets our safety standards.
That is what is wrong with this agreement. On the one hand, Liberals are saying they want to fix the temporary foreign worker program and invest in infrastructure for Canadian workers and on the other hand, they are doing things that are actually going to make it easier for that work to get scooped up by other workers. It does not make sense.
In terms of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing, we see it again with respect to the cost of pharmaceutical drugs. Even though some of the worst provisions in the TPP have been suspended, we know that they could come back at any time. They are sitting there on the books waiting to drive up the cost of Canadian drugs, even as the government says it wants to bring about some kind of drug insurance plan. We are not exactly sure it is going to be the right kind, but while the Liberals are talking about trying to lower drug costs for Canadians, in their trade file they are off on their merry way making it easier for the international pharmaceutical companies that produce those drugs to raise the price. Once again the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing, which is the charitable interpretation, or it could be that the voice of the left hand is being cynically put out there for political reasons, while the real hand of the government remains the right hand.
That is why international corporations get provisions in the main agreement and Canadian workers, if they get anything, get things in side agreements that are not binding and do not mean anything and can be overwritten very easily. That is another measure of how serious the government is.
If some of the language in those side agreements which represent meaningful measures when it comes to labour standards and environmental standards actually made it into the trade agreement, and they are not there currently, then we would have a deal that the NDP could look at seriously to consider whether or not it was going to support it. That would mean the government was actually trying to make a trade agreement that worked for Canadian workers instead of what amounts to a handful, relatively speaking, of Canadian investors and business people who are looking to invest abroad and want to do so on their own terms to get a big return. If they were to bring that money back to Canada and not send it off to Barbados, the Cayman Islands or wherever else they like to put their money, that would show GDP is going up and the Liberals and Conservatives could say they are increasing wealth.
However, if you follow the numbers, that wealth is not going to Canadian workers. That is why they are experiencing the highest levels of household debt in generations. That is why they are finding it hard to find housing. That is why they are struggling to pay the cost of their drugs. It is because of the way the wealth has been created over the last 25 or 30 years under these kinds of trade deals, not trade deals writ large.
The problem is that the Liberals and Conservatives in this place conflate their idea of trade with trade generally speaking. There are different ways to trade. In fact, we trade already with many of the nations that are part of the TPP. In many cases, there are hardly any tariffs on the trade happening between those countries.
That is one way to trade. We have been trading that way. We can expand trade under that model or we could do it under another kind of agreement that actually supports Canadian workers and supports employment for Canadian workers and actually recognizes the environmental impact of trading with certain nations that do not have the right standards. We could do that. That is still trade. In fact, I think it is a better kind of trade and it would be an effective kind of trade.
That is the kind of trade the NDP supports. That is what we are fighting for. It is why we are saying no to this agreement.