Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this House to speak to this very important bill which we are opposing because of the profound negative impact that comes from the botched series of negotiations and the very ineffective way in which this government has implemented it.
I should start by praising the work of the trade critic for the New Democratic Party, the member for Essex. She has been extraordinarily eloquent on this issue and she has done her homework. She has actually read through the agreement. She has identified the problems. She was the only member of the trade committee who actually listened to the witnesses, hundreds of whom came forward from a wide variety of backgrounds to talk about the problems with this agreement. She is the only member of the trade committee, having heard that feedback and input, standing up for those Canadians who came forward. We thank the member for Essex for her work on this.
I am in this House in part because of my interest in trade issues. I was interested in trade prior to becoming the CEO of a major social enterprise, WIDHH. That social enterprise was involved in exporting a wide variety of assistive devices for people who are deaf, deafened and hard of hearing. What we did was we opened up our website. We had a wide variety of products that are very unique. What happened when we did that is we found such an interest from the Americans, and even in Europe, that we were starting to receive orders.
I went to the federal government at the time. This was before I was a member of Parliament. I asked what kind of assistance was provided for export support. I was told there was not much and that I could get a loan, the same way I guess one can get a loan to go to a post-secondary institution. One can go into debt. That is about the only way the federal government will help with exports. That is the case today. We are talking 15 years later. We have one of the most deplorable records with respect to providing export promotion support of any major industrialized country. Australia provides about $500 million a year to bolster its export sector. Canada provides only a fraction of that, a few million dollars a year. This is, I think, the foundation stone to what has become a profoundly dysfunctional trade policy.
What we have is a government, first the Conservative government and now the Liberal government, signing agreements but without doing any sort of impact analysis, without understanding the economic ramifications of the agreements that it signs, and then throwing them on the floor of the House of Commons.
As we heard today, the debate has not been on the agreement. It has been from the NDP side, of course, because we have read the agreement. We are bringing forward the objections that were raised at the trade committee by Canadian groups from coast to coast to coast. However, the Conservatives and Liberals speak only in wild theory about trade. Of course we support trade, but there are two different approaches to trade that we see worldwide.
When it comes to Conservative and Liberal governments, there does not seem to be much difference between one party and the other, as we saw earlier today when a Liberal MP joined the Conservatives, and we have seen Conservative MPs join the Liberals. There does not seem to be any distinction between the two parties, aside from colours and some policy. However, regardless of which governments we have, Liberal or Conservative, they all support a very top-down model of trade. They call it free trade, but it is basically top-down. It certainly helps the lobbyists but it does not help regular folks across the country.
We take fair trade as something that we believe could bring the benefits of trade but actually makes sure that those benefits go to regular folks. There is nothing worse than a politician who, having not read an agreement, just gets some talking points and says that this has to be in the interest of everybody because trade is good, and votes to hammer so many sectors in the Canadian economy.
Let us look at the impacts. We have heard from a number of speakers today in this corner of the House talking about what the projected implications are of signing this agreement.
What we are seeing is a significant impact on the supply-managed sector, and not just on the supply-managed farmers in those sectors, whether we are talking about dairy or poultry or egg farmers; the impact is on their whole community when we dissect and rip apart supply management. Liberals may defend that by paying lip service to supply management on the one hand, but on the other hand they are signing agreements and trying to drive bills through the House that would actually devastate the supply-managed sector. However, we on this side actually believe in supply management as an effective approach.
We have been talking all day about the importance of ensuring that those supply-managed agricultural communities stay prosperous. We are going to lose thousands of jobs in the supply-managed sector if we ram this bill through.
Let us look at auto. The member for Essex knows that sector well, and she worked in the industry. We hear from that industry that it is going to lose tens of thousands of jobs. The total job loss that we are talking about when we talk about the auto sector, the supply-managed sector and other sectors is 58,000 jobs, yet we have yet to hear a speaker from the Liberal government address the concerns in this agreement and in the bill. I mean, they talk in highfalutin terms about trade being good, but not all trade is good if we devastate tens of thousands of jobs in our own economy and if we have not done an analysis of the impact on the economy. If we have not done our homework, not necessarily will every agreement be of benefit.
The Liberals have pointed out that there are a few key sectors that, at least at the national level, are supported and that there is potential for growth in a number of areas. However, I come back to my original point about when I was an exporter involved in a social enterprise that had a unique product. The government was not willing to provide export promotion support, and yet every other country does that. In terms of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association and the beef industry, in the U.S. they spend tens of millions of dollars a year. The United States government provides export promotion support. In Canada, there is nothing—crumbs.
Those sectors, in part, are reacting because of the incompetence of the government when it comes to trade management and providing export promotion support. Those sectors are hoping to provide some benefit or hoping to grow their sectors. However, the problem is not in whether or not we sign an agreement; the problem is a lack of export promotion infrastructure. This is not something the Liberals generated on their own. They inherited it from the former Conservative government.
I have talked to trade commissioners abroad as I have gone around to various countries, formerly as a trade critic, and talked to them about what kind of budgets they have to address these concerns about export promotion support. Many of the trade commissioners have said that they do not even have the budget to buy a cup of coffee for a potential client of Canadian exports. This is why, when we look at what the government had done, as we saw earlier this year, we are now seeing a record trade deficit.
The Conservatives signed a bunch of agreements. Now the Liberals are signing a bunch of agreements. They do not really look at them. They do not do any sort of economic analysis. They just throw them out on the floor of the House of Commons and say that trade is good, hallelujah, and then they leave. However, we see the devastation that results in our communities, because we are on the line with folks who are actually working for a living. What we see is record trade deficits as a result of this incomprehension between bad free trade agreements that these governments sign and the lack of supports for export promotion that could lead to good jobs in Canada.
We have heard today all of the problems that are in this agreement. We have heard the inability of the government to put in front of the House of Commons an agreement that will benefit all Canadians. We know for sure that we are going to lose tens of thousands of jobs. The government hopes that may be compensated for by some growth in some areas, but the reality is that in no way, shape or form can any member stand in this House and say that they have concrete evidence that this agreement is going to be a direct benefit.
When we look at all of the failings of this agreement, including its investor-state provisions, that take away the rights of regular Canadians to put in place public policy to their benefit, members can understand that I, for one, am standing in this House to say that I am going to vote against this bill and against this agreement.