Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to stand in the House and speak to this very important issue. I had the privilege of being the New Democratic Party official opposition critic on international trade for four years in the last Parliament.
Of course, the agreement that is the subject of discussion today that was known then as the TPP or trans-Pacific partnership, now renamed the comprehensive and progressive trans-Pacific partnership, was very much in the public domain at that time. I followed the details as that agreement was being negotiated fairly carefully at that time. Essentially, my concern comes down to a number of basic points.
First of all, New Democrats have long been concerned by the secrecy surrounding the TPP and the CPTPP negotiations. Despite direct promises by the Prime Minister during the last election to be transparent on trade deals, the Liberals continue to give Canadians vague updates and mixed messages. Today we faced the shameful action by the government that brought in time allocation to limit debate on this very important subject. The previous government did this almost 100 times and the present Liberal government seems to be trying to match it. That shuts down democratic debate. It prevents us from speaking our minds and representing our constituents, which we were elected to come here to do. I think it is deplorable and it ought to be condemned.
Second, we have to recall that the trade committee held dozens of sessions, heard from more than 400 witnesses and received written comments from more than 60,000 Canadians. The overwhelming consensus was that 95% of those people, those good people who took the time to make their views known, were against this deal. Experts also point out that Canada under the CPTPP would lose 58,000 jobs due to concessions that would damage our automobile industry and our supply management system. I will explore that in a few minutes.
This deal also contains troubling provisions on foreign control of Canadian businesses, rights to privacy and intellectual property. This agreement contains extremely weak labour and environment standards. I would say they are virtually absent. The so-called side letters are almost toothless, not only because they are not in the main agreement but because of the language contained in them.
The New Democrats have, for decades now, been strong proponents of fair trade and fair trade deals that seek to raise the labour standards, improve environmental protection, protect our public services and culture, and increase jobs in the Canadian economy.
I want to stop for a moment because I have heard, unfortunately, from the Liberal side of the House, some words that I think typify a very unfortunate approach to politics. We saw this in the last Conservative government under then Prime Minister Harper where if one was not in agreement with the government, then one was subject to a very simplified wedge politics approach that completely misrepresented one's position. It was repeated endlessly, so for instance if one did not stand with the Conservatives' tough-on-crime legislation, somehow one was on the side of child molesters. That approach to politics is deplorable in this House. I think Canadians reject it. We reject it. It does not do anything to advance informed political debate.
I am hearing the same thing from Liberals in this debate that, because we are not in favour of this agreement or are doing our job as opposition by critiquing this agreement, we are opposed to trade. That is absurd and it is nonsense, yet the Liberals keep saying that. Every Canadian understands the importance of trade. Every Canadian wants Canada to be a positive trading nation. That does not mean that we will sign any piece of paper put in front of us. That does not mean that we will be in favour of any agreement, no matter how many jobs it costs Canada or how harmful it is to the Canadian economy.
I want to state for the record that New Democrats are proud supporters of trade. We are strong supporters of Canadian champions and we want to build a strong trading nation in Canada that protects our environment, that supports labour and human rights and that also supports Canadian champions on the world scene.
The only major change that appears to be positive about this whole deal is that the Liberals put the word “progressive” in the title. This is a cynical and very transparent ploy that progressive Canadians will not accept. There is nothing progressive about this deal.
I want to talk for a few minutes about why this agreement is troubling and will start with the auto sector.
The auto sector in this country is extremely important. Canada is the 10th largest vehicle producer in the world. The auto sector is the largest manufacturing sector in Canada. Over 120,000 employees are directly employed in the auto and auto parts sector and it is responsible for about $100 billion in factory sales and related economic activity.
What will the CPTPP do? Industry and labour groups in the auto and auto parts sectors that will be most affected by this and have been carefully monitoring this agreement over the last number of years are strongly opposed to it.
The auto industry is already in the crosshairs of the NAFTA negotiation and facing punitive U.S. tariffs. The industry does not believe the Liberals' claims that the CPTPP will open up markets in the Asia-Pacific, particularly Japan. In fact, anybody who watches auto industry patterns and trends will realize that by reducing tariffs in this country, we are going to see a flood of automobiles and automotive parts coming in from jurisdictions, and not the other way around. It will only increase the auto trade imbalance and further de-harmonize the Canada-U.S. auto industry. Why? Let us look at the rules of origin.
Under the CPTPP, in order for a vehicle made in a TPP country to come into Canada tariff-free, 35% to 45% of it has to be made within a TPP country. Imagine that. If a car manufacturer sets up, say, in Vietnam or Malaysia, in order for one of its cars to come in tariff-free, only 35% to 45% of it has to be made in Vietnam or Malaysia. The rest of the car can be made outside of either of those countries in low wage jurisdictions like Bangladesh or India, or any other low wage jurisdiction that has no environmental standards and very poor labour and employment standards. Even if 35% to 45% is made in the low wage jurisdictions of Malaysia or Vietnam, 55% to 65% of that vehicle, the rest of it, will be made in an even lower wage jurisdiction.
How on earth are major vehicle manufacturers centred in Canada that pay good wages, that pay workers' compensation benefits, that pay for health and welfare benefits, and that pay good taxes or support social programs in this country supposed to compete with that? Yet the Liberals expect us to believe that under this deal we are going to be making vehicles here and will be sending them to Malaysia. If anyone believes that, we have a bridge for sale.
I want to talk about supply management. Supply management is made up of three pillars: price controls, production controls, and import controls. The Liberals continually say that they stand up for supply management in every trade deal, but what they do not tell Canadians is that in every trade deal they have signed, from CETA to the CPTPP, and probably with NAFTA today, they are chipping away at the import controls and letting each one of those great deals let more and more dairy products come in, 3% for Europe, and another 3.5% for the TPP countries. Who knows what we are going to give Donald Trump?
That means that as they sit here and pretend to support supply management, the Liberals are eroding or sawing off that third pillar of supply management. Eventually it will be 15%, 20%, 25%, 40%, 50% of import controls and by that time supply management will have been killed from within.
We saw what happened with Brexit in England. We saw the election of Donald Trump. What happened? Workers around the world have perceived that over the last 30 or 40 years under so-called globalization business has achieved everything it wanted, such as lower labour costs, deregulation, and liberalized trade so that global capital could move around the world. What has happened? The benefits of that have not been shared equally.
That is why the British and American working class have rebelled against neo-Liberal trade deals, all of which have only done one thing: increased GDP for the top 1% to 10%, while 90% of the rest of us end up having poor jobs while we watch our manufacturing sector get hollowed out and good middle-class, family sustaining jobs sent to low wage jurisdictions.
That is what has happened under the Liberals, it is what happened under the Conservatives, and the New Democrats are the only ones who will stand in the House and fight for Canadian jobs and a strong Canadian economy here at home for everybody. We will stand against these lousy trade deals every time they are put before us in the House. That is what the CPTPP is, a lousy deal, and we will continue to fight against it until we can stop this agreement.