Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak in what hopefully will be one of the last debates regarding the new NAFTA deal before we have officially conclude this and get on with this new deal.
It is important to talk about NAFTA 2.0 or CUSMA or USMCA or whatever we are calling it as an opportunity to modernize the relationship we have with these two very important countries that we have come to rely on and come to work with very well over the last number of years. I say modernize because the global world of trade has changed so much even in the last 30 years or so since this agreement was originally put in place.
Today, I am going to focus my comments on this theme of modernization and specifically talk about the auto and aluminum industries as they relate to that, and the environment and the additional measures put into this agreement as they relate to our environmental protections.
I want to start off by talking about the concept of modernizing this agreement and I think back to my riding. I have a number of different manufacturers in my riding that rely heavily on a free trade agreement with the United States and Mexico, for reasons that can get quite complex at times because of how complex and intertwined supply chains are. The auto sector is one of those. No longer do we live in a world where an automobile and all its various parts are manufactured within a region and assembled right there in that municipality or jurisdiction.
A lot of people probably do not realize that 80% of the nylon that goes into air bags in vehicles assembled and manufactured in North America comes from my riding. The plant is called INVISTA, and it is a global plant.
The nylon's raw components are brought into my riding by train. They are used to create the nylon. The nylon is made into the rolls. The rolls are then taken and go somewhere else like the States and are transformed into the bags. The bags are then moved to another country in this trilateral agreement or back to Canada again. The same concept applies to aluminum and so many other industries.
The supply chain and how things work in terms of the auto industry, and many industries, have advanced so much that we rely heavily on a trade agreement that allows the different materials to move back and forth between countries. That is why I am really glad to see a lot of the components of the new agreement are focused on auto. At the end of the day, we are seeing that the deal accomplished is one that really takes into account the car sector, and in fact, is a very good deal for the Canadian car sector.
That is where I will link to aluminum, because of the effects that the aluminum industry has on the auto sector and vice versa. What we never had before, as it relates specifically to aluminum, was any particular requirement of where the aluminum comes from that is going into vehicles manufactured and assembled in one of the three countries.
For the first time, we are seeing some real measures being taken. Of the aluminum that goes into vehicles assembled and manufactured in Canada, the United States or Mexico, 70% has to come from within that region. It is very good for our aluminum sector to make sure we are not receiving aluminum from other countries that are just dumping it into our market. It will ensure there are good jobs for Canadians in the future, so we can continue to supply that aluminum right from our individual jurisdiction and the three countries involved in the agreement.
Related to aluminum, I talked about Invista and the nylon facilities that it has, but another company, Novelis, operates an aluminum plant in my riding. I had the opportunity to talk with them on a number of occasions, in particular when the aluminum tariffs were brought in by the U.S., about the anxieties that were being felt.
I will give another example of how it works with aluminum. A lot of aluminum for this plant in particular is mined in Quebec. It is then taken from Quebec to the United States, to northern New York, where it is hot pressed. It then moves back across the border a second time into Kingston, Ontario, my riding, where it is cold pressed.
That is just to get the aluminum into a roll. From that point, it is then going to move back and forth across the border as it changes hands and as products are produced as a result of the aluminum that is mined and refined at these various stages.
That is why I find it critically important to maintain supply chains and put confidence in investors, so that these plants that want to can build on one side of the border or another. We must make sure that the confidence is put in place for them, by making sure that an agreement like this is put in place over the long term.
The last thing I want to talk about, as it relates to the modernization of this agreement, is the environmental protections and environmental standards that are put into this agreement.
When the original NAFTA was being created 30 years ago, there would not have been much emphasis on the environment and concerns that relate to environmental impact. Having the opportunity to go through this agreement again, and to update and modernize it, gives us the opportunity to make sure that environmental components are built into it.
We in Canada take the environment extremely seriously. We realize that there are obligations for us to live up to, in terms of mitigating our environmental impact. We also realize that we cannot do it alone. If Canada is the only one trying to do this, we are going to run into a situation where it is going to become uncompetitive.
In a free trade deal, one needs to make sure that the rules are the same on both sides. In this case, when it comes to the environment, it is extremely important to make sure that the rules in place are fair, and that we are treating the environment roughly the same on both sides of the border with those environmental protections.
That is why we see things put in place like making sure there is an entire chapter in the agreement on the environment, which replaced some side agreements that existed.
We are looking at things like upholding air quality and fighting marine pollution, making sure that we have commitments to high levels of environmental protection, which are extremely important in these trade agreements, and at the same time protecting workers and our planet from potential environmental impacts. We need to make sure that these things exist.
This is why I am highlighting that perhaps it was not something that we particularly wanted in the beginning. It is not something that we sought out, but it actually turned out to be a pretty good opportunity for Canada to modernize this agreement, to fix some of the problems with it and to update it to the current standards of where we are in terms of free trade agreements.
I know that after the hard work that was done by the government, and in particular by the minister who was responsible previously, hard work was done not to accept just any deal. We made sure we got a deal that was good for Canada, good for our values, good for our employees and good for our workers.
That is what we saw at the end of the day here, and I am extremely proud to stand with that minister and with this government in support of this agreement. We have a modern agreement that is up to date and that lives up to many of the standards that we demand now, which we may not have had 30 years ago.
I am extremely proud of this, and I really hope that this is something that can be ratified and adopted by this entire Parliament unanimously. I really hope that we can get to that place.