Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for splitting his time with me.
This is an alphabet soup, as people have mentioned. It is sometimes hard to see why the U.K. is suddenly joining the CPTPP and why we are discussing it today, but there are overlays and previous trade agreements. Perhaps something of a narrative might work to quickly review how we got to where we are today, and then I can highlight the concerns the Green Party has about it.
The trans-Pacific partnership agreement started quite a long time ago. As others have mentioned, there is a long list of countries that were initially involved, all of course in the Pacific region. There is Singapore, Malaysia and Japan, but then there are ones we do not necessarily expect, such as Peru as well as Canada and New Zealand. Of course, one of the instigators of the original trans-Pacific partnership agreement was the United States. However, back in President Trump's first term in 2017, he pulled the U.S. out of the trans-Pacific partnership.
Going back to Canada's trade relationships with the U.K., this is obviously not the first or even the most important of Canada's trade agreements with the U.K. Again, this goes back to trade agreements that countries enter into, and then when somebody pulls out, the pieces have to sort of reassemble.
Looking back at Canada's first trade agreement with the U.K., it was when the U.K. was part of the European Union, before the very tragic events that led to Brexit. For the U.K., and indeed the European Union, it was dreadful, with the skullduggery, the use of algorithms and social media, Cambridge Analytica and the sort.
There is a tremendous documentary for people who want to see how vulnerable our democracies are to the misuse of social media and those kinds of campaigns. It is called Brexit: The Uncivil War. I am not going to give a whole film review, but it does star Benedict Cumberbatch, in case anyone wants to look it up on Netflix. Members can watch it, and for parliamentarians or someone who runs for elected office, it may leave them feeling quite shaken about how vulnerable we are to misinformation and how the British public was misled into pulling out of not just a very good trade agreement but a governance agreement within the European Union that had a lot of benefit for the U.K., and that also had benefit for the European Union when the U.K. was in it.
Canada's first trade deal with the U.K., back to this particular piece, was the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, which was negotiated between Canada and the EU. Of course, part of the EU at that time was the U.K. Therefore, we had a lot of pre-existing negotiations and conversations, and then there was the TPP, which was negotiated without the U.K. but with the U.S.
What are the differences between these two agreements? Do they entirely overlap since we already negotiated them? We went back once the U.K. left the European Union, and Canada renegotiated the bits we needed so that Canada would continue to have a trade deal with the U.K. once the U.K. left the European Union. That got done. We have an existing trade agreement with the U.K., which is still called the comprehensive economic and trade agreement, but between Canada and the U.K. It is largely based on the previous agreement that was done with the European Union. Now we have the TPP and the CPTPP, which is without the United States but with the U.K.
Why do I go through all this other than to remind people of the threads they may have heard before? It is because there are differences between these agreements, and one is less advantageous to Canada and Canada's environment than the other. Both the CPTPP, which we are debating today, and the comprehensive economic and trade agreement, the CETA, include things called investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms.
The hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton has been the most engaged on this subject as we continue to debate it. I certainly agree with him and have always supported any efforts Canada can make to get out of such lopsided agreements, which inevitably, invariably and always give superior rights to foreign corporations investing in Canada or operating in Canada. Even if they do not invest, they can open up a post office box somewhere and be considered an investor.
Private sector corporations are bestowed with rights under investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms and agreements, the very first of which, by the way, we are now out of, which was chapter 11 of NAFTA, which ironically did not survive into the new negotiations when it became CUSMA. I am very glad chapter 11 of NAFTA is no more, but it was a prototype. Here is what it did. It said that if what a government does to a foreign corporation can be considered tantamount to expropriation, then that foreign corporation can sue the country in which it is operating. We have had S.D. Myers sue Canada. We had Ethyl Corporation of Richmond, Virginia, sue Canada.
Canada tends to lose on these challenges. Not only does Canada lose, but in general, the larger economic power wins. It is not always the corporation that wins, but if a U.S. corporation sues a government and the U.S. corporation is a giant, the U.S. corporation will win. If a Canadian corporation sues the U.S, the Canadian corporation will lose. There is a pattern. The larger economic power tends to win. The arbitrators are drawn from a rank of four. They are operating, $500 an hour, $1,000 an hour, lawyer kinds of people. The investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms, as has been established through numerous global studies, tend to favour the larger economic power.
It was a shocker when it first happened. This means that decisions and laws passed democratically by governments, whether at the provincial or federal level, could be overturned by secret tribunals run by for-profit secret lawyers who make a case and argue that something was done that cost the corporation money. They do not even have to allege that it was done with animus or that it was discriminatory towards that country or nation or corporation, just that it cost them money. For example changing the regulations to protect the environment or changing the regulations to protect workers, if it costs them money, the Government of Canada is going to pay out and pay a company from the U.S, which has happened to Canada an unfortunate number of times.
As we negotiate and discuss this agreement today, the CPTPP, it includes investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms that are of an order that is slightly less fair and slightly less transparent than similar agreements that were negotiated with the European Union under the CETA. Between the two, they both have investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms, but the one we are debating today, to which we are adding the U.K. and which means U.K. corporations will be able to sue Canada under the CPTPP, just as we are now allowing Peruvian or, more likely, Canadian companies to sue Peru if we are mining in their country and do not like the laws to which we are being subjected, will have less transparency than if we were working under the CETA. This is because there were enough elements that the European Union refused to pass the CETA as long as these investor-state dispute resolution measures were included.
I do not have much time left to wrap up my speech so I will end by saying that it is too late at this point to renegotiate and remove the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism.
However, it is time to shine a light on them and decide that henceforth Canada should get out of agreements that allow foreign corporations to have more power to sue the Canadian government, a province, a first nation or a municipality, for that matter. These agreements are corrosive to democracy. It is time to shine a light on them and start carving them out. It has now become routine with trade deals to throw in investor-state dispute resolutions. They are noxious.