Madam Speaker, first off I would like to thank the hon. member for Joliette and Bloc Quebecois critic for international trade for his comments. I would like to say, on behalf of my New Democratic colleagues, that we will also oppose Bill C-31. We will do so for the reasons expressed very eloquently by the member for Joliette, which I will try to explain in the few minutes of comment allowed me in connection with third reading of this bill.
As I said, we are opposing the bill at third reading. I want to make it clear how profoundly disturbing and disheartening the process was in committee with respect to the bill.
The committee took the time to hear many witnesses from civil society, the labour movement and the NGO working group on the Export Development Corporation. We heard witnesses from a Latin American human rights group, a researcher for KAIROS, witnesses from Développement et Paix and many others from the business community.
Following extensive hearings on the bill, when it came time to reflecting the concerns and the hopes of those witnesses in the legislation with respect to amendments, not a single amendment was accepted by the government members on the committee. Not a comma changed in the bill from its original presentation. Frankly this was contemptuous of the very thoughtful concerns that were expressed by the members of the committee and by the witnesses who appeared before the committee on its hearings.
I mentioned the NGO working group on the Export Development Corporation, the so-called Halifax initiative. I want to read out the names of the members of that initiative to give some sense to the House and to those Canadians who are watching this debate of the broad diversity of groups that made up this initiative and who were calling for significant changes to the legislation.
The Halifax initiative working group was made up of: the United Auto Workers Union, the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, the Canadian Friends of Burma, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Lawyers Association for International Human Rights, Democracy Watch, Development and Peace, East Timor Alert Network, the Falls Brook Centre, Rights and Democracy, Mining Watch Canada, Project Ploughshares, Results Canada, Sierra Club Nuclear Campaign, the Social Justice Commission of Montreal, the Steel Workers' Humanity Fund and the West Coast Environmental Law Association. This is a very impressive group of organizations from across the land that appeared before the committee and put together a comprehensive brief asking for some significant changes in the legislation.
In response to those suggestions, on behalf of my colleagues in the New Democratic Party, I proposed a number of amendments and each and every one was rejected.
My colleague from the Bloc Quebecois also tried to respond to the concerns and priorities of these witnesses. His amendments were also totally rejected by the committee.
I will now summarize the key areas of concern that were raised in the committee with respect to Bill C-31. First is the issue of disclosure and transparency.
The recommendations made to the committee were that the act be amended to require the disclosure of project related information in a timely and regular manner and that pre-approval disclosure of environmental and social information for projects with known or potential significant adverse impacts should have been included in Bill C-31.
The review made by Gowlings in June 1999 of the Export Development Act, by the foreign affairs committee in December 1999 and by the minister, all recommended that the EDC be required to disclose information related to transactions. When we look at Bill C-31 there is not a word about disclosure. There is not a single word about greater transparency.
In tabling the legislation and in refusing to implement the amendments and recommendations of witnesses, the government is ignoring not only the Gowlings report and the foreign affairs committee but the commitments that were made previously by the minister himself.
The EDC says that it has a disclosure policy that was implemented on October 1 of this year. It says that it has an internal compliance officer. The fact of the matter is there is nothing at all in the bill that requires the EDC to disclose any information whatsoever. Historically, back in the mid-1980s, the EDC actually decided that it would stop releasing any project related information to the public. It could do that tomorrow under the provisions of the legislation.
It is particularly important as well that the EDC be required to adopt pre-approval disclosure of environmental and social information for projects that may have a significant adverse environmental or social impact. If there is going to be any efficient environmental impact assessment process there has to be pre-approval disclosure. This is already part of the process under other international financial institutions such as the IFC and the European bank for reconstruction and development. In fact, the export credit agencies in the United States and Australia release such information 45 to 60 days prior to approval.
This is just good practice and it is a principle of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. If we look at Bill C-31 there is absolutely no requirement whatsoever for any kind of prior disclosure or pre-approval disclosure of environmental and social information for projects that could have very serious impacts on the environment. Although it was not possible to introduce an amendment to this effect because it was ruled to be beyond the scope of the bill, I would urge the government to bring in legislation to ensure the Export Development Corporation is fully subject to the Access to Information Act.
The Business Development Bank, which is another crown corporation in Canada, is already subject to the Access to Information Act. Both of the American export credit agencies are subject to similar United States legislation. It is totally unacceptable that a crucial question such as transparency should simply be left up to the entire discretion of the corporation. It should come under the umbrella of the access to information legislation.
With respect to the issue of environmental protection, clause 10.1 in Bill C-31 is a new clause that deals with environmental effects but it is full of loopholes. It gives the Export Development Corporation board total arbitrary discretion. I will read now from the section itself. It states:
(c) establish exceptions specifically or by any class, as defined by the Board, to the Corporation's obligation to make the determination.
That determination is with respect to adverse environmental impacts. It could exempt an entire category without any oversight whatsoever. This makes a mockery of any meaningful environmental assessment under the legislation.
Instead, we proposed, along with the many NGOs that appeared before the committee, that environmental criteria, including standards and processes, should have been included in the legislation and that a regulation on the environmental assessment process for the EDC should have been developed under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.
Once again, in December 1999, the foreign affairs committee made a similar recommendation that made it very clear that there should be far more openness to environmental criteria being included in the legislation. No such thing was done. There is not a single word about it in Bill C-31.
Even if the Export Development Corporation finds that a project does have, in the words of the section, adverse environmental effects despite the implementation of mitigation measures, the board can approve funding for the project in any event. Even if it accepts that there will be a significant adverse impact on the environment, it can fund a project despite that.
When we look at some of the projects that have been funded, such as some of the Candu reactor projects, including the Cernavoda project in Romania and in China, we have very serious concerns about those, just as we have concerns about the Three Gorges dam project in China and a number of other projects that the EDC has seen fit to fund despite very destructive environmental and social impacts. That is why we proposed those amendments.
I would note as well that the auditor general's report released in May was a damning indictment of the EDC's failure to implement its own environmental framework. It had an existing environmental framework in place but according to the auditor general's report it correctly implemented its own internal environmental framework in only 2 out of the 26 projects that were reviewed. That is why we as New Democrats have called for the Export Development Corporation to be placed under the framework of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. There is litigation currently underway challenging the decisions with respect to the Three Gorges dam. I for one hope that the litigation ultimately will be successful.
The final area of concern is with respect to human rights and core labour standards. We recommended in the committee, supported by the Bloc Quebecois which made a similar recommendation, that the purpose of the EDC be changed to include a requirement that it respond to international business opportunities in a manner consistent with Canada's international obligations.
Is it really such a revolutionary thing to ask that the Export Development Corporation, which is accountable to Canadian taxpayers and owned by the people of Canada, respect and honour the international commitments that Canada has undertaken, whether it be the international covenant on civil and political rights; the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights; our international environmental commitments; or our ILO commitments on core labour standards?
When Warren Allmand, the director of rights and democracy, appeared before the committee, he pointed out the same thing and made the same recommendation, that we should be honouring and EDC should be required to honour in its operations those international obligations.
Here again was a recommendation of the foreign affairs committee, the same committee that studied the bill and recommended in its December 1999 report, of which I have a copy here, that we explicitly make reference in the legislation to our international commitments to human rights, core labour standards and other key areas, including the environment.
I have a copy of the press release that was issued by the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade on December 16, 1999. The committee stated the following:
The Committee recommends, as an overarching provision, adding to the Export Development Act clear Parliamentary guidelines for EDC supported activities and transactions so as to ensure that these both deliver benefits to Canadians and meet Canada’s international commitments and obligations, including those related to environmentally sustainable development and human rights.
What happened between December 1999 and October 2001? The same committee rejected an amendment proposé par le Bloc québécois, proposé par moi pour le NPD.
They rejected an amendment in the identical wording that we had accepted and unanimously recommended in December 1999. I say shame on the Liberal members of that committee for not being prepared to stand up for the original recommendation that was made by their own committee.
Once again the bill is profoundly flawed in that respect as well. There is no commitment whatsoever to honour those international obligations and no commitment whatsoever with respect to the important issue of establishing an ombudsperson within the EDC. For those reasons my colleagues and I oppose the legislation.
We want to raise a broader question today. What the EDC has said is that it is prepared to protect commercial interests. We have heard this same argument with respect to trade deals. We know that under NAFTA corporate interests are protected by chapter 11, the investor state provision. We know that under the WTO the interests of patent holders and multinational pharmaceutical companies are accepted under the so-called TRIPS agreement, even when that has an obvious detrimental and in some cases devastating impact on the availability of affordable drugs to fight HIV-AIDS and malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil, India and elsewhere.
Why is it that the Liberal government and its allies in the Canadian Alliance on this issue are prepared to defend the rights of multinational pharmaceutical drug companies but are not prepared to defend the basic rights of workers around the world? They are not prepared to defend the environment, to defend indigenous peoples, to defend human rights. Why the double standard?
I might just say parenthetically that many in developing countries are asking why the double standard with respect to patent rights. We have seen the spectacle of the Minister of Health recently being prepared to override patent rights of the Bayer corporation in a minute because of a possible threat of anthrax in Canada. Frankly we as New Democrats welcome that decision.
People in developing countries are asking if this is the same government that is prepared to defend the multinational pharmaceutical companies under the TRIPS agreement when they try to say they need the right to protect their patents on drugs to fight HIV and AIDS. What hypocrisy. What a double standard with respect to multinational pharmaceutical companies. If it is good enough for Canada, it is good enough for the poor in sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil, India and around the world.
In closing I want to point to one very real, powerful, human example as to why there has to be fundamental changes in the workings of the EDC and why Bill C-31 falls far short of what is acceptable.
In 1999 an indigenous Embera Katio leader from Colombia, Kimy Pernia, appeared before the foreign affairs committee. I was there when he gave evidence. At that time he provided testimony about the impact of the EDC supported Urra hydroelectric dam in northern Colombia. Kimy testified eloquently before a committee about how Embera land and crops were being flooded by the dam. Fish stocks upriver from the dam were eliminated, robbing the Embera of the mainstay of their diet. Vast areas of stagnant water were created, bringing mosquitoes and epidemics of malaria and dengue to Embera communities.
Kimy testified that this dam was built without ever consulting any of the indigenous communities living in the area that would be affected. This was a violation at the time of both the Colombian constitution and international human rights agreements. The EDC financed a portion of this dam. There was no consultation whatsoever with the indigenous peoples that were most directly affected.
Kimy also told our committee that day that speaking out about these things would put his life in danger in Colombia and that four other Embera leaders had already been killed by paramilitary forces for challenging the negative impacts of that dam.
Tragically Kimy's prediction proved to be accurate. On June 2 of this year Kimy Pernia was abducted by paramilitary gunman in Colombia. Since then we have no way of knowing where he is. There has been absolutely no news about his whereabouts. Since he has disappeared there have been other killings and continued threats against Embera communities.
It is clear that the dam, a project the EDC chose to invest in despite the opposition of the local indigenous communities, has exacerbated the violence that already existed there.
That is another reason we wanted to see included in the legislation a requirement that the EDC operate in a manner which would be consistent with our international obligations in areas such as the universal declaration of human rights, the UN covenants I mentioned, and the ILO declarations on core labour standards.
If that kind of assessment had been done in Colombia perhaps that terrible project would not have been funded. We oppose Bill C-31. We believe that in the key areas of transparency, environmental protection and respect for human rights core labour standards the bill falls far short. For that reason we will be voting against the bill at third reading.
