Madam Speaker, it is an honour to participate in this debate and to follow the leader of my party on this very fundamental question about democracy itself, about corporate power and the power of people in the country and in the Americas.
I will respond briefly, because unfortunately the time is limited, to the comments made by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for International Trade when he trumpeted the great transparency and democracy surrounding the FTAA process.
Surely the hon. member recognizes that this is completely ludicrous. Instead what the government has clearly demonstrated is total contempt for democracy in this process. I can give many examples of that. The fact is that today on May 1 we still, as parliamentarians and as peoples of the Americas, are not entitled to view the text that is being negotiated.
The minister said we would see the text and that it was tough to translate. Frankly there is something absurd about a debate taking place on a document that still has not been made public. The government has refused to make public its own negotiating position on some very fundamental issues such as investment, intellectual property, services and dispute settlement.
Even worse we see a continual erosion of the minister's original position with respect to the most undemocratic provision of the existing NAFTA agreement, and that is the investor state provision in chapter 11. This is the thrust of our motion today because it illustrates so clearly and transparently how profoundly undemocratic the process is, as well as how undemocratic the substance is of the FTAA.
It was a little over a year ago, in response to my colleague from Winnipeg—Transcona in the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, that the Minister for International Trade was clear and unequivocal. He said “I can assure you that we are not seeking an investor state provision in the WTO or anywhere else in other agreements”. My colleague pursued. He asked “Not at the FTAA?” The minister responded “No, no, no. Not on FTAA either”.
That was in April of last year. Seen since then we have seen backtracking, reversal and betrayal of the government's fundamental commitment that it would not allow this destructive and undemocratic provision to be a part of any broader trade deal throughout the hemisphere.
Just a little over a month ago, in response to my question in the same committee, the minister said:
—we would of course not sign another agreement that would have the kind of clauses that we are seeking to clarify right now...we will not go to the sort of thing that we are seeking to clarify in chapter 11...
Yet, in the wake of the summit of the Americas, the Prime Minister said to forget all that and that chapter 11 was working reasonably well. The minister himself said after the summit of the Americas that things were fine, that there was no problem and that everything was working just fine.
What is the position of the Government of Canada? According to the minister's spokesperson, its position on chapter 11, investment provisions, is set out in the government's website. If we go to the government's website, here is what it says:
To date, Canada has made no submissions to the Negotiating Group on Services. Any submission made by Canada will be made available on the website.
When we asked the minister's spokesperson what was Canada's position on this fundamental issue of investor state, the minister's chief assistant said “We have not made our position known yet because we do not have one”.
The government may shamefully not have a position on investor state on chapter 11, but more and more the people of this hemisphere do because they have witnessed already the destructive impact of chapter 11 on the environment and on the fundamental rights of workers.
It is no coincidence that today is May Day, a day when we pay tribute to and honour the contribution of working men and women throughout the hemisphere and throughout the world. It is just a couple of days after the Day of Mourning for workers who were killed and injured on the job. More and more we have witnessed under NAFTA, under this regulation of growing corporate power, deregulation and privatization, an erosion in the rights of workers.
I attended, along with my colleagues, the people's summit. One of the most powerful and moving forums was the forum of women. It talked about the impact of the existing trade deals on women. I will never forget hearing a speech by a Mexican woman who worked in the maquiladoras. She spoke of the dramatically increased level of violence directed against women and yes, also violence at the workplace. That is what is being entrenched in this new FTAA.
We still do not know if there was a leak on the proposed investment provisions in the FTAA with respect to chapter 11. However we already know all too clearly what this means for us under NAFTA. On a number of occasions my leader has referred to a study which was just published by Professor Howard Mann, a respected director of the International Institute for Sustainable Development, who documented clearly and eloquently the problems with chapter 11 of NAFTA.
The study points out that the current interpretations of NAFTA's chapter 11 can have a significant and determinative negative impact on government decision making in relation to public interest. In fact they already have. The list goes on too long. A small community in Mexico, Guadalcázar, was told that it had no right to protect its citizens from the impact of a toxic waste dump. The company, which wanted to exercise its corporate rights under NAFTA, was awarded some $20 million because the citizens of that community said no.
More and more we see that local governments in Canada are recognizing the potential impact of chapter 11. Cities like Vancouver, Halifax and others adopted unanimously a motion condemning the investor state provisions and called on the Government of Canada not to sign any trade deal that would prevent them from making these decisions. As New Democrats, we stand in solidarity with those citizens and with citizens throughout the hemisphere.
We saw the MMT case as well in which the Canadian government was forced to abjectly apologize to Ethyl Corporation for having made a decision to ban this destructive gasoline additive. Even the Liberal member of parliament for Lac-Saint-Louis said in the wake of that decision “I can't believe that a foreign corporation can almost dictate its terms and we as a sovereign nation are completely powerless to do anything about it”.
It is astounding that the onus is on us as a country to prove MMT is not harmful. We saw it with Metalclad and Ethyl Corporation MMT decisions. We are certainly witnessing it now with the challenge by UPS to the Canada Post Corporation. This is a shocking challenge to the power of government to ensure that the public sector can operate in an effective way on behalf of the citizens in that country.
I am very pleased to note that the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers have launched a constitutional challenge to these sweeping and unprecedented powers given to secret tribunals to take away the right of government to make decisions in the best interests of its citizens.
I know that my time is limited and I hope I will have an opportunity in the question and comment period to talk a little bit about some of our positive alternatives to these proposals because the Hemispheric Social Alliance and the people's summit of the Americas came out with a strong, positive and eloquent statement of alternatives.
The fundamental issue before the House is the issue of democracy as opposed to corporate power. I appeal to all members of the House to support the motion because it simply reaffirms the principles the government indicated it was committed to, which was that the investor state provision had no place in this agreement.
In closing, I move:
That the motion be amended by inserting after the words “Committee” the words on “April 5, 2000”.
