Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to be able to participate in this debate this afternoon. The NDP finds itself in the position of being the only party in this House to oppose the legislation we have before us, the legislation that would bring into being the World Trade Organization.
It appears that unlike the government, the official opposition and the Reform Party we are the only party willing to develop and maintain a sustained critique of the way the world is going according to GATT, according to NAFTA, according to FTA.
Some would say this places us in the position of being defenders of things past and in some sense that is true. We would like to defend the notion of fair trade and markets adjusted to meet social and human need rather than accede to the demands of the multinational corporations that the world be arranged for their pleasure, which is the way we view the WTO and the legislation to implement it.
The WTO is in effect a new constitution for the globalized economy that is written by and for multinational corporations. One of the ways this could have been offset would have been if some effort had been made during the negotiations or even after to introduce the notion of a social clause that would ensure multinational corporations and others recognize basic labour and environmental standards for instance, to prevent the race to the bottom or what is also called social dumping.
This was not done during the negotiations, although I understand that some countries did bring the idea forward, not Canada unfortunately. It was not able to be done during the debate on this legislation despite the amendments that the New Democratic Party brought forward because the government rejected our amendments suggesting it ought to work on a social clause and report back to the House of Commons on a regular basis as to what it had done in respect to developing such a clause.
Another concern we had during this debate, which we expressed at report stage and we express now, is that this new WTO, even though it supposedly offers a new rules based trading regime that will bring relief from trade harassment, in spite of this, American behaviour under NAFTA rules and the evasive measures the Americans put into their implementing legislation make it very unlikely that the Americans will play by the rules.
That is why we offered through our amendments to put into our legislation that which the Americans had in their legislation. We thought what is fair for the Americans is fair for Canadians. What is good for the goose is good for the gander, or however the expression goes. No deal, the government defeated our amendments, argued against them as did others.
One has to ask the question of globalization through the WTO, but on whose terms? It would seem to be on the terms of the multinational corporations and in a secondary way on terms that are more favourable to the Americans than to Canadians and to others. Americans always make sure they have these riders, these qualifiers, these caveats in their legislation to make sure the rest of us will play by these rules. When push comes to shove if their interests are at stake they do not have to play by the rules.
The WTO as it now stands without a social clause would be a constitution for a new world order in which the multinationals would preserve their position as what we would like to call outlaws. They would be free to pursue their own interests outside the power of the law of any one land whereas the constitution for the new world order of the global marketplace, the WTO agreement as it stands is remarkably one sided in our
view in its defence of the rights of investors and its silence on the rights of workers.
It pretends that labour, social security and the environment are not trade issues and that attempts to regulate in these areas will be considered barriers to trade. It is eloquent about the multinationals' right to be free of any public policy that would affect their rights to intellectual property or to the free movement of capital but it refuses to allow similar protection for workers' rights to form trade unions or to have a safe workplace.
In the developed economies of Europe and North America globalization has contributed to the chronically high levels of unemployment, falling real wages and workers facing the stress of longer work hours. Most important, wages and salaries are dramatically falling as a percentage of GNP. That is, workers are getting a smaller and smaller piece of the pie.
When robust rates of growth such as we are now experiencing in Canada continue to be accompanied by depression like rates of unemployment and falling real wages, it is clear that benefits from growth in the new globalized economy are going to a very select group of people at the expense of most Canadians.
Some developing countries in Asia have experienced phenomenal rates of growth in the new order but in the most successful countries like Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore and China such growth has occurred in societies without basic human rights, without independent trade unions and with economies in which child labour, prison labour, conscript army labour are widely practised. This is sometimes referred to as the Asian miracle, the new miracle. I call it just an old form of exploitation revisited and does not deserve the word miracle at all.
The WTO as it stands puts its seal of approval on a world economy in which the benefits of growth flow more and more to the shareholders of the multinationals and less and less to their employees and to communities. What we should be seeking is a WTO that concerns itself not only with the classic trade disputes between nations but also the problem of what has become known as social dumping, which I referred to earlier; that is, a nation's competitive advantage that results from unregulated labour markets and lack of environmental protection regulations and other ways in which nation states are being asked by this new order to play this sort of beggar thy neighbour game by reducing the quality of their social standards in order to create what is euphemistically called a good investment climate.
A social clause needs to be added to strike a balance between the market efficiencies of liberal trade and investment practices and the social solidarity of all communities that want basic human rights and decent employment practices enforced everywhere where capital is free to come and go.
In debate on report stage, as I mentioned, we proposed an amendment to Bill C-57 that would have had the government report to Parliament regularly on progress made in WTO negotiations toward a social clause. In a related amendment seconded and supported by the Bloc Quebecois we also proposed prohibiting the importation of goods made by children in contravention of International Labour Organization conventions.
The idea of a social clause is one that enjoys wide support around the world as a necessary counter weight to the liberalization of investment. A social clause for the WTO is supported by the International Labour Organization's secretariat which earlier this month recommended to the governing body of the ILO that there should be a social clause to the WTO.
The majority report of the joint committee that recently reviewed Canadian foreign policy also included a recommendation that there should be a co-ordination of international labour and social standards. We were disappointed therefore but not surprised that the Liberals who wrote that report did not support our amendment that would have been a step toward the goal that they share.
In debate on our amendment on child labour, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for International Trade said that he agreed with the spirit of our motion and that the government was working with the OECD and the ILO on the question. He did not say, however, that at a recent UN meeting on the upcoming UN conference on social development Canada came down firmly against any attempt to link trade with labour or environmental standards. Shame on the government.
This confirms the dramatic drift of the Liberal Party to the right on trade issues.
The Liberals opposed NAFTA during the election on the grounds that there was no definition of subsidies and that the labour and environmental side agreements were not strong enough. They then proceeded to ratify NAFTA without a definition of subsidy and with the existing weak side agreements.
The Minister for International Trade then talked about the deepening and broadening of NAFTA, even comparing NAFTA to the early days of the European community. Now the Liberals say they are opposed to any linking of labour standards and environmental standards to trade in the WTO. The metamorphosis is complete.
On his recent visit to China and Indonesia, the Prime Minister claimed that the best way to improve the human rights situation in certain developing countries was to engage with them in trade. However, the WTO as it stands without a social clause will allow existing human rights abuses to flourish. There is nothing in the WTO that prevents countries from allowing child
labour, from using prison labour and conscript labour or from denying workers' rights to form independent trade unions.
China could join the WTO, as it is likely to do, and expect to enjoy the protection of the WTO free trade rules while it continues to allow 10-year old children to work in unsafe factories for virtually nothing. Indonesia could continue to operate an economy where over two million children work in contravention of ILO standards. For the government to deny any link between trade and labour standards makes a mockery of its claim to support human rights through trade.
Furthermore, and in conclusion, the advocates of the liberalization of world markets assumes that as developing countries become more prosperous internal social pressures will be generated from a maturing and self-confident workforce to insist on higher wages and better working conditions as happened in the past. This assumption fails to recognize that the vast pool of unemployed workers in rural sectors in the economies of east and south Asia, for example, not to mention in the former Soviet Union, creates a huge drag on the ability of wages to rise at a reasonable rate.
