Madam Speaker, let the record show that it was a Liberal who said no to that suggested amendment by the official opposition.
I am not here to speak to that at the moment. I am here to speak to Bill C-21, an act to amend the Customs Tariff. As has already been said by previous speakers, this bill would extend the general preferential tariff and the least developed country tariff for another 10 years as they were both due to expire in June 2004.
These regulations would allow for products imported from a list of 48 least developed countries and from other countries which have preferred trading partner status to be brought into Canada without having to pay customs duties.
Originally the list of products that could be imported from least developed countries was relatively limited, but as a result of the least developed countries initiative announced by the Canadian government after the 2002 G-8 meetings in Kananaskis, the list of eligible products includes everything other than certain agricultural products.
While it might be laudable to open the Canadian market to products from developing countries, the problem with this legislation--and we do not oppose it, but we do want to point out this problem--is that it reinforces the system that currently exists in which North American retailers can get cheaper products, especially apparel from developing countries. These are countries without labour codes, minimum wage or environmental standards.
Though it is important that developing countries be able to export goods to Canada, the Canadian government must take a much more active role than it ever has in ensuring that these products are produced in unionized and fair workplaces, a concern that is not reflected in the least developed country tariff.
We all agree that our markets should be more open to least developed countries because we know that to some degree this is key to economic growth for them. Although I must say that I think the model by which countries are expected to grow and develop their economies by an overemphasis on export markets can also be destructive, where stable and sustainable local economies have often been destroyed in the name of creating export markets. This has often had a terrible effect on the environment and on the sustainable way of life of peoples in these various countries.
We should not take for granted that the only way to development in the least developed countries is through this overemphasis on export markets. To the extent that export markets play a role in the development of the least developing countries, developed countries have a responsibility to open their markets. However, do we have a responsibility to open our markets for the products that then flow from these least developed countries without regard for how they are produced?
If the products flowing into our country, as a result of the reduction in tariffs, are products that are produced in sweatshops or are produced in workplaces that not only are not unionized but cannot be unionized because of no recognition or poor labour standards in particular countries, is this what we call a fair trading regime? Not at all. This is at the root of many of the objections to the current model of globalization, which everybody has been singing the praises of for the last 20 years.
We are not suggesting that any particular least developed country should adopt the same labour standards which we enjoy here in Canada. Sometimes I wonder whether we enjoy them any more, when we see that the CNR is able to import American scabs with impugnity into the current rail strike. But let us believe our own mythology for a minute and say that Canada has good labour standards.
We have been persistently--in all the forums in which I have spoken as NDP trade critic and many other New Democrats and social democrats around the world have spoken--asked that core labour standards be recognized and enforced.
What are core labour standards? Core labour standards are basically the right to form a trade union, the right to organize collectively, the right not to be a victim of slave labour. These are very basic rights. If even these rights were recognized and enforced around the world, we would move closer to what everyone says they want, which is a level playing field, but it is not a level playing field.
It may be a level playing field for the corporations in some way or another, but it is not a level playing field for Canadian workers. It is not a level playing field when they have to compete with workers in other countries who do not even have core labour standards, who cannot organize, who cannot defend themselves without ending up in the river or the victim of some death squad or losing their job, or whatever the various levels of punishment are depending on the country. That is not a level playing field.
This is the big lie that is at the root of the current globalization model, that somehow we are all moving toward this great level playing field where the competitive will thrive and those who are not competitive will fall by the wayside. There is nothing competitive in the best sense of the word competitive about exploitation.
What we now have is a global economic system that rewards countries on the basis of how much they persecute their workers. I do not call that competition. I do not think exploitation of workers should be a comparative advantage, to use a traditional economic theoretical term. I do not think exploitation is a comparative advantage or should be regarded as one in the global trading system.
That is why in the House back in 1994 when the legislation was brought in to implement the World Trade Organization, I moved amendments to the implementing legislation for the World Trade Organization that called on the government to prohibit imports from countries that were engaged in child labour.
Another element of what it means to have core labour standards is no child labour. Is this some kind of radical socialist idea, no child labour?
What we are saying is that when it comes to the global trading system, there should be the same zeal for enforcing a level playing field as there is when it comes to investors' rights. Right now we have this perverse moral hierarchy whereby for investors or a transnational corporation, their property rights and their investor rights have to be protected because that is a sacred thing.
However, a working person's job can disappear overnight if the owner can find a group of people to make it cheaper under more exploitive conditions somewhere else in the world.That is what is happening to manufacturing jobs here in Canada, in the United States and now even in Mexico because this capital keeps seeking the lowest common denominator. Therefore jobs disappear out of Canada into the United States, from the United States into Mexico, and now they are being lost out of Mexico to China, where we have the worst of all possible worlds.
In China we have the worst of capitalism and the worst of communism; a single party state running a capitalist economy. Yet our government is so far up the rear end of the Chinese market that we cannot even find it. It will not say anything critical of China because that might damage our opportunities for penetrating the Chinese market.
I was on one of the trips to China. It was disgusting to watch how uncritical the Canadian corporate elite and the Canadian government were when it came to China. Talk about the wilful blindness that the government has with respect to the sponsorship scandal. It pales in comparison to the wilful blindness that the whole world has right now about China.
What if everything could be made in China? What would the rest of us do?
These are just some of the concerns that we bring to this kind of legislation. We understand the intent but in the absence of recognition and enforcement of core labour standards, this kind of legislation is going nowhere. It is a recipe for exploitation and it is not going to solve the world's economic problems.
