Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to add my voice to today's debate on Bill C-32.
I will begin by reiterating my party's friendship with Costa Rica as one of our main trading partners. It is truly inspirational how Costa Rica has prospered as one of the oldest democracies on this side of the Atlantic, surviving in one of the most troubled regions of our hemisphere without a standing army.
We live in troubled times and I look to countries like Costa Rica as examples of how we can live in a more peaceful world. I also express my party's fundamental support for global trade rules based on fairness for the people of the world and which support fair labour standards, the preservation and promotion of cultural diversity and support of a sustainable global environment.
If we take the impact of the bill and ultimately the FTAA, we see in the sugar industry, for example, the differences between free trade and fair trade. The bill does nothing to promote better wages for Costa Rican sugar workers so that they can get access to our markets, and believe me, Canadians love sugar.
The agreement does nothing to ensure that sugar producers in Costa Rica meet the same environmental standards as Canadian sugar companies. To suggest that this is somehow a level playing field, speaks to the narrow vision of the drafters of the agreement. Their vision only sees money and balance sheets. Their vision cannot see the economies that the moneys flow into, the workers producing the goods or services, the internationally recognized beautiful cloud forests of Costa Rica that need protection or the families displaced by the implementation of the agreement.
What we oppose and what the hundreds of thousands of protesters who have been demonstrating in Vancouver, Seattle and Quebec City oppose are special rules embedded in trade agreements that give special rights to corporations trying to run over the rights of people and their elected governments.
I have said before in the House that I support trade. I support the jobs that come with trade. What I do not support is the set of global rules that say that people and their governments do not matter, only corporations matter.
That is the premise of NAFTA and its chapter 11. That was the premise of the MAI and that is the spirit of the bill when we remember that Canada has already signed special investment agreements with Costa Rica that effectively supplement Bill C-32.
Let us be clear about the government's trade agenda: support chapter 11 and expand NAFTA throughout the hemisphere, ultimately through NAFTA but, in the meantime, through little agreements such as this one and the one with Chile.
I would love to suggest that this is a government plan but I really think it is a corporate plan. I say that partly based on the erratic behaviour that the government has shown in the matter.
We saw the Prime Minister running in 1993 guaranteeing that NAFTA would not be adopted unless he got changes to protect Canada. He then adopted NAFTA with only a few cosmetic changes. The protests started, first at APEC, then Seattle, then Quebec City and then Genoa.
We had a glimmer of reprieve when the minister was before the committee a while back and said that investor rights would not move into the WTO, into GATS or into FTAA. However once again we saw corporate Canada send the message and the Prime Minister crack the whip to drive the minister back in line.
It is hard to know which party in parliament is being less democratic, the government or the official opposition. Both seem to want to hide public discussion and dissent behind closed doors and tall fences.
Last spring I was in Quebec City where 50,000 people marched into the streets to protest the undemocratic process being used to make decisions that would affect human beings around the world. The most common complaint of the hundreds with whom I spoke was the inclusion and existence of investor rights outlined in chapter 11, which, according to a leak on the eve of the summit, were to be included and strengthened in the FTAA. The bill would extend the regime to our relations with Costa Rica.
I was there as a member of parliament. It was clear that the place to be to find out what was going on in the hearts and minds of perhaps millions of Canadians was in Quebec City. The obvious place for the text of the free trade area of the Americas agreement to be discussed would have been in the House, as brought forward by our government, and in public forums across the country. Instead the text of the agreement was not made public until far too late for real comment. We as the elected representatives were outside the fence along with everyone else while corporate Canada lobbied for their interests behind the comfort of the police line.
Chapter 11 of NAFTA is about denying democratic culture. It is about destroying the democratic spirit of those outside the fence as resolutely as the police were committed to protecting the mass of concrete steel and barbed wire.
Critics of mine and the critics of other protesters have tried to say that New Democrats are anti-trade but that simply is not true. We are pro-trade. We are pro-community. We want our voices to count through our democratically elected governments. We do not want past mistakes of trade, specifically the recognition of investor's rights as being equal to the rights of government, to be preserved and expanded. We believe that business, money and the wealthy should not have special legal rights. Special legal rights in this context means that corporations get something that citizens do not, but NAFTA's chapter 11 says that the investors' rights are more important than citizens' rights.
I would not consider these rights special rights if a citizen could not go to a NAFTA tribunal and say “I need protection for my children, my way of life, my natural environment, my ability to have more than one point of view on the TV or in my newspaper, my income, my community or my democracy”. However there is no way an individual can do this either as an individual or through a class action. Only corporations can.
It is a right in NAFTA under chapter 11 and it is a proposed right in the FTAA under section 15. Under chapter 11 a foreign company can sue a democratically elected government because the government chooses to operate state enterprises or allow for monopolies that it deems desirable for the public good. Under chapter 11, the company can sue a democratically elected government because through its actions on behalf of its citizens it has denied that company the opportunity to profit in a specific sector of the economy.
We can imagine how our history would have evolved if this had been true in the past: no railways, no Canadian broadcasters, no Petro-Canada, no national airlines, no post office. This is not to mention the real threat which is to our public hospitals, our schools, our environmental controls and eventually our democracies.
Bill C-32 and the Canada-Costa Rica free trade agreement follow the NAFTA and the FTAA models of free trade that the NDP has consistently opposed because they put corporate rights ahead of human rights, the environment and democracy. To point this out, I will use an example currently before a NAFTA tribunal. UPS is suing Canada because it opposes Canada Post couriering mail. UPS is saying that because Canada Post is a crown corporation, which it is, and that it accepts parcels for delivery by the equivalent of a courier service, which it does, then UPS is losing potential profit and our taxpayers should cough up a chunk of tax money and give it to UPS, which we may have to do. It could win this one.
Under NAFTA, we no longer have the right to have crown corporations that are efficient, that use new technologies and that update their business plans to deliver a service which we as parliamentarians say Canadians want and need.
I do not think we have ever debated this in the House but it is not rocket science to realize that we are a big country with a small population that is very spread out. Having efficient, reliable and affordable services to send each other mail, parcels and goods makes a lot of sense to me, but apparently we can only do this if we first compensate UPS.
This case shows how we are stuck with agreements with ineffective exemptions that never allow public enterprises to change or modernize or to survive. If we lose our courier services at the post office, how long will it be until we lose the whole thing? How long will we wait before we are before a tribunal defending our hospitals, our schools, our public broadcasters or our military procurement?
These agreements and the right of investors to sue for perceived loss of profits because of changes in public services mean that the public sector will eventually be extinct. I disagree with this. Investors should have no special rights.
Our democracy is our most special public right. Under our charter, four of the five sections deal with guaranteeing these rights. However I am frightened that unless we change our tune on chapter 11 and these types of agreements such as the one we are debating today, these rights will be traded away for the sake of guaranteed profits for transnational corporations.
I believe that my constituents and all Canadians deserve better so I will be opposing this bill at second reading.
