Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-30, an act to implement the comprehensive economic and trade agreement between Canada and the European Union, or CETA, as it is often referred to. This landmark agreement is the result of years of hard work and I welcome the opportunity to help bring into force the deal that we as a government struck.
I congratulate the trade minister for signing and prioritizing this agreement. I do wish she would do the same for the TPP. I wish I could tell her that all the travelling and absences from her family will get easier, but, unfortunately, I cannot. However, I am sure they understand, as I do, that the work being done is to benefit their future and the future of all Canadians.
I also thank her parliamentary secretary for the work he has done on this file and for his participation at trade committee.
CETA was part of the most ambitious trade agenda Canada has ever seen. The Liberals call it the gold standard, which, of course, includes the trans-Pacific partnership. Our previous Conservative government under the leadership of the Right Hon. Stephen Harper; the former Minister of International Trade; and my colleague, the member for Abbotsford, were able to negotiate free trade agreements with 46 different countries.
Of course, none of that would have been possible without the tremendous work done by our country's world-class negotiators, and in the case of CETA, Steve Verheul and his team, who spearheaded negotiations with the European Union. The amazing results they were able to achieve on Canada's behalf, at times in strenuous situations, and the personal sacrifices they made to get the job done deserve a tremendous amount of respect and gratitude.
The truth is, the work they do is never complete. Even when agreements are concluded, the boots are always on the ground, helping exporters here at home, or Canadian businesses that have expanded abroad, to integrate deeper into global supply chains. They are the first to arrive and always the last to depart, carrying and leaving traces of Canada along each stop.
As members of Parliament, we honour their work not just by reading their names into Hansard, but by implementing the agreements they lost sleep over, ensuring that the deals they fought for, at the expense of countless days, weeks, and months away from their families, are realized.
To our negotiators, trade agreements are more than just tariff lines and clauses on a piece of paper. To them these agreements are a living contribution to ensuring that Canada remains prosperous and become a part of their DNA and, in turn, a part of our history and success as a long-time trading nation.
What does that success look like in terms of CETA? It looks like a full elimination of duties on all non-agricultural goods going into a market of over 500 million people. It looks like the elimination of almost 94% of agricultural tariffs when we export our goods into an almost $20 trillion economy.
CETA is projected to bring a 20% boost in bilateral trade and a $12 billion annual increase in Canada's economy. Put in another way, this is the economic equivalent of adding $1,000 to the average Canadian family's income or almost 80,000 new jobs to the Canadian economy. That will almost make up what the Liberal government has lost this past year so far.
The Canada–EU trade agreement is our country's biggest bilateral trade initiative since NAFTA. Let us just hope that our Prime Minister is not as eager to reopen CETA after it has been ratified.
CETA is unique in many ways, but the way that sticks out is how involved the provinces and territories were. Never before have the provinces and territories been part of international trade negotiations at such a grand level. The Europeans were hesitant at first, fearful that aboriginal concerns would slow down negotiations. The fact is, the opposite was true. Because of the level of provincial and territorial involvement, we were able to conclude the agreement back in 2014 as one voice with everyone on board. It turns out that the same could not be said for the EU, as we saw in Belgium with Wallonia. Part of that problem, of course, was the trade minister's incessant need to placate every irritant of every faction she could find, all for the sake of branding the agreement as Liberal and progressive.
In the end, when we do the side-by-side comparison of CETA, between the 2014 version that we concluded as the previous government and the current progressive version, we find that the so-called progressive changes the Liberals made were all rejected out of the gate by the EU Council and its member states. That means the agreement that we have before us, when it comes into effect, will be essentially what we concluded back in 2014, with the glaring exception now of any arbitration process for the ISDS claims. Our party strongly supports the international initiatives that will generate increased economic activity, drive prosperity, and create jobs as well as foster greater co-operation between our democratic allies.
The Canada–EU agreement emphasizes the importance of secure access to international markets through a rules-based trading system. It also would allow us to establish deeper trading relationships beyond North America. The same can be said for the trans-Pacific partnership, or TPP. But why would that be important and why would we look beyond North America? Well, it is important as part of the ambitious trade agenda I mentioned earlier.
As we know, Canadian exports to the U.S. account for about 75% of the total exports. This of course has its benefits, but we have to diversify our trade portfolio the same as anyone would diversify a stock portfolio. If we rely strictly on the U.S. market, as we have done for years, when the U.S. has a problem we face the same problem.
CETA, on the other hand, is a very aged market, a very mature market. The Pacific Rim of the TPP takes into account a growing or emerging middle class that we would have access to. So between the two, we would have access to 80% of the global GDP. It is very important that we have both agreements in place.
Yet, that is exactly what is happening as six nations press ahead with the TPP agreement, leaving Canada behind. At this point, we can and must change our position.
In addition to weakening Canada's position by prematurely putting NAFTA on the table before the new U.S. President has even been sworn in, there is the government's continued indecision and Liberal foot-dragging.
The general provision of the enactment sets out rules of interpretation and specifies that no recourse may be taken on the basis of sections 9 to 14, or any other—
