Dennis Bevington

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, February 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, it is hypothetical and we do not deal with hypothetical issues here. We are dealing with a trade agreement between Panama and Canada. Once this passes the House, then that is the law of the land. Therefore, we cannot be hypothetical about it. We have to be practical and realistic about it.

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, February 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, that question troubles and perplexes all of us. When we go into a free trade agreement with the kind of provisions we have proposed with Panama, we open a Pandora's box. There are 400,000 corporations in Panama. They are not there for the weather. They are there because the tax haven status is such that they can be there. Interestingly enough, many of them are also criminal organizations. These are things that will filter through to the Canadian side with this kind of agreement.

Panama refused to sign a tax information exchange agreement. Therefore, the country recognizes what it is doing with its laws for the corporations it shelters. It is not interested in changing, so why would we go ahead with this agreement?

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, February 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from the Yukon and I share many things.

I agree with him that there should be some countries we enter into fair trade agreements with that are based on careful analysis and that provide us the answers we want.

In some ways probably multilateral trade with Latin America would be better. It has trading group there called Mercosur. There are certain provisions within that trading group that it wants to maintain. Canada has to understand that fair trade means we deal with what the countries that have banded together want.

With some of those countries, though, we have a problem because we have very large subsidies and tariffs against things such as sugared-based ethanol from Brazil. That is a problem. How would we get around that and keep the subsidies in place for our farmers? Those are things that bar us from fair trade agreements with large expanding trading partners.

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, February 7th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-46 at report stage.

My opinion on the bill has not changed over the course of time of it being in committee. In fact, many of the things presented in committee spoke very strongly against the nature of the bill and against the bilateral free trade agreement with a country like Panama.

Panama along with Colombia are two countries that the Conservative government has decided, in its wisdom, to pursue free trade agreements with and have brought them forward in this Parliament. Neither of these countries is appropriate for free trade deals with Canada.

Clearly Colombia had so many human rights violations that the nature of our protection for those human rights issues, which we hold so strongly in Canada, were simply not there.

In the case of Panama, quite clearly there are human rights issues, but more overwhelmingly are the issues surrounding the nature of the Panamanian business community. That has been brought forward, in great detail, to Parliament through our work, through the work of some of the other parties and through the witnesses at committee and clearly this is not a nation that holds the same level of integrity and honesty within its corporate structures as we do in Canada.

To enter into this free trade agreement, pushing investment with Panama is like injecting more poison into our system. Our system may falter because of the opportunities that exist in this.

Free trade agreements need careful scrutiny, and we have been calling for that. Careful benefit scrutiny, net benefit analysis should take place on any free trade deal with any country in the world. I know we are negotiating a number of those, so there should be work put into that.

Take for instance the much wanted European free trade agreement. Many holes are showing up in that deal already. For instance, today there is a report coming out that indicates Canadian drug costs, drug costs that are directly related to government costs, are going to go up substantially if we go ahead with the European free trade deal as outlined, with the provisions in which the Europeans are most interested.

The opportunity to use generic drugs will be made more difficult. That difficulty is estimated to cost us in the order of $1.5 billion to $2 billion a year. Where does that come from? From the pockets of Canadian taxpayers. What benefits do we get from that? By going along with the Europeans on that, the net total investment in new research and development would be in the order of $400 million.

With the effect of marginal tax rate for corporations in this country of 18%, how much improvement to the economy has to go ahead to make up the difference of $2 billion to the taxpayers? There are no answers for that. No analysis has been done. That directly affects our federal government and all the provinces as well.

There was a curious reception that I went to the other night with the Japanese automotive association. There were opportunities for speeches. The Minister of International Trade made a fine speech about his total belief in free trade, the need to sign these agreements and to work on these things. That was fine. I accept that as his position.

However, the president of the Japanese automotive association said that the European free trade deal was not the panacea for the association, that it would lose on the deal if we signed with Europe.

Let us look at the Japanese automotive industry, one of the clear winners for Canada in the last decade with the setting up of new plants. Of the total number of vehicles produced, most are exported to the United States. Not only are the Japanese in Canada, probably because of our good conditions and public health care, but their product is part of our export development in manufacturing, which everyone in the chamber must understand is very weak on every other front.

The people who are doing a successful job for us in manufacturing automobiles and exporting to the United States are saying that we should look at the provisions of the European free trade deal. Quite clearly, we have to look at trade deals very carefully in this new world. This is not the old world of the 1980s and 1990s when the free trade mantra was something that no one could resist, that no political party was able to completely ignore, that no political party of the right was able to say anything other than it agreed.

Let me get back to the free trade deal with Panama. It is not really a free trade deal. This is about investment. This is about Canadian companies investing their profits in Panama, perhaps on the new expansion of the Panama Canal or a number of other areas. That is what is going to happen. Investors will be taking the money they make in Canada and investing it in another country.

What about agriculture? Riots are going on around the world right now over the price of agricultural products. Canada could do much better. A previous member spoke of pulses, the consortium of producers of lentils, peas and beans. I had an opportunity to speak with those people and they are not concerned about free trade. They are concerned about our railways that do not give them a proper deal on service. They have much more difficulty getting their products to the Canadian ports for export to the world market for produce that is ever-expanding and where the prices of products are going up.

When we talk about agriculture, we are talking about something that is going to be in great demand. When we think about agriculture in terms of free trade, what we should be thinking about is how to protect and enhance our agricultural capacity in our country. This is the way to deal with that.

What is Canada's trade? So much of it is energy and raw resources, the things the world needs, not what it wants. The world wants produced products, but it needs raw products and Canada is in a good position to provide those raw products. We do not want to sell them too cheap or give them away. We want to ensure that our children and grandchildren are well protected in our resources going forward. When we sign free trade deals with countries and say that we must give our resources in a fashion that we do not dictate anymore, we are giving up something, but what are we getting in return?

Let us talk about border security. A big issue right now is that the thickened border has slowed down free trade to the United States. That is nonsense. Trade since 9/11 to the United States has gone up consistently until 2008 when there was a recession and the value of the Canadian dollar accelerated. Those two factors hit our trade very hard with the United States. It went down from about $350 billion to about $100 billion, but it had nothing to do with free trade. It had to do with currency and our ability to deal with our own issues.

As for the currency, we do not have the opportunity to do like the Liberals did in 1993 and lower the interest rate because we are already at rock bottom. We are in a bind. What can we do, quantitative easing? What do we do to improve our currency position vis-à-vis the United States? That is the problem we have with trade with the United States.

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, February 4th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am having trouble with the deal that is being struck with Panama. It is different from the deal with Colombia. Human rights are very important to my party. We can understand perhaps why the Conservatives were not so big on labour unions, but with regard to this one, I have had to listen to their pious pronouncements on being tough on crime and getting rid of the drugs in the schools and on the streets and so on. This is a situation where we are legitimizing the world's largest launderer of drug money.

What is in the minds of the Conservatives? How can they go to sleep at night when they are so hypocritical? Why do they not wake up to what they are doing and recognize what the problem is with Panama and why an agreement should not be signed?

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, February 4th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I understand the Conservative Party recognizes the scourge of drugs in nations around the world. Quite clearly, Panama accounts for about 85% of the transactions in illegal income and about 55% of those cases are directly related to money laundering from the drug industry.

What does my colleague think about this situation where the Conservative government, with its high-sounding talk about putting Canadians in jail for every little drug crime, is now jumping into bed with a country that has the worst record in the world for laundering drug money?

[Canada-U.S. Relations, February 4th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives are selling out Canadians. The government is ushering in the United States' so-called secure flight program, taking our private personal information and giving it to Homeland Security just because Canadians are flying over the U.S. on their way to other countries.

Now, with talk of a new North American security perimeter, Canadians are worried what this might mean for them.

What other rights of Canadians is the Prime Minister trading today, as part of the perimeter security deal?

[Northern Economic Development, February 4th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I want to remind the government once again about the high cost of living in Canada's north. Here is an example. Many Canadians are alarmed that they may have to pay $1 for each extra gigabyte of Internet. In the north, the average for each extra gig is $10, and they start counting at as little as two gigs.

In December the aboriginal affairs and northern development committee released its unanimous report on northern economic development. The report recommended:

That the Government of Canada, to facilitate the development of the northern economy by attracting and retaining more skilled workers, consider enhancing the Northern Residents Tax Deduction to more fully compensate for the costs of living faced by individuals in the North, and consider a policy that provides universality to the travel portion of the Northern Residents Tax Deduction.

The 2007 budget gave an insufficient modest increase. What northerners need this year is an increase in the range of 50%. The Minister of Finance should really look at this, because he is the one who could deliver on this for northerners.

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, February 3rd, 2011]

Madam Speaker, quite clearly, when the Minister of Public Safety appeared before our committee, he said that the government did not want this bill, that the government did not want to give this information to the U.S., that it had tried everything it could but did not accomplish its task of getting the U.S. to give up on this idea because, quite clearly, the security implications of it were minimal, if anything.

When my colleague says the government should have worked harder to find a way to get the U.S. to recognize the ridiculousness of this bill, that is what we are trying to do here. That is why we put forward a three-year drop dead clause.

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, February 3rd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, what the member said was well known at the committee.

I put forward an amendment to the bill which would have been a three-year drop-dead clause to ensure that after three years the government would have to renegotiate this and that we would not be tying Canadians' privacy to a bad bill for eternity. Why did the Liberal critic at the transport committee refuse to go along with the drop-dead clause?