Gerald Keddy

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, February 3rd, 2011]

Madam Speaker, it is a privilege to rise to speak to this bill. I did not expect to be speaking to additional NDP amendments to the bill, but I can honestly say I am not terribly surprised.

Without question these amendments are dilatory, obstructionist and unnecessary. They are a thinly veiled attempt to kill the bill, nothing more, nothing less. Worse yet, in my opinion, they disrespect the committee process because all committee members had ample opportunity to put forward all of their amendments at committee stage. We had lengthy debate and heard numerous witnesses, yet here we are debating four amendments that have nothing to do with the substance of the bill. They are only here to kill the bill.

I am happy to speak to Bill C-46, the Canada-Panama free trade agreement, and am privileged to do so.

We need to recognize a few facts, because the previous speech was pretty short on facts.

Panama is a strategic hub for the Americas. It is an important nexus of commercial activity throughout the region. It is already an important market for Canadian businesses. In 2009, two-way merchandise trade between our countries totalled $132.1 million. Panama is a market with great potential, and this free trade agreement would help Canadian businesses take advantage of the opportunities that it offers. I have a personal example.

There is an engineering firm in my riding that specializes in the oil and gas sector. At the present time it is looking at some contracts in Panama. In order to fulfill those contracts, because of the duty, the company is better off to use its subsidiary business in Mexico and ship straight from Mexico to Panama. If this deal goes through, those jobs will stay in Canada.

This agreement would also establish a level playing field so that our companies could maintain or improve their competitiveness in a market where strong competitors, such as the United States and the European Union, have or are seeking preferential access.

A Canada-Panama free trade agreement would result in tangible benefits for Canadians. For example, it would be of key importance to Canadian merchandise exporters.

In 2009, two-way trade between Canada and Panama in non-agricultural merchandise amounted to $104.2 million with Canada's non-agricultural exports to Panama totalling $68 million. The hon. member wants to ignore the numbers as if they did not exist, but we have substantive trade between Canada and Panama now. It begs the question: why would we not include clearer rules to establish beneficial rules-based trading with a country that we are already trading with, that helps Canadian businesses and helps Canadian jobs?

Key Canadian non-agricultural exports to that market have included pharmaceuticals, machinery, vehicles and electrical and electronic equipment. Once implemented, our agreement with Panama would immediately eliminate tariffs on 99.9% of recent non-agricultural imports from Canada. The agreement would eliminate tariffs ranging from 5% to 11% on Canadian pharmaceutical exports to Panama, which amounted to $10.8 million last year.

Canadian machinery and automotive exports to Panama are currently subjected to tariffs as high as 15% to 20% respectively. Under the free trade agreement these barriers would be eliminated.

In these challenging economic times, when our manufacturing sector benefits, the country benefits.

In the forestry sector the Canada-Panama free trade agreement would eliminate tariffs as high as 15% on a range of wood and paper products, creating new opportunities for Canadians in the export of lumber, plywood, books, packaging materials and other products.

Here at home the forestry industry accounts for approximately 12% of Canada's manufacturing GDP and directly employs 230,000 Canadians. As the Forest Products Association of Canada has said, it is the economic lifeblood of over 200 communities in our country. Our government is working to ensure that industries like this one that contribute so much to our economy have access to growing markets like Panama and have the ability to make the most of the opportunities there.

In terms of our agricultural trade, Canadian producers exported $23.6 million of agriculture and agrifood products into Panama in 2009, and there is room to improve.

Panama currently applies tariffs on many agricultural products, some as high as 20%. Once implemented, the free trade agreement would immediately eliminate tariffs on goods accounting for 94% of Canada's agricultural exports to Panama. This would benefit Canadian farmers countrywide, including exporters of frozen french fries, pulses, malt, oilseeds, beef and pork products, maple syrup and Christmas trees.

Canada Pork International has gone on record that Panama is one of the Canadian pork producers' top 15 markets. Approximately $5 million worth of pork products are exported there each year. They support the Canada-Panama free trade agreement and have emphasized the importance of moving ahead with this agreement to take advantage of entering a market ahead of our largest competitors.

The benefits of having access to the Panamanian market do not end with our agricultural and non-agricultural goods, producers and exporters. A free trade agreement with Panama would also improve access for Canadian service providers looking to enter this dynamic and growing market. Panama is a services-oriented economy and some in Canada's service sector have already established operations there.

In 2008, our commercial services exports to Panama totalled $12 million. This includes those providing financial services, engineering and professional services, information and communication technology services, and others.

The Canada-Panama free trade agreement would help Canadian service providers expand their operations, pursue new opportunities, and keep pace with their competitors.

In its services negotiations, Canada obtained access beyond Panama's World Trade Organization commitments, particularly in areas of export interest to Canada, including mining services, energy services and environmental services. This means preferential access for Canadian service providers in sectors where Canada has expertise to share.

The Canada-Panama free trade agreement would also establish new rules to govern trade in services, ensuring the secure, predictable and equitable treatment of service providers from both countries.

This is to ensure that a company such as SNC Lavalin, which is leading a consortium to build a $4 billion copper mine in Panama, owned by Inmet, a Canadian mining company, will directly benefit from this agreement.

We are making our way through some difficult economic times. Many hard-working Canadians are looking for us to show leadership on the economy, promote sustainable economic improvements, and create opportunities for job growth. Our government has made a commitment to do just that, to help Canadians capitalize on their expertise and expand into new and exciting markets.

Canada's producers, exporters and service providers are constantly faced with fierce competition, and we must do what we can to ensure they compete on even ground with their competitors.

We must continue to reduce barriers to trade and negotiate competitive terms of access in global markets. We must show the world that Canada's businesses are second to none.

A free trade agreement with Panama would help to do this.

For all of these reasons, I call on all hon. members in this House, including the members of the NDP, to support Bill C-46.

In the time remaining, I would like to summarize some of the highlights of this bill. There are a couple that we cannot ignore.

We cannot ignore the increased traffic that will go through Panama after it is finished twinning the Panama Canal. We can look at that as an obstruction, a challenge, or we can look at that as an opportunity. Quite frankly, I look at it as an opportunity. There is no reason that increased flow of traffic cannot feed our container ports on the west coast and east coast of Canada.

We simply do not have to wait for the European Union or the United States to sign free trade agreements before we come in a day late and a dollar short. We are leading the way, we are promoting Canadian businesses, and we intend to continue.

[Criminal Code, January 31st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the hon. member. I had some difficulty following his train of thought. He jumped around a lot and he really used a lot of examples and analogies that had nothing to do with this particular piece of legislation, but I would ask a pretty straightforward question.

I have heard the hon. member talk a lot about what Canadians like or do not like, so I am assuming he has spoken to most Canadians on the issue of crime. However, the real issue here is that Canadians want to feel safe and secure in their homes, on the streets, in their workplaces. That is not an unreasonable thought, and it should not be foreign even to the NDP's mindset. However, the NDP does not support legislation that enforces that.

My question to the hon. member is, does he intend to support Conservative legislation that actually forces criminals to serve their time in prison, or not? It is a simple question, yes or no?

[Economic Negotiations with the European Union, December 14th, 2010]

Madam Chair, I have 30 seconds left. Maybe I could wrap this up, which is almost impossible to do in 30 seconds.

My question for parliamentarians and for all Canadians is this: do we want jobs and opportunities? That is the question.

There are jobs and opportunities for workers. There are jobs and opportunities for businesses. There are jobs and opportunities for all Canadians in this free trade agreement. I believe as a member of Parliament representing South Shore—St. Margaret's in Nova Scotia that we should go after those jobs and opportunities.

[Economic Negotiations with the European Union, December 14th, 2010]

Madam Chair, the hon. member spoke at length. I would like to say that I appreciate his comments, but frankly, to the House and anyone listening, I really do not appreciate his comments. He does not support trade. I do not know, and I hope none of us would ever find out, what a nuclear wasteland would look like, but I think it is something that the Canadian economy would look like if his party ever gets in charge of the reins to direct it.

There are a couple of simple terms, for those with a bit of an agricultural background, and I understand the hon. member professes to have some. Those are “gee” and “haw”, where we can turn a horse, because it has blinders on, to the left or to the right.

The member made a comment that there are pluses and minuses in every trade agreement. So I would like to hear some of the pluses in the trade agreements that we signed. I will list those agreements for him.

We have signed a trade agreement with the United States. We have signed trade agreements with Chile, with Israel, with Colombia, and with Costa Rica. We signed a trade agreement recently with Panama, and it has gone through the House now, clause by clause.

So I would like to hear some positive accomplishments from those trade agreements.

[Economic Negotiations with the European Union, December 14th, 2010]

Madam Chair, I do not know what the noise is in the House beyond of course your wisdom, but I will follow your good advice.

Because my hon. colleague covered a wide range of issues in his speech, I am going to ask him a wide-ranging question, and that is regarding the opportunity that we have before us.

We have WTO negotiations, multilateral negotiations that have completely stalled. Countries around the world, if they want to trade, are being forced, as Canada has been forced, to sign bilateral agreements with individual nations. We have an opportunity here with the EU to sign a third or a fourth generation-level agreement that will set the tone and raise the bar for every free trade agreement ever to be signed after this, and lead the way for the rest of the world in what we should be doing in trade agreements.

I would like the hon. member's comments on that statement.

[Economic Negotiations with the European Union, December 14th, 2010]

Madam Chair, I thank the hon. member for his intervention here this evening and engaging in this important debate in this place. You covered a lot of issues in his speech. I think you covered them all, and I will try to be brief.

[Economic Negotiations with the European Union, December 14th, 2010]

Madam Chair, I thank my colleague for his work on behalf of all parliamentarians as the chair of the Canada-EU Interparliamentary Association.

When a group of European Union parliamentarians travelled extensively throughout Canada last month, they also had fulsome discussions here in Ottawa under the member's guidance. I attended those meetings and I noticed how positive all of the European Union parliamentarians were about this comprehensive agreement benefiting both the EU and Canada.

[Economic Negotiations with the European Union, December 14th, 2010]

Mr. Chair, I have to interject here because the hon. member is simply incorrect.

Both Canada and the European Union are leaders in the promotion of the 2005 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. This convention recognizes that cultural goods and services are different from tradable goods, because they have both an economic and a social nature. They convey identities, values and meaning. We are in agreement with the European Union on that. There is no difference in our opinion or the European Union's opinion.

I have to protest that the member's arguments that somehow we are cutting culture out of this simply are not true.

[Economic Negotiations with the European Union, December 14th, 2010]

Mr. Chair, I thank the hon. member for her intervention this evening. This is an important debate and I appreciate her comments. I cannot say that I agree with her comments, and frankly, I am a bit surprised by them.

The purpose of including a cultural exemption, as it is in all of Canada's free trade agreements, every single one of them, is to ensure the maintenance of adequate flexibility to pursue domestic policy objectives. That is further backed up by the core objective for Canada, as it is again in all trade agreements, including and eventually the Canada-European Union comprehensive economic and trade agreement.

My question for the hon. member is, why does she not support the ability of Canadian culture to maintain, sustain and sell itself on the world stage? Why does she not believe in her own cultural identity of Quebec? It has a negotiator at the table. It has representation at the table. Why would she prevent, and why would she want to prevent, the great artists in Quebec from competing on a national and worldwide scale? Why would she want to keep Cirque du Soleil strictly in the province of Quebec, keep it cocooned and not able to travel and perform throughout the world?

I do not understand why the hon. member does not have confidence in our own culture here in Canada, when we are going to enter into a negotiation with the European Union that has 27 member states, 23 languages and a diversity of cultures, and has managed to trade and maintain its culture on the world stage.

[Economic Negotiations with the European Union, December 14th, 2010]

Mr. Chair, I thank the hon. member for her intervention and for her support of this agreement, understanding that there is a way to go yet before we get to the end of the negotiations. However, the principles of the negotiations are what are important.

My question is straightforward. Before the advent of our softwood lumber agreement and before the advent of NAFTA, Nova Scotia, the part of the world in Canada that I am from, used to export $900 million worth of softwood lumber, dimensional lumber to Europe. When the EU was formed, we were shut out of Europe on a phytosanitary certificate concerning pine wood nematode. Instead of exporting to the east, we simply started exporting south. When the barriers started to be put up by the Americans, we got around those because we did not fall under countervail because much of our land is privately owned, However, we still lost our market in the EU.

That is an example of where a part of the country needed an additional marketplace but not one was available to it and we suffered directly because of that, even though we managed to settle our differences with the Americans.