Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Skeena. From April 20 to April 22, 2001, 34 democratically elected heads of government representing a territory that spans from Iqaluit to Tierra del Fuego, with a combined population of some 800 million people, will gather in Quebec City for the summit of the Americas.
On the agenda are such topics as economic integration, improved access to education, alleviation of poverty, enhanced respect for human rights and democratic development.
The goal is to take a collective step forward toward implementing a free trade area of the Americas, a hemispheric free trade zone which would offer increased economic integration, increased economic growth and broad development that would benefit all concerned.
Those of us who accept and encourage the dynamic competitive and comparative advantage hope the talks will be frank and productive. However the talks might pale in comparison with the vigorous and shrill anti-summit disruptions that will occur throughout Quebec City. The press, always seeking to sell a racy story, will have to choose between dry stories predicting increased Canada-Costa Rica trade or explicit, loud and disruptive images of anti-summit protesters.
In the end protesters may succeed in selling their trade is bad, anti-capitalist message to an apathetic public, as they partially did in Seattle. However the average Canadian, using common sense, will know that just the opposite is true. Not only is trade good, but fair rules based trade is a goal we should pursue with vigour.
A mere look into the average Canadian kitchen, where Latin American fruits and coffee sit side by side with Mexican beer, Chilean wines and Canadian cheese, confirms the very obvious benefits of trade for all, benefits we often take them for granted. At its heart, the Quebec City summit of the Americas seeks to define rules that will ensure free trade of the Americas benefits all concerned. Unfortunately the popular focus has fallen victim to anti-free trade propaganda, propaganda that, frankly, is devoid of truth.
I will deal with some of the more often uttered objections to free trade.
We heard a minute ago from the hon. member for Winnipeg—Transcona and, before him, the hon. member for Burnaby—Douglas. They claim, as does the Canadian Union of Public Employees, that:
Under NAFTA Chapter 11, virtually any action by a government that limits the current or future value of assets held by a foreign corporation is subject to a claim for compensation.
While that statement is true, CUPE conveniently forgets to mention, as do opponents of NAFTA, that in Canada citizens and corporations alike, both foreign and domestic, have long had the right to sue the government for compensation for actions of the government that unjustly and unfairly damage them.
Many Canadians will probably remember the famous Pearson airport privatization scandal. It resulted from the sale, during the dying days of the Mulroney administration, of Pearson airport terminals 1 and 2 to a consortium that included some political allies.
During the 1993 election campaign the Liberals campaigned on a promise to scrap the deal and re-examine the contract. They won the election and cancelled the deal. The consortium sued. When the Liberals responded that a government could not be sued for keeping an election promise, the Ontario Court of Appeal disagreed. It ruled in 1995 that one could sue a government for breaking a contract and claim lost profits.
Faced with that reality, the government settled out of court with the consortium and paid it $265 million.
Canadians and Canadian companies and foreigners and foreign companies can sue the Canadian government. Not more than two blocks from this Chamber is the Federal Court of Canada which has jurisdiction “in all cases where relief is claimed against the Crown”. It recognizes the right of individuals and companies to sue the federal government. Naturally, that right includes the right to sue the government for lost profits or for compensation for loss of property.
Our trade agreements have not granted new rights to foreign companies in Canada. What they do is export Canada's standards of legal and political rights to other countries.
A second myth, often propagated by the detractors of expanded trade, is the belief that global trade is an evil which only benefits large corporations and must be fought at all costs. We heard that in the previous two presentations. This view is simply devoid of facts and serious economic reasoning. We have seen a dramatic increase in prosperity and growth as a result of the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement and NAFTA. We have seen firsthand the tremendous benefits of structured, rules based trade with a like minded democracy to the south.
Through the expansion of the proven principles of NAFTA to a Canada-Chile free trade agreement and to a now proposed Canada-Costa Rica free trade agreement, we have sought to diversify Canada's export market, in part to make Canada slightly less dependent on trade with the United States. That is a step in the right direction.
Today Canada conducts more than 80% of its trade with the United States and we trade more with Japan, our number two trading partner, than with all of Latin America and the Caribbean combined. If trade is good then multilateral trade, trading with many partners, is even better.
The FTAA seeks to create a regime of rules based trade that will serve the interests of everyone. Think back to October of 1999, when the WTO, acting on a complaint from Japan, struck down the longstanding Canada-U.S. auto pact. By striking down the access of Canadian car plants to U.S. markets, the decision could have meant disaster and the loss of thousands of jobs in Ontario and Quebec.
Instead, the open trade rule of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement kicked in. Since then Canadian exports to the U.S. have increased by more than 15% in that sector. That benefits auto workers, especially members of the Canadian Auto Workers union at plants in Ontario and Quebec which now build cars for export to such distant markets as Chile and Saudi Arabia.
While the Canadian Union of Public Employees, CUPE, denounces free trade, exports are paying the bills for Canadian Auto Worker union members. Perhaps CUPE's leaders should listen to their CAW brothers and sisters who would tell them that rules based free trade is good and that their jobs are proof of it.
That argument has not been lost in the sovereignty plans of the Bloc Quebecois and Parti Quebecois. They have always been careful to suggest separation would not remove Quebec from either the FTA or NAFTA. Whether such a status would persist is a debate for another time, but the fact is that free trade is good for Quebec's economy, and its representatives in Ottawa and Quebec City recognize and are actively reflecting that.
An argument can be made that the recent election in Mexico, which has rightly been hailed as the first open and honest election in Mexican history, was due in part to Mexico's involvement in NAFTA and to the commitment of democracy expressed in that agreement by Canada and the United States.
Similarly, it would seem that in South America a genuine commitment to democracy and all that it entails is seen as a necessary requirement to participation in the free trade area of the Americas.
The member for Burnaby—Douglas asked earlier and at committee why Cuba will not be at the FTAA summit. I told him at committee, and I will tell him again today, that Cuba will not be in Quebec City because there is no consensus among the 34 nations for it to be there. That is, I might suggest to the member for Burnaby—Douglas, because since 1959 the Castro regime has driven out, incarcerated or murdered a fifth of its population. That might have something to do with it.
Many of those protesting the summit are union activists who are staunch defenders of the collective bargaining process. Canadians have long respected that process, and they accept the need to conduct union-management negotiations behind closed doors as long as the rank and file are consulted before negotiations start and have a chance to ratify the final agreement.
Those principles must apply to the Quebec summit. Anyone who says otherwise is not truly interested in greater transparency but is using the plea for greater openness as a Trojan Horse to scuttle the FTAA process. We must recognize that behaviour for what it is: anti-democratic and contradictory to their own practices and self-interest.
In short, they selectively use closed door bargaining when it is in their best interests but not when it is in the best interests of those with whom they disagree. True democrats recognize this inconsistency as a lack of courage for an assumed, unassailable principle of collective negotiation.
I will end by quoting one of Europe's leading socialists, the Right Hon. Tony Blair, prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He said in this House:
It is time, I think, that we started to argue vigorously and clearly as to why free trade is right. It is the key to jobs for our people, to prosperity and actually to development in the poorest parts of the world. The case against it is misguided and, worse, unfair.
On behalf of the official opposition, I say amen to Prime Minister Blair. Greater truth has not been spoken by a prime minister in this place for a very long time.
