Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-24, an act to implement the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the Republic of Peru, the Agreement on the Environment between Canada and the Republic of Peru and the Agreement on Labour Cooperation between Canada and the Republic of Peru.
Bill C-24 is the implementation legislation for the Canada-Peru free trade agreement, which consists of three parts: the main free trade agreement text, the labour side agreement and an environmental protection side agreement. It preceded and is nearly identical to the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement. Bill C-24 is also structurally identical to Bill C-23, the implementation legislation for the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement.
Canada is following the United States, which completed the free trade agreement with Peru under the Bush administration in December 2007, in spite of strong opposition from trade unions, civil society and Democrats who viewed the deal as an expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA. Free trade negotiations with Peru date back to 2002 when the Chrétien Liberals first held discussions with the Andean community. That group consists of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia. On June 7, 2007, then minister David Emerson announced the formal launch of free trade negotiations with Peru. The Conservative government signed the bilateral agreement in May 2008.
The NDP opposes the NAFTA-style treaties that put big business interests before workers and the environment at all costs. That has increased the inequality and decreased the quality of life for the majority of working families.
In the case of the Canada-Peru agreement, our concern is that a much larger and more developed economy will take advantage of a developing one and that large corporate interests will end up shaping the so-called free trade architecture to serve their needs and not the public interests of the two trading nations. The worst aspects of the free trade agreement are similar to those found in the Canada-Colombia agreement.
The Canada-Peru free trade agreement does not include tough labour standards. The labour provisions are in a side agreement outside of the main text and without any vigorous enforcement mechanism. That is the key to this.
Trade unions in Peru have expressed concern as Peruvian labour law is deficient in several areas. By addressing the environment in a side agreement, there is no effective enforcement mechanism to force Canada or Peru to respect environmental rights.
Canada, in the recent budget, took away some of the environmental protections under the Navigable Waters Protection Act that we previously had in this country. It is not just a one-way street. In this case, we are looking at the country of Peru and saying that it is not living up to standards and it is racing to the bottom, but we have examples on our side where it could be argued that we are doing the same thing in terms of racing to the bottom.
The Canada-Peru agreement on the environment commits both countries to pursue environmental co-operation and to improve environmental laws and policies, but it can only ask both parties to enforce their domestic laws. If they do not, there is no necessary consequence.
In terms of the investment chapter, it has been a major concern of the members of the Bloc who support the NDP in voting against this bill. The investment chapter has been copied from the North American Free Trade Agreement. We have had some experience over the years with how that works. As for chapter 11 investor rights, the Canada-Peru free trade agreement provides powerful rights to private companies to sue governments over their public policy, enforceable through investor state arbitration panels.
We have seen, through experience with the North American Free Trade Agreement, how this type of corporate rights regime undermines the legitimate role of government in protecting and improving the lives of its citizens and the environment. In some free trade agreements investors are essentially put on the same level as that of the state and this puts the state in a defensive position. Just yesterday, one of my colleagues mentioned some examples under the NAFTA where the government is being challenged by investors who are not happy with their treatment under the agreement.
While Parliament cannot modify the treaty itself, Bill C-24 is just enabling legislation and the final jurisdiction over treaties lies with cabinet. We would like the government to stop the bill and renegotiate the problematic parts but that, of course, is not likely to happen. That is our major concern with this legislation.
I would like to address a question asked by a member a few minutes ago.
The Americans are moving perhaps a year or two ahead of us in this area. They have passed their own free trade agreement with Peru. However, unlike the Canadian agreement, environmental and labour standards were included right in their bill. One could argue that the Americans had a better constructed bill than we have here.
Their experience so far has not been good because a race to the bottom is developing where Peru has issued decrees and has reduced its standards. Any analysis that I have read, particularly from the American point of view, shows that the agreement they signed is not working favourably for the poor people and the working people of Peru.
Surely we should learn something from the American experience. They have two years on us. They have a better agreement but it is not being enforced properly in terms of pulling both countries up. What it is doing is pulling them down, specifically Peru.
Before we go much further with this, we should direct our negotiators to at least move our agreement up to the higher standard of the American agreement and maybe get some improvements on the American agreement that would benefit the working people in Peru.
We have a number of good examples that we have accessed from people who have looked at how the U.S. free trade agreement with Peru has been working. We can take the example of teamster president, Jimmy Hoffa Jr., who has made several observations about the U.S.-Peru agreement. He has said that nothing will change for the 33,000 slave labourers cutting down the Amazonian rain forest. He has said that subsistent farmers will be forced off their land because cheap U.S. food produced by agri-business will undercut their prices. The same thing happened with the North American Free Trade Agreement which has resulted in millions of poor Mexicans leaving their farms.
How anyone in this Parliament could see it is as progress and an improvement to the country and to the world to take a group of people, who have been working on their farms for hundreds of years, and force them off their land and force them to buy subsidized imported food and get away from growing their own food, is beyond me
The previous speaker from the Liberal Party was essentially condoning the race to the bottom approach. He said that we could not question any country's practices because we will scare it off and it will not want to trade with us. I have news for him. People all over the world want to trade.
When a few protestors from my own province of Manitoba go to environmental commission hearings in Minnesota to complain about our hydro development up north, when it really is not a serious problem in my opinion, our government takes that very seriously. Why? It is because we want to keep selling power to the United States. A few protesters can have a big influence on our government policy in Manitoba. One or two people showing up at environmental commission hearings--
