Madam Speaker, we are here today to talk about the creation of a special House of Commons committee to look at all aspects of the U.S.-Canada economic relationship.
Why create a special committee? There are two key reasons. First, we need an integrated opportunity to look at all aspects of the economic relationship. Our House of Commons committees tend to focus on certain aspects such as finance, trade or foreign affairs. We need to be able to look at all of those things in one committee, and that is why we need this special economic relationship House of Commons committee. An economic relationship includes all those aspects.
Second, parliamentarians absolutely have a role in this conversation. We have seen increasing challenges, and a narrative from the government that says the House of Commons committees do not have a role; however, House of Commons committees work with Canadians to discuss, look at and research challenging issues so we can make recommendations to Canadians and governments.
Why do it now? We find ourselves at a tipping point. We have witnessed a fundamental shift in the global economic balance of power. We are seeing countries use trade as a weapon to gain political, economic and national strategic advantage. At the same time, in the last 20 years we have seen vast increases in consumer spending, GDP growth and stock prices. What we have not seen, in the United States and Canada, is significant economic benefit for individual Canadians or Americans, and that was before COVID.
Now we need to act with a sense of urgency. This rising tide has not raised all boats. We need to understand why that is, and we need to be proactive to determine how we are going to secure the future health and prosperity of Canadians. There is no question we will not be able to do that successfully without our most important trading partner, defence and security ally, and in many cases our greatest friend: the United States.
We have $1.5 billion a day in trade. All kinds of people and goods go back and forth. We have integrated supply chains. We need this committee in order to understand where both our countries are economically, and to look at what the foundation of our economic relationship needs to be.
The world is not the same as it was in the 1980s, when we first put NAFTA in place. Both our economies have changed substantially. From 1999 to 2015, the U.S. lost over five million manufacturing jobs. Canada lost over 600,000, which was over 25% of our country's industrial workforce. Barely two workers in 10 in Canada are employed in making goods, and in the last 18 years, there has not been a single net increase in jobs in the goods sectors.
In both our economies, the middle class is drastically shrinking. In the United States in 1980, 60% of the national income was from the middle class. Unfortunately, today that number is 40%. Every four years, one in five people in the middle class falls into the ranks of the working poor, and it is increasingly difficult to move up. Wages are stagnating, the gig economy is making work more precarious, prices continue to rise and student debt is a greater burden than for any generation previously. From 1990 to 2015, 80% of Canadians saw few, if any, income gains, and that was before COVID.
We see a trend in the U.S. that started long before President Trump and may well continue under the new administration. We need to understand what that is and actively plan to address it, mitigate it and work mutually for a win-win situation between Canadians and Americans.
The narrative we have heard is that the global trading system is universally unfair to U.S. workers. There is a call in the United States to turn back the clock to a time when goods sold in the U.S. were made in the U.S. There is also a further push for globalization, which appears is neither inevitable nor desirable, and if actions speak louder than words, a number of examples highlight this trend.
For example, the renegotiated NAFTA, now called the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, or CUSMA, is not a free-trade agreement but a managed trade agreement, with conditions that further restrict Canada's participation in the North American market. It gives American farmers increased access to Canada while also eliminating regulations and slanting the playing field in favour of the U.S. Also, it caps the growth of the Canadian auto sector and raises the cost of Canada's production, jeopardizing our competitiveness. It is an agreement that has caused Canada to lose sovereignty, because it is not a simple free-trade agreement: it is an agreement with clauses that put conditions on Canada's ability to enter into other trade agreements and limit our independence on monetary policy.
Furthermore, the U.S. has seen massive tax reform. U.S. corporate taxes have been slashed, and measures have been put in place to incentivize American companies to repatriate their manufacturing operations to the U.S. We have witnessed punishing steel and aluminum tariffs under the guise of national security, and new protocols have been put in place to make it easier to put further tariffs on in the future. We are also witnessing non-tariff trade barriers from the United States: The United States International Trade Commission is in the process of reviewing the safety and security of blueberries, strawberries and red peppers that Canada is exporting to the U.S. After 21 days of these investigations, the U.S. could impose tariffs on these products. This is a $750 million export market that affects over 8,300 Canadian farmers and families, and thousands of jobs as well.
There is no question that economic relationships at their core are relationships and, like relationships between people, no aspect of an international relationship can be viewed in isolation. Canada's relationship with the U.S. is a defence and security one. It is a values and ideas one. It is a world view one, as well as an economic one. It is one that is rapidly changing and evolving. Canada cannot afford to be complacent and take for granted, or assume, that the conditions that have been in place for the last 20 years will remain the same going forward.
We must pivot. We must have the courage to look at ourselves and understand exactly what we need to do to position ourselves, and the United States, in a win-win situation for the future. We need a special House of Commons committee to understand our own economic situation, our own rules and regulatory frameworks, our own taxes and everything else so that we can also look at the security and prosperity that we depend on in this most important relationship.
Canada's security and prosperity depend on this relationship. The benefits that we can achieve, together with our friends and allies, will be unparalleled. I hope that my colleagues will join me in supporting the motion before us, so that we can create the committee and get this work started as quickly and urgently as possible to position ourselves for a secure—
