Mr. Speaker, it is with great regret that I rise to speak to the Canada-Panama free trade act. As I said previously in the House on both this proposed trade agreement and on the trade agreement with Colombia, the government has completely reneged on its promise to supposedly balance environment and trade, environment and development. Instead, the government has moved backward in time.
Even though the North American Free Trade Agreement has a lot of problems, at least there was a substantial side agreement on the environment. Today I will go through how the government has specifically downgraded that agreement.
I would like to bring to the attention of the House one of the reasons that I tabled an environmental bill of rights. I tabled the bill of rights because it was important for Canadians to have cast in law their right to participate in decision-making and their right to have the implications of any government decisions revealed to them.
The Conservatives ran on a platform of increased openness and transparency. In their time in power as the Government of Canada, they have done nothing but the opposite, and the tabling of this bill reflects that. First, where is the dialogue with Canadians about what they think is important in trade agreements with other nations?
Previous governments stated that they thought that balancing labour rights and environmental rights and protection were equally important to trade, and so we had side agreements. At the time, there was a lot of controversy because it was felt by many that if we were really going to put development and trade on par with environmental protection and labour rights, then they should be incorporated into a legally binding document.
The government professes to balance development and trade with environmental protection and that it believes in openness, transparency, accountability and engagement of the grassroots public and yet it has tabled trade agreement after trade agreement doing the complete opposite. There has been no dialogue with the public on what direction we should be taking in our trade agreements since NAFTA. I would highly recommend that the government initiate that dialogue because Canadians will pay the price.
Under my environmental bill of rights, Canadians would have the right to this information. They would have the right to see proposed trade agreements with nations such as Panama. They would have the right to participate in decisions about the criteria for entering into trade agreements with other nations and what would be included in those documents. They also would have the right to know whether we should move forward on the long overdue promise of putting environment on par with trade and development.
Here again, similar to the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, we have the same reprehensible document. The side agreement on environment has been stripped of any of the substance that it had under the free trade agreement with Mexico and the United States, to the point where we may as well not have the side agreement.
Specifically, we have taken away the ministers of environment meeting to discuss the major environmental implications of decisions on trade and development in the respective two countries. Under the side agreement to NAFTA, the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation, the government very wisely created the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment. In this case, that has been taken away. Instead, there is an advisory body composed of lower echelon bureaucrats. Nothing is revealed. There is no budget in this time of restraint in our country and, most likely, in Panama as well. Where is the budget line item to adequately finance the review of decisions on trade in the respective countries?
There is no full-time secretariat, unlike the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation which established a full-time secretariat. The three countries to that agreement alternate the head and staff of the secretariat. We have no such secretariat. This will simply be another task downloaded on an already overstretched bureaucracy that, in all likelihood because of our deficit, will be cut back even further.
It is not clear who is actually going to be the watchdog for this side agreement and who is going to be addressing and responding to public concerns. Where is the line item in the government's budget with respect to providing those services for this trade agreement?
There is no full-time commission, no full-time budget, no independent secretariat. The value of an independent secretariat under the North American Free Trade Agreement is that people have a level of comfort in coming to that secretariat and raising issues. In fact under the North American agreement on environmental co-operation, under article 13, citizens of the three respective countries, Mexico, the United States and Canada, can recommend to the secretariat that particular issues of concern to the environment on a bilateral or trilateral issue be investigated independently by the secretariat with independent consultants. The council of ministers can recommend that issues of common interest be reviewed in a co-operative manner to come up with co-operative solutions.
There is no such body here where we can have a level of confidence that the government sincerely wants to pursue any implications to the environment of the trade agreement.
There is also no mechanism for open dialogue. Under the North American agreement the council commits at least once a year to meet in the open, transparently, with the public of the three countries. There is no such commitment in this agreement, so everything is going to be behind closed doors between bureaucrats.
A number of public bodies to hold the council accountable for delivering on the side agreement are created under the North American agreement on environmental co-operation. There are no public advisory committees under the side agreement with Panama.
There is under NAFTA a joint public advisory committee that includes representatives of industry, of public interest groups, of scientists and other learned people from all three countries selected to advise the secretariat and to advise the ministers. We have no such body here. There is no mechanism for the people of Panama or Canada to provide input to the governments on issues that may arise related to this trade agreement.
Where is the grassroots government promised by the Conservative Party of Canada? The Conservatives promised they would be a new kind of government. They said it would not be top down, that it would be grassroots up, that the people of Canada would drive policy. Where is the voice for the Canadian people on this agreement or either of the two side agreements? It does not exist.
As well, under the North American Free Trade Agreement all three countries created national advisory committees to advise the environment ministers of the respective three nations on the issues they should be bringing before the common body. I do not know what has happened to the national advisory committee under the Conservative government. Perhaps it does not exist anymore even under that agreement, but there is no such mechanism under the Panama agreement.
There is no requirement to hold public meetings. There is the opportunity to raise a concern but it is with some not yet identified body of the bureaucracy of the two countries. Where is the level of comfort? With whom will these concerns be raised: the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Department of the Environment, or the Department of National Defence? With whom will this be raised? There is absolutely no certainty that whatever body is established will have the full competency to deal with the kind of issue that is raised, whether it is to deal with pesticides, climate issues, access to safe drinking water, or the trade in a particular commodity that may or may not be contaminated. There is no certainty of who within the two respective regimes will be responsible for giving serious attention to those concerns.
Of greatest concern to me is the fact that in this agreement with Panama, the side agreement on the environment misses one of the most important provisions of the North American agreement on environmental co-operation and that is the right of any citizen to file a complaint that the law is not being effectively enforced. This provision was put in specifically because of the concerns that with free trade, protection of the environment may be put in second place. It gave the right of citizens in any of the three countries of Mexico, Canada or the United States to file a complaint of failure to enforce against any of the three parties. That is completely missing in this agreement.
Where is the commitment to pay equal attention to environmental protection as there is to opening the doors to trade? It is absolutely missing, as is the whole right to public scrutiny of whether or not these free trade agreements are having implications for the protection of the environment and the protection of biodiversity. This topic is being discussed in Japan as we speak. Canada is being maligned. Canada has been given the first Dodo award because we have failed.
I would recommend that the government seriously consider withdrawing this trade agreement, go back to the table, meet with people who have participated for over a decade in the North American agreement and learn from what they have learned.
