Pat Martin

[Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement Act, June 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is correct and these very things have been pointed out to us by labour leaders in the United States, who pointed out that in regard to the United States-Peru free trade agreement, which was about a year ago, we are following the U.S. almost step for step in Colombia and Peru. It seemed that when the Bush administration signed agreements with Peru and Colombia, all of a sudden it became necessary for the Conservative government here to follow suit with the same kind of substandard agreements.

A very prominent labour leader, the head of the teamsters union in the United States, pointed out that it was outrageous that Congress and the Bush administration had approved yet another job-killing trade agreement at a time when American families were seeing their jobs shipped overseas, their food and toys tainted, their wages on the decline, and their houses foreclosed upon. Workers here and in Peru deserve better.

If we take out the word America and insert the word Canada, the same applies to this country too. We could not possibly pick a worse time to impose a free trade agreement that will have downward pressure on Canadian standards because of harmonization. The globalization of trade has resulted in us lowering our standards, not developing nations raising theirs.

[Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement Act, June 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his thoughtful remarks. I should tell him that one of the reasons the NDP enjoys its third majority government in Manitoba is that we have taken the hair shirt off the NDP. We have become a lot more fun, and the member would be happy to know that.

We are all in favour of good corporate citizenship. I know he is not speaking on behalf of corporate Canada, but we do take the member at his word, that most Canadians would expect Canadian businesses to conduct themselves in a way that his honourable when they operate outside of the domestic jurisdiction.

That has not always been the case. There is nothing particularly binding on them. We find the environmental standards, the labour standards and the health and safety standards in other countries sorely lacking. It is difficult for small countries or developing nations to impose stringent health and safety, environmental and labour standards because they are so desperate to attract investment.

This is the contradiction we have heard. This is the quandary in which they find themselves. I am not trying to imply the government of Peru is corrupt, although I did cite some sources that implied the current leadership is under a lot of stress because of bribery and corruption charges, but even in those countries where there is well-meaning leadership, they would look to the harmonization of labour standards and environmental standards as a huge benefit and a huge gain. However, there is nothing in these agreements that would make that so, other than the implied goodwill of the corporations.

As I said in my remarks, capital has no conscience. We have to impose a conscience on them.

[Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement Act, June 1st, 2009]

The four horsepower of the apocalypse. That is very good.

The fact is that we now have Marxism realized. We own the means of production and we did not have to fire a single shot. It is really quite phenomenal what went on today.

We have always cautioned people that unfettered capitalism has no conscience. I do not blame it for that, just like a shark cannot be blamed for having no conscience. It simply swims through the water and gobbles and gobbles because that is what it does.

It is up to us because we have the moral conscience. It is up to people to apply morality to capitalism and that is what we seek to do when these free trade agreements come through. Some of us need to rise up in the spirit of true democracy, contrary to what my colleague implied, that those of us who raise legitimate concerns are somehow less than democratic. We do not respect the unfettered right of the Conservative minority government to enter into free trade agreements without scrutiny, oversight and due diligence by duly elected members of Parliament in this chamber. That would be an affront to democracy, if there were any associated with this.

My Bloc colleague from Rivière-du-Nord pointed out earlier that one of our serious legitimate concerns about this free trade agreement and others is the investor rights that it gives to corporations. The chapter 11 rights were unheard of until they were introduced in the NAFTA agreement. These rights give a corporation nation-state status so it can sue a duly elected government for inconveniencing its ability to commercialize a certain product.

That was horrifying to us. We blew the whistle and sounded the alarm in 1988. We warned people that this was folly and that it would lead to untold complications. I will give one example from a few years ago and example of one that is going on currently involving MMT.

The people of Canada decided that the gasoline additive MMT was too poisonous to be exposed to and that we did not want it put into gasoline in this country. We were sued because this decision interfered with the ability of Ethyl Corporation to sell its product in Canada. It sued Canada for lost opportunity and it won. We paid the corporation for the inconvenience. We had to shell out $13.5 million to Ethyl Corporation because we as a nation decided we did not want MMT in our air supply and in our children's organs.

I will give the House a more recent example. The province of Quebec, quite rightly, wanted to ban the cosmetic nonessential use of pesticides in homes, gardens, schoolyards, on golf courses, et cetera. This was the right thing to do given that we now know that exposure to chemical pesticides can lead to a number of cancers, birth defects and problems in reproductive health. However, believe it or not, Dow Chemical, the manufacturer of many of these chemical pesticides, is now suing the Government of Quebec for having the temerity to do what it thought was right for its citizens.

That is fundamentally wrong on so many levels that I can hardly express them, but this is the very same concept we are now introducing in this free trade agreement with the people of Peru.

The good people of Peru will find themselves stripped of some of their sovereignty to chart their own destiny in a matter so vital and so fundamental as public health. The same investor right clauses can be applied should their democratically elected government decide to curtail the ability of one of the Canadian mining companies operating there or impose stringent standards on the operation of those companies. Those companies can sue because this interfered with their ability to commercialize that product.

That is just one of the concerns that we have that warrants further debate. I regret we are now at the stage of debate on this bill where we do not have the opportunity for further amendment. All I can do is express our dissatisfaction with this and our legitimate concerns.

The NDP, advocating on behalf of workers around the world, has tried to introduce what we call our corporate social responsibility bill, a bill put forward by my former colleague and the former leader of our party, Ed Broadbent. It was taken over by the next leader of our party, the former member for Halifax, Alexa McDonough.

For a decade or more, we have been trying to introduce something that would recognize the problems in the free trade agreement. If we are going to give a charter of rights to businesses and to corporations, then we need to offset those rights with what we call the extension of corporate social responsibility of Canadian companies when acting abroad.

The rules that apply to them when they are within the domestic jurisdiction where they come from should apply to them when they act and operate outside this jurisdiction. That way we would truly be elevating the labour and environmental standards of those other companies with which we trade because we would export not only the business operation, but we would export their modus operandi of how they conduct themselves as well.

These companies should not be able to form and incorporate in this country and then when they conduct themselves abroad, go to the lowest common denominator or standards, health and safety standards, labour standards and environmental standards, that are often far lower than what we would require a company to adhere to in this country.

We noticed when the Canada-Peru free trade agreement was first signed, the president of Peru, Alan Garcia, was optimistic that Canada, having a greater production outcome, would share some of that outcome. He said that Canada had a production output 12 times greater than Peru's and bought $600 billion worth of goods from other countries. He was therefore optimistic that Canada, by virtue of this trade agreement, would add more Peruvian wood, mining products and farming and manufactured products to the list.

At the same time, critics of the current president and the regime spoke out against the free trade agreement and against the president's administration, pointing out that the president's approval ratings had sunk as popular support for his policies continued to vanish. An international commentator said:

The Peruvian government is beginning to unravel as corruption charges and scandals threaten to completely discredit the already unpopular leadership of President Alan García. The minister of Mines and Energy as well as other top energy and state oil officials have been fired in response to allegations of favoring a foreign energy company...in exchange for bribes.

The regime that we are entering into an agreement with is falling apart. I speak now on behalf of the working people in Peru. It could well be that the Peruvian government does not have the mandate to enter into this agreement from the people of Peru any more than this minority Conservative government has the absolute mandate of the people of Canada to enter into this agreement.

We should remind ourselves that it was not long ago that bribery was such a common business practice in international trade, et cetera. Until the mid-1990s, the Government of Canada allowed companies to write off bribes as a tax deduction. This only changed in the mid to late 1990s after Canadians were horrified. The companies pushed back and said that it was the way business was done when they operated abroad. They have to grease the wheels of commerce with bribes and therefore it is a legitimate business expense. Until recently, the Government of Canada accepted this.

Revenue Canada has been under a lot of scrutiny lately with the Oliphant inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber Airbus affair. Many of us were horrified at some of the things Revenue Canada deemed to be acceptable. When we pay our taxes diligently, not exactly eagerly, and then the former prime minister of Canada, after not paying taxes for nine years on money he received in a brown paper bag in a hotel room, finally decides to come clean with Revenue Canada and it arbitrarily decides that he only has to pay taxes on 50% of what he failed to declare all those years earlier, the credibility of Revenue Canada comes into question.

I was even more horrified to learn today that the practice was only stopped by Revenue Canada last November. When this whole situation began to surface, Revenue Canada quickly stopped the practice and covered up its tracks.

That does not explain what happened to the former privacy commissioner, George Radwanski, who owned $650,000 in back taxes and 24 hours before he started a job, which paid $250,000 a year, Revenue Canada forgave him all the back taxes on the basis that it was not possible to retrieve.

Those are the kinds of decisions that Revenue Canada makes from time to time. It makes Canadians really question if there is not two tax systems in our country, one for the rich and the connected, someone who has connections with the PMO, and the rest of us.

This free trade agreement is fraught with concerns. We felt obliged to oppose the agreement when it was first introduced. My colleague, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster, at every stage of debate and through the committee stage, made efforts to amend the free trade agreement so it would be in a form of which we could be proud.

Those of us who want fair trade do not object to free trade, as long as it meets those basic tests. We do not want the huge imbalance that exists, an imbalance that would act as a charter of rights for corporations to override the sovereignty of a nation state and completely give them carte blanche to conduct themselves in any way they saw fit without a considered attempt to elevate the standards of conditions in the places where they settle.

My colleague from Rivière-du-Nord said that one of the faults of the bill was that it set guidelines for voluntary compliance, by suggesting these companies should conduct themselves in a certain way will make it so. I am sorry, but we do not buy that. It is just not credible. We should judge people by what they do, not by what they say.

We find ourselves in the middle of an economic downturn. Some people are saying that it is the end of an era of a certain ideology and certain economic policies. Some people are calling for a new Bretton Woods. Some people are calling for a new internationalism, coming out of the ashes of what began as the globalization movement.

The champions of the globalization of capital saw it as a panacea, that all we had to do was increase and improve lines of trade with countries and they would automatically come and be harmonized at some western standards.

That has not been the case at all. These things will not happen by accident. These things will not happen because there has been no collective agreement, which is one of the goals, one of the objectives. When businesses come to governments looking for a licence to operate in a certain way, it is up to us then to inject and insert those secondary objectives into the activities that they have under way. They have one goal and one goal only, and it is the profit motive. There is nothing wrong with that. That is what businesses do. They seek to maximize profits for their shareholders.

We are here with a different mandate, a different set of rules. We are here with different goals. If our goals are to elevate the standards of wages, living conditions and social conditions of fellow workers around the world and if we use these opportunities to achieve those secondary goals and objectives, we can do more than just enable free trade. We can mandate fair trade and then we will realize those noble objectives of elevating the standards of the people with whom we are trading.

What we want for ourselves, we wish for all people. That is one of the founding principles of the party to which I belong. As a socialist and a trade unionist, it is my obligation, every chance we get, to try to elevate those standards of my colleagues around the world, my brothers and sisters in the international labour movement. It is through trade agreements we can achieve those things, but not if we let them slide by in a substandard way like this.

[Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement Act, June 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to follow my colleague for Rivière-du-Nord and her learned presentation. We share many of the concerns raised by my colleague. This is the second time today I have spoken to an issue brought forward by my colleague for Rivière-du-Nord. She is having a very illustrious day in the House of Commons today.

The position of the NDP has always been that we are not opposed to free trade providing that it is fair trade. We sounded the alarm in the 1980s when the first free trade agreement was introduced. We cautioned people that the globalization of capital was not some force of nature, that it was not like gravity or the conservation of mass. This is a choice made by nation-states on behalf of corporations. The free trade agreement and the NAFTA became like a charter of rights and freedoms for corporations to move freely and override the sovereignty of nation-states.

What we cautioned then, we continue to caution today, which is that there is an erosion of sovereignty associated with the free trade agreements that we have entered into so frequently and freely since the early 1980s when the first FTA was put into effect.

Mr. Speaker, you know that I am a socialist and a trade unionist and you should also know that I am a fiercely proud Canadian nationalist. As such, on all of those fronts, we are dedicated to a multilateral point of view. We are dedicated to elevating the standards of wages and working conditions for people all over the world, not just for Canadian workers but for the international movement of workers' rights. The international solidarity of workers' rights is alive and well. In fact, it is the free trade agreements entered into so freely by nation-states around the world that have revitalized the importance of workers coming together through their free trade unions, where such free trade unions are allowed, and through the international plenary umbrella of international organizations of those unions.

It seems that we alone are standing to try and caution people about the predictable consequences of some of the causes associated with what are called free trade agreements, such as the one we are contemplating today.

The international trade critic for the NDP, my colleague for Burnaby—New Westminster, has been a tireless champion of these issues. Again, this is not to be negative and try to criticize the concept of freer trade, tearing down barriers to trade or some of the non-tariff barriers to trade. Granted, we want the free movement of capital and of goods and services. We even want the free movement of people around the world. However, we also suggest that when there is the globalization of capital there must also be the globalization of labour rights, human rights and environmental standards. We want to harmonize at the highest common denominator, not the lowest, and that has been the actual empirical evidence in many of the free trade agreements that we have now had the luxury of time to study.

The old yarn put forward by the neo-Conservative movement that a rising tide lifts all boats, is not in fact true. If our boat has a hole in it, it does not rise with the tide. It simply stays down. We watched this movement propel itself around the world and, frankly, capitalism does not had a very good name lately.

When I announce that I am a socialist, I guess it is no surprise because we are all socialists now. We just bought General Motors. I always thought that one of the signs of the apocalypse would be when General Motors went bankrupt. Is that not when the four horsemen appear on the horizon and there is darkness at the break of noon when GM goes bankrupt?

[Petitions, June 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to stand today to present a petition signed by literally thousands of Canadians. They draw the attention of the House to the fact that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known and yet Canada remains one of the largest producers and exporters of asbestos. They point out that Canada spends millions of dollars subsidizing the asbestos industry and even blocking international efforts to curb its use. These thousands of Canadians call upon Parliament to ban asbestos in all of its forms and introduce a just transition program for the workers who may be displaced, to end all government subsidies of asbestos in Canada and abroad, and to stop blocking international health and safety conventions designed to protect workers from asbestos, such as the Rotterdam convention.

[Canadian Products Promotion Act, June 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, we should point out to the hecklers on the other side that I have the floor and it is my turn to talk. This drives me nuts.

We started a postcard campaign and 5,000 postcards came into the Government of Canada to explain the folly of this decision. This is only one concrete example. It happened just last year and it is a top-of-mind issue, but this happens all the time. My colleague for Rivière-du-Nord put forward a bill that respects international trade agreements. It simply says that preference should be given to made-in-Canada products providing it does not offend existing or future trade agreements.

Where is the problem with that? What is the matter with being patriotic enough to say that we will, to the greatest extent, show preference to Canadian made products? We should declare that with pride instead of being on our hands and knees to some phantom god of the free market that those people are foisting on us. This is folly. The rest of the world does not play by these rules. The United States has had a made-in-America procurement policy since 1927 and it is not in any contravention of NAFTA with that. In fact, it ignores trade agreement rules whenever it is convenient. We respect trade agreements but we will not to be suckers.

Frankly, this bill makes me proud. I thank my colleague for Rivière-du-Nord again for raising this on behalf of all of us.

One of these postcards has a picture of three monkeys. One is supposed to illustrate the Minister of Public Works and Government Services, the other is supposed to illustrate the Prime Minister and the third one is supposed to illustrate the Minister of National Defence. All three ignored reason, logic and even economics by giving these buses to Germany. This was a $60,000 difference on a $34 million contract. The military officers who go over to inspect the manufacture of those buses during their construction would have spent more than $60,000 going back and forth. It is completely irresponsible. Whoever was in charge of that file should be dragged into the streets or, at the very least, fired because they are not representing the best interests of Canadians.

We were sent here for a specific purpose by the people we represent and that is to look after their best interests. No one can tell me that it is in anybody's best interest to give our job away by some blind ideology that has not borne results or fruit. The people at Motor Coach Industries are the ones bearing the brunt. The people at Prévost in Quebec, who also could have quite capably built those buses to carry our troops, are the losers.

Once again, it falls to us, the two smallest parties in Parliament, to stand up for the best interests of Canadians. Those guys are playing games that no one can understand and they certainly do not advance the interests of the manufacturing sector in this country.

My colleague for Rivière-du-Nord and my colleague for London—Fanshawe have carefully crafted bills that will succeed without offending existing trade agreements. My colleague for Rivière-du-Nord went even further to say that these jobs, to the greatest extent possible, should be spread among the regions of Canada so that not too many of them are concentrated in any one part of Canada. These are sane considerations that any procurement policy should be crafted around.

By what pretzel reason and logic is it that Canadian taxpayers are better off creating jobs in Germany with their tax dollars? I know we have agreements with our NATO allies when it comes to military procurement but this bus contract did not apply to that. These are troop carriers. We had no obligation to buy those buses. It had the lowest bid by a razor thin margin and somehow we got screwed and it got the jobs, which is fundamentally wrong.

I will be voting in favour of this bill when the first opportunity arises. I will be voting in favour of Bill C-392 when it comes to the floor. Hopefully, our relentless pressure on the Government of Canada's procurement policies will bring some reason, logic, patriotism and nationalism to our procurement policies and not be strangled by some misguided ideology and some Boy Scout attitude that we play by a set of rules that the rest of the world ignores. That is a sucker's game.

On behalf of the people in my riding of Winnipeg Centre, I will spend what little time I get to spend in the House of Commons protecting their jobs, standing up for their jobs and looking after their best interests. Canadians do not need representatives to come to Ottawa to sell them out. They need representatives to come to Ottawa to look after their jobs, not trade them away to a low bidder. For the price of a set of tires, we sold out the workers at these two bus manufacturing plants.

Members should read some of the comments on the postcards that I have brought with me today. Perhaps the one that sums it up the most is in large font that says, “We got screwed”. That is a quote from the member for Winnipeg Centre. That is actually my own opinion.

[Canadian Products Promotion Act, June 1st, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by thanking my colleague from Rivière-du-Nord for bringing this important issue before the House to Commons today. I want to thank her for saying what we are all thinking.

We have all been thinking in recent months and years that Canada's procurement policies go beyond stupidity. Sometimes they border on economic treason. I would like to use one case study to illustrate my point.

I should point out as well that the NDP feels so strongly about Canada's faulty procurement policies that our member for London—Fanshawe has introduced a similar bill to be debated in the House, Bill C-392. We have seen many parallels. These two bills complement each other, because the issue is as poignant for those in London—Fanshawe and the rest of Canada as it is for my colleagues in the province of Quebec. I am pleased to see that my colleague from Rivière-du-Nord is generous in her spirit by saying that her Canada includes Quebec, or her Quebec includes Canada. Let me put it that way.

The one illustration I would like to point out is something that happened recently in my home province of Manitoba. We believe that good government means putting the interests of Canadians first. I use that quote from the president of the Manitoba Federation of Labour.

The Government of Canada needed new troop buses for the Canadian military, so it put out a tender. I should point out that Manitoba builds the best buses in the world. The second best buses in the world are built in the province of Quebec. There are two bus companies in Canada and both build excellent buses, first class buses. In fact the Canadian military uses nothing but buses built in Quebec and Winnipeg for the rest of their troop carriers.

The government put out a tender for 32 new buses. Only two Canadian companies bid on it, from Quebec and Manitoba. A third company, a German company, Daimler-Chrysler, was the low bidder. Get this. It was a $32 million contract. Mercedes-Benz won it by $60,000 on a $32 million contract. This is 1,000 Canadian jobs. We got screwed. For less than the price of a set of tires, the Government of Canada chose to give that contract to Germany, so our tax dollars are creating jobs in Germany and unemployed Canadians in Quebec and Manitoba could have and should have been building those buses.

Let me expand on this folly. Let me expand on how stupid that is. I do not use that term lightly, but that decision was fundamentally stupid, because now we have said to the rest of the world that if they want a good troop carrier, they should buy German. That is what our army did. Now all of our NATO allies in Afghanistan in the field are being ferried around in 32 buses made by Mercedes-Benz.

We also had to build in a whole new parts regime. We had to train our mechanics so they could fix the Mercedes-Benz buses as well as the good Canadian buses that they used to drive.

[Canadian Jewish Congress, May 27th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, on May 31st, the Canadian Jewish Congress will celebrate its 90th anniversary at its national assembly in Toronto.

Since its inception in 1919, the Canadian Jewish Congress has represented the Jewish community on issues, including anti-Semitism, racism, Holocaust remembrance, and support for Jewish communities that are in need in this country and around the world.

On behalf of the New Democratic Party, I am proud to recognize and pay tribute to the Canadian Jewish Congress and to praise its role as a human rights organization concerned with the social justice and rights of all Canadians and the promotion of the values of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms at home and abroad.

The NDP wishes the Canadian Jewish Congress a happy 90th anniversary and a productive and successful 29th national assembly. To the CJC, yasher koach, may you go from strength to strength.

[Petitions, May 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by many residents in my riding of Winnipeg Centre. They call upon the House to recognize that each year Canadian households receive 1,300 pieces of unsolicited mail. These signators comment that it is not only using up far too many trees but much of that paper is not recycled. We could switch to hemp as a source that is far less environmentally damaging.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to request the Minister of the Environment to consider bringing forward legislation requiring all unsolicited ad mail and flyers to be produced using easily recyclable paper, to phase in by year 2012 the use of hemp paper to be used in the production of flyers, and that all distributors of flyers obey all no flyer signs in Canada.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, May 25th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I also want to thank my colleague for Burnaby—New Westminster for elevating the standard of debate over this particular free trade deal.

The one thing he points out that we should all be cognizant of is the whole myth associated with the globalization of capital, which was that globalization would somehow elevate the standards of labour and environmental conditions in the countries with which we trade, even though they are unwilling to ever put labour or environmental standards in those trade agreements.

In fact, the inverse has been true. The only way we will get countries like Colombia to elevate their standards of labour and human rights is by not allowing them to play in that sandbox of globalized capital trade, et cetera, unless they do come up to some minimum standards of decency.

I have a question for my colleague. I remember when Dick Martin, the head of ORIT, the labour organization associated with the Organization of American States, came back to Canada and sounded the alarm that they were killing trade unionists in the streets. The head of the teachers' union, the head of the nurses' union and the head of the miners' union were summarily executed in the driveways in front of their homes. Does my colleague remember the warning that Dick Martin sounded in this place a number of years ago?