Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak during our opposition day to the motion moved by the member for Vancouver Kingsway. I would like to thank him for the excellent work he does and for giving us the opportunity to debate this important topic. As we have all come to realize, the Conservative government has done everything it can to keep us from talking about this.
Canada has always been a trading nation, and the NDP believes that trade, when done correctly, is beneficial for the entire country. However, when trade is governed by ill-conceived policies and even more ill-conceived treaties, the entire country suffers the consequences.
The NDP is in favour of free trade. We have said it time and time again. However, these agreements need to contain minimum environmental and labour standards, and these agreements need to be in the interest of all Canadians. That is important.
Yet, as usual, the Conservative approach is to sign an agreement no matter what the cost, simply to be able to boast about it. They are just signing agreements for the sake of signing them. That approach is unacceptable to those of us on this side of the House.
We are seeing the same approach from the government with respect to the Canada-China FIPA that we are speaking to today, the bilateral agreement intended to protect and promote foreign investment. As was the case with the majority of free trade agreements signed by the government, the government has kept Canadians in the dark throughout and has not consulted with anyone.
I know that my colleagues in the official opposition, led by the very able member for Vancouver Kingsway, will point out many issues that we have with this agreement. Therefore, I would like to use my time to speak to an aspect of our trade policy, the effect of trade agreements and FIPAs on aboriginal rights, interests and land titles.
To understand this properly, we need to take a step back to the very beginning of this nation. The first peoples of North America were trading nations, travelling great distances to exchange goods with one another. Our ancestors had lived this way since time immemorial and continued to do so after the first arrival of people from Europe. Trade even helped create a whole new indigenous nation, the Métis. Through all that time, trade was done respectfully and to the benefit of all sides involved.
That takes us to 1763, when King George III of England issued the royal proclamation that recognized aboriginal title to these lands. He recognized that the aboriginal peoples of this continent had rights and had to be negotiated with. At that time, this was such a revolutionary idea that the proclamation was actually one of the “Intolerable Acts” that eventually led to the American Revolution. That in itself tells a story about how Canada and the United States developed. While in British North America it became practice to negotiate various kinds of treaties from that time forward in most parts of what is now Canada, the Americans went to open war with the indigenous nations.
At first glance, it would seem that Canada's approach of signing treaties with the country's aboriginal peoples was the better one. These treaties helped create a framework for equality, peace and stability in order to build the country.
However, this method only works if it is adopted in good faith and if everyone keeps their word. A number of treaties have been negotiated to date—but honouring and implementing them is a whole other issue. I will spare the House the details of this part of our well-known history.
When we look at trade and investment agreements that Canada has reached with other nations, it is clear that many provisions of those agreements have a direct impact on the rights, interests and titles of our aboriginal peoples.
And yet aboriginal peoples are never represented during the negotiations for those agreements, nor are their interests defended. This is also true in the case of the agreement currently before us. Canada negotiated with China, while completely excluding first nations, Métis and Inuit from the whole process.
This FIPA includes investor arbitration rights that would allow Chinese enterprises to sue Canada “...in cases where the host country attempts to impose new or updated regulations that may interfere with the investor's bottom line”.
A provision like this is in direct contradiction to section 35 of the Constitution and rulings made the Supreme Court of Canada, which state that the government has a duty to consult and accommodate aboriginal peoples in this country.
An agreement like this FIPA would trump all of that and would be a direct threat to the ability of aboriginal peoples to protect our rights and our traditional way of life. The government does not have the right to unilaterally sign away those rights, yet this is precisely what they are doing in this case.
In response to this threat, in January the Hupacasath First Nation asked the Federal Court to stop Canada from ratifying this treaty until it and other first nations have been consulted. The Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, the Chiefs of Ontario, and the Serpent River First Nation in Ontario are also supporting this injunction.
What is the Conservative response to all this? Silence. Total silence. A stunning level of silence.
I find it quite sad that again we are seeing another indigenous nation in Canada having to go to court to force the Conservatives to simply respect their rights.
This is far from the exception, as Conservative and Liberal governments going back decades have wasted hundreds of millions of dollars every year fighting aboriginal rights in the courts instead of sitting down, accepting what has been law for 250 years, and working toward a resolution with the indigenous peoples of this land.
This case in particular is even sadder, given that indigenous nations of Canada are trading nations, but unlike the Conservatives and the Liberals, we do not believe in trade and investment at any cost. We would never put our health, our culture or our communities at grave risk just to be able to say “I have a deal.”
We would never allow our families to starve nor would we destroy our homes just to be able to say “We improved our standing with another nation.”
We believe in fair trade, in trade that benefits all involved, and that is something that has not changed today.
The government has a constitutional duty. If we are going to truly rebuild this floundering relationship, the government needs to start bringing the aboriginal nations of Canada to the table as full partners. In our trade and foreign investment policies, given our histories on this topic, it would be the most natural thing to do to start with.
Canada cannot reach its full potential without respecting the rights of first nations. It is high time that the Conservatives stopped ignoring this fact. We can do better and we can expect more from the Government of Canada. That is why we oppose this agreement and why we want something better.
If the Conservatives refuse to get on with the task of negotiating better agreements for Canada with our global partners, I would ask them to simply step away from the file and let us take care of it, for that is exactly what we will do in 2015.
