International Trade committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Garry Neil. I am the executive director of the Council of Canadians, Canada's largest social justice organization with roughly 75,000 supporters from coast to coast to coast. Since 1985 the Council of Ca

International Trade committee  While I did make reference to the investor-state provisions, I'm fully aware that they're not in the free trade agreement. But we see it as a package. We see that what is happening here is a negotiation of rights for corporations, whether those be related to their investments abr

International Trade committee  Let me start and say it's a difference in approach here. We believe that in fact before Canada agrees to free trade agreements with certain countries, we ought to be able to see real change in those countries in very important respects as a prerequisite, as it were, of enjoying

International Trade committee  As I indicated briefly, the big issue with respect to environment in Jordan is the question of water, because the country is under enormous pressure with respect to water. The problem we see is that the ability of the Jordanian government in future to make determinations on how b

International Trade committee  Yes, because those agreements are about maintaining the rights of corporations—for example, to have access to water—and putting that in an international agreement, and then giving an opportunity to another country or to a company to take actions against a Jordanian decision that

International Trade committee  It seems to me that there's no evidence to support your contention that trade creates jobs and that trade assists countries to improve their human rights records. There is simply no evidence. We see the hollowing out of Canada's industrial infrastructure right now, and it's beca

International Trade committee  I think that is fair to say. I don't know if this committee is aware—you probably had some research on this—that the Jordanian government began to privatize heavily in about 1996. One of the companies that took advantage of that is Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan, which now

International Trade committee  Absolutely, the human rights impact assessment ought to be done before the agreement is concluded. That's our position. We support a different model of how you get to true free trade agreements. For example, the model we almost can get to in the culture sector is the way you do

International Trade committee  In fact the agreement on the environment does have a strong provision in it, which is that the parties have set out mutual obligations, including the establishment of high levels of domestic environmental protection through their environmental laws and policies. The problem, of c

International Trade committee  No.

International Trade committee  What I would argue is that there are internationally recognized norms, for example, in the field of labour and labour law, and Jordan has agreed to those and they ought to meet that standard, and if they meet that standard then they pass that bar. In our view, they do not meet t

International Trade committee  What it says where?

International Trade committee  No.

International Trade committee  I believe that if a human rights impact assessment were done prior to entering into the agreement, it would reveal a number of things. If you improved the environmental side agreement and the labour side agreement, it would certainly make it better. Then we would look at the outc

International Trade committee  Oh, I absolutely agree. I think the situation in Jordan with respect to water is very serious. It's becoming more serious. Water is becoming more scarce, and the Jordanian government absolutely needs both to take action and to have scope to take action to protect the water as far