International Trade committee  Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you about the TPP. I'm Kevin Rebeck, president of the Manitoba Federation of Labour, and we represent over 100,000 unionized workers throughout different sectors here in Manitoba. We have a number of concern

International Trade committee  Yes, absolutely. I think that's our responsibility in these trade agreements, to be raising the bar. Our challenge and concern is that's not what this protects. It doesn't protect keeping those standards. In fact, it puts them at risk. Worse, if we negotiate on some of those and

International Trade committee  Keep the labour perspective involved and evolving, and offer some protections for worker rights, worker standards, and health and safety standards, so that those aren't sacrificed to profit. Then, when we deal with a dispute, the profitability of a company isn't the sole determin

International Trade committee  Yes, absolutely, the temporary foreign worker program is something we can fix. It has its flaws and problems. We absolutely are in favour of immigration. We need more people coming to Canada to work with us and get jobs, but we need them to come as permanent citizens. We lose tha

International Trade committee  That's a great question. It's a big one and tough to answer, because it's open to any company to start accessing this program and bring foreign workers in without having to meet the test balances, or even do workforce development assessments on whether there are people here who c

International Trade committee  There's policy that we debate. This is an area that we haven't had a lot of information on, so we do the best job we can to consult with our leadership. It's a representative democracy of course that we speak for, but these are huge concerns. The fact that we're asking the ques

International Trade committee  There are two answers to that. One is that largely our labour shortages are real shortages, and we need a better immigration stream to have families come and set roots in Canada and contribute to our society. We should do everything we can to make that as much of a reality for pe

International Trade committee  That's an excellent question. I should hope so, but I think sometimes health and safety labour standards are seen as impediments to trade or not being able to be competitive with other regions. Then it starts becoming a discussion at the federal table, “Well, does that get covere

International Trade committee  I think the potential is there. We have, particularly in Manitoba, many indigenous people who need employment. The TPP allows them to go without checking to see whether there is a labour market, whether there is unemployment, whether there are people here in Canada who could do t

International Trade committee  No, I'm not too knowledgeable in that area. We don't represent workers in the architectural section.

International Trade committee  There's lots that needs to be done there, and I think all our organizations share that interest. The labour movement certainly is wrestling with this question of how we do it. It's a great question. It doesn't fit, necessarily, with a TPP deal that's written and rather set in sto

International Trade committee  I think the labour movement continues to work within the boundaries that are set before us. It will be another barrier that we need to figure out how to manoeuver around and how to work within. We will continue to work in partnership with indigenous people. We will continue to wo

International Trade committee  Sir, I opened it up by saying that we need to make sure we protect jobs in the auto industry. I didn't say that any job.... I didn't lay anything on Harper's government on losing jobs. I said that we're going to lose another 20,000—

International Trade committee  Jobs can be easily moved out to other countries that pay low wages and have less health and safety regulations—

International Trade committee  You're going to make it even easier. The TPP will make that trade in vehicles even higher, likely—