Foreign Affairs committee  We help run a clinic in Shenzhen, China, to help young workers who are injured on the job with compensation and to teach them health and safety.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, they are.

Foreign Affairs committee  In most of the developing world they are, and that's our competitive disadvantage. We keep getting told at the bargaining table that we need to lower our standards to those countries, because if we don't, they will do as Caterpillar and other companies did and shut down and move.

Foreign Affairs committee  But they are.

Foreign Affairs committee  We don't have anything right now that we could give you. We could provide you with data. If the committee wants it, we can provide you with that data and—

Foreign Affairs committee  MiningWatch and others have documented some of this in detail, as the history of Canadian mining companies in the third world has, regrettably, a long and tragic litany of trampling on the human rights of indigenous peoples and environmental devastation. Most recently, five peopl

Foreign Affairs committee  We think it has to be collaborative with other participants, other NGOs that do the work on the ground, as we said, with the workers and with the citizens, to give them the empowerment to understand their rights and obligations at work and in the community. We don't think the cor

Foreign Affairs committee  I'll have to give it to my expert.

Foreign Affairs committee  No, it's not. We don't disagree with that, to an extent. But what is the analysis, and what are the checks and balances around that? It's not the only aspect; it's part of it, but you still need regulatory oversight and citizen oversight and participation in that. That's where we

Foreign Affairs committee  Canada is a world leader in saying we need to promote more export and trade. Yet cutting back on overseas development agencies is like shooting ourselves in the foot, undermining the very foundations for economic growth to take place in reducing the capacity in the long term for

Foreign Affairs committee  We are nervous about the direction. In fact, we think that things are going in the wrong direction. We continue to make promises in the international community, the G-8, the United Nations, that we're going to meet our 0.7% obligation, but we think we need to honour those promise

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. By way of opening comment, let me say that the Canadian Labour Congress has a long history of working with trade unions and non-governmental organizations throughout the world. We've managed projects in over 30 countries, many of which were funded by CIDA, t

Finance committee  It's not the investment risk, it's the benefit at the end that doesn't attract us to defined contribution plans. There's no certainty in a DC plan, and we prefer the certainty that DB plans deliver. We agree that the consolidation of plans is attractive to us because it does dri

Finance committee  We have argued, and we still argue, that the whole issue has to be discussed.The age of entry into the workforce is changing. The nature of work is changing. When we bargained for our first pension in the plant I worked in, you probably couldn't work there past age 58, because th

Finance committee  How did we get here right now in this crisis? It was abuse and improper use of the capital markets in the crisis with which we've been hit. The system failed, and you're finding yourselves in deficit problems right now because the governments of the world are bailing out that sys