Bill C-30 (Historical)

Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act

An Act to implement the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union and its Member States and to provide for certain other measures

This enactment implements the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union and its Member States, done at Brussels on October 30, 2016.
The general provisions of the enactment set out rules of interpretation and specify that no recourse may be taken on the basis of sections 9 to 14 or any order made under those sections, or on the basis of the provisions of the Agreement, without the consent of the Attorney General of Canada.
Part 1 approves the Agreement and provides for the payment by Canada of its share of the expenses associated with the operation of the institutional and administrative aspects of the Agreement and for the power of the Governor in Council to make orders in accordance with the Agreement.
Part 2 amends certain Acts to bring them into conformity with Canada’s obligations under the Agreement and to make other modifications. In addition to making the customary amendments that are made to certain Acts when implementing such agreements, Part 2 amends
(a) the Export and Import Permits Act to, among other things,
(i) authorize the Minister designated for the purposes of that Act to issue export permits for goods added to the Export Control List and subject to origin quotas in a country or territory to which the Agreement applies,
(ii) authorize that Minister, with respect to goods subject to origin quotas in another country that are added to the Export Control List for certain purposes, to determine the quantities of goods subject to such quotas and to issue export allocations for such goods, and
(iii) require that Minister to issue an export permit to any person who has been issued such an export allocation;
(b) the Patent Act to, among other things,
(i) create a framework for the issuance and administration of certificates of supplementary protection, for which patentees with patents relating to pharmaceutical products will be eligible, and
(ii) provide further regulation-making authority in subsection 55.‍2(4) to permit the replacement of the current summary proceedings in patent litigation arising under regulations made under that subsection with full actions that will result in final determinations of patent infringement and validity;
(c) the Trade-marks Act to, among other things,
(i) protect EU geographical indications found in Annex 20-A of the Agreement,
(ii) provide a mechanism to protect other geographical indications with respect to agricultural products and foods,
(iii) provide for new grounds of opposition, a process for cancellation, exceptions for prior use for certain indications, for acquired rights and for certain terms considered to be generic, and
(iv) transfer the protection of the Korean geographical indications listed in the Canada–Korea Economic Growth and Prosperity Act into the Trade-marks Act;
(d) the Investment Canada Act to raise, for investors that are non-state-owned enterprises from countries that are parties to the Agreement or to other trade agreements, the threshold as of which investments are reviewable under Part IV of the Act; and
(e) the Coasting Trade Act to
(i) provide that the requirement in that Act to obtain a licence is not applicable for certain activities carried out by certain non-duty paid or foreign ships that are owned by a Canadian entity, EU entity or third party entity under Canadian or European control, and
(ii) provide, with respect to certain applications for a licence for dredging made on behalf of certain of those ships, for exemptions from requirements that are applicable to the issuance of a licence.
Part 3 contains consequential amendments and Part 4 contains coordinating amendments and the coming-into-force provision.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to speak alongside our leader and my colleagues in opposition to Bill C-30. I would also like to thank my colleague, the member of Parliament for Essex, and our entire team for pushing the debate forward.

On something as important as the trade agreement with the European Union, it deserves proper debate in the House of Commons. Truly, it is only the NDP that is pushing for that debate, pushing to ensure the government is being held to account on a proposed trade deal that we find extremely problematic for Canadians.

I also rise in the House today not just as the member of Parliament for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski but also as the jobs critic for the NDP. Earlier today, we presented our federal call to action entitled “The Precarious Generation: A Call to Action”. It was based on our months long national tour, a series of national consultations in nine provinces and one territory. We heard from young people, millennials, their parents, their friends, and people from our communities across the country. They all came to share their stories, their lived experiences with respect to what was an emerging crisis in Canada, which is the rise of precarious work.

Today I was honoured to put forward the kinds of recommendations that millennials across our country shared with us, recommendations that are bold, that are hopeful, that are visionary. Those recommendations come from a place of great challenge and increasing difficulty. Millennials are facing the prospect of being less well off than their parents generation in a very real way. That is a phenomenon we have not seen in recent times in our country.

The numbers talk for themselves. The rate of youth unemployment is twice the national average. Thirty-nine per cent of workers under the age of 30 are precariously employed. Most are working in temporary and contract work, despite the fact they are currently looking for, and certainly would much rather have, full-time employment. In provinces like Ontario, 300,000 young people are working unpaid internships and, in many case, those unpaid internships do not lead to paid work.

We heard heart-wrenching stories across the country. I remember hearing from a young worker in P.E.I. who talked about the fact that he had just graduated with a Bachelor of Science in biology, and he could never imagine having a job in his field on the island. Every morning he woke up at 4 a.m. and went to work in a fish plant. Every night he worked at Best Buy.

In Newfoundland, young people talked about the fact that their provincial government had just brought in an austerity budget. They knew they came from a province where people usually had to leave to find work. Despite the fact that they thought times were getting better, once again their generation would have to leave to find work somewhere else.

In Halifax, a young woman came forward. She told us that where she came from the most secure form of employment for young men was to join the military, a real precarious kind of work.

In Winnipeg, we heard about work, particularly in the public domain. Jobs like garbage pickup, which had been done for a very long time by younger, indigenous men, had been outsourced and devolved. These men were able to support their families with the income they made, but now they were unable to make that kind of living. As a brother told us at that meeting, they were treated as disposable as the garbage they pick up.

In Regina, we met a young woman who broke down in the meeting. She talked about how she could not afford her tuition. She could not bear to think what she would do to come out of the burden of student debt that she faced. She knew she had to find work that had pharmacare benefits to ensure she had the medication she needed.

In Calgary, we had a NDP cabinet minister tell us that for many years Calgary had been the promise land for young people from across the country. Today, even if individuals are from Alberta and are young, they can barely make it there.

In Vancouver, a young woman talked about the fact that because she was in a cycle of precarious work and because housing prices were so out of reach, she, like many young people, found it heartbreaking to know she would never be able to afford a home in the community she came from, and “heartbreaking” is the word that she used.

One of the last meetings in our 14 stops was held in Windsor, Ontario. When we talked about precarious work across Ontario and across the country, people told us to go to a place called Windsor. Windsor tells a story of how our generation has been sold out. Year after year, we have seen the impact of trade agreements that certainly have not had our best interests in mind. We have seen governments that have not had our best interests in mind and we have seen where that has gotten us. An older activist talked to us about the way in which manufacturing had been dealt a blow there for quite some time. Jobs that young people would normally do and certainly hope to raise a family with that do not exist the same way they used to. At the end of that meeting, we heard from a young woman who was finishing her law degree, her third degree. She is from Windsor. She moved back home and into her parents' basement. At the end of that meeting, she said that she did not know why anyone in the room was surprised that people of her generation could not imagine owning a home, having kids, and raising a family as that was just how it is now.

Those stories inform me and the work we do in the House, as we stand to oppose CETA, yet another trade agreement set to sell us out. It is clear from the messages we heard that both our generation and people who care for the millennial generation will not tolerate further actions from federal governments that do not have the interests of young people, and all people, in mind going forward.

In recent decades, and certainly since the start of the neoliberal era, we have seen a great many good jobs leave our country. We have witnessed the erosion of our social safety net to the benefit of corporations, millionaires and billionaires.

Today, and I have witnessed this throughout recent months as I was crisscrossing the country to take stock of the working conditions of our generation, it is clear that good jobs are becoming increasingly scarce, and that the millennial generation is living in uncertainty, with no benefits and no job security. How can we have come to this point, when we were promised an unprecedented level of prosperity if we opened our borders and liberalized trade all over the world? Well, it is because, from the start, liberalization was designed for the corporations and the billionaires, not for the middle class and the working class. We opened our borders not for human beings but for money, and massive amounts of it left. The tax havens are overflowing with profits made on the backs of workers here and elsewhere. We have allowed the rich to break our social contract, and to pay for our social services we are turning ever more to wage-earners who are paying today so that their employers can be subsidized to the tune of billions of dollars. We were promised that free trade would create jobs, but where are they? I would like someone to show me the jobs that have since been created, because after 10 months of consultations, no one seems to have found them.

We in the NDP have always been skeptical of these free-trade agreements unilaterally designed for the richest people, and time has obviously proven us right. Employment today is part-time and rarely unionized, and does not allow one to support a family or future projects. That is the sad state of our society.

Is it possible to conclude agreements that promote trade and serve the interests of Canadian workers? Of course it is, and that is why we are fighting today against Bill C-30 and the free-trade project with the European Union.

Finally, I am proud to stand up with my colleagues in the New Democratic party and thousands of Canadians all over this land who are opposed to this government’s measures.

I am proud to stand with my colleagues in the NDP and in solidarity with tens of thousands of Canadians, many of them young, who call on the government to work with us in providing a better future.

Bill C-30 and the proposal before us is not in that vein. We will continue to oppose it.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the comments from my friend from Churchill—Keewatinook Aski.

I am intrigued by her embrace of the exact same phrase Donald Trump uses, describing trade agreements being bad deals for us. Yet there is a lot of evidence that these trade agreements are actually good for Canada.

In the case of the Canada-European Union trade agreement, studies were done in advance and were the basis for the negotiations that indicated a $12 billion annual boost to the Canadian economy from a trade agreement such as the Canada-European Union trade agreement. If that were the case, a $12 billion boost to the economy, that would provide the kind of growth for the young generation of workers, who she says lack hope. It would give hope that they would have jobs and opportunities under this.

Does that promise of a $12 billion boost to the economy not provide the member some encouragement that perhaps this free trade agreement with Canada and European Union is a good deal, and that we will not see all our manufacturing jobs flee to France or to Luxembourg?

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I believe, as my seat colleague will know, that I prefer to subscribe to the philosophy of Bernie Sanders, a progressive politician who has also questioned the free trade dogma.

In all seriousness, as I have relayed here today, my generation, the millennial generation is speaking very clearly with respect to the challenges ahead of us, and very clearly of the ways in which federal government decisions to sell us out, whether it is free trade deals that have gone bad, or foreign ownership that has sold us out, and I can speak to that with respect my hometown that has seen that reality and is living it, or its gusto for privatization and de-regulation.

All of these measures are coming together to make for an increasingly challenging reality for many Canadians, particularly young Canadians. We know that to be the case from the most recent Statistics Canada information. We need to change course. Opposing this trade deal before us, which is bad news for Canadian workers, is only one step in that direction.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her speech.

I heard something that really surprised me. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I thought she said that jobs in the Canadian Armed Forces are precarious. I would like to tell all Canadians who are listening that, on the contrary, working for the Canadian Armed Forces is wonderful. I did it, as did my brother, father, grandfather and great-grandfather. It is a very well-paid job.

I strongly encourage all young millennials who are watching at home to contact their closest recruitment centre and join the Canadian Armed Forces.

If the member is saying that being a member of the Canadian Armed Forces is precarious because it involves dangerous missions, I would like to remind her that statistics show that it is much more dangerous to be a fisherman in Acadie or a city firefighter than to be part of the Canadian Armed Forces.

I want Canadians to know that being part of the Canadian Armed Forces is a wonderful experience.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments.

I do not think my point has come across. What we were told is that young men and women want more choice when it comes to jobs. As we know, many do not want to move away and they want more secure jobs than those provided by the Canadian Armed Forces. Of course, it goes without saying that some do want to join the armed forces.

We must recognize that relying on the armed forces, for example, is not an economic policy that our country can support. There must be choice. Our young people must have choices. What is obvious in today's Canada is that there are fewer and fewer choices when it comes to careers or full-time jobs. We must change that, and that is why we oppose the bill before us.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House at the point of calling the question on Bill C-30, the bill that would bring in the comprehensive economic trade agreement between the European Union and Canada.

I have the honour to represent the only party in this place that has voted against all investor-state agreements. Although mostly the NDP members vote against them, they do not always. I would urge them to reconsider and ensure, for the future, that all investor-state agreements be rejected. They really have nothing to do with trade at all. I want to dive into that aspect of the investor-state agreement and touch briefly on the other aspects Canadians should be concerned about.

First, as many members in this place have already raised, it will increase the cost of pharmaceutical drugs. It is very clear that this will happen. Numerous independent studies have looked at the implications of the so-called CETA on drug prices for Canadians.

Second, it is also clear, and it has been raised by a number of groups, that the language the European Union wants in the text on the question of municipal powers for procurement will also be negatively affected by CETA, including access to procurement for municipalities, academic institutions, school boards, and hospitals. If they should decide that they want to make sure they are buying locally, they could be offending the provisions of CETA.

The third part is the most controversial. It is certainly the most controversial in Europe. It is why Canadian parliamentarians are being sold a bill of goods when we are told that there is any urgency here. I am really surprised that the Liberal government chose not to have significant review and consultation nationally. We had that on the trans Pacific partnership agreement but not on the comprehensive economic trade agreement with the European Union. This is surprising, given that there can be no need for urgency in Canada to ratify when there are 28 countries, and an additional 10 subnational groups throughout the European Union, that have yet to ratify, and given that there is still a pending decision from the European Court of Justice as to whether the comprehensive economic trade agreement is compatible with European law.

The controversy within Europe is overwhelmingly about the one piece of this agreement that I think could be very conveniently and easily removed without affecting the trade aspects at all. This takes some underscoring. What kind of trade agreement has an entire section that has nothing to do with trade? The answer, these days, is almost all of them. We are being sold, hook, line, and sinker, the notion that a trade agreement must include something called investor-state dispute resolution systems, or FIPAs, foreign investment protection agreements.

The first of these anywhere in the world was chapter 11 of NAFTA, and we have a lot of experience with it. I do not believe that even the negotiators of NAFTA believed that they were introducing anything novel when they negotiated chapter 11. As much as Canada had a national debate on NAFTA, chapter 11 never came up, because it was a sleeper provision. It might have stayed asleep, actually, if it had not been for the ingenuity of a Toronto lawyer, Barry Appleton, who decided that chapter 11 of NAFTA could be interpreted in a completely novel way.

The essence of the legitimate protection of investor interests in other countries is that we do not want a government coming along and nationalizing the assets, saying, “You have built a lovely refinery here. We are now going to say it belongs to the government of 'fill in the blank', and you, as an investor, are not going to get your money back on that.”

That is what people thought chapter 11 was initially, because it talked about protection from expropriation, but chapter 11 used some novel language. It talked about governmental measures that were tantamount to expropriation. Here is where the clever lawyering came in.

The first chapter 11 came to us when this Parliament banned the trade and use of a toxic gasoline additive, a manganese-based gasoline additive, that had a human health threat component. It also gummed up the diagnostics of the on-board catalytic converters for automobiles, so car manufacturers were worried that it would void their warranties. Environment Canada was worried that it would cause more air pollution. Neurotoxicologists, like Donna Mergler, at the University of Quebec in Montreal, was worried about it causing an increase in a disease that looks a lot like Parkinson's, but it is manganism.

Well, Parliament banned it, but because of a chapter 11 NAFTA challenge from a private corporation in Richmond, Virginia, Ethyl Corporation, Canada found itself in an arbitration case. This was just the first of many, and we keep losing them, or we keep having them settled out of court, although we cannot call these places courts, unless we use the word “kangaroo” first. These are arbitrations in hotel rooms with private arbitrators. They make money being arbitrators. They are expert lawyers. We can find Canadian lawyers who claim to be environmental lawyers suddenly selling out to be expert lawyers for U.S. corporations at these secret hearings.

The secret hearing process under NAFTA in chapter 11 is egregious. Just as egregious is the Canada-China investment treaty. I would have to say that it is more egregious, because every investor from the People's Republic of China is going to be a state-owned enterprise for the People's Republic China. Therefore, their ability to sue us is virtually unlimited. Of course, the Canada-China investment treaty never had even as much debate as we are getting on CETA. It never went through Parliament at all, because previous Prime Minister Harper approved it in cabinet, confidentially. The treaty binds the Canadian government until the year 2045 to the People's Republic of China, and its state-owned enterprises have more right to challenge decisions made in Canada than any Canadian corporation does.

CETA falls somewhere in between. CETA is being sold to us by many as the gold standard. It was the head of trade negotiations for the European Commission, Cecilia Malmström, who came up with the idea that since this investor-state provision in CETA is so controversial and is attracting so much protest from within the European Union, maybe we can make it look more like a real court and end the fact that it is so clearly profit driven.

Can members imagine arbitrators who are one day working in their big downtown law firms and the next day are essentially judges determining whether the decisions passed through parliaments around the world are going to hold up to their private scrutiny? There is no appeal, no oversight, and no room for intervenors to make the case as to why it was appropriate to ban a gasoline additive or to stop the export of PCB-contaminated waste or to not put a toxic waste disposal facility next to a town's freshwater supply. These are all real-life examples under chapter 11 where the polluters have won and the citizens have lost, and it happens over and over again.

CETA proposes some improvement, no question. It is much better than chapter 11 of NAFTA and better than the Canada-China investment treaty, which we seem to have forgotten ever even happened in this place. When I hear Conservative members getting up and asking whether the new administration under the Liberals is moving too close to China, I kind of want to run over, shake them, and ask if they do not remember that they passed, in secret, or their cabinet did, the Canada-China investment treaty, which is the worst of all of these.

Professor Gus Van Harten, of Osgoode Hall Law School, literally wrote the book on the bad investment deal with China. The book is called Sold Down the Yangtze, if members want to pick it up to find out how our sovereignty was sold out by the Harper administration.

Gus Van Harten has done a careful study of what is being offered in this so-called gold standard, and there definitely are flaws.

The arbitrators will have a more permanent roster. Can members imagine if our judicial system picked judges at random from the private sector, and they did better on cases where the rich guys won? Can members imagine how fair our judiciary would be seen to be? Well, CETA makes an improvement on that. There will be a permanent roster of such judges. They will still be drawn from private-sector work, and although they will be prohibited under the CETA terms from acting as advocates and lawyers before a CETA investment court, they will not be barred from operating as advocates and lawyers under other dispute resolutions, such as chapter 11 of NAFTA.

There is still this culture of an elite group of corporate lawyers who are literally global ambulance chasers. They find companies and tell them that they can sue a government if they want to.

The sad part, as well, is that, for a moment, Cecilia Malmström's proposal called for allowing civil society to come forward as intervenors. That part of her proposed gold standard was dropped.

My plea to the current government, and my plea to all parliamentarians, is to dig in our heels on this. I commend the NDP caucus for digging in its heels on this. We should dig in our heels and say that these are anti-democratic by definition.

There is no chance in the world that a company that emanates from the European Union is going to expropriate Canadian property in Europe, contravening all the laws and international common law practice. We are in a safe zone here, developed country to developed country. Let us get rid of the unfair investor-state provisions and fix CETA so that it is about fair trade.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is an old saying that fools rush in where wise people fear to tread. My question has to do with rushing in to sign this agreement.

We know that CETA will not be fully ratified until all 28 EU member states have passed the agreement in their own parliaments. Clearly, we have time. We should take that time.

I wonder if the member has any thoughts in regard to taking time so we can address the issue of investor-state provisions and the very clear concerns expressed by CELA in regard to environmental degradation. Of course, there are our dairy farmers and those who produce the good food we rely on. Can we accommodate those folks? Can we slow down? Should we?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, absolutely we should slow down. This is going to take a minimum of five to seven years to get through the European parliaments we are dealing with. We also still have the very substantial, some might say risk but I say hope, that the European Court of Justice will say that it is not in accordance with European law to allow Canadian corporations to sue European governments.

The shoe is on the other foot. It is something like the Ajax mine they pushed in Kamloops, B.C. that local residents do not want. It is owned by a state-owned enterprise from Poland. If CETA does not go through, the B.C. government can turn down the Ajax mine without the risk of a corporate suit against B.C. taken at the national level. Goodness knows how much money we could lose.

I have to underscore this: The decisions under investor-state provisions have nothing to do with trade. They do not involve Canada doing anything wrong. They do not involve us violating any scientific principles or acting against evidence. We just have to be shown to have cost them money. That is it. It is completely corrosive to democracy.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, many European countries had reservations about signing this agreement, and many have now signed but with the proviso that they have not yet ratified. The debate within Europe, especially about the investor-state dispute settlement clauses, is far from over.

There are other aspects of the agreement that could be positive, and there are some negative ones too.

I am wondering who the member thinks is putting on all this pressure. If the investor-state dispute settlement clauses are what risks having the deal fall through in Europe, who is pushing for them? If it is the Canadian government, why would the Canadian government be willing to risk the rest of the deal for the sake of keeping these provisions? Certainly not many of the governments in Europe are pushing for these. In fact, that is where they are getting the push-back from their own population on this deal. Who is defending these, and why is it so important to keep them in there if it jeopardizes everything else the Liberals and Conservatives say is good about the deal?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is, as they used to say on the old TV show, the $60,000 question. Adjusted for inflation, I guess it is now the $6-trillion question.

We have issues with some of the trade aspects, and I am glad my friend from London—Fanshawe mentioned the dairy threat. I mentioned pharmaceuticals. There are the procurement provisions, but even they are not primarily about trade.

What we are talking about here is increasing the powers of transnational corporations while decreasing the regulatory powers of governments. In whose interest is that? It is not in any sovereign nation's interest. It is in the interest of transnational corporations. It is the first plank of global corporate rule, and it is being advanced by the corporations.

The current Liberal government should look at who pushed it in the last round of negotiations, realize it was the Harper administration, not the Europeans, take it out, and start a rethink of all these investor-state provisions and renegotiate them so they make sense and defend the sovereign rights of governments to protect public health, safety, and workers' rights within their own countries.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise again to speak to CETA in the House, because there is a lot to talk about and I do not think we have done a good enough job yet of discussing what is in this deal. We have heard a lot of platitudes by those who support the deal and, I would say, not a lot of information. The government has certainly not provided any detailed study of the anticipated economic impact of this deal. Canadians are supposed to just take it on faith that somehow it is going to be good for them, their jobs, and their communities.

It is reasonable for Canadians to expect at any time, and particularly from a government that has promised to bring back evidence-based decision-making and a scientific approach to government, to be provided with information and analysis on the particular ways that the government thinks this deal would be beneficial. However, we have not received that at all. Instead, we get an ideological repetition of the idea that these deals must obviously be good.

The NDP, instead, has been trying to offer an example of how to look at an agreement's details, to evaluate the various clauses, and to come to a conclusion about whether, overall, it is a good agreement for the country. I do not think it is any secret that the conclusion New Democrats have come to on this particular deal is that it is not, on balance, good for Canada. I will get to why.

There is one thing we need to recognize, first and foremost, which may sound silly to say. When considering the positions and arguments advanced by other parties, it bears repeating that trade deals are an important part of public policy. It is not as if trade, on the one hand, is separate and divorced from all the other public policies of government, on the other hand. Trade deals have important implications for governments, particularly these kinds of comprehensive trade agreements. They set the economic framework and a number of other important rules under which government can or cannot apply other levers of public policy.

Consider, for instance, a previous trade agreement that Canada once had with the United States called the Auto Pact. It was an agreement on the trade of a particular good, in this case automobiles, across the border. The people who negotiated and concluded that agreement recognized that trade deals were public policy. Therefore, the public policy goals of that agreement were not just to create more wealth for transnational corporations. They said that if they were going to sign a trade deal, they needed to enunciate what their public policy goals were. An important public policy goal was to ensure that jobs were created within Canada and that the goods being sold in Canada actually meant that Canadians got a slice of the production of that good and received wages for the goods sold in Canada.

When we talk about trade deals of different kinds and the values that can be represented in them, here is an example of a trade deal that we should not need to approve just because it concerns trade. Let us face it, multinational corporations have negotiated with themselves, because they are advising all of the various governments involved in these negotiations. These are not negotiations including union leaders and people representing the interests of the environment and ordinary Canadians. They are largely negotiations with government representatives and representatives of multinational corporations meeting behind closed doors and coming up with rules. Then, when they come out of that negotiating room, we are told that either we agree with trade or we do not, and that this particular set of rules that has been negotiated behind closed doors represents the best possible scenario for ordinary Canadians. That is a laughable claim. They never provide any evidence to back up that claim and we are supposed to just take it on faith. When we look at agreements like this, it is not clear what the public policy goal is.

Consider CETA, for instance. This agreement, we know, because it has been confirmed by a number of independent studies, will raise the cost of pharmaceutical drugs in a country that already has among the highest such costs. We need to go from where we are right now with respect to the costs of drugs and to find ways to bring those down, and we know that CETA would move us in the wrong direction. What gain would we be making that would offset that loss, unless the public policy goal, perversely, of the government is to fatten the wallets of international pharma?

I do not think that is a defensible public policy goal. However, if that is the goal of the government, let it say so; and if it is not, let it tell us what we are getting out of this deal that counteracts that effect on Canadians. If everyday Canadians are made to pay more for their pharmaceutical drugs, that is a tangible cost, and what tangible benefit can they expect to see in return?

There are lots of other ways we could pursue other public policy goals within the context of these kinds of trade agreements. For instance, we could say that because we want green public transportation in Canada and with our trading partners, whether they be in Europe, the United States of America, or wherever else, we want a firm commitment, with timelines and penalties if these goals are not met, to work toward a common charger for electric vehicles. That would be a legitimate thing to do. Certainly, if a trade deal like CETA can pronounce on the minuscule details of municipal procurement, we could certainly reach a deal that would bring its member parties together to pursue a common charging standard that would allow that industry to reach economies of scale, increase production, whether in Canada or the other member countries, and begin greening public transportation in those various areas.

However, we never hear about that because we do not actually get into a debate about what the public policy goals of a trade deal are. Rather, we are just told that this will create massive wealth, that it will be great for everyone, and that everyone is going to get a job after we pass this.

The evidence does not support that at all if we look at the historical record of what has happened in the Canadian manufacturing sector since the late 1980s and early 1990s when we began signing these kinds of agreements. No further evidence has been provided. When we look at the historical track record, I would argue it is not particularly good, and we are not given any contrary evidence.

We might also say that when it comes to labour mobility, for instance, these agreements tend to have lots of provisions on how companies can bring in their own workers from wherever to perform work here in Canada that ought to be performed first and foremost by Canadians who are looking for this kind of work. That is not the right way to go about this in these provisions, but we do know that there are labour mobility challenges. For instance, trade unions who have hiring halls have people here who are out of work and there are places with labour demand in the United States, and those people cannot get that work because in order to be authorized to do the work, they first need an employer and a visa. However, because there is an agreement in which the employers go to the hiring hall to fill their labour demands, the workers need to be cleared to work at the hall first, but until they are cleared at the hall they do not have an employer so they cannot apply for the visa and cannot be cleared at the hall until they have a visa. That is a legitimate labour mobility issue.

We could be working to address labour mobility issues in that way rather than encouraging the import of temporary foreign workers who then work only for that company and who are thus, frankly, under the dictatorship of that company, because if the company decides for whatever reason that those workers are complaining too much about their working conditions or if the company does not pay them what they were promised when they came over, the workers can be sent back by the company. That is not a fair arrangement for those workers. It is not a fair arrangement for Canadians who are expected to then compete against them. There are other ways to do that, but these do not come up when we are talking about these deals.

What the NDP is trying to do in this debate is to say that there are other ways of doing this and there are other important public policy goals that ought to be taken into consideration when we pursue trade agreements. However, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have failed to do this. That is the problem. That is what we are trying to zero in on. We are trying to show that, yes, trade deals and trade is important, but there is more than one way to do it. There are an infinite number of ways. This particular way, in which we take away the ability of democratically elected governments in Canada and elsewhere to make decisions about health, the environment, and working conditions within their own jurisdiction and to put them at the mercy of trade tribunals that are more concerned about whether transnational corporations are losing money than about the substance of those issues, is the wrong way to do it. That is not to say there is not a way to do it, but it means that we have to ask more of our governments here in Canada when it comes to negotiating a trade deal.

Conservatives and Liberals alike have shown that they are not up to the task. Although we have seen a change in government, we have yet to see a change in approach. We saw the same when David Emerson switched from being the Liberal international trade minister to being the Harper international trade minister, and we saw it when the current Minister of International Trade hugged the former international trade minister on the floor of the House of Commons the day CETA was signed. There is no difference between the two.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I again thank my friend from Elmwood—Transcona for his opposition to the investor-state agreement.

Getting back to the core of this, we really do need to ask how we became so ensnared in so many of these agreements that only privilege the rights of foreign corporations. Canadian corporations cannot sue under such provisions if the Canadian government makes a decision that hurts their profits, but if we accept this agreement, companies from Germany, Poland, Belgium, or wherever, would be able to sue the Canadian government just how U.S. corporations can do now. The People's Republic of China's corporations can, and if the TPP goes through, another nine countries' corporations can bring these private cases against Canada.

Would the member agree with me that we need to reopen the whole bundle of investor-state agreements and renegotiate them globally to ensure that they fairly balance the rights of corporations versus the sovereignty of governments?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would agree with the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands that there is something fundamentally broken at the conceptual level with the investor-state dispute settlement clauses. There absolutely is. Giving foreign companies the ability to intervene in areas of domestic policy-making, which we elect democratically governments to do, is just completely backward.

The idea that somehow in order for those companies to get fair treatment in Canada we need these investor-state provisions, when we have a whole body of common law and other international agreements that give reasonable assurances to those companies they will not be treated unfairly, is also wrong. Added to that is a mechanism by which these transnational corporations can use the threat of serious financial punishment of a government in order to direct its policy behaviour. That is what is wrong about this. It is not about fair treatment. That already exists under the law before we sign these agreements. This is about whether we are going to give these companies the hammer and the threat of it use to direct government policy. That obviously is wrong and should not be a component of deals going forward.

[Tracey Ramsey, NDP, Essex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague brought up jobs, and we need to have an understanding of what we face in terms of employment under CETA, but, unfortunately, we do not because the current Liberal government has not done any analysis. We do not know what the projected job losses could be, but we do have one study coming out of Tufts University in the United States saying that Canada would lose 30,000 jobs from CETA. It is not just Canada that is concerned. In the EU as well, just last week the European Parliament's employment and social affairs committee voted for a motion saying that the EU parliament should refuse to approve CETA because it would lead to the loss of some 200,000 jobs in the EU.

There is no evidence to back the potential number of jobs that we hear the government and the trade minister talking about all the time; but quite the contrary, what we only see going forward in Canada and the EU are job losses.

Does the member for Elmwood—Transcona believe that we should have a full analysis of the job losses that would incurred in Canada?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I think that is exactly what is required. I cannot imagine a large company embarking on a new contract with a new supplier or new partner without doing some serious due diligence. I cannot imagine that they sit down in corporate boardrooms and say they have the opportunity to have a partnership with a major new supplier or a competitor who wants to join with them and that they are going to approve the merger simply because bigger is better and mergers are good. I cannot imagine their saying they do not need to take the time to study it, they do not need any numbers, because they believe that bigger is better is a good economic principle and therefore that they just need to go ahead. I cannot imagine their saying that all of the questions are just slowing them down and that the board needs to stop asking questions about the money and the jobs and about their obligations under a new contract and just plow ahead because it is a great principle, that they run the company based on principles, not on spreadsheets or numbers.

There is not a company that would last a day in the market if it ran itself that way, and Canadians should expect better from their government.