44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 24, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, thanks to this agreement with Ukraine, Canada can improve its ability to export not only agricultural products, but also agricultural equipment. This agreement with Ukraine can help us meet this challenge.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's comments about the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement. He mentioned that MCC is very active in Abbotsford in helping refugees from Ukraine settle in our beautiful community. I would invite him to expand on that.
Where have they settled? How are they integrating into our community?
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Madam Speaker, right by Bourquin Crescent in Abbotsford, there is a townhouse complex. I believe it is called Lakeside Terrace. MCC has coordinated for many of the refugees to live at Lakeside Terrace.
On Sunday afternoons, when I am taking my kids for a walk at Mill Lake Park, which is adjacent to Lakeside Terrace, I hear many children speaking Ukrainian. A great way to integrate new refugees is to put them close to our pre-eminent park in Abbotsford. It is allowing the kids to integrate more quickly, and it is building those friendships that are so important to making newcomers feel welcome in our wonderful community.
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Madam Speaker, I begin the discussion today on Bill C-57, which is the updated Canada-Ukraine trade agreement.
We have had some conversation already this morning on the subject of the differences between trade agreements and investor protection agreements. I would like to approach that topic again and talk about the updated Canada-Ukraine trade agreement.
I would also like to put a frame around the fact that a number of Liberal MPs said that this agreement makes an effort to name climate change and to tackle climate change in trade agreements. I wish that were so. We have a long way to go if we are going to confront the ways in which the World Trade Organization and its creation have undermined the climate agreements, and multilateral environmental agreements in general.
With that frame, I will move very quickly through some of the larger issues here because it is unusual for us to have any opportunity in this place to address the trade and investor protection agreements and how they impact climate, and they do.
Let us start by looking at the last effective multilateral environmental agreement that the world has ever seen and that was the most effective. It was negotiated in 1987 in Montreal. It is, of course, the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer.
I was honoured to participate in those negotiations as senior policy adviser to the federal minister of environment in the Mulroney government back in those days.
If we look at the success of the Montreal Protocol, it is astonishing. We have not only arrested the destruction of the ozone layer through various ozone-depleting substances but also expanded that agreement with the Kigali Amendment so that it has also been an effective treaty that has helped reduce greenhouse gases.
One of the key reasons the Montreal Protocol was so successful was that the agreement to protect the ozone layer had enforcement mechanisms. It had penalties for countries that chose to ignore their commitments to protect the ozone layer. In fact, those treaty sanctions were so effective, they never had to be used because countries abided by their commitments in the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer.
The effective sanctions were trade sanctions. It is very hard to imagine any kind of international treaty that binds nation states and that has an effective punishment system that would be other than trade agreements. It is the most logical place in which we can inflict some degree of penalty on non-compliance.
The way the Montreal Protocol worked was that if any country ignored its commitments to reduce its use and to stop the production of chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting substances, then that country would be subject to trade sanctions from any other country that was a party to the Montreal Protocol.
Since every country on earth was a party to the Montreal Protocol, that was why it was a very effective mechanism. Ten years later, in 1997, in Kyoto, Japan, when we negotiated the Kyoto Protocol, tragically, Canada changed its position 180 degrees.
Instead of being a country that championed making those agreements effective by including trade sanctions, our minister of environment headed to Kyoto saying that if trade sanctions were included in the Kyoto Protocol for climate action, Canada would not sign.
What happened? In that 10-year window, there was the creation of the World Trade Organization. The end of the Uruguay Round negotiations resulted in a more established centre for trade work globally.
All of this emanated from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Article XX of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade had, since just after the Second World War, when it was negotiated, set aside and protected from trade sanctions those actions that were considered to be part of natural resource conservation and so on.
Article XX of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade set aside, essentially, environmental protections without using that language. It certainly did not reference climate. We had the window there to protect what we did as nations, not for trade-motivated reasons or protectionist animus but for the legitimate pursuit of environmental protections. We could not be sanctioned by trade deals.
That all changed with the creation of the World Trade Organization. It created a committee called the Committee on Trade and Environment and instead of asking the useful question of whether we have trade agreements that get in the way of environmental protection, it asked a different question: Do we have environmental agreements that get in the way of trade? It spotted the Montreal Protocol and did not like that. It did not like the Basel Convention, which allows trade sanctions, or the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, CITES.
We already had a number of agreements that said we were allowed to take measures to protect the environment and in those agreements, we said trade could not get in the way. The trade Hydra raised its many ugly heads and said, no, it did not want us to do that.
There was never any decision, by the way. There was no ruling. It was just a matter of, in every national capital all around the world, the powerful trade ministers at every cabinet table turning to their less powerful environment ministers and saying they could not use those tools anymore. As a result, not a single climate agreement that Canada has ever signed has had any sanctions at all. The only sanction in the Paris Agreement is essentially the annual global stock-taking of language. That is coming up at COP28. The global stock-taking is essentially a sanction based on global shaming and embarrassment as there is no sanction there at all.
We really need to deal with this. Although the window here with the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement is pretty well closed because the negotiations are done, let us take this moment to say this is wrong. Certainly, President Zelenskyy of Ukraine has been one of the most outspoken champions. The war that Putin launched illegally against Ukraine must not get in the way of climate action. President Zelenskyy knows it and champions it. This is a good time to make sure all of the climate agreements are protected from trade limitations.
This is a good time to dust off some of the decisions that have been wrongly assumed to say that we cannot pursue climate agreements without violating trade deals. For instance, there are the tuna-dolphin case and the shrimp-turtle case. Both of those cases, at the WTO appellate level, left out very clear language. It does not say that we can never protect the environment under the WTO but that we cannot do it one-on-one. We cannot say the U.S. makes its own rules and then tells Mexico what to do.
However, it did say, in the context of a multilateral agreement that is negotiated, that trade has to back off and to respect those commitments. That is the case with the Paris Agreement. Every country on earth is bound by it. It is a perfect opportunity for our government to step up and to start saying that countries cannot use trade agreements to limit action to protect climate, as has been done. There are sanctions against India for moving to renewable energy, and so on. We recently had another investor protection agreement decision that hampers climate action.
To go back, trade deals are different from investor protection agreements, but in Bill C-57, in the existing Canada-Ukraine trade deal, there is an investor protection agreement. Those are very corrosive of democracy in that they say a foreign corporation has a right to sue a government if it does not like something that a government does that reduces its expectation of profits. Our government got rid of it in negotiating for the new CUSMA with the U.S., so what was chapter 11 of NAFTA is now gone.
We should be moving quickly to remove investor protection agreements that undermine our democracy, our environmental protections and our labour protections. Getting rid of investor protection agreements, or at least ensuring that they do not give foreign corporations more rights than domestic corporations, would be very welcome, indeed.
Bill C-57 as an improvement in modernization of the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement is fine as far as it goes, but it would not do the things that many Liberal MPs have said it would. They have not been misleading the House, as they absolutely believe to be true that the Canada-Ukraine agreement as reflected in Bill C-57 would modernize and include more protections to the environment. It would not really, because unless we get at the basic conflict that trade agreements and the WTO have set themselves up to be superior to multilateral environmental agreements, like the Paris agreement, we are always at risk of trade deals and trade decisions from bodies like the World Trade Organization undermining and sabotaging global climate efforts.
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Madam Speaker, within Bill C-57, there are references to our environment. There are references to unions and labour standards, if I can put it that way. When I look at previous agreements, I do believe we are moving the ball forward.
The member makes reference to the World Trade Organization and so forth, and at the end of the day, this particular agreement would achieve a significant amount in the right direction with respect to the environment.
My question to the member is this: Can she provide her thoughts about the Green Party's position with respect to this specific deal? Does she anticipate voting in favour of it?
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Madam Speaker, I would agree with the parliamentary secretary. There is language about climate. There is language about labour rights and language about indigenous rights. The difficulty here is that we can put in all the language and pretty words we like, but if the effect of the supremacy of trade deals and the World Trade Organization remains untouched, then anything we put in pretty words is undercut by the effective hard impacts. It is like having a set of really sharp scissors that cut through that paper. We do not really make the progress we think we are making by just saying we care about climate. However, if there is going to be an investor protection agreement that says, “I do not like the decision someone just made” to the government of international agreements that makes sure we start changing technologies and moving toward renewable and so on, the ability of a foreign corporation to sue over that undercuts the pretty words. That would be the point.
I will say to the hon. parliamentary secretary—
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- Oct/24/23 12:32:34 p.m.
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I have to allow for other questions.
The hon. member for Abbotsford.
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Madam Speaker, the member spent a lot of time talking about investor protections, and she suggested that foreign investment protection promotion agreements are corrosive to democracy and to how we represent Canada's sovereignty at home and abroad. However, I would ask her a question. There has been an investor protection agreement in place with Ukraine since 1994, for 30 years. Can she point out one or two cases under those provisions that have resulted in Canada's sovereignty's being impaired?
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Madam Speaker, in the generic category of investor protection agreements that damage Canada's sovereignty, I would point more to what used to be called NAFTA, where we had decisions taken by Parliament that were reversed because of complaints by U.S.-based corporations. Canada has lost out over and over again in those agreements. In the case of the one with FIPA and China, since all those decisions are secret, we do not know how often it has been used to challenge.
I think the hon. member for Abbotsford knows that the answer is that I cannot think of a time the Canada-Ukraine agreement has been used in ways that preferred Ukrainian corporations over the Government of Canada. However, the reality of investor protection agreements is that, in the context with a bigger power, the Canadian companies have lost out in U.S. challenges under arbitration, as Canadian governments have lost out when U.S. corporations challenge us. It is a consistent thing through investor protection agreements that the larger economic power, whether it is the investor or the nation state, whichever is the larger—
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- Oct/24/23 12:34:40 p.m.
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I am sorry. I do have to allow for one more question.
The hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona.
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Madam Speaker, along those same lines, I wonder whether the member also wants to talk about not just instances of particular investor protection agreements, but also the cumulative effect of constantly building these types of provisions in, whether they appear as independent agreements or as ISDS provisions in trade agreements, and the kind of chilling effect that has on government decision-making long before anything is brought to a trade tribunal.
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Madam Speaker, as ever, the member for Elmwood—Transcona is brilliant and absolutely right. There is a chilling effect. When the Government of Canada acts to ban a toxic substance, as it did to ban a gasoline additive called MMT, it is found to be very bad and naughty, and it has its hand slapped. By the way, this was because the Chrétien government decided to settle this before there was a decision on MMT. This had the effect that the people at Environment Canada, who thought this had better be banned because it is a neurotoxin already affecting the health of Canadians, got sanctioned. The money that was paid out to Ethyl Corporation, in that case, came out of the core A-base budget of Environment Canada.
There is a real chilling effect every single time Canada, the sovereign state, takes a measure for the environment or human health and gets told that it was bad to do it because a foreign corporation did not like it. It is—
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- Oct/24/23 12:36:17 p.m.
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I am sorry. Unfortunately, there is only so much time. I know it is a very passionate and important issue.
Resuming debate, the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to contribute to the debate about changes to the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement.
I will start by stating again our full support for Ukraine in the war against Russia, which started with an illegal and unjustified invasion on Ukrainian territory in February of last year. Our support is not only in response to some of the atrocities committed by Russian forces in the region but also is a firm stance in favour of international law and a rules-based order that Ukrainians are very literally on the front line of today. It is important that when we choose our allies, we choose allies that are committed to those values and to the application of international law and that we hold them to high standards when it comes to their observance of international law in what they do.
There are many ways we can support allies. Of course, Canada has sent various kinds of aid, whether financial or military, to Ukraine, but being a helpful trading partner in times of strife is also something that is important. However, at the high level, while we are very committed as New Democrats to supporting Ukraine, details do matter, which is why there are established procedures for the House and departmental guidelines for ensuring that parliamentarians have time to do their job of proper scrutiny.
We know that sometimes, under the auspices of good causes, governments have been known to sneak a few things in, which is why the department's own policy on tabling treaties in the House of Commons requires 21 sitting days between the tabling of the text of the treaty and the tabling of enabling legislation. Given that the text of the treaty was tabled on October 17, just a few days ago, normally that would mean that we would not be seeing enabling legislation until November 22. Instead, it has come much more quickly. It has been about a week since the text of the treaty was tabled, and we find ourselves in the second day of debate. This is a contravention of the department's own guidelines on tabling treaties in Parliament, a document that, as New Democrats, we take very seriously because we take the work of this place seriously.
One of the practical consequences is that, even though we are on the second day of debate about changes to an international trade treaty, caucuses have not had the opportunity to meet since the bill was tabled, so it is a very tight turnaround. To ask parliamentarians to be speaking with authority on just a few days' turnaround to such a large document with some important implications and a lot of detail does not manifest in spirit, and in this case not even in the letter, the government's words about taking Parliament seriously as part of the trade process. I think this is an important thing for Canadians to know and understand.
Often in this place, there are debates that touch upon the role of Parliament and the seriousness with which government takes Parliament, and I think this is one of those examples. These are the times not because it is a big controversial thing but precisely because it is not. We know that the government had signed this treaty well before it was tabled in the House of Commons. There were opportunities to bring Parliament into the loop and follow the appropriate policy, but for whatever reason, the government chose to take a pass on that as it too often has in the past.
For those in government who mean it when they say that they take this place seriously, we would exhort them to talk to their colleagues in cabinet to make sure they are following, at the very least, the established procedures for conducting these kinds of debates and discussions in the House of Commons. When they get good at, at least, following through on their own commitments and their own established policies, then we can talk about how to do it better. There certainly are ways to do it better, ways that involve the legislature much earlier on in the process, and build a tighter mandate for enabling legislation when it hits the floor of the House.
There has been a lot of talk already about some of the language in this agreement. I thank the previous speaker for pointing out that flowery language in preambles and elsewhere, if not accompanied by proper enforcement mechanisms that have teeth that would catch the attention either of our own government or the governments with which we are entering into treaties, does not really amount to much.
I am going to lay out what I think is a small but symbolic test of the government's commitment, not just on its process for trade treaties but also in the context of this particular one. In some of the flowery language, there is talk about an indigenous chapter and indigenous rights. I know the government also had flowery language on that file when it came to the Canada-U.S.-Mexico agreement.
However, I moved an amendment to the enabling legislation that would be a non-derogation clause for indigenous rights. It just said that nothing in that legislation, nothing in the agreement, would impinge on the already established rights of indigenous people in Canada. When I did this, I watched the Liberals vote with Conservatives to not have such a clause, just a reminder that indigenous people do have rights in this country and that nothing the Liberal government does in the context of an international trade treaty could undermine that or take away some of those existing rights.
I was disappointed at the reticence of the government members to endorse that as a basic principle and to put it in the legislation. Now we see flowery language about indigenous rights. Let us be sure that, at a minimum, we are including that non-derogation clause in this enabling legislation. That is an important point.
I want to talk a little about one of the issues that I know certain Conservative colleagues have raised in respect of the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement and, since the war began more largely, the supply of Canadian oil and gas to Ukraine. I want to point out that, regardless of whether someone supports more natural gas and oil development in Canada for export to Ukraine, when Conservatives talk about this, they are implying that we should have a greater role for government in deciding who the customers of Canadian oil and gas companies are. I do not find that particularly offensive, in principle. I think that is a conversation we should be having.
We should talk about what a reasonable level of extraction for oil and gas is, in barrels per day or barrels per year, and we should have a conversation about the best way to use those finite resources. They are finite because they are not renewable resources and because, if we are doing it right, we should have some kind of cap on how much extraction could happen in a year. This should be devised with our climate commitments in mind.
Oil and gas becomes a very precious resource indeed, as Canadians already know, with the prices they are being forced to pay. Conservatives would have us believe this is because of carbon tax, but, in fact, if we look at the record profits that oil and gas companies have been experiencing over the last number of years, price gouging is actually a much bigger concern, or should be a bigger concern, for Canadians.
Whatever government is taking in the form of a carbon tax and delivering back to Canadians in the form of a rebate is a hell of a lot less than what oil and gas companies are taking out of their pocket and sending off to international tax havens. That is costing Canadians a heck of a lot more.
It is rich for the Conservatives to get up and pretend that, somehow, they are in support of talking about how a public regulatory framework could guide export relationships and contracts for the oil and gas industry. That is not something they support. They support getting more oil and gas out of the ground faster. They support those companies selling it wherever they can make the best buck. However, for the government to get involved and actually say that we should not be buying oil and gas from these countries, that we should be exporting oil and gas to those countries, invites a lot more public involvement in the oil and gas industry than I think they have the stomach for.
This is a debate that I welcome. The best, most efficient and most prosperous use of finite oil and gas resources is something that, from many perspectives, we should be talking about. However, I do not believe this is a conversation they are serious about having. In contexts such as this, the Conservatives use it to score cheap political points, and Canadians should pay attention and not take them at their word on it.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to address the member's opening comments.
We need to put in perspective that this agreement was actually signed off on just last month, between the Prime Minister and the President of Ukraine.
Now we have the legislation before us, which was done in a relatively quick fashion. We have to put it in the context of the fact that we have an illegal invasion by Russia into Ukraine. It is a time of war, when allied countries around the world are coming to support Ukraine. There is a huge sense of Ukrainian solidarity. Canada is the first country to actually enter into a trade agreement, even in a time of war. It is there not only for the economic benefits of both Canada and Ukraine but also to send the right type of messaging to the people of Ukraine and Russia.
What are the member's thoughts on that?
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Madam Speaker, it is true that it was signed off on just last month, when President Zelenskyy visited Ottawa, but our understanding is that, in fact, the terms and conditions of that agreement were finalized much sooner. It is important for members of the government not to confuse their own communications imperatives and their desire to have nice press conferences and fancy signing ceremonies with the imperatives of a war; that does a disservice.
It seems to me that, actually, the agreement was in a position to be signed off on sooner, and then the members of the government could have followed their own policy and had the legislation in Parliament sooner. We can honour the imperatives of the war without taking seriously the government's own communication strategy.
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Madam Speaker, I enjoyed the member's speech. However, it did concern me that he was somewhat disparaging toward our oil and gas industry. The member accused some in this House of scoring cheap political points, but when one does that, one had better not be guilty of doing the very same thing; unfortunately, he is the guilty one here.
Natural gas is one of the solutions to the world's greenhouse gas emissions challenges. We can displace dirty coal elsewhere around the world by exporting much cleaner natural gas to those countries. There is some urgency in doing this for Ukraine. Does the member not believe that Canada should put in place every single strategy available to us in order to get our liquefied natural gas to a country like Ukraine, which is in such deep straits and turmoil because of Russia's invasion? Does he not agree that this is an urgent situation where we should be providing—
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- Oct/24/23 12:49:36 p.m.
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I will allow the member to respond.
The hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona.
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Madam Speaker, I am very happy to repeat myself. I actually said that this is a conversation I am open to.
However, the member just did the very thing that I have warned against. He says that Canada could be sending oil and gas to countries that are currently burning coal, which is fair enough. This is to talk about the government's selecting places in the world where we think we have a strategic best use for our own oil and gas reserves. That is fine; let us have that conversation. However, I do not think that is a conversation Conservatives really want to have, because they actually want a free market in oil and gas. They are not interested in having that kind of government intervention.
It is telling that the member found my comments disparaging; they were disparaging not of the oil and gas sector in this case, but of the Conservative Party. He conflated my critique of the Conservative Party with a critique of the industry. It is telling that the Conservatives feel those two things are so closely tied at the hip.
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Madam Speaker, I just want to refer back to oil and gas. In this place, we continue to see the Conservatives try to focus on a diversion. They talk about the carbon tax. Last year, it went up two cents. The oil and gas profits went up 18¢ on every litre of gas; the Conservatives do not talk about that. We do not need oil and gas lobbyists here on Parliament Hill when we have the Conservative Party right here in the House of Commons.
I would like to ask about the true cost of oil and gas companies' not paying an excess profit tax right now. Big corporations are getting off the hook when it comes to not paying their fair share in countries such as Canada and Ukraine. What impact does that have on the economy, and how does apply it to trade agreements when we look at corporations getting off the hook?
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