- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- South Okanagan—West Kootenay
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 61%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $128,729.57
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, my colleague mentioned off the top that the Bloc was supporting the bill, and it seems to be a fait accompli, that everything was done behind closed doors and we are just implementing it. However, there is a section in the bill he was concerned about on investor-state dispute mechanisms, which is the foreign investment protection agreement of 1995 rolled into this new version. I am wondering if the Bloc will support this and then ask for amendments in committee. What are they going to do about this?
These are things that both the NDP and Bloc seem to be concerned about, where we would have foreign corporations that could sue Canadian governments at all levels for legislation that we want to bring in to protect our environment and protect our citizens. I am wondering what the Bloc's attitude toward that is.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask more or less the same question that the Bloc member just asked about the investor-state dispute mechanisms. He said it was not like the investor-state dispute mechanism that the Americans wanted. I wonder if the member can explain more about that. How does it differ from the investor-state dispute mechanism in the Canada-Europe treaty and the CPTPP? Those are things the NDP is not in favour of. Is this some sort of ISDS light? What is it that we can and cannot do, and can face as governments being sued by multinational corporations?
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Mr. Speaker, I think we can all agree that we want to help Ukraine in every way possible and that modernizing the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement is one way we can do that. I think this is a good step forward.
What concerns me about the bill we are debating today is that the whole process of bringing the new agreement to the House was flawed in every way in terms of the standard policy around bringing new trade agreements to this place. First of all, we were supposed to have a period of debate before beginning the negotiations so members could have some input into that. Second, there is policy around enough time after the treaty has been tabled, to see that, and then time to debate here. None of that was done for this bill. It has been done in the past, so it is not impossible. It is important that people here have a chance to properly debate our free trade agreements. I just wonder whether the member could comment on that.
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Mr. Speaker, I will avoid a long debate about how clean liquid natural gas is and the whole idea of liquid natural gas actually being a good way to move forward with climate action, but I will say that there are liquid natural gas projects that are well on the way to completion in British Columbia. They take time. They cannot be built overnight. They are being built very quickly.
I would hope that this illegal action, this war in Ukraine, would not be going on by the time they are eventually shipping liquid natural gas. There are countries around the world that are much better placed, because of their situations, to supply that liquid natural gas to Ukraine, but Canada is moving in that direction. I just hope that the war is over by the time we are able to help in that regard.
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Mr. Speaker, we heard the member for Winnipeg North say that we have had good negotiators and that, once they finish the negotiations, that will be it as we will not have any opportunity or reason to intercede. We have real reason to intercede beforehand, when we can talk and discuss in this place what our priorities should be in free trade agreements or any treaty regarding this country.
The member for Elmwood—Transcona brought this to the minister before we were negotiating the Canada-U.S.-Mexico agreement because the United States was already holding debates within their congress about what priorities they should have in these negotiations. We did not have that opportunity. There was a commitment made in policy that this would be the way things move forward, yet for this agreement, which is really the first agreement we have entered into since CUSMA, this has not been followed. I asked the member for Elmwood—Transcona and the member for Windsor West, who was our international trade critic, if it had happened. We queried the clerk of the committee on international trade on if this happened. Nobody could find any evidence of it happening.
This is what we have been pushing for. We want to help the government really form good policy to negotiate good treaties. We should have some discussions before our good negotiators take their jobs and negotiate the treaties. We should give them some direction that comes from all of us here.
We come from different parts of the country and from different backgrounds. We have to have that input in these negotiations to make sure that they will benefit all Canadians. That is what the NDP really stands for, that these agreements should help not just corporations but all Canadians.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Kitchener Centre for taking part in a press conference I held with the member for Timmins—James Bay on that subject last week, where we called both the government and fossil fuel companies to account for the fact the International Energy Agency has said we cannot move forward with any new fossil fuel projects and here we are, as he mentioned, $30 billion into the Trans Mountain pipeline. I could go on and on about other projects.
This is something the government and the fossil fuel industry need to face. The fossil fuel industry has known since the 1980s where we are headed. It warned in the 1980s that it could not go down that path, and then it decided that would be too expensive and there was too much money to be made. We need to call both the government and the industry to account on this and make some very important changes very quickly.
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Mr. Speaker, as I said in my speech, we were in favour of the previous agreement, and this agreement seems to be an improvement and an expansion on that.
There are many details, the devil is always in the details in free trade agreements, and we will be taking a closer look at that agreement over the next couple of days. However, as I said, there is supposed to be 21 sitting days between so that we can have that time to really look at things closely. I think there might have been 10 sitting days between the time the treaty was signed and the enabling legislation tabled and only a couple of sitting days since the actual implementation legislation was tabled. That is where I think the government should have done better.
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Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise today to speak to Bill C-57, the new Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement. This bill would update the agreement made in 2017. Much has happened in the past six years, as we all know.
First, I would like to speak a bit about the original agreement, as it forms the core of the present one, then cover some of the changes outlined in Bill C-57. I will wrap up with some comments about how free trade agreements are presented to Parliament for the debate that they deserve.
The NDP is very much in favour of free trade agreements. We hear catcalls from both sides every time we debate free trade agreements here, saying that the NDP is always against them. We are not. We have voted for free trade agreements in the past and we voted for the Ukraine free trade agreement when it was presented. Our main caveat for these agreements is that they be designed to protect and create Canadian jobs, protect the ability of Canadian governments at all levels to care for our environment, and promote the well-being of our citizens. The measure of success of free trade deals must not be just the profits made by Canadian companies. It must also include measures of good labour agreements, both here and in the countries we are making deals with, and measures of good environmental and human rights laws on both sides as well.
These agreements must be beneficial to the people of both countries involved. I have to say that this new agreement with Ukraine and the bill before us that would implement that agreement seem to do a good job in that direction. The Canada-Ukraine friendship is very special. In fact, when Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Canada was the first western country to recognize that act. Today, there are more than 1.3 million Canadians of Ukrainian heritage. They are very proud of that heritage and their cultural traditions.
Canada has consistently supported Ukraine's development and reform efforts, providing over $460 million in international assistance between 2014 and 2021. Of course, Canada and Canadians have been strong supporters of Ukraine since the illegal invasion by Russia in February 2022. Since then, Canada has committed over $8.9 billion in assistance, including financial, development, humanitarian, military security, stabilization and immigration aid.
With respect to trade, Canada issued remission orders to temporarily open up trade with Ukraine, allowing supply managed products, such as poultry, to enter Canada. We have heard some concerns about these remission orders in the international trade and agriculture committees, but I think it is fair to say that Canadians are happy to help Ukraine in any way during these horrific times in their struggles.
I would like to step back a bit in time and spend some time talking about the original agreement. I would like to thank Tracey Ramsey, who is the former member for Essex, the NDP international trade critic when the first Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement was debated and came into effect. Tracey was and remains a passionate defender of Canadian workers, and she took her role very seriously. She recommended that the NDP support the original Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement because it upheld those basic principles I mentioned previously.
The Canada-Ukraine trade relationship is relatively small. Ukraine represents less than 1% of the total Canadian global exports. Following the signature of the original trade agreement, Canada's non-coal exports to Ukraine grew by 28.5% between 2016 and 2019. Total merchandise trade reached an all-time high of $447 million in 2021, although that of course declined in 2022 because of the illegal invasion.
The original free trade agreement eliminated most of the tariffs on Canadian imports to Ukraine and Ukrainian imports to Canada. Canadian exporters have largely welcomed the deal. Canadian products that benefit from the free trade agreement include iron and steel, industrial machinery, pulses, canola oil, and fish and seafood.
While the original free trade agreement includes a state-to-state dispute settlement mechanism, it did not include the investor-state dispute settlement system, ISDS provisions. It is important to note that these provisions actually existed before the free trade agreement came into place because in 1995, Canada and Ukraine signed a Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement, which included these investor-state provisions.
The NDP, in general, does not like ISDS provisions because they allow foreign corporations to literally tell Canadian governments at all levels how they should be protecting their environment or protecting their people. We believe that is an infringement on our sovereignty and we think that ISDS provisions do not have a place in any foreign free trade agreement. We are happy to see that the new Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement did not include them. They were in both the Canada-Europe trade agreement and the CPTPP. We believe that foreign investors should be obligated to go through domestic courts before being granted access to a special court where they can sue our governments, and that should be done at the state-to-state level.
New Democrats analyze trade deals as a whole. As I say, we have supported trade deals in the past, including the Ukraine agreement and the South Korea deal.
The original Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement entered into force in 2017. It has a review clause that it be reviewed within two years of entry into force with a regard to expanding it and that was done. In 2019, Canada and Ukraine agreed to modernize the free trade agreement with expanded sections. There were public consultations held in the winter of 2020, but those consultations did not seem to include the Parliament of Canada. I will talk more about that later.
Canadian and Ukrainian officials conducted negotiations from May 2022 to April 2023. The new agreement includes more chapters on a broader array of services and business. It covers professional services like engineering, legal, computer services and telecommunications. It covers investment. It covers temporary entry for business persons. There are other sections that promote more broad interactions around trade and commerce. These are chapters that are included in other free trade agreements that Canada has with other countries and we welcome them here.
The agreement also has an updated environment chapter, which is subject to dispute settlement, aiming to ensure parties do not lower the levels of environmental protection to attract trade or investment. Again, that is obviously an important part of trade agreements. Trade agreements should raise the level of the standard of living of people in both countries in commercial and financial terms, but also in terms of their environment, human rights and labour dealings.
This bill has an updated labour chapter, which is again subject to dispute settlement provisions. It aims to improve labour standards and working conditions in both countries.
As I say, the NDP in general supports this kind of free trade agreement. Whether we support this bill or not, I would like to say here that, unfortunately, this bill was tabled only last Tuesday and I have not had time to bring it before the NDP caucus for discussion, which happens on Wednesdays, as we all know. This is a big, complex agreement and the NDP caucus likes to discuss all legislation before we decide whether we will support it.
We think it is important to allow Parliament to have input into trade negotiations before they begin. It is also important to allow ample notice once the treaties are signed for debate in this place before they are ratified. When the first Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement was tabled, the government followed that policy. It tabled the enabling legislation along with an explanatory memorandum and a final environmental assessment more than 21 sitting days after tabling the treaty. However, the government did not follow any of these standard procedures when introducing CETA, the Canada-Europe trade agreement. We were happy when it followed those procedures in the previous first version of the Canada-Ukraine agreement, but it seems that the government has forgotten those policies with this new agreement.
When the government negotiated CETA and CPTPP, Canadians were kept in the dark about what was being negotiated. When we finally learned what was on the table, the deal was already finalized, and the government said that there was absolutely no way to change anything at that point. It is not too much to ask for input on these important policies. The United States Congress has the right and ability to debate what the priorities of their country will be before entering into free trade negotiations.
The member for Elmwood—Transcona wrote a letter, in December 2019, to the Minister of International Trade, who is now the Minister of Finance, regarding increased transparency around the negotiations for the new Canada-U.S.-Mexico free trade agreement. In response to that letter, the minister agreed, on February 19, 2020, to change the policy on tabling treaties in Parliament. Those changes:
To require that a notice of intent to enter into negotiations towards a new free trade agreement be tabled in the House of Commons at least 90 calendar days prior to the commencement of negotiations. Under normal parliamentary procedures, the notice of intent would be referred to the [committee on international trade].
To require objectives for negotiations towards a new free trade agreement to be tabled in the House of Commons at least 30 calendar days prior to the commencement of negotiations. Under normal parliamentary procedures, those objectives would be referred to the [committee on international trade].
As I mentioned previously, there were discussions with some stakeholders about the scope of changes to this free trade agreement in the winter of 2020, but as far as I can tell, and we have done some research on this, the matter was never referred to the international trade committee or tabled in the House.
The government also seems to have broken standard policies on introducing implementation legislation for free trade agreements and other treaties. There should be 21 sitting days between the tabling of treaties and tabling of legislation, and that did not happen with this agreement. On top of that, as I mentioned, the minister tabled this legislation last Tuesday and here we are debating it on Monday. This is a big, complicated bill. There was no opportunity for opposition parties to discuss this in caucus last Wednesday.
To conclude, the NDP is very much in favour of free trade. We supported the original version of this agreement with Ukraine and we will be discussing this new legislation in caucus on Wednesday. I urge the minister and her government to follow the standard policies on how to introduce treaties and implement legislation before Parliament. These are not minor details; these are important points on how Canadians expect us here in this place to hold the government to account.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the minister's speech on this important free trade agreement. The NDP supported the previous agreement, and we are looking into what this new agreement looks like.
One thing we do like about the old agreement is that it did not have the investor state dispute mechanism in there. That is something that we have held as essential for any new trade agreements going forward. CETA and CPTPP both have that in them, and we do not like that. The NDP supports free trade, but we do not like foreign corporations telling governments what to do.
One thing I am disappointed with is the speed at which this is coming before us. I have not had time to bring this before caucus to even have a basic discussion. Why was this being rushed through without following any of the standard procedures about introducing treaties and agreements before the House?
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