moved:

Motion No. 4

That Bill C-79 be amended by deleting Clause 11.

Motion No. 5

That Bill C-79 be amended by deleting Clause 12.

Motion No. 6

That Bill C-79 be amended by deleting Clause 19.

Motion No. 7

That Bill C-79 be amended by deleting Clause 50.

Mr. Speaker, I wish I were rising today with some hope that we would be having more of a fulsome debate. It is very unfortunate that the Liberals and Conservatives have decided to join forces in a very rarely used provision in this House in order to ram through Bill C-79, the CPTPP.

It is quite baffling to me because the amendments really focus around the ISDS. In the CPTPP, we have fully signed on to the investor-state dispute settlement which today we heard from the Prime Minister he is happy to see gone in the new USMCA deal we have with the United States. Not only do I find this baffling, but Canadians also find this baffling. Of course, we welcome the elimination of this provision with the U.S. and Mexico because we have been the most sued country in the world under this provision. It has not worked well for us. I believe there are members on the opposite side who are also not happy with this provision.

I focus on this because it speaks to the hypocrisy and inconsistency we are seeing in this House when we see this approach to trade. On one hand we are saying that ISDS is a bad provision and needs to be gone, which is quite welcomed from the Liberals but quite shocking as well because it was not the Liberals who wanted it gone in the new USMCA. It was the U.S., and more specifically President Trump, who wanted it gone. We see this flip-flopping with the Liberals. How is it they are standing today pushing through debate on a deal that includes this very provision? It is baffling to me.

Not only is that baffling, but so is what we have given up in terms of dairy. Despite all the promises in this House from the Liberal government that it would completely protect our dairy sector in the new deal, the USMCA, we now know that is completely false. The Liberals have not protected it. They have knocked down two key pillars of supply management. We know that when we come back to this deal with the U.S. in six years it will be at the top of the list, and the Liberals will be happy to give it up again. They have betrayed family farmers in my riding of Essex and family farmers across this country. Why are we now signing a deal where we will further damage family farms and auto workers?

Speaking of auto workers, what we were able to achieve in the USMCA for auto workers is good. It is positive. We prevented that 25% tariff, and that is most definitely something Canadian auto workers are pleased to see. However, right on the heels of that, we are signing onto an agreement that is going to hurt auto workers. This is incomprehensible. How is it that the Liberals say they are going to protect people and workers in our country and the very next second they do the exact opposite?

I am not sure Liberals understand what they are signing onto. From the very limited debate we have had in this House, I would say that is clear. We should be having 10 hours of debate but it is now down to four hours of debate on an agreement that is thousands of pages long and will cost 58,000 Canadian jobs. It is bizarre to me that even the Conservatives do not want to debate this fully. They certainly have been saying that everything in this House deserves full debate, but today we saw that is not the case and they are happy to partner with the Liberals. Canadians are left shaking their heads to see the difference between Liberals and Conservatives in this House today in the approach to trade.

On the ISDS question I asked the Prime Minister today, it was interesting to me how he glowingly spoke about their being able to remove it, how fantastic it is, and invoked Jerry Dias and Hassan Yussuff. Yet, when I spoke with Jerry Dias on the phone this morning, he was shaking his head and saying that it is a betrayal for the Liberals to sign the CPTPP. How is it that on one hand the Liberals are saying they are going to stand by auto and on the other hand they turn around and do the exact opposite?

The Liberals are making fools of Canadians by trying to have them believe that in some way they care about working people in Canada. The CPTPP is a betrayal to working people. It is a betrayal to family farms. It contains ISDS provisions, which the government has now had a second coming on and has finally decided is not a good provision, but not to worry, they are still going to put it into the agreement over there. That is okay. We should just not look too closely over there.

Again, I have to point to the Conservatives, because the Conservatives have been up reading, I would say, by all accounts, what I consider to be NDP viewpoints on trade on the USMCA in the last few days, as though Canadians believe that the Conservatives stand up for working people, as though Canadians believe that they protect farmer, when they in fact are the architects of the TPP.

There is absolutely no comprehensiveness or progressiveness around the TPP. If we speak with the lead negotiator of the TPP, we will find that the text is identical. What has happened is we have a suspension of 20 provisions and we have some tweaks, and we have actually lost some of the side letters. There is no change to the text of the TPP whatsoever. By putting a new name on it that suggests otherwise is simply false. It is misleading to Canadians.

Canadians are not buying it either. When we had the original TPP, 18,000 Canadians wrote to the Liberal government. All but two of the 18,000 people told the government not to sign the CPTPP, and yet, here we are. Once again, we have this full consultation where there is an impression that when Canadians express themselves to the government, they will be heard.

However, the government is falling down on that day after day in this House. The Liberals will consult, but they have already made up their minds on exactly what they are going to do. Whether we are talking about indigenous rights, workers' rights or family farms, that is what the Liberals are doing. No one is fooled by what is happening in this country right now.

I want to talk about the mandate letters that came out. The progressive elements were included initially in the mandate letter for the international trade minister at the time, the fresh mandate letter of 2015. It included all of these progressive trade elements, like a gender chapter, environmental rights, indigenous people, labour rights, all of these wonderful things that Canadians would really like to see as part of our deals. In the CPTPP, sadly, none of those things exist. Not one of those things ended up being in the actual agreement.

To include “progressive” in the title is a farce. There is no indigenous chapter or language. The words “climate change” are not even mentioned, and by the way they are not in the new U.S. deal either. The USMCA does not even mention the words “climate change”. There are no labour provisions in the CPTPP that will help working people.

There are regressive provisions. Now, we are going to be in competition with countries like Malaysia, where the wage is frightening to our Mexican partners in the new U.S.-Mexico deal. The wages are so low, the treatment is so low, and there are no labour standards and no environmental standards.

What happened to the government's gender lens it was going to apply to all of the work it does? It has completely evaporated. It does not exist in the CPTPP.

The promise that was made to people about the type of trade, the type of consultation and, quite frankly, what happened in the new trilateral deal that we have in the USMCA, did not happen at all in the CPTPP. None of those people were in the room. In fact, in a Montreal round when that particular deal was being negotiated under the NAFTA name, the minister and all of the officials were there meeting with stakeholders all weekend long, talking about the new deal we were going to have with the U.S. and Mexico, and they left those meetings without saying one word about the CPTPP. They flew away and signed the CPTPP.

Again, we have this incomprehensible mess of a trade agenda that the Liberals are presenting to Canadians, and we have Conservatives in this House who are happy to join hands and go down this path. I want working people in Canada to know, I want farmers in Canada to know, I want everyone who struggles to pay for their prescriptions to know, and I want everyone who cares about our environment to know that today, the Liberals, along with the help of the Conservatives, have turned their backs on them. They have exposed themselves for the free traders that they are, and there is nothing they will not sign and nothing they will not give up.

Tracey Ramsey

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