FAIT Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE

COMITÉ PERMANENT DES AFFAIRES ÉTRANGÈRES ET DU COMMERCE INTERNATIONAL

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, April 5, 2001

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. Bill Graham (Toronto Centre—Rosedale, Lib.)): I'd like to call this session of the committee to order.

This is our ninth meeting—just to remind colleagues and the public who are watching this—of the committee on the subject of the Summit of the Americas, which will take place in Quebec City during the parliamentary break.

There's a great deal of discussion about transparency and openness in respect of the Quebec City summit, and I'd just like to remind our members that we have held nine hearings, we've heard from some 38 witnesses, and we've extended invitations to many more witnesses who have, unfortunately, been unable to attend. However, we look forward to continuing this issue and perhaps preparing a report after the summit, when we can judge what the effects of it have been.

So with that introduction, I'm very pleased to have with us this morning various witnesses.

[Translation]

First, we have Mr. Roger Bertrand, member of the Quebec National Assembly for the riding of Portneuf and chairman of the Committee on Institutions.

The clerk tells me that you were re-elected chairman of this committee just one week ago. Congratulations and welcome to our committee.

Mr. Bertrand.

Mr. Roger Bertrand (Member from Portneuf; Chairman, Committee on Institutions, National Assembly of Quebec): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am indeed pleased to accept your invitation to come and speak to you briefly—I was told I have 10 minutes or so and I will try to stay within that time—about the recent report that the Committee on Institutions of the National Assembly tabled last December, which is entitled Quebec and the Free-Trade Area of the Americas: Political and Socioeconomic Effects.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to begin with a few words about the Committee on Institutions of the National Assembly. It is one of 10 standing committees and is composed of 12 members from all political parties present in the National Assembly, that is, from both the opposition and the government sides. Excuse me, there is also the ADQ member. We have at least three parties. The committee's terms of reference include the fields of justice, public security, the Constitution and international affairs, as well as everything concerning the Executive Council.

This committee, like your committee, has a power of initiative, which means that, with the unanimous consent of committee members, it may initiate examination of, or terms of reference on, subjects that it deems to be important in keeping with its duties. Therefore, all the committee members agreed that it was urgent and necessary to study this issue. I must point out that the work done as part of this exercise was approached in a completely non-partisan manner. The report produced by the committee was a unanimous report, and I think that this is a fundamental consideration when judging the significance of the report and the soundness of its recommendations.

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We began this study in June 2000, by launching far-ranging public consultations. For the benefit of members of this standing committee, I would explain that we innovated by calling for public briefs in the traditional manner, namely through notices in newspapers, and so on, but also by allowing our fellow citizens to express their views and opinions by means of the Internet. I believe it is important, for the sake of democracy, to use and to take advantage of this opportunity to reach even more people and obtain their input. In many cases, we are reaching citizens who are not necessarily represented within large organizations.

In response to our invitation, we received 41 briefs, collected 25 opinions from the Internet and met with 36 people and groups. The report was tabled in December and, in the committee's view, is only an initial step.

We think that each of the major standing committees of the National Assembly, in their respective jurisdictions, should examine the impact of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas as well as the issue of hemispheric integration. One obvious example is culture, which, as far as Quebec in particular is concerned, is especially significant. This applies to others as well. It is especially important here, at the pan-Canadian level.

So, this is an important proposal. The third summit will be taking place soon, bringing together 34 heads of state once again, to continue to work vigorously on this major proposal.

The plan for hemispheric integration has four main components: first, preserving and strengthening democracy; second, economic integration and free trade; third, eradicating poverty and discrimination; four, sustainable development and the environment.

We therefore clearly realize that this is a huge, comprehensive undertaking that encompasses not only economic and financial issues, but political, social and democratic considerations as well.

However, we must keep in mind that the Free Trade Area of the Americas is the only component of this huge initiative of hemispheric integration that seems to be moving ahead as was more or less planned. It is only one of the components, but, clearly, it is the one that has made the most progress. I think I can say that committee members were concerned that the other three major components of this huge undertaking were dragging behind.

As we all know, it is an ambitious undertaking. Let me recall the main features of the Free Trade Area of the Americas: an agreement that could be concluded as early as 2003 and implemented as early as 2005; 800 million consumers; a total GDP of $10,000 billion annually, a single large market; an incomparable variety of economies and people participating. Therefore, as parliamentarians, we have no choice but to look very carefully at such initiatives, through the lenses of democracy, the economy, the environment, social policies, culture and many others.

Mr. Chairman, after this introduction, I will go directly to our recommendations and our conclusions, so as to have perhaps more time for questions and answers with the members of the standing committee.

The first main observation is the noticeable lack of transparency that seems to characterize the whole process. Of course, this is nothing new, as everyone has been talking about it for some time now. All of the groups and individuals who testified before the committee mentioned a definite lack of information, despite the commitments that had been made by the heads of state at the start of the process.

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So, the witnesses were almost unanimous in levelling this criticism. Of course, such a situation has the effect of fuelling the worst fears and leaving room for all kinds of speculation, for example, on the future of public services and on the treatment that will be given to water as well. In such a context, the issue of water is also a topical one. The committee deplores this situation and believes that we should take steps to make this process much more transparent than it is now. It also believes that, in order to clarify the issues, we should conduct an in-depth evaluation of the lessons learned from these major free-trade associations that we have belonged to for a number of years, at least a decade. Although it would be a complex task, why do we not undertake an exhaustive study of the advantages and disadvantages, the pros and cons of the NAFTA and the FTA? For example, the NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, is often credited—and perhaps a little too quickly—with ushering in the period of prosperity that we have experienced in the last few years and the increase in wealth that has been observed in the participating countries. But to what extent are the advantages that are currently observed attributable to an initiative like the NAFTA? The NAFTA might be responsible for 90%, or perhaps for 10%, of the advantages. No one can say today.

We therefore ask the following question: before venturing rashly into an even broader economic association, can we reasonably do without an in-depth study of the results of our experience in the last 10 years? The committee consequently makes the recommendation—I will speak to it a little later—that a thorough analysis and assessment be conducted. Although it recognizes that there will be obstacles and difficulties, these obstacles and difficulties should not prevent us from going ahead with such an analysis.

The second main observation, which is also receiving more and more attention, is that there is a democratic deficit. To begin with, the implication of the first observation that I just mentioned, is that the lack of transparency leads to the conclusion that there may be a democratic deficit, of course. In addition, however, despite the limited involvement of civil society in the negotiating process itself, there is nothing to prevent broader, more frequent and more constant participation by the various groups of civil society in consultations and in monitoring the process than has been the case up to now.

Furthermore, there is a democratic deficit because of the troubling absence—and the adjective is mine, not the committee's—the significant, almost total absence of parliamentarians in the whole process, both upstream and downstream, that is, both before the negotiations are initiated and concerning the possible outcome of such negotiations. I realize that, in the case of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, the negotiations are not over and so we parliamentarians cannot easily examine a possible agreement. But in other cases, for example the NAFTA, we found that parliamentarians were involved in a minimal way, after the fact.

Let us look at this question of the lack of upstream involvement on the part of parliamentarians, which I could compare to the process used in negotiating a collective agreement. I believe that our colleague is familiar with this process. What happens? There is a general assembly that usually mandates an executive to negotiate a certain number of items. In the second stage, the items are in fact negotiated. During the actual negotiating process, the details of the discussion are perhaps less distant, but information is nevertheless constantly made available to members so that they may form an opinion on how things are going. This is followed by the ratification of a draft agreement or a draft accord.

Naturally, no comparison is perfect, but I think that our executives should be wise enough to, in the first place, ensure greater involvement of parliamentarians in developing negotiating mandates and also in following the progress of the negotiations, without going into detail, by providing information. Of course, not everything can be made public during negotiations. There is no point in everything being public, as this might make negotiations difficult. I have less experience than some of you around the table. I can understand that, but there should be clear mandates at the start, mandates that we think should be approved by parliaments. During the negotiations, there should definitely be much more information available than there is currently and, at the conclusion of the negotiations, parliaments should ratify the draft agreements signed in principle.

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The second problem, then, is the democratic deficit, the fact that parliamentarians are absent from the process. This is particularly important in the case of parliamentarians within a federation, which is the situation of parliamentarians in the National Assembly of Quebec. Not only are we still kept away from these various stages within the process leading up to the signing of an agreement, but in addition, our own executive is not at the negotiating table. Consequently, there is a twofold problem.

However, as lawmakers, there are a number of responsibilities that we must exercise in our fields of jurisdiction. In these fields, we are not at all in a position to reassure in any way those people whom we have the duty to represent that, in the end, any agreement—signed or unsigned—is acceptable. So, there is a twofold problem for members of a parliament within a federation.

We have other reservations, Mr. Chairman, and I will rush through them because I really don't want to take too much time. There is the sharing of wealth. All of the witnesses told us that they thought a Free Trade Area of the Americas could in fact help create more wealth for all of the peoples concerned. But the major obstacle is the sharing of the wealth. People who have given somewhat closer study to, for example, what has happened in the areas where we already operate, wonder whether the end result has not been to make the rich richer, while the poorest classes have not become any wealthier and have not gained any advantage from these large entities.

There are also the social clauses. To what extent could the agreements that we might sign, or that might be signed on our behalf, call into question some of the progress we have achieved in areas such as working conditions and the environment? If we sign them, to what extent might the social standards that we have adopted have to be revised, and possibly lowered?

The environment is another concern. There is the whole process of dispute settlement and its impact on legislatures, which we have noted so far with regard to Chapter 11. This might force a government, or even a parliament, to amend a legislative provision as a result of a settlement or ruling of an international trade tribunal that would be able to order us to amend a provision that had the support of our people, in order to abide by the terms of an agreement.

We have additional concerns regarding the marketing of certain commodities. I mentioned water and commercial services a few minutes ago.

I'm about finished, Mr. Chairman. I have attempted to group together under five main headings the committee's recommendations, that you will find in the report which has been made public. If it is your wish to have a copy, Mr. Chairman, I will be happy to send you one.

Our first main conclusion or recommendation is the duty to inform and involve; the general public must be informed, parliamentarians must be informed, and all those who may have reasonable concerns around the issues being discussed should be informed, and should also be involved.

Secondly, we recommend that we assume our responsibilities. This message is directed in large part at our parliamentary colleagues of the Americas. We believe that, together, we have not played our role as we could have. Parliaments are the places where debates ought to be held. They are intended to be places where people can make themselves heard on such fundamental issues. We have observed, however, that few parliaments and few parliamentarians have looked into these issues, and I congratulate you, Mr. Chairman, as well as the members of this committee, for examining this issue now.

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Few parliaments listened to what various groups of citizens had to say about this initiative. But if our constituents cannot make their views known to their elected officials, what will happen? They will take to the streets. They will make themselves heard there if they cannot express themselves somewhere else, in a place where they should normally get a better hearing.

I will summarize our third main recommendation as follows: there must be respect. What has to be respected? Our jurisdictions must be respected. We want respect for our jurisdictions as parliamentarians in a parliament within a federation, and we want respect for our values. In Quebec—and it is probably true in the other provinces of Canada—we have a different way of doing things. We have economic tools, for example, that are not used in other provinces like Ontario, and that's okay. We have also opted for a pan-Canadian health care system that is largely publicly funded and operated. Will the agreement that is going to be signed jeopardize these choices that we have made in a democratic manner within our society? So, we must be careful. The third recommendation is that jurisdictions need to be respected, our values and our social choices need to be respected.

The fourth main recommendation is that we work on all the components. Currently, as I said earlier, true progress is being made on only one component, the Free Trade Area of the Americas strictly speaking. We are dragging our heels on the other three components.

Lastly, there is a set of recommendations that are intended more for our executive, for the government of Quebec, suggesting that Quebec prepare itself to enter into this new association.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Bertrand. That is very interesting. I am sure there will be some questions.

[English]

Next I'd like to turn to Mr. Ken Traynor from the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

Thank you very much for coming, Mr. Traynor.

Mr. Ken Traynor (Director, International Program, Canadian Environmental Law Association): Thank you.

The Canadian Environmental Law Association is a publicly funded legal aid clinic specializing in environmental issues, which is part of a system of 72 legal aid clinics in Ontario. We have a community board, a law reform in legal education mandate, besides our direct legal representation work. The organization is 30 years old and has been involved in the development of most major environmental legislation in Ontario and at the federal level in Canada over those last 30 years.

As part of our law reform and legal education mandate, we've been actively involved in the analysis of and the political debates around all of the major trade and investment agreements of the past decade, beginning with the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement in 1998, right through NAFTA, the GATT, the development to the WTO, and the multilateral agreement on investment negotiations. Now we are actively involved around the negotiations of the free trade area of the Americas and the General Agreement on Trade in Services.

We're also active members of Common Frontiers and the Hemispheric Social Alliance, which is sponsoring the people's summit in Quebec City.

In a nutshell, in our view these agreements represent a significant set of new corporate property rights—especially in North America—without any new corresponding responsibilities or public checks. Those are, I hope, the issues and the role we can discuss here today.

They represent a significant strengthening of the major deregulatory pressures afoot in North America and internationally. In our view, another way to think of these agreements is essentially a corporate insurance policy against creative public policy.

CELA has been involved in a whole wide range of international and Canadian-based law issues. We were actively involved in the five-year review of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act in all of its bruising political battles. We have been involved as part of the Canadian delegation in the negotiation of the Biosafety Protocol. We have participated—again as part of the Canadian delegation—in the negotiation of the persistent organic pollutants negotiations as well. We want to try to bring some of the experience we've had in those negotiations to bear on the questions here today.

We've presented—at a number of different times in the past—to this committee about our views on trade issues. We could talk extensively, and we have a wide range of resources on our website about the role of chapter 11 in the investor state. We're actively engaged with the government around the questions of the implications for domestic regulation of the proposals that are coming forward in both the FTAA and the General Agreement on Trade in Services around their attempts to move into the arena of domestic regulation here in Canada.

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In trying to decide what issues it would be useful to focus my ten minutes on here today, I figure if you want to talk about those issues, you can ask me direct questions about it.

I'd like to shift the ground a little bit. In developing my comments today, I reviewed some of the issues that others have raised with you. I found Bill Dymond's comments, as essentially a trade practitioner, very interesting.

First, he reinforced our view that the text of these agreements must be made much more widely available, although I'm not sure that was his intended message when he said, “weigh it, don't read it”.

When asked about whether public day care in Quebec...

The Chair: Are you concerned about how much paper it's consuming?

Mr. Ken Traynor: Yes. We have a range of concerns. If we had more creative trade policy, which will be the point I will make hopefully by the end of this, we wouldn't need necessarily those 900 pages. There are a lot of things we know already.

When he was asked if the public day care in Quebec would be threatened, first he replied yes. Then he replied “We need a reservation on day care. Is it adequate in the FTAA? You are going to have to tell me what is in it first.” And that is exactly the point.

The devil is in the details. There is a range of expertise, which can be brought to bear on these issues, which does not presently reside within the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. They do not implement environmental agreements, yet the province of Ontario... They do not regulate in the health sector, and yet many of the decisions they take are key ones as to whether we will have the tools to develop the kind of public policy we want in the future. So, yes, we must open up that process more creatively.

In our view, we need to open up the process of making trade policy in order to improve it. I hope this committee will play an active and key role in making that happen. Then, if opening up the process to public scrutiny derails the negotiations, as it did for Bill Dymond's MAI, so be it. That's the reality of public policy-making.

We need to subject our international rule-making to the same level of scrutiny as we do our domestic legislative rule-making, and at all stages of its development. There needs to be no free ride—no special ride—for international trade negotiations that we would not accord to our own development of domestic law.

Secondly, again, a key and interesting point that Bill Dymond made was that he saw a key role of trade agreements is to create rules and institutions needed for global governance. This is precisely our concern. We are not willing to leave the development of these institutions to the trade bureaucrats' hands alone. I'm not saying they don't have a role and the experience to bring to bear on this, but they are not the fount of all knowledge on how to develop creative public policy.

I want to just take a moment to use some of the experience from the MAI, from one of your counterparts. I don't know if you reviewed what has become known as the Lalumière report, which was the report of the European member of Parliament, Catherine Lalumière, and a representative of the ministry of finance of France when the MAI negotiations were suspended. I think it offers us some interesting perspectives as we try to think what do we do with an FTAA. I'd just like to quote briefly from it:

More than any other international agreement of an economic nature, the MAI has raised objections and tensions at the heart of civil society. The opposition to it was surprising in its scale, strength and the speed with which it appeared and developed. The consultations enabled us to clarify this phenomenon and to understand better the positions and expectations of diverse sectors of opinion and the professions.

1) The opposition presents new characteristics

it appeared simultaneously in several countries.

it goes beyond merely sectoral or technical concerns.

it puts the interests of new actors at stake. Beyond the traditional representatives of the professions, the trade unions and the economic sector, one should note the activism of the non-governmental organisations. ... NGOs with considerable means (Greenpeace, WWF, Friends of the Earth...) are at the origin of this challenge to the MAI. These organisations have refined and diffused to all countries an anti-MAI position which is now expressed in similar terms throughout the diverse countries of the OECD.

the way the negotiation is carried out is challenged as much as its outcome. More or less legitimately, the secrecy which surrounded the negotiations and the deep motivations of the participants are questioned.

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The MAI thus marks a stage in international economic negotiations. For the first time one is seeing the emergence of a “global civil society” represented by NGOs which are often based in several states and communicate beyond their frontiers. This evolution is doubtless irreversible.

On one hand, organisations representing civil society have become aware of the consequences of international economic negotiations. They are determined to leave their mark on them. Furthermore, the development of the Internet has shaken up the environment of the negotiations. It allows the instant diffusion of the texts under discussion, whose confidentiality becomes more and more theoretical. It permits, beyond national boundaries, the sharing of knowledge and expertise. On a subject which is highly technical, the representatives of civil society seemed to us perfectly well informed, and their criticisms well argued on a legal level.

[The negotiating method] did not allow governments to exercise their political responsibilities over matters which are however essential. All the work on it took place within the negotiating group which was itself split up into technical sub-groups. Its communiqués on the MAI submitted for ministerial approval are limited to the annual repetition of the same generalisations. At no time were the questions mentioned above—[the political questions]—brought to the attention of ministers, even less made the subject of debates.

Now, there's a lot of other good material in it, but I wanted to essentially bring that to your attention, because I think that describes the reality of what we are facing with regard to the negotiation of a free trade agreement of the Americas.

If we're going to move to begin to develop new public institutions at the global level around global government, I would like to offer up a couple of ideas based on our recent experience here at CELA.

We participated actively in the negotiations of the Biosafety Protocol. I think in a review of that Biosafety Protocol we could begin to look at some ideas, which you could use—and I hope you will use—to begin to craft a different negotiating process and a role for both yourselves and ourselves as a part of civil society in this negotiating process.

The Biosafety Protocol arose out of the concerns of the ongoing raging debate, which we may hear more about from representatives who speak later today, around the quality of the review around genetically modified organisms and the potential threats, environmental and otherwise, that the wide-scale release of those organisms offer to us.

The Biosafety Protocol is not a particularly edifying, I would say, example of Canada's role at the international level, but the outcome of the negotiations themselves is useful. I was disappointed, and as an organization we were disappointed, in the role the Canadian government chose in that. But within that negotiating process—it was carried out within the United Nations process—it was a very open process. As an NGO, we were actively involved in the advisory committee to the Canadian government. We participated in the negotiations, and there was a very creative chair of those negotiations who used some creative negotiating techniques to get around a host of very real, significant problems.

One of the interesting aspects of this was that as the process unfolded you had the tremendous public opposition to the introduction of genetically modified organisms into Europe—the European food system—so you had a very active public position already established there. Then you had, in the negotiations in Seattle, the chief trade negotiator of the European Union essentially trading away the forum for the decision-making around what genetically modified organisms would be allowed into Europe. He tried to push it into the WTO as a forum for that negotiation. What you had was essentially a trade negotiator attempting to compromise public interest in order to meet his goals as a negotiator.

The environmental ministers of the European Union stood up and said to Pascal Lamy that he did not have the authority to essentially make that compromise around public interest, and he had to withdraw that compromise.

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You then shift to the negotiating forum of the Biosafety Protocol. The Colombian environmental minister, Juan Mayr, who was chairing those negotiations, invited the environmental ministers from around the world to come to Montreal to participate and to provide, if you will, a second voice to the negotiators who were participating in that forum. So you involved environmental ministers, you did not leave it in the hands of trade negotiators at that time.

So out of that process, which was a tremendously intense one, I would argue that an interesting development happened at the international level—we're talking of, essentially, January 2000. There was a proposal on the table—Canada was very supportive of this—that the provisions of the Biosafety Protocol should not affect the rights and obligations of any party to this protocol deriving from any existing international agreements to which it is also a party. The intent of that clause was to say that trade agreements trump anything you will do in this room to do with the trade in genetically modified organisms. That was the intent of the language being proposed. That language was rejected by the countries of the world after the WTO was in existence. Basically, what they said was, we will not allow this agreement to be subjugated to trade rules—the trade über alles kind of concept that is often out there. After vigorous and hostile debate, the protocol concluded with trade language only in the preamble of the agreement. As environmentalists, we're well aware of how you shift those things you don't want to actually act on in trade agreements off into the preamble.

So I would suggest you can argue now that the international community has said, in these complex issues, especially environmental issues, we do not accept that the WTO rules all. Their trade panels will not be the key forums to determine what kinds of environmental and health law we have, and so on. So I urge you to look at that and to begin to think about what space it offers you in this.

A second point of disagreement is that inside the text of the agreement it incorporates the precautionary principle. I won't take your time by going into a long debate about the precautionary principle, but again, this is the first time you have involved that kind of language in an agreement that is there to regulate trade in genetically modified organisms. I would urge you to think creatively about the use of the precautionary principle, especially given the threat that is clearly shown to us from the recent decision by the Bush administration that the Kyoto Protocol and the kinds of challenges we face there are something they're not going to use. So precaution can be extremely important.

I've used up my time. I wanted to speak a bit about the whole campaign concerning access to essential medicines and the role civil society organizations have played in pushing that challenge to the trade-related intellectual properties sections of these trade agreements onto the political stage. I'm sure others this morning are going to speak to that issue, so I would like to come back to it in the question period. Again, I think it reiterates the importance of developing a much more creative use of civil society energies.

So my words to you are, think outside the box. Take advantage of the opportunities provided by the very act of civil society engagement on these issues. Find ways to speak to the aspirations that are being so vigorously presented. If our leaders were more passionately addressing the key problems of this hemisphere, rather than just staying on message, they would not have to meet behind a three-metre fence in Quebec City.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Traynor. It was very helpful.

I'd like now to turn to Mr. Aaron Cosbey, who is with the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Thank you very much for coming, Mr. Cosbey.

Mr. Aaron Cosbey (Associate and Senior Adviser, Trade and Investment, International Institute for Sustainable Development): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'm both privileged and challenged to be here today on the tails of so many expert witnesses who have appeared before this standing committee. I am privileged, because they have said much of what I would like to convey to you, and therefore my job is easier, and challenged, in that it is consequently difficult for me to add value, but I will do my best.

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The International Institute for Sustainable Development is a policy research institute based in Winnipeg, created and in part supported by the governments of Canada and Manitoba. We have been working, among other things, on trade and investment issues and their sustainable development implications since 1991. In that decade of intense analysis we have come to the conclusion that trade and investment liberalization are necessary, but not sufficient components of sustainable development. They are necessary because trade and investment liberalization hold out the best hope on offer for raising standards of living, for transferring new, environmentally sound technologies to countries where those things are very much needed—and in the context of the western hemisphere, we know there are countries that are crying out for the resources that trade and investment can raise. They are not sufficient because if the proper environmental management systems are not in place, if the social infrastructure isn't there to take advantage of the opportunities those agreements create, if liberalization is too rushed or improperly staged, or if the regulations are poorly framed, then trade and investment liberalization can help degrade the environment, can threaten their ability to regulate the protection of environmental and social goals, and can worsen vital social indicators.

So the $64 million question is how to make it sufficient, and particularly, in the context of these hearings, how to make it sufficient in relation to the free trade area of the Americas and the summit process.

I'll address the answers to those questions by talking about two models through which we can incorporate sustainable development objectives in trade negotiation, by talking a little bit about process, and by focusing on one of the areas my institute has most intensively examined, and that is investment.

I start, then, with two models for incorporating sustainable development objectives in what is essentially a trade negotiation. Although Monsieur Bertrand spoke eloquently on the other aspects of the summit process, the FTAA, as he correctly pointed out, seems to be the crown jewel and is the only thing moving ahead with enough energy to be a going concern.

So there are two main ways to incorporate those types of objectives in a trade negotiation. The first is the NAFTA model, whereby a trade agreement creates the necessary momentum—an institutional freight train, if you will—onto which we can piggyback what are essentially environmental agreements. In the NAFTA context we have these side agreements on environmental cooperation. This is an environmental agreement. It has very weak links to the trade agreement itself. It is, in essence, an agreement about doing things in the environmental context that we should have done whether there was a trade agreement or not. So we have standardization of environmental data across the countries, we have eco-regional state of environment reporting, we have action on shared issues, such as migratory species and persistent organic pollutions, and we have capacity building and information exchange. These are the types of things that, as I say, are good whether we have a trade agreement or not. But the existence of the trade agreement and the energy in the negotiations for a trade agreement give us the vehicle by which we can introduce these types of changes.

These things are good as far as they go, inasmuch as they strengthen environmental management and reduce the potential for trade and environment clashes. However, they have few real links to the trade regime itself, and so a second model is also necessary if we want to ensure that trade and investment liberalization help us to achieve sustainable development. This is the integrated model. In other words, how do you get those objectives addressed directly in the agreement itself?

First, you need appropriate language in the text itself. While we've heard that preamble language is not all that significant, a preamble statement of a sustainable development objective in the FTAA is absolutely necessary. These are more than words. We've seen in the WTO context how a preamble objective of sustainable development has vitally affected WTO judgments where trade and environment have clashed, and for the better. Preamble language is not meaningless language. We need preamble language in the FTAA agreement that states clearly that one of our objectives is sustainable development.

Second, in each of the nine negotiating groups—not in a separate group, not in an environmental side agreement, but in each of the nine negotiating groups—we need to take seriously the environmental implications of what is being negotiated. In agriculture we need to look at what will be the environmental consequences of agricultural liberalization. In investment, we need to look at what will be the consequences, for environmental regulation and environmental management, of the language we're negotiating. In services, we need to look perhaps at lowering tariffs on environmental services.

• 0950

In each of these groups I would argue that there is an essential environmental and sustainable development component, and we need to ensure that those things are taken into consideration in those negotiations, not only in some side agreement.

Finally, and this is something of a process concern, in an integrated model it is essential to do environmental assessment of the agreement in question, both before the agreement is undertaken, during the process of negotiation, and after the agreement on an ongoing basis. If we don't understand what are the environmental and sustainable development implications of what we are negotiating, we have no way to address them. Whether they are positive or negative, we have no opportunity to enhance the positive and avoid the negative. This is an essential step.

In this context, I would like to congratulate the Government of Canada for its recently enunciated policy on assessment of trade liberalization and environmental liberalization agreements but express my concern that while we have committed to undertake that type of assessment, and while the framework for undertaking it is a good framework, the resources for undertaking it seem to me woefully inadequate.

For a process that is designed to address the FTAA, WTO services and agricultural negotiations, the Central American agreement, and the Costa Rican agreement, we do not have a single extra staff person at DFAIT. We have some resources, but I don't think it reflects the level of seriousness needed if we are to understand what the implications are of what we are negotiating.

Finally, a warning. The NAFTA approach, without the integrated approach, risks leaving us worse off than we were before. I do not want to be handed a sandbox in which to play as an environmentalist while the real negotiations proceed without consideration of environmental objectives. If all we get is a side agreement, there is the danger that we will be sidelined into devoting our energy on that agreement and that process, while the real and key economic issues that will affect sustainable development objectives are being pursued elsewhere in insularity.

Now to the process issues. You've heard enough about transparency from previous testimony, so I will be brief on this, but it is obvious to me, and I hope to you, that the integrated approach works only in the context of properly conducted negotiations. When I say properly conducted, I mean conducted in a spirit of openness.

Openness has two components, one of which is the availability of the information to the interested public. The other is the mechanisms for the use of that information by the public in the policy decision process.

As I say, we have heard adequate testimony on the subject, but I just stress that what we are dealing with in the FTAA context to date is an anachronism. When trade agreements were about negotiating tariff rates, when they were about purely commercial implications, it was appropriate for them to be held behind closed doors, because vested interests would affect the process of negotiation.

That is no longer the case. We are now dealing with issues of vital public interest, including environmental management, health and education service provisions, intellectual property rights, competition law, and investment, which has implications for national development strategies. These are areas in which we go beyond simple commercial negotiations. They are of vital public interest and need to be opened to public input.

I need not stress—it has been stressed many times—that my appearing before you and the deliberations of this standing committee are an inefficient use of time compared with what they would be were we deliberating on the basis of known negotiating text.

Lastly, I turn to the specific topic of investment rules in the FTAA context. I dwell on this partly because my institute has done several years of intense analysis on this subject. I say with some humility that we are among the leading experts on NAFTA's chapter 11 and its implications for sustainable development and environment.

Our conclusion after those years of effort is that NAFTA's chapter 11 is serving in ways that its drafters never intended. Instead of serving as a protection for investors, for fair treatment of investment, it is serving as a strategic tool to be used by corporations in attacking and preventing both legitimate environmental regulation and regulations on other matters of public interest.

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I will mention briefly the example of the Methanex suit. A Canadian corporation is litigating against the Government of the United States for a non-discriminatory measure to ban a suspected carcinogen in the state of California. Methanex is claiming that this amounts to, among other things, an expropriation of its business interest in selling the constituent of that carcinogen to the Californian public. Our institute is seeking to intervene in this case as a friend of the court. We've had encouraging precedents from the tribunal to date.

I bring up the example to underscore the kinds of serious public policy issues we're facing in the context of NAFTA, chapter 11. I applaud and support the resolve of the minister in stating that he does not want to repeat the mistakes of NAFTA in the FTAA context.

I raise the issue because I believe it to be important but also because I believe it to be a striking example of the need for openness in trade and investment negotiations. The NAFTA chapter 11 debacle should never have happened. Had the negotiations for NAFTA been open in the way I propose they be in the FTAA context, we would not be in the state we are in today.

Environmentalists and others beyond the narrow investment sphere that negotiated the chapter 11 provisions could have warned us about what we were getting into. Now that we are into it we are seeing it as a much more sticky proposition to get out of than it would have been to prevent. This, in other words, is a classic argument for openness in the context of negotiations. I can't think of a better one.

To summarize, then, trade and investment liberalization are necessary, but not sufficient, components of sustainable development. Ways in which to make it sufficient include: the negotiation of a side agreement that will address environmental objectives in the context of the FTAA, in the context of the Americas; an integrated approach that ensures that we have sustainable development language in both the preamble of the agreement and the text of the agreement itself, and that ensures that in each of the nine negotiating groups environmental considerations are taken seriously; and as a prerequisite to the above, a more open process for negotiation, one that includes both mechanisms for public input and transparency to public input.

In these ways we hope the free trade area of the Americas can fulfil its promise for sustainable development in the hemisphere.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Cosbey.

Mr. Keyes, before we turn to Mr. Elston, I wonder if you could take the chair. I have to put a report in the House.

Excuse me, witnesses. I'll be back as soon as I put my report in the House.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Stan Keyes (Hamilton West, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The committee will turn its attention to the next witness, a familiar face to many of us around the table, Mr. Murray Elston, president of Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies.

Welcome to the committee, Mr. Elston. I understand you will be speaking also for Mr. McCool. Is that correct?

Mr. Murray J. Elston (President, Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies): Actually, we will share our time, but we won't be going on too awfully long.

Let me first introduce ourselves. While we represent pharmaceutical companies, something that people generally misunderstand is that we represent not only the traditional large companies but also a number of evolving Canadian companies, the so-called biopharmaceutical companies whose lifeblood is the prospect of invention and innovation. It is in fact the lifeblood of our industry, where we invent new medicines to deal with existing conditions.

We have taken note of where the Canadian government has been with respect to the announcement of their innovation strategy, the knowledge-based economy initiatives. We believe in the work we do, creating responses to long-lasting health conditions, positive results in increasing the lifespan of people, and making their lives better. We in fact represent a very good example of how the knowledge-based economy can be beneficial.

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In that regard, we believe the people who are doing the work in Canada, the women and men who are researching and discovering new products, have something to offer in the world context. We also believe that in addition to the predictability that has come with respect to some of the international agreements that let a trading nation like Canada into some of the markets around the world, an initiative around the free trade of the Americas agreement would also provide some of the predictability required if we are to be able to assure ourselves of access to markets around the world for the new inventions that are discovered here.

So having introduced that very briefly and understanding that time is an important element, perhaps I could turn over the discussion to Mr. McCool for more precision with respect to some of the items, and we'll be very pleased to answer more questions that we can help the members with this morning.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Stan Keyes): Thank you, Mr. Elston.

Mr. McCool, please.

Mr. Terry McCool (Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, Eli Lilly Pharmaceutical Company): A couple of years ago we appeared before this committee in Montreal and presented a brief outlining our position on competitive intellectual property as part of a global free trade agreement. Today, I'd just like to reiterate some of the points we touched on at that time.

Canada's research-based pharmaceutical companies applaud the efforts of the governments in the western hemisphere to initiate negotiations on free trade. The successful conclusion of these negotiations will spur continued economic growth and development throughout the region and will be a boon to consumers and businesses. The Rx&D appreciates the opportunity to highlight the areas that are most important to it and to its member companies.

Systems that effectively protect intellectual property rights are essential to a knowledge-based industry like the research-based pharmaceutical industry. Effective and well-integrated intellectual property systems are a necessary component of any initiative to promote market openness among FTAA countries. To build such systems, however, requires more than just the adoption of legal standards in the form of national laws. It requires efficient and transparent procedures for procuring rights—particularly patents and trademarks—and fair, timely, and transparent means of enforcing those rights.

Patents protect the inventions resulting from R and D and are internationally recognized as the critical driver of innovation and technology transfer. Without adequate patent protection for their inventions, individuals and businesses would not invest in or undertake the often large-scale risks associated with expensive R and D processes in Canada or in other countries. And despite the significant progress made in the Uruguay Round negotiations in NAFTA to lower trade barriers, arbitrary government policies continue to persist in the region.

The FTAA negotiations should build on a foundation of compliance with existing WTO obligations and should be used to break down the remaining trade barriers and distortions. A comprehensive and strong FTAA agreement should not only open Latin American markets to exports and investment opportunities, but also help maintain the competitiveness of the research-based pharmaceutical companies throughout the hemisphere.

Intellectual property protection is governed internationally by TRIPS, and I'm sure you've heard significant testimony to the fact that this is the most comprehensive multilateral agreement on intellectual property. The agreement applies to copyright, trademarks, industrial design, and of course patents. It deals with the three main areas of protection: standards of protection, enforcement of rights, and dispute settlement mechanisms and procedures. All countries that signed that agreement in 1996 agreed to improve their intellectual property laws, with the deadline of 2000 for some of the developing world and 2005 for the least developed countries.

The process of innovation and the economic development that innovation drives are crucial to the prosperity and competitiveness of any nation, and excellence in all aspects of science and technology is fundamental to a successful innovation system. In today's society, the building of successful knowledge-based, high-tech industries is pivotal to a thriving economy and the ability of a country to be globally competitive—and I think Canada is a good example of that.

The winners, as stated by the Prime Minister and the ministers of finance and industry on several occasions, will be those countries that quickly adopt measures to anticipate and stay ahead of the competition, placing themselves in the leadership position to take advantage of the opportunities arising from this competitive environment.

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Rx&D believes the free trade area of the Americas is important to achieving greater prosperity and a better quality of life for all. As a key player in the knowledge-based economy, we believe the Canadian government should have a genuine commitment to ensuring the FTAA will enable everyone to participate in this knowledge economy.

Thank you. We'd be happy to take any questions.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Stan Keyes): Thank you very much, Mr. McCool.

For the benefit of our viewing audience, Mr. McCool represents the Eli Lilly Pharmaceutical Company.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for your submission to the committee. We do appreciate it.

Just for the consideration of the committee and its witnesses, if there are any cell phones on, would you move them to vibrate mode or turn them off for us, please. Thank you.

We'll begin a round of questioning now with Mr. Martin.

Mr. Martin, a five-minute round.

Mr. Keith Martin (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, CA): Merci beaucoup, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, panel, for coming here today and talking about this very important subject.

I'll just ask a couple of questions; one is to Mr. Traynor.

Mr. Traynor, what solutions could we utilize that would enable us to incorporate the protesters in a meaningful way in the dialogue so that we can have a fair trade agreement for the Americas? It appears to me that many of the concerns of the protesters are what is going to be discussed in Quebec in the context of the agreement, or in the process leading up to that some years hence. How can we involve the people who are against it in a meaningful way so we don't get this destructive behaviour that so marred the debates in Seattle?

And how do you think we could get labour and environmental standards incorporated into an agreement that would enable us to develop international standards? A lot of these problems, as both you and Mr. Cosbey know, are of an international nature, particularly the environmental ones, and all of us have a strong desire to ensure that people in developing countries are going to share in better labour standards and have better environmental standards than they do today. So how do we incorporate these into an agreement that enables us to have a multilateral international agreement, while at the same time respecting the autonomy of a nation-state?

I'd like both Mr. Cosbey and Mr. Traynor to address those.

Mr. Ken Traynor: I think the starting point has to be a clear indication that there is political will to accomplish those goals. And that's, I think, what's been missing in the run-up to these negotiations, to the summit that is here—where is the evidence that the political will exists to actually pursue those ideas?

I have a couple of quick examples. If you were to talk to the Canadian Labour Congress about labour standards... they were intimately involved in the discussions around the North American Free Trade Agreement. As you well remember, there was a tremendous media focus at the time of the negotiations on both the environmental and the labour challenges in the border regions—the border between Mexico and the United States. At that time the suggestion was that free trade would lift all boats, we would end up with a better world, and we would have environmental side agreements that would change those realities.

If you want, that was the political promise. But any thinking person who travels that border, who's been there, knows that none of those political promises have been met. As recently as last month, representatives of a small union who were on the Mexico border came forward to vote for their union. It was not a secret ballot and there was significant intimidation of those people. So they don't have those rights yet today. It's been seven, eight, nine years since they were promised that free trade would lift all of these boats.

So to start with, there needs to be a clear expression of political will.

What kind of political will could we expect? Well, we could hear from the mouth of—just speaking about Canada—Prime Minister Chrétien that his concerns, the concerns he was taking into this meeting of the summit in Quebec City, actually included those realities. For example, I've heard a lot of talk about the importance of connectivity, that the ministers from around the hemisphere are saying, we've got to get everybody on the Internet, this will create this vibrant democracy, and so on. We have a computer in my house, and Canadians have taken up Internet connectivity and so on. But what do you say to a woman garment-worker in Ciudad Juárez who's getting paid $2 a day? How do you create from $2 a day a lifestyle that would allow you to provide the education you want for your kids by connecting them to the Internet in order to take advantage of all of these opportunities?

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So the rhetoric we hear from the leaders about these issues does not match up with the real concerns that people have day to day, whether it's environmental or a labour issue. There are, as I suggested, a lot of creative ideas out there that could be used to craft these kinds of agreements. But there has to be the political will to engage them. When that's there, we can talk about details.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Stan Keyes): Mr. Martin, your time has expired, but we will allow the other gentleman to answer your question, because you asked for two answers. I think it's Mr. Cosbey you wanted to also answer the question?

Mr. Aaron Cosbey: I'll be very brief.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Stan Keyes): Thanks, Mr Cosbey.

Mr. Aaron Cosbey: In some aspects it's too late. If you're talking about how to ensure a proper process leading up to the Quebec City summit, we have passed up some opportunities we should have taken advantage of, including the opportunity to committee adequate resources to the assessment of the FTAA, to convince people we were going to take that exercise seriously, and to release the negotiating text and lead-up to the thing. Let me say that if you want a confrontation, if you want Molotov cocktails, one excellent way to get it is to conduct your negotiations in secret and not release the text. I'm extremely surprised, in the wake of the experience with the MAI, that the governments in the hemisphere did not learn that lesson.

There are some things it is not too late to do, including strength and commitment to the assessment process now and daily briefings for civil society representatives in Quebec as the negotiations go on, as were conducted in the WTO context at their past two ministerial meetings. So there are some things we can do, but really our opportunity for a peaceful process in Quebec has passed us by.

Your final question, how to ensure raised standards on a hemispheric basis as a result of this agreement, is an excellent one. Let me briefly contrast the EU and the NAFTA in this regard. The NAFTA is a very institutionally weak agreement. It is a trade agreement. It sets up no supranational institutions such as we have in the EU, in the parliament, the European council, and therefore has few opportunities to enforce the kinds of harmonization you might be looking for. It does have some baby steps. It has article 14, under which citizens can complain that their countries are not enforcing existing legislation on environment. That is a good step. I would like to see that repeated in the FTAA context, but I think it's highly unlikely.

In the absence of something like the European Commission, which can issue directives binding on all the countries under its jurisdiction and, very importantly, can funnel funds to those countries that are not able financially to take up those commitments—this kind of capacity building and transfer is very important—I would say we have to wait for the trickle-down mechanism to effect the harmonization. As we know, that's a very long process.

The Acting Chair (Mr. Stan Keyes): Thanks. Thank you for your brevity.

Colleagues, remember we're on five-minute rounds. If you ask a four-minute question, it doesn't leave much time for answers.

Mr. Paquette, please.

[Translation]

Mr. Pierre Paquette (Joliette, BQ): I would like to begin by thanking you for your presentations. I think that there will be enough questions to take up the few minutes that we will be spending together. I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to thank Mr. Bertrand for the help he is giving us in preparing for the Parliamentary Forum on April 7 and to again invite all members of the House of Commons to participate in this meeting on the role of parliamentarians and the role of civil society, and the links between them. In my opinion, the report released by the Committee on Institutions frames these issues very well.

However, what I would most like to do while you are here is to raise a question that has perhaps not yet been adequately explored in our work, namely, the relations between the federal government and the provinces, and Quebec in particular. We know that the provinces requested a formal mechanism that would allow them to be part of the negotiations. To date, there has been no response. This is particularly important for Quebec because of its specific national character. Is the proposal to have Quebec government representatives on Canadian negotiating teams one that could be included in the conclusions of this committee's report, Mr. Bertrand?

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Mr. Roger Bertrand: The committee, in its report, does not go as far as to propose a formal mechanism, or to describe such a mechanism. However, the report does indicate clearly that, in the system in which we operate, Quebec and all the provinces have very precise responsibilities to assume in our fields of jurisdiction, and others in the shared areas of responsibilities. Consequently, we have responsibilities to carry out in those areas also. We are in fact of the opinion that there should be a much clearer and much more formal connection between the provinces and, in particular, between Quebec and the federal government on these issues.

I will describe one example of such a mechanism. From my experience as minister responsible for Industry and Commerce, and from attending various federal-provincial meetings, I can tell you that international and interprovincial trade issues were not approached in exactly the same manner, from an organizational point of view. When the ministers for Industry and Commerce met to discuss interprovincial trade, a co-chair presided. There is in fact a chair, who is the Canadian minister responsible for International Trade, and a provincial minister is appointed or elected by his or her peers to represent the provinces at the table. This person acts as the co-chair.

As an example, would it be unthinkable for us to be able to act together when negotiating international issues and to transpose the model used for interprovincial trade to international trade? Why not? As a province, we in Quebec have responsibilities to carry out, and I believe that a principle like this, if it is valid for interprovincial trade, could also be valid for international trade. This is only an example.

Well, in response to the question that I raised briefly, we received a blunt refusal. The committee therefore did not sense, from the evidence submitted to us, a great deal of support for strengthening connections or increasing the involvement of Quebec and the provinces in the process.

Mr. Pierre Paquette: I have a question for Mr. Cosbey, and perhaps Mr. Traynor could take it up after.

With regard to Chapter 11 of the NAFTA, which raises many questions—I think that the three witnesses here mentioned it—which is often presented to us as an argument... At any rate, there have been only three proceedings in all against the Canadian government. I would like to know the total amount of money involved in these cases. In the end, is Chapter 11 such a serious threat, and can it be considered a worthwhile basis for negotiation? I would first like to know whether you have a total figure for the settlements and, secondly, whether you think that Chapter 11 is indeed a flawed basis for negotiations. Mr. Pettigrew, for his part, had assessed the settlements at 380 million dollars.

[English]

Mr. Aaron Cosbey: These are excellent questions. The answers are not entirely clear, because the difference between what is requested in a chapter 11 case and what is finally awarded is usually huge. Ethyl, for example, was requesting hundreds of millions of dollars and ended up with an $18-million settlement. Sun Belt, litigating against the Province of British Columbia, is requesting close to $1 billion, as I understand it, but is not thought to be able to get anywhere near that. So the question is hard to answer.

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I prefer to go to your second question, which I think is of greater import, and that is, is this really a threat? The proliferation of challenges, and there are 17 altogether at this moment—not versus Canada, but 17 in the whole North American context—ten of which deal with environmental matters, and the rapidly escalating, accelerating pace of initiation of those challenges leads us to believe that this is now being used as a strategic tool for lobbying. It's a very cheap one to initiate; a notice of intent to arbitrate only costs a few thousand dollars, and it has an incredible impact on government regulators who must pause and think about the financial implications of their regulations. And it is being sold, frankly, by the lawyers involved as a strategic corporate tool to be used in attacking regulations or redressing injustice where it is perceived.

So we think it is a huge threat. We think the case law to date, including the very unfortunate decision in the Metalclad case on expropriation, is extremely worrying. In that case, expropriation was ruled to be anything with a significant business impact. Of course, any environmental regulation worth passing has a significant impact on some businesses. If we are to be held to a standard whereby we pay for all of those impacts, whether the legislation in question was discriminatory or unfair or not, then we are looking at a freezing of effective environmental management in the North American context.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Traynor, do you want to add something to that?

Mr. Ken Traynor: An interesting way to look at the Ethyl settlement that was ultimately paid by Canada is that the amount of money, which in Canadian dollars at that moment was about $19.2 million, exceeds the total budget of Environment Canada for enforcement and compliance in 1998. So Ethyl—and let's remember lead in gasoline and all of the attendant impacts it has had since it was introduced—received in that year more than Environment Canada got for enforcement and compliance. That also raises some serious challenges around the role of these agreements and our balancing of public interest.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Monsieur Paradis.

[Translation]

Mr. Denis Paradis (Brome—Missisquoi, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank all the people on the panel for coming this morning.

Before asking my question, I would like to make a few comments on what Mr. Bertrand told us. Mr. Bertrand spoke of a lack of transparency, the democratic deficit and the sharing of wealth, to summarize somewhat the three main points that registered with me.

As far as transparency and the democratic deficit are concerned, I would humbly submit that we are dealing with a summit of heads of state. And, if we are talking about a summit of heads of state, what is the role of parliamentarians and what is the role of civil society? I think that, in the exercise that we are undertaking again this morning and that we have undertaken in the past, a fairly important place has been given to civil society and to parliamentarians.

As far as civil society is concerned, there is of course the parallel summit, the People's Summit of the Americas, to which the Canadian and Quebec governments have contributed. I believe that what is important, for both civil society and parliamentarians, as elected officials, is to find a forum where our fellow citizens can raise their concerns. This forum, of course, and the kind of discussions that we are having this morning, when they are reported in the press, and so on, help advance the issue.

At the same time, I see the summit as a special place where matters can be advanced globally, where we can advance our democratic values, our environmental values and our values in terms of the well-being of the peoples of the Americas. In this regard, I tell myself that we are neighbours. We have a large neighbour, the United States, with which we do business regularly. We have this proximity and we also have, in Canada, two cultures: the Latin culture and the Anglo-Saxon culture. The Latin culture will bring us closer to all of the countries of South America.

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You mentioned the figure of 800 million people in the Americas as a whole, a few minutes ago. If we substract the approximate 300 million Americans, there still remain 500 million people who have this Latin culture in common.

We have a dual legal system: civil law and common law. Civil law is found in Quebec and in all of the South American countries, and common law is found in the rest of Canada and in the United States.

So, for a slew of positive reasons, Canada should, in my humble opinion, take even greater advantage of this positioning, not just to advance trade, but also to advance issues such as human rights, democracy and the environment. I would like Mr. Bertrand to comment on how we could do more to capitalize on this special position that Canada has as a country in the Americas.

Mr. Roger Bertrand: Mr. Chairman, I think that our colleague, Mr. Paradis, is quite right when he says that there are great benefits to be drawn from a better and broader integration of the three Americas. Moreover, that is why Quebec, once again, with all parties represented, has always been a strong supporter of free trade areas and defended, from the beginning, the FTA and the NAFTA, for example.

However, we feel that it must not be done at any price. We believe that, while developing a draft free trade agreement for the three Americas, we should at the same time work as vigorously on the three other main components that I mentioned earlier, which I will not repeat. I think that you are familiar with them.

Therefore, from our standpoint the first condition is that we be able to move forward on all fronts at the same time, instead of tacking on other elements such as democracy, the environment, the fight against poverty, discrimination, etc., as an afterthought. I think that we have our work cut out for us, some catching up to do.

Second, you are right in saying that it's a summit of heads of state, but at the same time it is a hemispheric integration project, with this free trade area component which affects all citizens and those who have the amazing, and at the same time difficult task of representing the interests of those who elected them. And there is a democratic deficit when it comes to this because not only governments, but the executives as well—and the Canadian government is not alone in this—are not giving much of a role to parliamentarians in these issues, and parliamentarians themselves have done nothing to really take their place. Therefore, a part of the answer lies with us.

Mr. Cosbey said earlier that it is already too late to do certain things. He is right that it is already too late, but at the same time, if we could take the trouble to adjust the calendar in order to make up for the delay with respect to information, the democratic delay and the delay on a number of fronts, we could very well catch up and have a hemispheric integration process that would be undertaken in an orderly and measured manner.

[English]

The Chair: Merci.

Madam Davies.

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP): Thank you, Chairperson.

First of all, I'd like to thank the witnesses for coming today.

I think it's too easy to pick up on some isolated incidents of protesters, such as the ones that involve people breaking windows. There's no question there's a massive growing movement of opposition and dissent not just to the FTAA but to all of these trade liberalization agreements.

I was actually here with my colleagues, Alexa McDonough and Svend Robinson, in this room on Sunday with several hundred citizens in the Ottawa area who were participating in a teach-in on the FTAA and were engaging in discussion and practice of non-violent means of civil disobedience and dissent. I think it's too easy just to focus in on some isolated incidents. However, that's not my question.

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I wanted to pick up actually on some comments Mr. McCool made, where he says these agreements will spur economic growth and be a boon to citizens and corporations, and it will be a better quality of life for all.

On Tuesday this week we had witnesses from the Canadian Council for International Cooperation. In reading from their material, the in common Global Action Against Poverty, one of the things they put forward was that “trade was never meant to be an end in itself or a way for the rich to become richer at the expense of the poor”. They document very well that in actual fact the gap between rich and poor, under these evolving trade agreements, has increased hugely, never mind the devastation of the environment and the loss of labour standards, deregulation of labour and so on.

I have a couple of questions. We've heard a defence today of the intellectual property rights, and yet the other side of that is the denial of essential medicines to people who are dying of AIDS, or TB or malaria. We're now seeing litigation around those issues.

So I'd like you, Mr. Traynor, because I know you wanted to say some more about that, to tell us what the impact of these so-called TRIPS, or the intellectual property rights, are in denying people essential medicines.

And the other question to Mr. Cosbey is about chapter 11 under NAFTA. In my caucus, the NDP caucus, we've actually been pressing this issue under the FTAA and trying to get a clear understanding from the government. While, as you said, they say they're not seeking investor status rights and the ability to sue governments, they won't say what their position will be if the issue comes up.

Meanwhile, we're now seeing the impact of the Metalclad case. I'm from Vancouver. It's being heard in the B.C. Supreme Court. It was a municipality that turned down the toxic waste dump in a Mexican community. So this is having an enormous impact now, not just at an international and national level, but even encroaching on municipal jurisdiction. Maybe you could respond to that question as well.

The Chair: Where would you like to start?

Ms. Libby Davies: With Mr. Traynor on the essential medicine, and then Mr. Cosbey on the environment and on municipalities.

Mr. Ken Traynor: The issue around access to essential drugs, I think, is a very interesting evolution of engagement at the international level. What you have is that in many cases, even though drugs may have been invented through the intellectual creativity of people, and this can address serious public health issues, in the reality of much of the world—South Africa could be a particular example—the scale of the problem, and the price of the drugs, suggests that you can't meet the public health challenge because as a government you cannot afford to provide the medical treatment that is available to it.

In most cases, the costs of those medical treatments are not in their manufacture but in the whole dynamic around what is the return the firms that control those patents are able to get. It brings us right to the nub: do we essentially allow people to die when we have public health tools that we could utilize but we don't have the resources to make it happen? The question to the international community becomes, essentially, how do we address this problem? That's where there is, under things like the agreements, the whole question about a public health emergency and so on around that.

It's a complex piece, but the things that were at play over a short period of time were that the South African government responded to the very real need to bring in HIV/AIDS treatment to a tremendous problem it is facing that is disrupting South African society and its economy as well. To do this it was introducing law that said, we are going to import drugs from a producer in India, which can produce them and sell them to us at a price that is dramatically less than we are required to pay under the international regime.

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It's a long story. A host of both diplomatic and legal challenges have been made to the South African government on that. There were also responses at the international level from organizations like Médecins Sans Frontières and from ACT UP in the United States. So it became a very political issue, as well as a practical and legal issue.

But it brings together what I believe to be the essence of any attempts at making creative public policy at the international level now. The need must be tremendously clear. The problems with the trade agreement and its implementation were well known and clear. This then brought in non-governmental actors and actors through the World Health Organization, who put the question firmly on the table: are we going to allow people to die because we have a particular regime in a trade agreement there?

Push that forward and what we now see is this kind of creative public engagement with governments changing the reality around the pricing structures; the companies are responding, and it is a very fluid situation at this time. We now have the Prime Minister, whom, I was pleased to hear, agreed with the Prime Minister of Italy that this issue should be discussed at the upcoming G-8 meeting. But I think we would have to agree that it was the creative energy put into this around the world that put this issue onto the agenda. It was not something the Prime Minister chose to use his political capital to pursue.

I suggest this is the reality of the world we face. I hope again we'll begin to look for creative ways to allow us to address these questions, and not leave these trade agreements as things that basically dictate to us how we're going to develop public policy.

The Chair: Did you want to add something to that, Mr. Cosbey?

Mr. Aaron Cosbey: Yes, just in a moment.

I'm happy to spend a minute expounding the gory details of the Metalclad case, because it demonstrates how NAFTA's chapter 11 goes beyond merely environmental concerns to concerns of sovereignty and the rule of law.

The Chair: We're now into eight minutes of a five-minute question period, so I'll certainly hold you to your minute.

Mr. Aaron Cosbey: In this case, a hazardous waste company sought to locate a facility in a municipality in Mexico and never achieved the requisite municipal permit for building that facility. It achieved all the federal-level permits, but was assured at the federal level that this was okay and it could go ahead, in spite of the fact that it didn't have its municipal permit.

Eventually, the state governor shut the thing down by declaring the area an ecological reserve. The panel in this case ruled that the federal assurance constituted an obligation on the Government of Mexico to allow this facility to operate. In that sense it held the assurances of bureaucrats at one level of government to a level of importance that is jurisdictionally questionable—a federal official overriding, in essence, the jurisdictional ability of the municipal authority. Municipal authority, according to constitutional experts testifying on behalf of Mexico, was sufficient to override this permit.

You see in this case a panel ruling on issues of constitutional legitimacy within Mexico, with a troubling verdict going to the very heart of sovereignty, to the heart of the ability of the different jurisdictions to regulate in protection of the environment.

This is why your question as to whether we will have the minister's assurance that he will not seek this sort of mechanism in the FTAA is extremely important, in our view. Were I assured by it that the outcome would be favourable, I wouldn't be talking about it today. There are 33 other countries in this negotiation as well. We'll see where we end up.

The Chair: Right.

I don't want to get into all the legalities of it, but you've brought this case up, and Ms. Davies mentioned that it was before the courts of British Columbia. Is the issue before the courts of British Columbia about someone seeking to quash the decision based on the interpretation you've suggested, that they were interfering in the constitutional law of Mexico and misinterpreted the authority given by the federal government? That's what I understand it to be.

Can you answer that yes or no? No lawyer ever does answer yes or no.

Mr. Aaron Cosbey: I can't give you a yes or no. I'm not a lawyer.

The Chair: Okay, well maybe you can then.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

• 1040

Mr. Aaron Cosbey: There is no effective appeal mechanism under chapter 11, so the only appeal mechanism open to a party who has lost is to go to the jurisdiction in which the tribunal sat and argue that the tribunal's errors in law were so egregious as to eliminate its jurisdiction to rule on the issue.

The Chair: I take it that jurisdictional error in this case is a misinterpretation.

Mr. Aaron Cosbey: This is one of the arguments Mexico's putting forward, yes.

The Chair: Yes. That's what I understood, too.

Mr. Elston, I'm going to go to you very, very briefly, because, again, we're running over our time, but there was comment.

Do you wish to comment very briefly on the issue of drug companies?

Mr. Murray Elston: Sure.

In terms of accessibility to essential medicines, obviously the issue in sub-Saharan Africa is extremely critical to the world overall. There has been a refocusing of efforts on developing a partnership among several organizations to respond to what is now obviously a pandemic.

That is helpful. What is not so helpful is for people to simplify a very complex story and say that price, as a result of patent protection rules under WTO, is the sole prohibitive or insurmountable barrier to the supply of these medicines. This is obviously not the case. Supply of the medicine is one issue. The ability to have professionals assist in delivering the medications, building the infrastructure—not only in South Africa, but in a whole series of other countries—is extremely important.

As in other areas, the pharmaceutical companies would like to be involved as a collaborative partner in response to this. But the need to eliminate all predictability in the protection of inventions, being able to take away what has been a very expensive creative endeavour and say “Your product is not now subject to those rules,” would be a very big mistake. It would shut off the ability for people to reinvest money in the invention process we all rely upon. And no more so critically do we rely on this process than in finding new drugs to respond to AIDS, which everyone knows is a particularly virulent sort of disease, one that changes very quickly. Not surprisingly, it is one of our most difficult challenges at the moment.

So we're there. We're on the ground. We'd like to see some international responses. I'd be pleased to talk at length, perhaps in another forum, but this is a short, off-the-top, for-the-moment version, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: Thank you very much. Others may come back to this question.

Mr. Harvard, sir.

Mr. John Harvard (Charleswood St. James—Assiniboia, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to the witnesses for coming today.

We've heard a lot this morning and earlier in these hearings about process. That's very legitimate; process can be as important as substance. Some statements have made pretty explicit suggestions that these negotiations leading up to Quebec City have involved those governments taking part in something rather nefarious and underhanded, in trying to pull a fast one on the people of this hemisphere. Perhaps the fix is in, whatever those fixes may be.

There's no doubt parliamentarians are caught in a struggle between openness and transparency—democracy, if you will—on one side of the equation, and the need to get something done, on the other. Because I do come from the school of thought that holds that we should be making some changes, there should be some integration, there should be freer trade.

When I listen to Mr. Traynor or others, I infer that they don't like the democratic process that is being used. Instead of allowing governments to do their work, some of the bureaucratic work needed to put something together so there is a starting point, they would prefer to bring every possible, disparate group in the hemisphere, and I don't mean this pejoratively, but bring all of these disparate groups together into a room and start from scratch with everybody.

I suspect this would be very democratic; I'm just now too sure whether anything would ever get done. Yet we come down so hard on governments when we allow them to do some of this work. Yes, at some point there will be a so-called negotiating document that will reflect at least some consensus, but it won't be the finished product.

• 1045

I think there is no doubt that the negotiating text will come sooner as opposed to later.

The other thing in my understanding is that the ultimate deal—if there is an ultimate deal—will not come until about 2005. So let's say we get the text at Quebec City. We may even get it after Buenos Aires. Is there not time in the next three to four years to do the democratic work that is necessary? Are we locked in so badly with a negotiating text that groups like yours, who have legitimate concerns, are marginalized and pretty well left out of the process? You can't do your work. That's the thing I am grappling with.

Now, if you're one—and I'm not suggesting you people are—who believes the status quo is just fine, of course, then naturally you don't want the machinery to work. I'm not suggesting that this comes from you. But there is this talk that somehow or another the whole process is just very underhanded. I hope that's not the case. I hope the governments involved will come clean—as it were—through a negotiating text and will see what this beginning document is. Then if there's something terrible, and I'm sure there will be, fire away.

You can answer. Is it too late? Maybe that's the question.

Mr. Ken Traynor: Well, I think there are two elements to what's happening here. In regard to Mr. Elston's comment of refocusing, I think a significant amount of the message that's trying to be conveyed to the Summit of the Americas is that there needs to be a refocusing of energy around addressing a host of problems rather than the amount of energy that goes into the negotiation of the trade agreements. So I think that's the first point I would make to differentiate.

To come back to your point about the trade agreement and the text, we will look at it in a great amount of detail. We are actively involved in the negotiations and in discussions with the Canadian government around its positions, for example, in the General Agreement on Trade in Services. We know that the people who do the negotiating of the General Agreement on Trade in Services are also the people who do the negotiating of the services sections of the free trade agreement of the Americas.

Having been actively involved and engaged with them around this, we're not particularly confident that the resources that are being brought to bear on these issues within the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and the character of the review of those issues really speaks to the kinds of public policy challenges that our experience with trade agreements suggests.

For example, we have been waiting for three months now for a detailed response from the negotiators around the General Agreement on Trade in Services to their domestic regulation paper. When we first raised this question, they said to us that it's very interesting to meet with groups like ours because we raise issues that are not brought forward in their direct discussion with the corporate sector. We raise defensive issues from the point of view of Canadian public policy that are not raised in these other arenas.

So implicitly they have suggested we are raising key questions, but Canada has now taken its position. There has been cabinet discussion of these questions, and they have taken positions forward to Geneva, and we're still waiting on that reply. So our experience is that we do have to be actively involved. The sooner we're involved, we hope the better the agreements will come out of this, and we're committed to trying to make that work.

But I understand the frustration of people, who may not be as actively involved in the process, about this question of what the focus is of the Summit of the Americas and who feel that it does not reflect things that they think are extremely important and should be on that agenda.

The Chair: Mr. Martin, sir.

Mr. Pat Martin: Thank you very much.

Mr. Elston, I wonder whether we could continue on with the previous line of questioning. It's a personal interest of mine. You spoke about the issue of South Africa and the lack of access to anti-AIDS medication there. Brazil just came up with an innovative plan that enables their people to actually have access to anti-AIDS medications at a far cheaper rate, but it is being challenged.

• 1050

I wonder whether your organization has managed to come up with some solutions to deal with the balance that enables the research-based pharmaceutical companies to earn a fair profit, but also enables developing countries to gain access to medications that truly are of a lifesaving nature, not only for AIDS, but also for diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, bilharzia, river blindness—diseases that have enormous mortality and morbidity among these countries. Have you come up with a balance with your groupings—your companies that you represent—where you can work with the international community to provide some kind of fund or some kind of access that balances your needs as well as the health needs of these groups?

The Chair: Mr. Martin, I have a similar question. I'm going to piggyback it on this, so you don't have to answer it twice. A lot of us are very interested in this issue.

I understand, for example, that in the plan of action that will come out of Quebec City—we've been told by the sherpa who was before our committee—that one of the provisions will be for drug access in the Caribbean for AIDS and other issues, and that there will be work being done through PAHO to provide virtual medical facilities and various things.

Again, along the lines of Mr. Martin's observations and your answer to the earlier question, to what extent are the drug companies engaged in that and willing to step up to the plate a bit in terms of the impact it has on their profits?

Mr. Murray Elston: Was Madam Marleau also going to ask a question?

The Chair: No. I will let Madam Marleau come after you later. We're not all trying to hit you at once.

Mr. Murray Elston: As a person who used to serve in a forum similar to this, once you give me the microphone it may be all over. I was hoping for a 15-minute free run here.

The Chair: No, no, you won't get that.

Mr. Murray Elston: A couple of things, if I might, very quickly.

The misconception about the Brazilian situation is that there is a challenge to the Brazilians' AIDS relief program. In fact, that's not the case at all. The issue in the Brazil challenge is around the requirement for local content, which is basically requiring people who want to have market to build plants and things in Brazil.

I'm not—I should tell you—a technical expert on the whole element of that, but enough to say that it was not instigated in relation to AIDS at all. In fact, the AIDS relief program in Brazil was assisted by a number of products being provided by brand-name companies to assist the government in carrying out what has become, at least from what I understand, a relatively successful response in that country.

Secondly, I think Brazil is probably a much better developed country than perhaps some of the ones in sub-Saharan Africa, about which I think the concern is extremely justified. There I think the demonstration by several of the companies internationally to come to the table to make provisions—to provide product—but also to help in formulating a response to setting up the method of administering the product has been an important element.

I think there are a lot of people who would argue that perhaps we haven't taken action quickly enough. But I think perhaps it takes some time to bring the collaboration of a series of key players to the same table at the same time to get everything done. That has I think now started to occur. We've had a number of individual countries who have actually come to agreements about how they're going to provide relief to their populations with respect to AIDS.

There are two other items, which are extremely important for me. You mentioned river blindness and tuberculosis. There are in fact international donations by individual companies where product is actually given, but in the context again of assuring that the administration of the product will occur under the auspices of trained people.

The third element in relation to the balance is that in Canada particularly we have developed a partnership with a group that was formally called MAP International, with John Kelsall, actually under the auspices of a former Speaker of this House, the Honourable Gilbert Parent. I understand that perhaps even the current Speaker may in fact continue that, where when there is a problem, Kosovo, where there are problems in earthquake areas, whatever may occur, the connections made there directly to our companies generate a request for required medications.

• 1055

In fact, as Madame Marleau would know through her other place, we then dispatch, with the assistance of the Canadian Armed Forces, planeloads of medications that have been donated by our companies, in addition to others. We have emergency relief programs that we are pleased to respond to when the need is well identified.

In respect of that balance, it is not only a situation where we guard our product and say it's for us only. We make donations, we respond to emergencies. And we respond to emergencies in this country. I can talk about this country's responses, but I can tell you there are also emergency responses by companies of ours that have other jurisdictions of occupation, where they actually respond through those as well.

Mr. Keith Martin: May I make a comment?

The Chair: Well, it's a comment and it won't invite a response.

Mr. Keith Martin: I know I've run out of time.

Mr. Elston, no one would ask the pharmaceutical companies to be a social program. You're a business and you must make a profit. But I hope that for the education of all of us, we can be as constructive as possible. If your organizations, and indeed the international bodies you're a part of, can come up with something that would strike that balance with governments—because you cannot be asked to go and fork out things—if some balance can be arrived at, either through tax breaks or through a fund, where we're working together in an international sphere—and the FTAA would be one forum where this could be brought up—it would be beneficial to us to have that perspective from your organization. It would be very helpful.

Mr. Murray Elston: Could we have Mr. McCool provide a quick response?

Mr. Terry McCool: I think sometimes we're addressing the wrong problem here. You have to remember that 95% of what the WHO describes as essential medicines are not under patent. One-third of the world's population does not have access to drugs. That's the problem we should be trying to fix, not trying to change intellectual property on the 5% of drugs that might be included on that list. I know AIDS is a pretty big epidemic, but there's no money going into public health care, there's no money going into addressing poverty, there's no money going in from international organizations to try to address the bigger problem in health care. We're concentrating on just a narrow aspect of it.

One of the things the World Health Organization is suggesting is that the industry should look at differential pricing, and developed nations, Canada included, should be prepared to pay a higher price for drugs, so that they can be offered for sale at a much lower price in the developing world. I'm not sure the nations of the world have agreed to that, but it's one of the ideas that's being floated. The other idea is to create an international bank of aid, funded from a variety of organizations, that could help to address the problem. But it's a bigger problem than just AIDS, and we have to keep that in mind.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

You might be interested to know, Mr. Elston, when members of this committee travelled to Bosnia some years ago, we took about $5 million worth of drugs with us. We transferred them to one of the local authorities there as part of the MAP program. So we've actually been involved, acting as your carriers, if I may put it that way.

[Translation]

It is your turn, Ms. Marleau. It will then be Ms. Lalonde's turn.

[English]

Ms. Diane Marleau (Sudbury, Lib.): I know we've debated this at length, but I think the industry must put together a plan of their own. I understand the reason for protecting property rights, especially in the industry you're in, but I believe you're going to have to come up yourselves with a plan to address these very serious issues, because, as Mr. McCool said, this is larger than the AIDS problem. We, as parliamentarians, are going to be continually pressured, because this is all part of the question of how we can allow those less prosperous than we are to share in that prosperity. That means access to medicines they don't have access to now and can't afford. While you talked about the World Health Organization, I really believe your own industry has to come up with a plan of its own to deal with this. Otherwise you will continue to have the challenges you're starting to face, and you will spend far more in defending your patents than in developing new ones, if this continues.

• 1100

Have you really thought of it, not just at the level of Canada, but on the international front? You can't hide from this. This is just the beginning, and I think it might be smarter for you to take the lead on this. While MAP is great—it fills a certain gap—it certainly isn't anywhere near what is necessary out there.

Mr. Terry McCool: You do make some good points. I think our industry is trying to address, certainly, the issue in South Africa. As you know, many companies came together. The prices at which AIDS drugs were being sold in South Africa were not the prices you were hearing, but about 80% of those prices, which is the same price at which they were being sold to international organizations. Those companies have since dropped the prices to zero. That still is not going to be enough, and we've already been told that's not enough. The issue in South Africa is not about getting the drugs to patients. It's about industrial development. It's about changing the rules in intellectual property to create an industry. It's being used as the whipping boy to get the whole intellectual property regime to come crumbling down, and we can't have that. We have addressed, as an industry, as much as we can, but we cannot share the whole burden for the problem

Ms. Diane Marleau: No, but if you are proactive, you won't get into the kinds of problems you're getting into in South Africa.

I'm saying this is just the beginning. I think if you have a good plan, you will be able to counter these problems, which are, as you say, about industrial development. I don't think you should hide behind the fact that it can't always be distributed as well. I think there are means of ensuring that, by and large, with the World Health Organization in some instances, and in others perhaps not, but don't hide behind that. That's not—

Mr. Terry McCool: Fifty percent of the drugs that are already being sold to the state system are being diverted. We already know that. There are major issues down there in getting drugs to patients.

I think one of the issues where you have to provide us with an answer is in dealing with AIDS. We know it mutates very quickly, that resistance develops very quickly, especially if it's not under medical supervision. With those patients who indiscriminately are going to be given free drugs and take them effectively, when resistance develops, what kind of argument can you come back to the industry with and say, your free drugs didn't work? What kind of an incentive can you provide to us to say, okay, where's the next generation of AIDS drugs? Where's that going to come from, and how are we going to make that free?

It's a complex issue, and simple solutions, such as we just heard, about changing intellectual property, getting free drugs to people in developing nations, are not going to work. It's a bigger issue than that, and I think you have to address the bigger issue.

As Murray said, we would like to be part of the solution. We are already cooperating with governments in Africa. There are a number of agreements where we've made drugs available at very low cost, and in fact in some countries we give it away free, whether it's for river blindness or malaria or resistant tuberculosis. But there still needs to be more work done on those diseases. If governments step up to the plate and say, we're going to do all the discovery work—and you have to remember that 90% of the discoveries come from our industry—I think that's a longer process. It's a time-consuming process to find the cures everybody desperately needs.

We think we're part of the solution. We've been identified by some people as not part of the problem, but the problem. That's the issue we're trying to address. It's not easy. We'd just like a chance to be able to try to address it.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

[Translation]

Ms. Lalonde.

Ms. Francine Lalonde (Mercier, BQ): Thank you Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to all of you. Your presentations, each in its own field, are extremely important. I want to express, Mr. Chairman, how extremely happy I am that we have had these hearings. We heard from witnesses with a great deal of expertise, and I am sure that we will be able to produce a report that will be very useful.

I would like to add that I do not understand my colleagues opposite—and I say this in front of our guests watching—who are not supporting us in saying that it is important that we have the texts. This morning's meeting convinces me all the more so of this, because we are dealing with expertise that can be brought to this issue and also because there are political stakes. We have just seen this. In my opinion, the stakes are political. We know that there is a relationship between the northern countries, which are the richest, and the southern countries, which are the poorest.

• 1105

I have some questions to ask.

Mr. Bertrand, I know that you have been involved in the Parliamentary Conference of the Americas. There are other federal countries that have associated states, we know that the United States is an example. This is an extremely democratic aspect: there is a lack of democracy when, as parliamentarians, we are responsible to the citizens for maintaining, for example, their right to define services in health care, in education and in social assistance and to provide institutions, and there are negotiations where we have no say and where the government has no say either. This is an important point that you brought up, and I would like you to develop that.

Messrs. Cosbey and Traynor, I would like you to talk about the impact that the dispute settlement process will have, a process which is extremely secretive and private, and which is only now being developed, which demonstrates that democracy can be undermined. I would like to reiterate Ms. Swenarchuk's comments, regarding the fact that both legislative houses of California passed resolutions in the Methanex case, in which they stated:

[English]

We find it disconcerting that our democratic decision-making regarding this important public health issue is being second-guessed in a distant forum by unelected officials.

Secondly, we, as California legislators, find it problematic to be told by remote and un-elected trade officials what paradigms or standards we must apply in writing environmental and public health laws for the people of our state.

[Translation]

This is the case for Canadian provinces, this is the case for American states and this is no doubt also the case in South America. Thus, the risk of a lack of democracy is multiplied.

Mr. Traynor spoke of the whole issue of parallel agreements, and it would appear to me to be quite important. This brings us back to the issue of expertise.

Finally, I would like to put a specific question to Mr. Elston and Mr. McCool. As far as I know, the concept of differential pricing, put forward by the WHO, is different from what you expressed. It would not be 80% of the current price, for example, because in any case, the development and the research was funded by the North. It seems to me that there must be a way to apply prices that take into consideration the significant problems faced by southern countries. In your opinion, could the concept of differential pricing put forward by the WHO and UNAIDS be considered as dumping and as contravening the spirit and intent of international economic agreements?

[English]

The Chair: Mr. McCool first. We're going to go in reverse order of these questions.

Mr. Terry McCool: Well, it could be considered. Obviously, if you have nations in the developing world that were innovating drugs, they would not want to have drugs coming in from the northern hemisphere competing with them at a reduced rate. Obviously that would be a consideration.

The other issue, which I think is a very real issue, is that if you did create a price structure where you had lower prices in the least developed country, how would you prevent those products from being diverted and resold back into the developing countries? I don't know of any mechanism that would prevent that.

So it's a very complex problem. Somebody's come up with what they think is a pretty simple solution to try to address how to get cheaper medicines to the developing world. As I said before, no one's agreed to that yet.

We as an industry have tried to make our prices available to countries that cannot afford them, in a more beneficial way through state-tendering programs with the government. The issue is still that the products have not been able to get into the hands of the people who need them most.

• 1110

For us to sell our products in some of those countries, there are very high tariffs and also very high distribution. There are a lot of people who make money off the distribution of drugs, which adds to their cost in those countries. So it's not a simple solution.

[Translation]

[Editor's Note: Inaudible]

Ms. Francine Lalonde: ...still, as Mr. Traynor said.

The Chair: Mr. Traynor, followed by Mr. Bertrand.

[English]

Mr. Ken Traynor: I would agree with regard to the last comment that it's not a simple solution, but there are a lot more ideas on the table given the fairly rancorous and public discussion on this issue than there were before this process started. I think we have to say that while it may be a messy process, we're getting a lot farther than we were before we started into it. I hope we can accomplish some of the things that it's been suggested would dramatically improve the situation.

With regard to the dispute-settlement mechanism, I think there's an interesting point in the evolution of how governments are responding to possibly their less-than-precise drafting under the North American Free Trade Agreement with regard to dispute settlement. I think one of the key elements, ultimately, is that governments have come back to the public justice system to try to address these complex issues that were glossed over in the solutions that were presented under the trade agreements with their strong commercial emphasis.

So there's a bit of rebalancing that may be accomplished. We don't know where it's going to be. But there is an attempt to rebalance somewhat, because the Canadian judicial system does, as part of its mandate, look at the question of public interest. That is not part of the mandate that is given to the dispute-settlement mechanisms and so on.

So I think that is an element of this process. That's just speculation on my part, but it is interesting the way the appeals are coming back into the court system.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

[Translation]

Mr. Bertrand.

Mr. Roger Bertrand: Thank you Mr. Chairman.

I have one quick comment. Earlier, you spoke briefly about COPA. I would like to draw the attention of the members of the standing committee to the recommendations put forward by the Committee on Institutions, which appear on page 106 of their report. You will be provided with a copy of this report. I shall read this recommendation:

2.4. That Quebec parliamentarians strongly advocate the need to establish a continental parliamentary forum that will monitor the entire process of the integration of the Americas, including the FTAA, and that this forum be representative of all of the parliamentary assemblies on the continent.

This issue may be somewhat sensitive, but you will observe that there is no specific reference to COPA, because beyond any discussion that there might have been on intentions, we wish to remove this aspect of the discussion in order to come back to the crux of the issue, in this case a true parliamentary forum which, from our perspective, like any parliamentary body, including the one we are in, must have two important dimensions.

The first dimension is that this forum include multipartisan representation from the different parliaments. The best quality of our parliamentary institutions is that they bring together all of the different perspectives around one table, and incidentally I have made reference to this on a number of occasions since the beginning of this session. We would want this to be the case with such a forum.

The second dimension is that this forum should also include representatives from federated parliaments, this for the reason that we mentioned. We have our areas of responsibility. As far as I know, Canada is not a unitary state, nor do I believe, either, that that was the intention, at least as far as I understand.

That is where the idea for the committee's recommendation comes from. I would hope that this committee will look into this issue to ensure that we too, at the parliamentary level, have a body that is at a level that is equal to that of the summit of the heads of state.

The Chair: Thank you.

• 1115

[English]

Mr. O'Brien.

Mr. Pat O'Brien (London—Fanshawe, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thank the witnesses for being here. I'm sorry I was late. I was tied up in the House of Commons, as you were as well for some of it, Mr. Chairman.

I have a comment or two, and then I think I have just one question probably.

I have to react to the statement that we're past the point where we can possibly have a peaceful demonstration in Quebec. I find that... I'll restrain myself and call it a very regrettable statement. It could be seen as giving a cachet for violence there, Mr. Chairman, and I think it is a very unfortunate comment. I think it was Mr. Cosbey who made it.

When we've had groups that are saying their express purpose in going to Quebec to demonstrate is to be engaged in violence, I think it would be somewhat naive of anybody to think there won't be some of that. I really can't believe you can tie that to some perceived lack of consultation. That, to me, is incredible.

Anyway, my colleague, Mr. Paradis, I think pretty well debunked the myth that there's been no consultation. Mr. Chairman, you chaired hearings of this committee before the last election on this whole process. You chaired a forum of the Americas that I was happy to participate in; it was an excellent process. Many of our colleagues participated, as well as people from some 28 other countries of the Americas. As Mr. Paradis said, there's a parallel summit funded by taxpayers. Five of the nine Canadian positions have been on the website for weeks.

The fact is—and I want to make this point—the Prime Minister said in the House of Commons several weeks ago that he would like to publish the text, as has the Minister of International Trade, but that he was not prepared to do that unilaterally. The minister is in Buenos Aires today and tomorrow, where he is pressing this case with his counterpart ministers—to release the text. But the Canadian government will not do that unilaterally.

I think it's important that we get on the record right now that all the opposition parties that I know have expressed themselves on this point of view, on this question, have said the Canadian government should not unilaterally release the text. If there's a political party in the House that feels differently, it has not verbalized it. And I'm pleased they haven't, because I think it would be highly irresponsible to just unilaterally publicize these texts.

Mr. Chairman, there's so much I could ask, but I'm going to constrain myself to one question, which might surprise you.

To whoever would like to answer, can any of the witnesses tell us... I have put this question to other witnesses, and in fairness I'll tell you I have yet to have what I consider a satisfactory answer. I've also put it to other parliamentarians who've taken issue with the process, and they have ducked the question. Mr. Robinson from the NDP is one example.

The question is simple and it's this: would you tell me of a trade negotiation that Canada has been involved with in the past that's been as transparent as this one, let alone more transparent? Please give me that example with specific ways to justify the example, if you have one.

Mr. Ken Traynor: Possibly you missed my discussion around the Biosafety Protocol.

Mr. Pat O'Brien: Yes, I expressed my regrets for that.

Mr. Ken Traynor: Just let me repeat that point.

The Biosafety Protocol is an agreement that was entered into about the trade in genetically modified organisms. It was a highly controversial topic, but also one that speaks to the complexity of the international arena we now face, given the kind of trade liberalization that has happened. The threats are very real. All we have to do is look at the dynamics... for example, you can't even go to somebody's wedding in Britain if you're from rural Ontario because you have these concerns.

So we live in a complex world that requires some really creative solutions.

Mr. Pat O'Brien: If I might, Mr. Traynor—

Mr. Ken Traynor: Yes.

Mr. Pat O'Brien: I'm sorry, I don't like to interrupt witnesses; I rarely do it.

Maybe I didn't express myself well, but what I'm looking for is an example any of you have of a major trade—

Mr. Ken Traynor: Yes, that's what I'm getting to.

Mr. Pat O'Brien: Okay.

Mr. Ken Traynor: The Biosafety Protocol is an agreement to legislate around the trade of genetically modified organisms.

Mr. Pat O'Brien: That's one issue, right? You're talking about—

Mr. Ken Traynor: But it's a trade agreement. You can put it all—

Mr. Pat O'Brien: No, but you're—

Mr. Ken Traynor: No, just let me finish my point here.

Mr. Pat O'Brien: Okay, all right.

• 1120

Mr. Ken Traynor: It was a trade agreement. It was entered into by the countries of the world. There was a proposal put forward in the Biosafety Protocol that said, when we're regulating the trade of genetically modified organisms:

The provisions of this Protocol shall not affect the rights and obligations of any Party to the Protocol deriving from any existing international agreement to which it is also a Party...

Essentially, that said the WTO agreement would trump with regard to the trade of genetically modified organisms. The countries of the world said “No, we're not going to. That's not what we're talking about here.” Our organization, the Canadian Environmental Law Association, was part of the Canadian advisory committee on this process. We saw negotiating text. We participated, because it was done under the auspices of the United Nations rather than the World Trade Organization. They were open and active negotiations. Some quite creative methodology was used in the negotiations to make them efficient and effective.

So there is one. This was my argument earlier, that we need to move beyond what has been a very commercially driven process. Historically these agreements were about largely commercial issues. They have shifted from the commercial arena and they are now intimately involved in the determination of domestic matters, whether it be at the national government level, the provincial government level, or down to the municipal government level. Consequently, the forums of negotiations of the past are no longer adequate to address the complexity of these agreements and the issues they're addressing. That's the point we've been trying to make.

To give the minister some due, there is some movement by the Canadian government in the way they carry out these negotiations, for very real political reasons that have happened, but they still have a long way to go. Our comfort level in terms of how much change has happened is pretty limited.

The Chair: I get the impression from you that we're moving in the right direction but not far enough or fast enough, basically.

Mr. Ken Traynor: Yes. That's a start.

The Chair: Okay. That is the impression I got.

Mr. Cosbey, did you want to add quickly to that one issue?

Mr. Aaron Cosbey: Yes. I would support Mr. Traynor's interpretation of the Biosafety Protocol as a trade agreement and add a couple more. The Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, in effect since 1974, and the Basel convention on international trade and hazardous waste are also so-called environmental agreements, but they're trade agreements. They're about trade. Every single one of them allows for not only openness of the documents but also participation by non-governmental organizations, speaking rights from the floor, and the submission of documents.

This goes to Mr. Harvard's point, that there's a tension between effectiveness and openness. But it has been dealt with, it is being dealt with, and it can be done effectively.

Mr. Pat O'Brien: Quite frankly, I have to say, as important as those examples are, and I appreciate having them, I don't consider them multilateral trade negotiations covering a multiplicity of issues. I think that's quite a stretch, gentlemen, but I appreciate the examples anyway.

The Chair: Yes. It's certainly helping us to understand the issue.

Ms. Davies, then Dr. Patry.

Ms. Libby Davies: Thank you, Chairperson.

I think there's been a really interesting discussion today about, for example, the availability of essential medicines and what that gets into. The contradiction strikes me as so huge. I mean, here we are, the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, talking about whether or not people live or die based on intellectual property rights and the availability of essential medicines.

I guess the question I wanted to get at centres around this issue that just about everything we deal with now is being looked at through the perspective, through the lens, of trade, whether it's the environment, whether it's medicines, whether it's labour standards, whether it's social programs, or whether it's education or health care. The list goes on and on. I actually feel very frightened about where this is all heading in terms of a society where the overriding principle becomes trade and everything has to fall underneath that.

I was just trying to imagine what kind of debate we'd be having if the issue for trade were health outcomes, or environmental outcomes. What kind of different discussion would we be having?

I guess my question centres around alternatives. We haven't really focused on the alternatives. I think we're always led to believe in the TINA—“there is no alternative”—syndrome, but of course there are alternatives. The people's summit will very much focus on that. So I want to ask the witnesses if they are engaged in that at all.

• 1125

How do we begin to disentangle ourselves from what I consider to be sort of a dictatorship, where trade becomes so constraining to dealing with any other issue that our ability to function as a just and democratic society is completely violated?

So I'd ask you to talk a little bit about the alternatives and what we need to do to disengage from this kind of constraint that we're now in.

Mr. Cosbey, maybe you'd like to answer that.

Mr. Aaron Cosbey: Sure.

Some of the alternatives that we can talk about, as I said, fall into two categories. I'm using environment as the example because that's my area of expertise. You can use the analogy of addressing environmental concerns at the federal level. You either have them addressed within the environment ministry and nowhere else, which is entirely unsatisfactory, or you can have them addressed in the environment ministry and within the various line ministries—agriculture, transportation, and natural resources. I think our only method for inserting other objectives into a trade agreement will be in this fashion. We have to inject them into each of the negotiating issues.

I come back to this again: There is no way we can insert other values into the negotiations on agriculture, on intellectual property rights, unless there is a participatory process in the negotiations of each of those areas. It cannot happen. The negotiators themselves are insulated individuals who deal specifically with their areas of expertise. We cannot expect them to understand or address the implications their areas of expertise may have for other broad social objectives.

That's one answer. The other answer is that eventually we need democratic institutions at the supranational level that can perform the kind of balancing you're talking about between trade and other social policy objectives.

In the first instance, we will need that in a dispute-settlement mechanism that's created under the free trade area of the Americas. Without a mechanism that takes into account more than commercial objectives, we are lost. I suggest that part of the mandate for such a mechanism can come in preambulatory language, but certainly other parts of it can come in the proper construction of that mechanism.

The Chair: Great.

[Translation]

It is an answer to Ms. Davies' question? Fine.

Mr. Bertrand.

Mr. Roger Bertrand: My answer will be very brief and very practical.

In fact, we do not need to develop an alternative solution. All we have to do is come back to the basic design, which is a hemispheric integration project including the four elements that I referred to earlier. If you want to be sure that all of the elements progress at the same rate, all you have to do is introduce one condition, namely that there be no FTAA agreement unless there are simultaneous agreements in the other three areas. You will see that things will happen quite quickly.

The Chair: Thank you. That is a good answer.

[English]

Colleagues, before I turn to Dr. Patry, I'm going to ask your indulgence on a quick housekeeping matter while we have our quorum, because sometimes towards the end of the meeting people have to go on to other meetings. I have to review with you and get your permission and approval on some propositions that the clerk has distributed.

I'd like your approval that on Tuesday, April 24, we meet with Jozef Miga, the President of the National Council of the Slovak Republic. We would have one of our usual meetings, at which one half of our group—I would propose group A—would meet with him. Is that all right?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chair: All right.

[Translation]

Fine.

[English]

Secondly, it has been requested that we meet with the Prime Minister of Lebanon on April 30. Again I would suggest we break up into one of our groups, as usual. Is that all right?

Thirdly, Mr. Obhrai has brought to the attention of the committee that when we invited Ministers Manley and Pettigrew to come for the estimates, we did not invite Minister Minna; therefore we should issue a invitation to her. Do I have your authority to do that, for estimates?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chair: Thank you.

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There should be a steering committee meeting on Tuesday, April 24, to decide how to deal with this study.

[Translation]

We should have a meeting of our Sub-committee on Agenda and Procedure in order to decide how we should finish this study on the Summit of the Americas.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: You said that we had quorum. Is quorum for this committee not 10?

The Chair: Quorum is nine. Even if it were 10, we would have it because Mr. Harvard, who was here, has left for a special break.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: I did not say anything.

The Chair: Mr. Harvard will return as his glasses are on the desk.

[English]

Also, we have a meeting with department officials. We'll have to set up a meeting on April 26 to deal with the South Caucasus study.

Colleagues, this final item is something I need your approval for. Mr. Wilfert, who's the chair of the Canada-Japan Inter-Parliamentary Group, wishes us to organize a joint meeting with the Senate foreign affairs committee in the context of the eleventh bilateral consultations between the Canada-Japan Inter-Parliamentary Group and the Japan-Canada Parliamentarians Friendship League in order to promote the parliamentary aspect of the interparliamentary group and to present Canada as a high-technology country.

I don't think we should call a formal meeting of our committee with the Senate committee, but what I'd request is maybe that you authorize me to attend with Mr. Stollery at that occasion and represent the committee. I will send a notice, and other committee members who would like to attend could attend as well. Could we deal with it that way? I don't think we should call for a formal meeting, but you could authorize me to go, and we'll invite other members to come.

[Translation]

All right?

Ms. Lalonde.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: Mr. Chairman, quorum is 10. I have just checked. He is coming, but with him that makes nine. Ten? Very well.

The Chair: From time to time, I am counted. It is rare, but I do count. For the purposes of quorum, I am here. For other purposes, people could care less about me and I am fully aware of that, but...

Ms. Francine Lalonde: Mr. Chairman, rest assured that I normally do count you.

I have one question to ask. On the 26, our guests from the southern Caucasus and Central Asia will include, I am sure, Kurd representatives, because in Turkey we met with no one from the Kurdish community.

The Chair: On the 26, it will only be government officials. We must discuss whether or not we should invite other witnesses. Therefore, the meeting is only for witnesses from the government. Obviously, we can discuss the possibility of inviting other witnesses.

[English]

Colleagues, thank you for that.

Dr. Patry, I'm sorry to have interrupted your line of questioning,

[Translation]

Mr. Bernard Patry (Pierrefonds—Dollard, Lib.): I would like to thank the members of the panel.

Mr. Bertrand, I am very happy to learn that the National Assembly of Quebec's Committee on Institutions has studied Quebec and the FTAA. It would have no doubt been interesting to hear representatives from other provinces in order to learn if they have undertaken the same work. That is great and I am very happy to learn that you will be providing us with a copy of your report. That will no doubt help us.

I have one very brief question. This morning, there was a lot of talk about transparency and especially about the availability of the texts. My question is mostly for Mr. Traynor or for Mr. Cosbey. You are treaty experts, and Canada has already signed a number of treaties. Canada signed the NAFTA, the Canada-Chile agreement and the Canada-Israel agreement.

According to some witnesses that we heard from over the last few days, it would appear that the Canada-Chile agreement is currently being used as a model for Canada during the negotiations, and that, if we want to know exactly where Canada is heading in the current negotiations, we must reread the Canada-Chile agreement.

My question is quite simple: in your opinion, is the Canada- Chile agreement a good model to follow for the current negotiations?

[English]

Mr. Ken Traynor: I could suggest that it is an incomplete model in that it was not as comprehensive as the FTAA will be.

For example, on the services side of the equation, and so on, there were issues that Chile was not willing to negotiate with Canada that it would then have to renegotiate with the United States. That's one aspect to look at.

With regard to the goods trade, which I would suggest is the least controversial of the issues, it's in the classic form. But it did not cover a significant number of areas because of the complexity. The free trade agreement of the Americas is essentially about relationships with the United States, both political and economic, in the hemisphere. That's what a significant part of it is about. The Canada-Chile agreement was a subset of those things.

• 1135

The Chair: Mr. Cosbey.

Mr. Aaron Cosbey: The Canada-Chile Free Trade Agreement is good in one sense: it does contain a side agreement on environment. I have not seen that side agreement yet, so I can't comment on its effectiveness or say whether there are elements missing. The process of negotiation for that agreement, of course, was not subject to the environmental assessment framework, nor was it as transparent as I would have liked it to be and as I hope the FTAA negotiations will be. So in that sense, on the process issues, it is not a good model for the negotiation of the FTAA.

The Chair: To what extent do you think it depends on whether there's a specific interest? I know there's a discussion at the moment about a possible agreement with Costa Rica, with other countries. Are you engaged in following those discussions, those negotiations, as well?

Mr. Aaron Cosbey: We are, and we hope to eventually weigh in heavily when the assessment process kicks in relative to those agreements.

The Chair: Thank you very much. That's helpful to know. I appreciate that.

[Translation]

Mr. Paquette, followed by Mr. Paradis.

Mr. Pierre Paquette: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As this will likely be the last question for the Bloc Québécois, I would like to come back to the issue of transparency, because it is important.

In my opinion, there is a significant problem with respect to the Canadian government when it comes to transparency. Despite the fact that what they say is sometimes promising, their practice is otherwise.

I still believe that the basic negotiating texts should be made public periodically. What we have now is a start. In these texts, they have assembled all of the various governments' positions, but as the negotiations advance, we shall be able to see the stakes of the negotiation in the text itself. Thus the texts should be made public periodically.

Contrary to what Mr. O'Brien said, the Bloc Québécois' position has not yet been finalized. It may very well be that after the Buenos Aires meeting and our current tour throughout the regions of Quebec, we will ask the Canadian government to be exemplary when it comes to being democratic and to unilaterally make these texts public.

That having been said, I'm waiting to see what happens with the approach that Mr. Pettigrew promised he would take in Buenos Aires. I don't want to prejudge the position that we will be taking the day after this meeting, which will be held in a few hours.

I would also remind our witnesses that the Liberal government defeated a motion that I had tabled, asking that the House of Commons debate, and vote on, any final agreement concerning the Free Trade Area of the Americas. I would also remind them that the Canadian government did not want to pass on the request of the People's Summit of the Americas to be received directly by the heads of state.

There is much more that I would like to say, but I don't want to take up too much time. I will simply say that, in addition, the federal government did not want the Premier of Quebec, who is hosting the Summit of the Americas in our national capital, to address the heads of state directly.

I'll end with a question of a general nature, for all the witnesses. In your opinion, what key points might the standing committee include in its final report, with a view to making the current process more transparent? I would remind you that, when Mr. Pettigrew tells us that he would like to make the texts public, he is himself admitting, by this very fact, that the current process is not transparent enough. I would therefore like you to share your suggestions with us, so that we may include them in our final report, in order to improve the process.

Mr. Roger Bertrand: Mr. Chairman, I do believe that such texts should be released to the public and made available to those interested on a regular basis during the negotiations. This would prevent all kinds of speculation on what these texts contain and on the specific directions that negotiations might take. It can be as simple as that. I do not claim that there have been no efforts to make information available, but that's a matter of opinion. However, it is a fact that all the groups that testified before the Committee on Institutions told us that they were absolutely incapable of forming a clear idea of the issues and determining the desirability of what is currently being negotiated, because they did not have access to the texts.

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Mr. Pierre Paquette: The committee will have access to the texts.

Mr. Roger Bertrand: Yes, the committee will be meeting tomorrow morning, at the invitation of the Minister responsible for International Relations, to examine these texts in camera. As the chair of the committee, I have taken all the necessary steps to ensure that there are no leaks, of course, because I think that we would look like poor sports if, at this point, we caused a stir.

That having been said, in my view, we should spare no effort to ensure that such documents can be made available as quickly as possible. We have some catching up to do in this regard, and the process as a whole can be considered invalidated if the effort is not made to make this information available rapidly.

Mr. Pierre Paquette: I'd like to add one thing, which is that the positions of the Quebec and federal governments are not the same. The Quebec government is not at the negotiating table. The Canadian government is at the negotiating table and, if the Quebec government were to make the texts public, then clearly the source of information would dry up, which is not the case with the federal government. I saw Mr. Paradis nodding in agreement. The situation of the Quebec government and of the provinces is not the same as that of the federal government, which is the one that is responsible for making these documents public.

The Chair: I am assuming that that is a statement and not a question.

Mr. Paradis.

Mr. Denis Paradis: Mr. Chairman, first of all, I will continue along the same lines.

I believe that Mr. Pettigrew mentioned that he would take all the necessary steps. He is in Buenos Aires right now, to ensure that the countries... The texts cannot be made public without the approval of the other partners. Negotiations are under way right now. I believe that this is why the chair of the Committee on Institutions of the National Assembly is taking every precaution to ensure that they are not made public. Canada wants to ensure that the texts will be made public, but only if all the players agree.

Secondly, Mr. Chairman, with regard to the presence of Quebec, or of the premier at the Summit of the Americas, there are precedents in this area as to non-participation of provincial premiers. And, for example, what about the mayor of Quebec City? Where does it end?

There are heads of state coming to Quebec City. Canada is the host country, and it is the host country that will welcome them. However, of course, there will be a place for Quebec, and both the sherpa - the Prime Minister's personal representative - and the Quebec provincial authorities have agreed on a modus operandi that ensures there will be a place for Quebec at the Summit.

My next point is the Inter-Parliamentary Forum of the Americas. I would take advantage of this opportunity, Mr. Chairman, to congratulate you for your appointment as chair of the FIPA.

The Chair: For once, I matter.

Mr. Denis Paradis: I think that it's important to have an assembly of parliamentarians, and that it should help us advance issues on the American continent, rather than highlighting our divisions or our different ways of thinking within a country. Perhaps that was part of the reasoning behind the FIPA.

I remember that assembly that took place in Quebec City, where our two speakers, the Speaker of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Commons, felt somewhat insulted. I think that there should be an assembly of parliamentarians. Yes, definitely, this assembly should be opened up. I hope that, with time, as you mentioned, it will be opened up to parliamentarians outside the federal parliament. I believe this is a good thing.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to return to a point raised by Ms. Lalonde: the involvement, at the Summit of the Americas, of Quebec or of the provinces in matters that concern them. I'll take the example of education. If I remember correctly, or if I understood correctly, education is a sector for which there were discussions chaired by the Deputy Minister of Education of Quebec, on behalf of all the provinces, as a part of the series of negotiations. That brings to mind the Conference of Ministers of Education of countries using French as a common language. I was asked to host this Conference of the Ministers of Education of countries using French as a common language about two years ago, as part of the Francophone Summit that was held in Bathurst. Quebec was at the table, represented by the legislative assistant to the Minister of Education.

• 1145

It is part of a whole, and everyone generally gets along well together at this type of forum. There is room for everyone. That is the clarification that I wish to make, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Do you have a comment?

Mr. Roger Bertrand: Yes, I have a brief comment.

I believe I can speak with some authority on the subject, because at the root of the COPA, there was first a huge conference bringing together representatives from all the parliaments of the Americas in Quebec City, in 1997. I say that I can speak with some authority because this event resulted from an invitation that I had issued when I was Speaker of the Quebec National Assembly. The idea was to possibly set up such an association of parliamentarians. The goal that we had in mind, and that I personally had in mind as Speaker of the National Assembly, was none other than to allow parliamentarians from all parts of the Americas to come together to discuss subjects of common interest, as a part of the agenda for hemispheric integration.

Naturally, we can read all kinds of intentions into this on both sides, but the goal of the movement in which we are currently involved—a movement to create an interparliamentary forum bringing together representatives of various political parties who are members of parliaments—is first and foremost to have an Inter- Parliamentary Forum of the Americas that includes representatives from all parliaments. There is nothing else on the agenda, in my opinion, at any rate, certainly not as its driving force. I think that, in realizing this initiative, it will be quite possible to be respectful of everyone.

I personally hope that we can get back to the substance of the matter. As an example, let us look at the wording of the recommendation made by the Committee on Institutions which, in my view, is a model of neutrality, in order to take advantage, finally, of this forum.

I have one last observation. I do not wish, Mr. Chairman, that you take offence at it. It is important to ensure that such a forum of parliamentarians not in essence issue indirectly from the executive branches. Our basic problem is to succeed in counteracting the influence that executive branches have exercised in such bodies, not just within our parliaments, but also internationally. We must be attentive to this too.

Thank you.

The Chair: I don't want to get into a debate over the relative merits of the COPA and the FIPA, but I think that you would at least agree, Mr. Bertrand, that the creation of an inter- parliamentary association—even if it is exclusively made up of representatives of federated states at the national level, but around the OAS—can play a very important role in hemispheric integration. Not everyone is included, but at least it's a step forward.

Ms. Lalonde and I participated in the founding of the FIPA with this in mind. We recognized that not everyone is included but, at least, this new institution will provide an opportunity to exchange views and make recommendations to heads of state. We can also work with other organizations, but at least something has been created.

Mr. Roger Bertrand: This will certainly come up again; I don't believe that the debate is over.

The Chair: In your opinion, is it worth it or not? That is what I would ask you. A Quebec professor who appeared before us asked us why we had done that. He said that it wasn't worth the bother, that it was silly. He trashed the whole idea, but I don't have the impression that you would agree with him. You are in favour of the COPA, but I don't have the impression that your position would exclude the possibility of creating another institution that is also worthwhile.

Mr. Roger Bertrand: In all fairness, I can only refer to the wording of the committee's report in this regard. I believe that it gives a very clear indication of our intentions as parliamentarians who examined those issues.

I would insist on one thing, Mr. Chairman. Inverted pyramids must not be encouraged. The participants in such a forum should not basically be people appointed by our executive branches. Do you agree?

The Chair: Absolutely, and the representatives from the university who were here emphasized that. That is precisely why their relationship with the FIPA and OAS is too vague to allow it to be an assembly of parliamentarians rather than government representatives. We are in perfect agreement on that question.

• 1150

Doctor Patry.

Mr. Bernard Patry: Mr. Bertrand, what you say is so true that, when the FIPA was created—because resolutions could not be passed before it was created and before its charters were adopted—a resolution was adopted to invite Cuba to the next FIPA deliberations. It was certainly not the position of our Canadian government at the time.

Mr. Roger Bertrand: The same was done for Quebec, I suppose.

The Chair: Quebec does not yet have statehood. Are you seeking that?

More seriously, Mr. Bertrand, even the American parliamentarian who was there supported this invitation.

Ms. Lalonde, add one last point and we will close the debate.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: I want to add something very important.

Yes, I participated in this first FIPA assembly, but I have to say - and you know that this is not the first time that I say it, and I will continue to say it - that I am extremely disappointed that the rules allow for a maximum of five members, who are as representative as possible, but only two votes. With the Senate and the government there, this means that there will be no possibility for the opposition parties to dissent. That is not at all the way I see a parliamentary assembly. You may count on my co-operation to transform it into a real parliamentary assembly...

The Chair: Wonderful! You may count on me, as the chair of this organization, to do the same thing because I agree with you on this issue.

Ms. Francine Lalonde: ...and to ensure that we work with all parliamentarians from the associated States. I am sure that everyone on the opposition side agrees. And if those who are in power really think about it, they too could agree.

The Chair: That would also depend on the other FIPA members.

Ms. Marleau.

Ms. Diane Marleau: I would like to add something. It has nothing to do with you, Mr. Bertrand.

[English]

I wanted to make a correction, because I don't want the audience to be under the impression that the patented medicines and your companies are the worst offenders. As a matter of fact, I wanted to set the record straight, to say that by far the largest number of medicines needed around the world, especially in developing countries, are medicines that are not covered by patents. In essence, we are talking of your industry more because of the challenge of AIDS and some of the newer medicines that are still under patent. Many of these non-patented medicines could save lives. They could be made very inexpensively, and we all have to make absolutely certain that we make these non-patented medicines available to all the people, because they will go a long way to keeping many of these people healthy.

I just thought I owed you that as an explanation, but I still think you should look at a plan to address the issue more thoroughly.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Again, I'd like to thank all the witnesses for coming this morning. We appreciated very much your taking the time to do this.

This ends the series of hearings prior to the summit.

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, April 24. We'll have a subcommittee on procedure at that time.

[Translation]

Mr. Pierre Paquette: I don't know whether it is worth coming.

[English]

The Chair: The meeting is adjourned.