FAIT Committee Report

MUCH REMAINS TO BE DONE, FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF TRANSPARENCY AS WELL AS OF BALANCE AND COMMITMENT

            The Bloc Québécois members on the Standing Committee are pleased that it took action on our request to hold public hearings before the Quebec City Summit. This exercise made it possible to better identify the hopes and concerns of the public at large, business people and the civil society.

            The integration of the Americas is turning out to be much more than a purely commercial endeavour and is a challenge to us as citizens of the Americas. We have appreciated the opportunity to listen to witnesses from the Southern hemisphere, who were able to express their worries and expectations facing the integration of the Americas.

            Public consultations must guide the political actors, not serve as a screen to cover up the absence of real, constructive dialogue. Consultations that fall on deaf ears serve only to increase the cynicism and mistrust. To this end, the Committee must take note of what the evidence put before it and faithfully reflect this in its report. Unfortunately, it is our opinion that the report fails to do this; hence our dissenting opinion.

Transparency and public participation are utterly indispensable to the democratic process

            Apart from two expert witnesses, everyone who appeared before the Committee deplored the fact that they did not have access to the texts that served as the basis for negotiation among the heads of state meeting in Quebec City. Contrary to what is said in the report, those who insist on them are not obscuring the fundamental issues; they are the essence of the debate integration of the Americas. Six weeks after the beginning of the Summet, the texts are still not available and we strongly deplore it.

            Let us not forget that two summits were taking place simultaneously in Quebec City: the Summit of heads of state and government and the People’s Summit, which brought together thousands of representatives of the civil society in the three Americas, Aboriginal peoples and parliamentarians. These spokespeople brought with them varied points of view and a wealth of expertise that the heads of state would have done well to listen to.

            Those who participated in the People’s Summit could have made a more significant contribution to the process of the Summit of the Americas if they had known exactly what was being negotiated at the other Summit behind the closed doors of the Congress Centre.

            The disproportion between the access afforded to the representatives of the American Business Forum and that given to the representatives of the People’s Summit, along with the sponsorship system established by the federal government at the Quebec City Summit, only served to fuel the negative perceptions.

            Last April, the House of commons unanimously adopted a motion aiming at promoting the transparency of the negotiating process by integrating Parliament’s participation and civil society. The motion reads as follows:

"That the government put in place an open and ongoing process to keep Parliament informed of negotiations to establish a Free Trade Area of the Americas so as to allow parliamentarians to debate it and civil society to be consulted before Parliament approves it."

We must move from corporate America to an America of the people

            The Bloc Québécois believes in free trade. Quebec and even Canada are relatively small markets, and our businesses need access to the rest of world. This is especially true of leading-edge fields in which businesses could never write down high research costs based solely on the domestic market.

            Nonetheless, free trade is not the answer to every problem; quite the contrary. Inequalities among countries have increased in recent years, and relative inequalities between the rich and the poor within countries have increased. The absence of legislation protecting the environment, and citizens and workers’ rights, could lead to the corporations’ relocating there to save money.

            If everyone is to benefit from free trade, progress must be assured — and equal importance given — to the business, environmental, human, democratic and development aspects simultaneously. These aspects are not meant to be played off against each other. They are the five pillars on which the integration and development of the Americas should rest. If one is favoured over the others, the structure will be undermined. The Bloc Québécois, which strongly supports the idea of creating a support fund for the structural development of the Southern hemisphere, regrets that the government has not adopted this project and that the Committee has not even addressed it. This balance, of which the Committee report speaks, is impossible to reach without support for development.

            The Bloc Québécois is of the opinion that any free trade agreement for the Americas must include respect for fundamental human and labour rights and protection of the environment, if all countries are to be able to take advantage of the economic benefits of the FTAA.

When investors’ rights are exercised to the detriment of citizens’ rights

            We have seven years of experience with the implementation of NAFTA, experience that we must learn from in order to avoid spreading its weaknesses to the rest of the Americas. Although the agreement has, on the whole, been beneficial, it does have shortcomings.

            Chapter 11 of the agreement — which entitles businesses to take direct action against foreign governments if they believe that a legislative provision prevents them from doing business, and thus corresponds to expropriation — is problematic. The only witness before the Committee who claimed that NAFTA’s Chapter 11 did not pose a problem was a lawyer representing a company taking action against the federal government under this chapter.

            We must bear in mind that NAFTA was presented, during its adoption process, as the "greenest" free trade agreement ever to have been negotiated, particularly with respect to its environmental reserves and its parallel agreement on environmental co-operation. But witnesses, including a former Premier of Quebec, demonstrated to the Committee that the inclusion of Chapter 11, all by itself, has succeeded in obliterating these advances. Almost everyone agreed on that. However, the government did not take note and the report is silent on this point.

            What will the real impact be of the "democracy clause" adopted in Quebec City, if the integration of the Americas is not itself democratic? If foreign businesses are able to overturn legislation, if the mechanism for resolving disputes remains secret, if not all interested parties are allowed to argue their case, we risk finding ourselves with democratic governments that have lost their ability to defend their people.

The Bloc Québécois therefore urges the government to take the same stand on investments.

Parliamentarians should not be mere observers

Currently Canadian parliamentarians are, in fact, passive observers of the FTAA negotiation process — when they are not, which is worse, expected to act as approving straight men.

            The integration of the Americas will have a direct impact on the people we represent. It is vital for us to be players in this project if we are to defend their interests. Parliament’s only decision-making authority will consist in adopting the FTAA implementation act, which involves amending Canadian legislation to bring it into line with an agreement that will have been signed and ratified by the government without citizen involvement.

            MNA Roger Bertrand, who appeared before the Committee on behalf of the Quebec National Assembly, stated the findings of the report of Quebec’s Committee on Institutions, which made the same point. Oswaldo Molestina, an Ecuadorian parliamentarian and Vice-Chair of the Parliamentary Conference of the Americas (COPA), expressed a similar view in the name of the parliamentarians of the Americas.

            Unfortunately, the Committee report makes no mention of this. The Bloc Québécois believes that the federal government should rethink its practices and follow the example of the Quebec National Assembly, which will give its opinion on the draft FTAA before the Quebec government commits itself to the agreement. Twice, the Bloc Québécois has moved that the House of Commons debate and vote on any final agreement regarding the FTAA before Parliament approves it. Each time, the government majority rejected the motion, even though it had the support of all the opposition parties.

In Quebec’s absence, who will defend the "Quebec model"?

            The government did not clearly specify the position it will defend with regard to services. As far as it would go was indicating that it intended public services controlled by the government to be excluded from free trade. In Quebec, however, some public services are not delivered directly by the government; they are delivered through not-for-profit organizations subsidized by the government. This socio-economic sector is expanding steadily and is part of what is called the "Quebec model."

            Because the provinces have been excluded from the negotiations, they are unable to defend the interests of the people. The Bloc Québécois maintains that the elected officials of the government of Quebec must have access to the international forums discussing areas of jurisdiction exclusive to Quebec.

The need for sovereignty

            At a time when sovereign states are taking their place around the world table to negotiate new rules, Quebec must start now to assert itself. It must assert the values that shape its uniqueness, assert its identity as the only francophone state in the Americas.

            By becoming a sovereign state, Quebec will be in a position, as the sixth strongest economic power in the Americas, to stand up for itself at the international negotiating table, argue its case in alliance with other countries without going through the filter of the federal government, and make decisions that reflect its own interests. In the context of globalization, sovereignty is the only solution that will allow Quebec to develop to its fullest potential.