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Results: 1156 - 1164 of 1164
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
CPC (ON)
So, you don't know the cost to the governments of killing the Teck Frontier mine. It is reported to be $70 billion that the governments—all three levels—will lose if your government kills this project.
You claim that your government has been negotiating with the first nations regarding the blockade. Since the blockade began, has your government met with any of the 20 first nations communities' elected councils that have approved and support the Coastal GasLink?
View Bill Morneau Profile
Lib. (ON)
The situation we find ourselves in is obviously one that's extremely challenging. We know that the path forward has to consider our objective, which is to get to a peaceful conclusion that allows our economy to function and respects all parties to the situation. So, we—
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
CPC (ON)
Yesterday, the Prime Minister's remarks didn't even acknowledge the existence of the 20 first nations communities that have signed agreements to support the Coastal GasLink. It sounds to me as if their voices don't matter to this government. It really harkens back to a sort of colonialist mentality where the government just ignores people it disagrees with and only talks to those with whom it agrees.
Why hasn't your government engaged with those 20 first nations communities that desperately want this project to go ahead so they can lift themselves out of poverty and give hope to their young people? Why aren't you engaging with those first nations communities?
View Bill Morneau Profile
Lib. (ON)
With respect, I wouldn't agree with that characterization. I think it's important for us to consider all the parties to this situation. That includes the peoples engaged themselves; that includes their elected representatives; that includes the hereditary chiefs, and of course that includes the businesses that are impacted and the people across Canada who are impacted by the situation.
So—
View Bill Morneau Profile
Lib. (ON)
I'm not quite finished yet.
We are not excluding anyone from those discussions, and we will work as hard as we can and in a co-operative fashion to get to a conclusion that will be positive for the people engaged in this and positive for our economy.
Sujata Dey
View Sujata Dey Profile
Sujata Dey
2020-02-18 12:49
Good afternoon.
My name is Sujata Dey, and I am responsible for the Council of Canadians' international trade campaign.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you about the Canada—United States—Mexico Agreement, or CUSMA, from outside the country. As you said, I am in Guadalajara where this agreement is known as T-MEC. But you have my word that I am here by chance.
With more than 100,000 members, the Council of Canadians was founded on the heels of the debate over the first free-trade agreement between the United States and Canada. It was THE major topic of debate in the elections of 1988.
As many have said, a number of things have changed since 1988. At the time, our organization, just like the Liberal Party and the NDP, in fact, was concerned about Canadian sovereignty. Nationalism was the issue.
Decades later, many of our concerns are the same as they were in 1988: downward pressure on our social protections and regulations, privatization and deregulation of the public sphere, and the way these deals contribute to lowering conditions for workers and the environment.
It is not just about Canadian values. It is about how free trade, as codified in these agreements, protects the interests of multinational corporations rather than those of people and the planet. As Maude Barlow, our chairperson, wrote, “The most important thing both the FTA and NAFTA did was to create North American economic integration...and the country origin of these companies meant less and less. So it was less about where the company originated than the way it used these trade agreements.”
Often when these trade agreements are conceived, they're framed very strictly: winners and losers, industries and markets. Yet, these agreements reshape our democratic rules and our societies, not just our global markets.
With President Trump's renegotiation of NAFTA, we inherited the same model. Again, the bulk of the conversation was on supply chains and trade volumes. While there were attempts to involve civil society, this was not the central part of the agreement. Neither were MPs, our democratic representatives, implicated in the hatching of this agreement. Indigenous partners were not on the same level as states.
As such, we have an agreement that may contain some improvements, but that is still sorely lacking in many areas. That is sad because this is happening at a time when we have global problems such as growing wealth inequality, which is leading people to choose the path of dangerous populism. There is a very real climate crisis, and these issues should also be addressed in trade agreements, not undermined by them.
When I spoke to this committee in 2019, just before the federal election, I noted that we were very happy to see a few important changes. Over 35,000 of our members wrote to MPs asking for some of them.
ISDS, or the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism, has been taken out of the agreement, at least for Canada and the U.S. This investment chapter gives corporations the right to sue governments over their policies. NAFTA made Canada the top ISDS target: It became the developed country with the most cases against it. As most of these cases were focused on environmental regulations, this hampered Canada from taking bold climate action.
All over the world, ISDS is becoming more unpopular. From now on, Canada must not accept this clause in any of its agreements, whether in CETA—where it is very contested—in the CPTPP or in any similar mechanism proposed at the WTO. It is simply too dangerous.
As well, the mandatory energy proportionality provisions that mandated us to export a quota of energy to the U.S. have been removed from the new NAFTA. That will give us more policy room to meet our G8 and Paris commitments.
The cultural exemption has been strengthened and now applies to the digital industry. The Council of Canadians and le Réseau québécois sur l'intégration continentale wrote an open letter in defence of this principle. The letter received support from Margaret Atwood, Susan Swann, Jane Urquhart, Ronald Wright and Jack Stoddart. In Quebec, support has come from France Castel, Dominic Champagne, Philippe Falardeau, Pierre Curzi, Micheline Lanctôt, Yann Perreau, Lorraine Pintal and Michel Tremblay, among others.
Indigenous artists like Marco Collin and Tantoo Cardinal are among those who support the principle.
In the spring of 2019, there was a panic to ratify the agreement as soon as possible. In June, Council of Canadians members wrote to their MPs urging them to wait for the Democrats in the U.S. Congress before they finished improving the agreement. Our members were also concerned about the biologic provisions that would make drugs more expensive. This would add to the cost of an eventual pharmacare program. Luckily, those provisions were removed in the democratic process. Labour provisions were also strengthened, so we feel it was definitely worth the wait, but there are still serious problems with the agreement.
The chapter on regulatory cooperation may appear harmless, but it is not. It actually allows private interests to participate in a process parallel to the parliamentary and democratic process. That imposes new requirements on those responsible for the regulation in terms of defending the new policies. If that process is not adequate, states can challenge the regulatory measures through the dispute settlement regulations.
CETA has a similar voluntary co-operation chapter that is much less stringent than the one in the new CUSMA. Together with foodwatch, a European advocacy group, this week we revealed documents under an access to information provision that showed just one of the meetings of this regulatory co-operation committee. It showed that Canadian regulators were successful in challenging sometimes higher European Union animal and plant legislation, as well as legislation on pesticides and herbicides. They were also using this committee to attack the precautionary principle, which is used in the EU.
In this committee, Canada has regularly done regulatory co-operation with the U.S., but now the new CUSMA codifies it. The documents showed that in many cases Canadian regulators were unwilling to discuss the issues with the EU because they were very concerned about harmonization with the U.S. This is alarming for citizens, because it suggests that these committees, rather than protecting our human and animal safety, protecting us from toxins and trying to prevent harm, are using this chapter to weaken regulations. We need checks and balances in this implementing legislation, including parliamentary oversight of these eventually industry-created committees.
On farming, much has been said about attacks on supply management and quotas for American dairy products entering the Canadian market. At the Council of Canadians, we're also worried about the standards of additional U.S. milk coming over the border. In the 1990s, we successfully campaigned to end the licensing of bovine growth hormone here in Canada. This hormone makes cows produce 25% more milk, but at the expense of cow health. BGH is used in the U.S. and is not labelled. We must ensure that the labelling of BGH happens or that there are restrictions on milk produced with BGH and sold in Canada. This will be particularly challenging because Canada and the U.S. have already successfully used the WTO forum to challenge European bans on hormones.
As well, we've often mentioned the environmental chapter. Yes, it's binding, but it doesn't even mention climate change. It doesn't do much on pollution, and it does nothing to prevent corporations from shifting to places where regulations are laxer. UNDRIP is not part of the agreement, nor is water protected.
We're here now to get a better agreement. To get a better agreement, trade must be done differently from the start. Citizens and parliamentarians must be let in. Having worked on trade agreements with NGOs in Europe and the U.S. for the last five years, I've noted that their processes are more debate-oriented and there's much more consultation. This has not occurred by accident, but by design. In Canada, the amount of participation is at the discretion of the federal cabinet. There's no requirement for anyone to be consulted until the implementing legislation, the point where we are now. The result is that these agreements are more tilted away from democratic oversight and into back rooms.
In both the U.S. and Europe, the negotiating objectives are published and debated by lawmakers. In the U.S., the negotiating objectives are in the trade promotion authority fast-track law itself. At several stages of the process, NGOs and stakeholders are mandated to participate, through the committee process or even their own negotiating round. Lawmakers are also involved in the negotiation process, and the negotiating texts are shared. In both the EU and the U.S., economic impact studies are conducted before the process is completed.
In Canada, there is no mandatory economic analysis; it is rarely done. As a result, in two of our agreements, with South Korea and—
View Daniel Blaikie Profile
NDP (MB)
Thank you.
Thank you very much for making arrangements to be in touch remotely. I know you are out of the country right now, and we appreciate your being here.
I want to pick up on one of the themes of your opening remarks, which is the process by which Canada comes to conclude trade deals. Oftentimes Parliament really only gets involved in a substantial way once a deal is already signed, which precludes the possibility of impacting the outcome. In some cases negotiations can go on for some time without Canadians necessarily being aware that they are.
I wonder if you could speak to some of the elements that could be brought in to have a proper trade process here in Canada that involves civil society and Parliament earlier on and ensures we have the kind of public and open debate that we ought to have when we're considering deals of this magnitude.
Sujata Dey
View Sujata Dey Profile
Sujata Dey
2020-02-18 13:31
Thank you for that question.
It's very important, not just for people who believe in the values of the Council of Canadians, but this is a process that makes our trade agreements better. We can all agree that the more people are involved, and the more democratic and transparent our process is, the better our agreements will be.
Within the U.S. process, we saw a process where Congress was very involved from the very beginning, from the negotiating mandate, to being consulted during the negotiation process, having the negotiating texts, having economic studies on time and having hearings with civil society and other participants. That resulted in a much richer debate, not just during this NAFTA process, but even during the TPP process.
This is a common-sense approach on how we can do better, and this approach is not just in the United States; it's within Europe. When we started CETA, they had done economic impact studies right from the beginning. They had planned a negotiating round with civil society. They had gone in and had several points where the EU Parliament and the EU council were involved with the agreement. There were times when the negotiating texts were made public.
I think those processes would make Canada have a much more balanced and better process, because then we would be able to actually evaluate it: How is this agreement actually helping us? Are our exports going lower as a result of this trade agreement? Is it actually benefiting us? I think those questions would give us a lot more rigour and a lot more democracy in how we approach trade and would make all Canadians feel more a part of the trade process.
Nicholas Leswick
View Nicholas Leswick Profile
Nicholas Leswick
2020-02-03 15:33
I'll just make a few short opening remarks.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, and honourable members of the committee.
Well, you've introduced me, Nick Leswick, the assistant deputy minister of the economic and fiscal policy branch, with overall responsibility within the department for economic and fiscal forecasting and the production of the federal budget.
Andrew Marsland is our assistant deputy minister of tax policy. Evelyn Dancey is our associate ADM of the economic development and corporate finance branch.
I have other officials from the Department of Finance behind me who can assist us in providing responses to your questions.
I will speak briefly about the preparations currently under way at the department for budget 2020. Every year, the Department of Finance organizes its own pre-budget consultations in addition to the consultations that you, the committee members, are hosting.
Through town halls, focus groups and online surveys, and by receiving emails and regular mail, the consultations allow the Government of Canada to hear directly from Canadians on what measures could be included in the upcoming budget.
This year's pre-budget consultations are focused on the themes from the Speech from the Throne, themes that we know are important to Canadians and that the government has stated as its clear priorities: strengthening the middle class, protecting our environment, keeping Canadians safe and healthy, and reconciliation with indigenous peoples.
These pre-budget consultations were launched on January 13. The objective was clear: inviting Canadians and experts to share their ideas and help build the upcoming budget.
As you may know, Minister Morneau and Minister Fortier, as well as Parliamentary Secretary Fraser, who is at this committee, have held town halls and round tables across the country to date.
Also, 15,000 Canadians have responded so far to online surveys on our website, and responses come in every day.
The consultations are ongoing; therefore, there is still time for Canadians to share their ideas and their priorities with the government, whether that is online or at events across the country. The government wants to hear from as many Canadians as possible.
With that, Mr. Chair, we will be happy to answer any questions the members of the committee may have as they pursue the various themes under this year's pre-budget consultations.
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