FREE TRADE AREA OF THE AMERICAS

Bloc Quebecois Opposition Motion

Tuesday April 24, 2001

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to be able to participate in the debate today, because as some members will know I was up earlier asking questions of members of the Bloc.

I want to explore the theme of democracy which we find in the motion in terms of trying to set out appropriate process and which we find in the ongoing nature of the debate. The member for Toronto Centre—Rosedale just mentioned the democracy clause.

The debate today is all about democracy. The democracy clause that was adopted in Quebec City, and which has been put forward as such a great accomplishment, is at a certain conceptual level a genuine accomplishment.

There is nothing wrong with the United States of America and for all the countries of the FTAA area to say that they want all the countries who come to the table to be democratically elected. But the absence of military dictatorships is not a guarantee in itself of authentic democracy. It is a bit simplistic, while at the same time being important, to say if they are not a democracy they cannot be at the table.

Our claim is a much different and deeper claim about democracy. This is what I would like to try to explain and which other New Democrats have tried to explain over and over again. It is not enough to just have elected democratic governments. Those democratic governments must have a full range of choices available to them in terms of how they organize their own national economies, how they provide services to their citizens and what kind of demands they can put on foreign investors who are investing in their countries in terms of job performance or environmental regulations.

There is a variety of things that democracies have had at their disposal traditionally, which if these free trade agreements are adopted, as some have already been, this range of options will not be available to these democracies. We say that is not democracy.

One of the reasons there is this tolerance for democracy by the Americans in Central America and South America now is because they have the prospect of free trade agreements and because the free trade ideology has been generally accepted.

What they used to have to have an authoritarian right wing government in order to achieve, they can now do through a free trade agreement. The world is now not safe for democracy, the world is now safe from democracy.

We can have all the elected democracies we like because these free trade agreements have drawn an ideological perimeter around what these governments are able to do. What can they not do? They cannot get in the way of the patent rights of giant multinational drug manufacturers. They cannot get in the way of the producers of various toxic additives to gasoline.

They cannot get in the way of American media interests that do not like the way Canada has subsidized its cultural industries, in particular its magazines.

They cannot get in the way of the freedom of multinational courier companies to make profits. In other words, they cannot do what Canada has done for years, which is to have a public monopoly of the post office and have that public monopoly subsidize other activities of that same post office.

They cannot get in the way of the ability of multinational corporations and others to exploit certain resources, whether they be energy or water.

It is all fine and dandy to have democracies, but if these democracies have to behave in a certain way, and in a certain way only, and if they do not behave in that way they come up against sanctions built into the agreements either by virtue of chapter 11 mechanisms whereby the democracies that do not want to behave in an ideologically correct way are sued or they are challenged in some other way by the agreements, then what is the point of democracy? What is the point of democracy if the only thing we can do is what the corporations want us to do anyway?

I suppose it is better on some level than not having a democracy but it is a pretty limited democracy. That is our point and I think the point of so many demonstrators who were in Quebec City last weekend.

It is not enough just to have elected democracies. If those elected democracies are generally bought and paid for by big corporate donors in their respective countries, as is the case in this country and so many other places, and if even then they have to live by a certain set of rules set down by the corporations that are on the inside of the negotiations and have a very powerful say in what the trade agreements look like, then what kind of democracy is that?

It is almost a ruse. It becomes a kind of sham democracy because so many of the public policy options which were available to governments in the past, and which Canadian governments used in the past to build what most Canadians consider very important to the country, will not be available to the new democracies.

The public policy options that have been established, which are contrary to the ideological correctness built into the agreements, subsequently will be whittled away. They will be challenged through chapter 11. They will be eaten away at through various other forms of harmonization.

That is our contention. I would challenge Liberals to get up and say that they think that is okay. Do they think that the threat to these public policy instruments that Liberal governments used in the past to regulate foreign investment, media and culture and now the emerging threat to our publicly owned health care system and our publicly funded education system, are acceptable?

Is this really what they call democracy, or does democracy really mean having a much greater range of choice when it comes to policies than what the free trade agreements will permit when they are entrenched and what the ones that are already entrenched permit at the moment?

We hear a lot of talk about choice. My Alliance colleagues are always going on about choice, yet they are willing to support free trade agreements which almost eliminate choice; choice for everyone else except government and choice for everyone else except democracies.

Democratically elected governments will have about this much room to operate because everything else will be prohibited by the free trade agreements. I do not call that a democracy.

Mr. John McKay (Scarborough East, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I do not take issue with the hon. member's speech in some respects. I appreciate that he has identified some of the frustrations around chapter 11 and around recognition of the devolution of sovereignty in terms of going to free trade panels or some other dispute resolution mechanisms.

What he has not addressed is the central issue of large multinational corporations investing in nations and then having the rules, laws and regulations changed after the fact. This could be any corporation or business, large or small, that has invested in a nation be it Canada or any other nation in the hemisphere. They recognize there is some vulnerability in this investment and some form of legal regime, rules, laws and regulations.

Could the hon. member address the issue of how a capital investment, large or small, could be brought into one of these agreements whereby there would be some comfort to the investor, yet still address some of the issues that he has legitimately raised?

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member raises a good point that goes to the heart of the matter in some ways.

What we are being asked to do in Canada is, in the name of protecting Canadian investors who are investing in other countries and that may run up against the very same public policy instruments that Canada has used in the past and in some sense is still using them to further the national interest or act in the public interest or in the interest of the common good, give up those public policy instruments so that Canadian companies will not run into those same instruments in other countries.

This specifically applies when it comes to GATS and health care. ln order to make it possible for multinational health care corporations, some of which may be based in Canada, to have access to what are essentially private health care systems in other countries we are being asked to give up our ability to protect our publicly owned health care system.

I say there has to be a way to have the rule of law in these countries, so that people do not get swindled and have their investments disappear overnight by virtue of some government fiat or arbitrary change in the rules or whatever. There has to be a way to do that so it does not destroy the ability of a democratic country like Canada to employ the kind of public policy instruments which we have employed in the past and which we still employ. To me that is a challenge that can be met.

Instead, under cover of protecting investors' rights in other countries we are being subjected to an ideological battle here at home whereby a lot of the things that people have always been against they are now getting to eliminate under cover of protecting investors' rights in some other country.