Our interests are clear, but what are our values?

As François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of International Trade, signed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership in Santiago, Chile, earlier this month, Canada’s interests were boldly underscored. An agreement that would level the playing field of the global economy. (Well, a piece of it.) An agreement that would rain prosperity and well-paying middle-class jobs for Canadian workers. A “progressive” deal that would benefit Canadians for decades to come.

It really did sound magical in the minister’s phrasing, binding the country closely to the Asia-Pacific region. Imagine tariff-free exports of fresh P.E.I blueberries to Malaysia or greater market access for the already $1.5 billion worth of imported Vietnamese clothing and footwear that stuffs the racks and shelves of fashion and athletic wear outlets from Vancouver to St. John’s.

But we all should be asking by what measure the 11-member arrangement is truly progressive. Or whether the values inherent in raising international labour standards, for example, got lost along the way.

This conversation seems to have been forestalled by ongoing (never-ending) NAFTA talks and the bully tactics deployed by the U.S. president (he who shall not be named) over steel and aluminium. But time was when progressives on the trade file understood that the old NAFTA was a failure on the labour front and believed the Trans-Pacific deal was a gifted opportunity to right past wrongs.

For background, it is imperative to review the side agreement reached by U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and Vietnam’s minister of industry and trade two years ago when the United States was still part of the pact. The language is muscular; the intent clear. To establish legal procedures and registration mechanisms, in collaboration with the U.S., to recognize grassroots labour unions. To ensure that those are in accordance with the ILO declaration, “including with respect to transparency.” To recognize that any registered labour union be allowed to operate autonomously according to its own statutes. To have Vietnam amend its penal code to apply “appropriate criminal sanctions for the use of forced labour.” To develop and implement an inspection strategy to investigate child and forced labour.

That’s just a precis. Legal and institutional reforms were to be enacted before the TPP would come into force.

And here’s the biggie: the agreement gave the U.S. the authority to withhold or suspend tariff reductions. That’s a big stick. If Vietnam disputed that decision, it had recourse through the so-called Dispute Settlement provisions in the main text.

Angelo DiCaro, a national representative in Unifor’s research department, describes the U.S.-Vietnam action plan as a “prescriptive, itemized blow-by-blow of everything Vietnam needed to do to reform its labour provisions on condition of joining the TPP.” And then the U.S. dropped out.

In the newly inked CPTPP, Canada has since signed a number of “side instruments” with Vietnam. There’s one on whisky: Vietnam agrees to recognize Canadian Whisky and Canadian Rye Whisky as distinctive products of Canada, and will not permit the sale of any so-named items that have not been manufactured in Canada.

There’s a pledge to keep talking about cybersecurity.

On labour, the letter has none of the progressive measures that the U.S. had crafted. Instead, the agreement merely attaches time lines to potential dispute settlements as defined in the main text. That means that the main text language in Chapter 19 of the agreement prevails. Chapter 19 “recognizes the goal of eliminating” forced labour (a more impotent phrase is hard to imagine) and upholds the rights of the ILO Declaration (freedom of association, etc.) with none of the U.S.-crafted guidelines for implementation and transparency.

“It says if you don’t comply with our timelines, we can now enact a dispute that goes through Chapter 19,” says DiCarlo.

The labour movement draws a straight line between the feared ineffectiveness of that dispute settlement process and a nine-year long labour enforcement case between the U.S. and Guatemala. The Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement was signed in 2004 and came into force in 2009. In September, 2014, Michael Froman announced that the Obama administration was proceeding with a labour enforcement case against Guatemala, the first ever labour dispute under a free-trade agreement.

The case involved garment manufacturers, shipping companies and a rubber plantation, and focused on the failure to enforce labour laws related to the right to organize and bargain collectively as well as the failure of those companies to comply with court orders to reinstate and compensate workers dismissed for union activities.

Last summer, the dispute panel ruled that while the labour laws had clearly not been upheld, the U.S. had failed to establish that the failure to enforce those laws affected trade between the parties. So the test became not whether labour rights had been violated, but whether any competitive advantage was gained by the exporters in question. No trade advantage was determined.

In the years before the case was lost, Michael Froman spoke eloquently about what the gold standard in trade should be. “These standards protect the fundamental rights of workers around the world and promote trade and investment that lifts the futures of all, not the fortunes of a few.”

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That’s what the Trudeau government should have been bent on delivering. That’s how we could have enshrined our values, and not just advanced our interests.

Reach Jennifer Wells at jenwells@thestar.ca