NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh outlines the NDP's plan to help small businesses and workers by making pharmacare and dental care part of Canada's universal health care. Singh, was joined by NDP candidates Nick Milanovic (Hamilton East-Stoney Creek), Scott Duvall (Hamilton Mountain), Matthew Green (Hamilton Centre) and Yousaf Malik (Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas) at Kebabish Restaurant in Stoney Creek. Singh is seen in this photo with Gina Angelino and Nadeem Younis small business owner of Kebabich Restaurant. Cathie Coward/ Hamilton Spectator

An NDP government would be in “no rush” to ratify the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement, party leader Jagmeet Singh told reporters Thursday — and the NDP would look to alter the deal to include measures like explicit penalties for breaching labour or environment provisions.

“What’s the point of having provisions on labour rights, having provisions on the environment, if there’s no enforceability? That’s, to me, meaningless,” Singh said in Toronto. The NDP leader made similar comments in a French-language debate on Wednesday night, prompting a rebuke on Thursday from Liberal Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland.

In a Twitter post directed at Singh, Freeland wrote that claiming the new trade deal didn’t have protections for the environment or workers was “false.”

“Our government negotiated and secured enforceable, standalone chapters on labour and the environment. Facts matter,” Freeland wrote.

Responding to Freeland’s criticism on Thursday, Singh replied that his issue with the trade deal wasn’t that such sections didn’t exist — it was about whether they could be enforced.

“The fact that Ms. Chrystia Freeland has pointed that out is highlighting my exact criticism of a government that thinks saying pretty words is enough. It’s not,” Singh said.

READ MORE: NAFTA 2.0 ratification likely won’t happen until the fall: US AG official

The NDP leader was then asked by a reporter what specific enforcement mechanisms he would prefer to see in the deal.

“We can have enforcement which requires that the protections are brought before international laws, that there’s accountability measures put into place, that there are penalties in place if they’re not followed,” Singh replied. “Enforcement means making sure we use all the tools available to hold to account any breach in the rights, whether it’s workers rights or environmental rights.”

Singh did not specifically answer when asked whether he would fully “walk away” from the existing USMCA deal, nor how, in that case, he would compel the U.S. and Mexico to return to the negotiating table.

The suggestion that an NDP government would attempt to renegotiate the high profile trade deal has been in the spotlight this week, after Essex incumbent Tracey Ramsey said an NDP government’s “top priority” would be securing a “better” trade deal during an interview with Power & Politics.

“There are improvements that can, and should, be made to this deal and we would make every effort to ensure that we do so,” Ramsey said of the deal — which has been signed by all parties, but has not yet been ratified.

The USMCA deal, sometimes referred to as the new NAFTA — the nearly three-decade old North American Free Trade Agreement it’s posed to replace — was signed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U.S. President Donald Trump and then-Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto last November.

The deal’s future is still on uncertain ground, as U.S. Democrats — who control a majority of the House of Representatives — have raised several concerns, particularly around the labour and environment chapters. Canadian foreign affairs officials, in communication with concerned U.S. Democrats, have been attempting to stress that the two chapters in question are subject to state-to-state dispute settlement under Chapter 31.

Reuters reported last month that the Trump administration had sent its latest proposals for addressing such concerns to the Democrats, citing “lawmakers and congressional sources.” The Canadian Press also reported this week that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has launched a new effort to push for the deal’s final legal approval in Congress by the end of November.

The USMCA deal was negotiated during a time of high trade tensions between Canada and its southern neighbour. The U.S. hit Canada with tariffs on steel and aluminum last June, and the Canadian government retaliated with their own levies on those products, as well as a variety of other goods. The U.S. agreed to lift its tariffs on steel and aluminum in May of this year, with CNN reporting that officials from Canada and Mexico refused to ratify the new trade agreement until the levies were removed.

Now, questions are swirling about if and how a House impeachment inquiry, recently launched against U.S. President Donald Trump, will impact the ratification process. Trudeau was asked about the impeachment inquiry at a campaign stop in Delta last week, and whether he was concerned about its impacts on the ratification of USMCA.

“We’ve always been focused on the ratification of USMCA in a way that tries to go beyond the partisan differences in the United States right now,” Trudeau replied.

He stressed the continued existence of NAFTA, USMCA’s predecessor, in the meantime.

“Until the new one is brought in, the old one remains in place,” the Liberal leader told reporters in British Columbia.

The federal NDP’s critiques of the USMCA deal did not begin on the campaign trail, with Singh taking aim at perceived shortfalls in the trade agreement soon after it was tentatively agreed upon last year. In May of this year, Ramsey issued a statement condemning the federal Liberals for trying to push forward USMCA’s ratification, urging the government to allow the U.S. Congress to continue their work “to improve the deal.”

“Congressional members, labour and environmental groups in the U.S. are working hard in talks with Ambassador [Robert] Lighthizer calling for stronger language to improve labour and environmental provisions and pushing hard to remove the intellectual property protections that will lock in higher prescription drug costs for all three countries,” Ramsey wrote.

READ MORE: Liberals to force vote on bid to extend House hours as MPs mull over new NAFTA pre-ratification motion

Singh was asked on Thursday about how he would address the provision he sees as leading to higher drug prices, particularly given its connection to data protection. (The deal extends the minimum data protection period for a class of drugs known as biologics.)

“It’s made it harder, absolutely,” Singh told reporters. He pointed to his party’s pledge to bring in universal pharmaceutical care as the answer to such concerns. “That is the way we bring down the cost of medication. In fact, we make it free. We use the buying power of our entire nation. Our plan is exactly that,” he said.

Singh then repeated a figure of $10 billion, which he has said on the campaign trail the government would need to invest to ensure universal pharmacare. The only independently released Parliamentary Budget Officer costing assessment of a drug-related pledge so far has been from the Green party. The assessment of their universal drug plan resulted in an estimate of $6.69 billion for 2019-2020, rising to $36.64 billion in 2028-29, with the PBO designating their estimate as having high uncertainty.

READ MORE: Singh says Liberals can’t be trusted to implement pharmacare

The NDP leader was asked by a reporter in Toronto on Thursday about his pharmacare plans, and specifically, how an NDP government would prevent Americans from coming into Canada to buy their drugs — which could either create drug shortages, or drive up prices.

“That’s something we’ve got to look at. It’s a new concern that people are raising,” Singh acknowledged, pointing to price differences for medicines like insulin.

But he stressed that creating a universal pharmacare system would be an NDP government’s first priority, saying his party would address that particular risk afterwards. “Let’s not get the horse before the cart,” he said.

*This story has been updated with details about Canadian foreign affairs officials’ communication with the U.S. on Chapter 31 dispute settlement.

