Not sold on deal’s supposed ‘values’
What’s the deal?
Some readers took issue with this column’s characterization of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s keynote speech at Davos this week.
As noted, the PM prefaced his remarks by announcing that Canada has at last come to terms on a trans-Pacific trading partnership, the former TPP, now the CPTPP, or Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. This announcement, he said, was “fully in keeping with the speech I’m about to give.” His remarks would “address the importance of progressive values in the context of globalization.”
So, arguably, a reasonable person might reasonably expect to be informed as to how the new deal meets the “progressive” test and Canada’s role in that achievement. He was addressing a globalized audience at an economic forum. He noted the “staggering” gap between the rich and poor. He noted that trade agreements must provide better opportunities. And then he led the audience down his previously travelled road of gender equity, the urgent imperative of advancing women in the workplace, getting more women on corporate boards, and so on. The speech paid homage to government initiatives aimed at the domestic scene (pay equity), and took a pass on the transference of progressive values to a globalized world. So back to trade. One of the big lessons of NAFTA was that it failed in labour rights and environmental controls. Both provisions were addressed only after fierce debate and only in so-called sidebar deals. The renovation of NAFTA, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland promised, would bring modernization in these areas, and others. “Canadian workers have legitimate anxieties about the ways in which international trade can lead to a race to the bottom in labour standards,” Freeland said. The new NAFTA would be both modern and progressive and side letters would be recast as chapters within the trade agreement.
This is not a column about NAFTA, but the context is important.
The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership faced significant challenges on the labour front. The United States Department of Labor documents goods produced by child and forced labour.
The list is long in Vietnam, where low- skilled labour makes up 40 per cent of the workforce. Leather, pepper, textiles, coffee, garments and footwear are just some of the goods believed to be produced in violation of international standards. Exploitation in Malaysia is noted in the areas of electronics, garments and palm oil. Vietnam and Malaysia are both signatories to the CPTPP.
Reform of labour relations in Vietnam was high on the United States agenda when Washington was a participant in TPP negotiations. The Vietnam General Confederation of Labor (VGCL) is the country’s only trade union confederation, oversees and controls all unions and reports directly to the government. Two years ago, as part of the TPP, the republic’s ministry of industry and trade reached agreement with the U.S. on labour modernization, including legal reforms ensuring the rights of workers to form grassroots labour unions outside the control of the VGCL with equal rights “in law and practice,” including the right to operate according to the union’s own statutes and the right to collective bargaining.
Other agreed-upon demands included amending the penal code to apply criminal sanctions to the use of forced labour and the creation of a strategy of targeted inspections in sectors where forced and child labour has been identified.
Vietnam had a huge and obvious incentive for signing a side agreement that goes much deeper than the labour chapter of the TPP: mar- ket access.
Significantly, the WashingtonHanoi agreement set strict time limits for implementation to bring changes into force and concluded with the U.S. threat of subsequently withholding or suspending tariff reductions.
And then the U.S. dropped out, plunging Vietnam’s estimated gains from the trade deal from as much as a 7-per-cent increase in GDP to as low as 1.3 per cent. When Canada announced Tuesday that it had reached agreement to join the CPTPP, it highlighted cultural protections and market access for auto exports to Japan. The final paragraph of the government release begins like this: “Canada also secured a new preamble that includes important progressive ele- ments.” These include “promoting labour rights.” Not ensuring labour rights, but promoting labour rights.
Numerous references were made in the media this week to a longer “grace period” to bring Hanoi into line. Side letters will be signed when the deal is sealed, in early March, in Chile.
How long will Vietnam’s transition period be? Will the new deal be enforceable? How progressive is it? Progressive values are, as the prime minister says, vitally important in the context of globalization. I’m still waiting to be convinced that in this, Canada has created the new gold standard as promised. In the meantime I ask again: What’s the deal? jenwells@thestar.ca