Trade Justice Network CUSMA Consultations Submission 2025

Submission to the Government of Canada Consultation on the Review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) from the Trade Justice Network

Thank you for this opportunity to provide the Trade Justice Network’s recommendations in advance of the review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement. The Trade Justice Network (TJN) is a coalition of labour, environmental, and social justice organizations. Our members include the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the National Union of Public and General Employees, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, Unifor, and the United Steelworkers. In total, our coalition represents well over three million working people.

Our over-arching request is that, in the CUSMA review negotiations, the voices of these Canadians – workers, students, women, Indigenous peoples – the majority of the population – are given full consideration, and that your negotiating positions reflect our member organizations’ concerns.

TJN works with sister organizations in the U.S. and Mexico and we share many common concerns. The inclusion of a Labour Chapter, and specifically the Rapid Response Labour Mechanism, has helped workers in Mexico to form genuine unions in dozens of workplaces, and thereby improve their lives. However, on a broader scale, over the past five years since the implementation of CUSMA, barely any progress has been made in closing the enormous gap between the wages of workers in Mexico, and workers in Canada and the US.As a result, poverty continues to prevail in Mexico despite the presence of state of the art production facilities, and workers in Canada continue to face a corporate-driven race to the bottom, also fueled by anti-union “Right to Work” legislation in many US states.

We encourage Canadian negotiators to come to the CUSMA table with options for improving worker protections and expanding – and enforcing – “inclusive trade” elements in the agreement including: labour rights; expansion of the rapid response labour mechanism; banishing the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) from CUSMA and other trade agreements; expanding environmental protections; and strengthening gender, Indigenous and other anti-discrimination provisions.

Here is a more detailed list of our shared TJN priorities:

1. Improvements to the CUSMA Labour Chapter, including the facility-specific Rapid Response Labour Mechanism (RRM)

a. Apply the RRM to equivalent sectors within the U.S. and Canada and permit complaints to be filed for the same violations of labour rights.

b. Add a substantive obligation requiring all CUSMA Parties to ensure employers bargain in good faith in their respective countries.

c. Require Mexico’s Federal Center for Conciliation and Labour Registration (FCCLR) to have sanctioning authority on employers. Granting this power to the FCCLR would allow expanded enforcement and to deal with labour law violations that the RRM does not catch.

d. Engage in co-operative capacity building under the CUSMA chapter to strengthen labour law enforcement and inspection systems in Mexico and to help support, with funding and capacity, an arms-length oversight committee with a mandate to collect data and offer training regarding labour law enforcement.

e. Expand the application of the RRM beyond workers involved in manufacturing goods, supplying services, or mining to also cover other trade-related areas, including energy, the broader service sector, agriculture and migrant workers.

f. Expand the definition of a “denial of rights” under the RRM to include, in addition to the current freedom of association and collective bargaining rights provision, protection from discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation or gender expression, gender-based violence, child labour, health and safety, and minimum standards of work. Violations of these commitments should be grounds for a complaint.

g. Implement standardized and transparent procedures for countries to receive and investigate RRM complaints, including the obligation to consult with affected workers and complainant parties. Implement standardized and transparent procedures for remediation and follow-up on implementation of remediation within specified timelines. There must also be transparency regarding the reasons why complaints are not investigated.

h. Provide protections from blacklisting and other reprisals for whistleblowers and those workers who bring complaints about labour violations under the RRM, including stronger confidentiality measures for complainants.

i. Require a company to disclose its customers and distribution networks if it alleges that it is not a Covered Facility as defined in the Agreement. Failure to disclose this information in a timely manner would lead to a negative inference by the government investigating the complaint that the company is, in fact, a Covered Facility.

j. Implement meaningful Canadian enforcement measures to block the importation of goods produced using forced or compulsory labour, as required by Article 23.6 of CUSMA

2. Strengthen the enforcement of the CUSMA Environment Chapter

a. Establish a rapid-response mechanism (RRM) for environmental complaints, modeled after the facility-specific RRM in CUSMA’s Labour Chapter. This will strengthen and codify the enforcement of environmental obligations.

b. Negotiate a climate peace clause that shields measures aimed at reducing emissions or responding to the climate emergency from potential CUSMA state-to-state and investor-state dispute settlement.

c. Expand the list of multilateral environmental obligations that can be enforced through CUSMA’s binding state-to-state dispute settlement process to include the UNFCC, Paris Agreement, and Sustainable Development Goals.

3. CUSMA dispute settlement mechanisms

a. Create a level playing field across North America with respect to investment by completely eliminating investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in Mexico, already eliminated for Canada and the U.S.

b. Propose to remove access to the ISDS process in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) for Canadian investors in Mexico and Mexican investors in Canada.

4. Human Rights – Gender, Indigenous Peoples, Other Protected Classes

a. Require the inclusion of a Gender Chapter in CUSMA and develop ways in which the provisions of the chapter can be subjected to dispute resolution.

b. Conduct a thorough equity review and gender-based analysis of CUSMA and consider ways in which an intersectional analysis could lead to better inclusion of provisions designed to address how trade may have negative impacts on women, racialized people and other disadvantaged groups.

c. Canada should provide financial support for the gender elements in the Mexican labour reform and for Mexican labour activists’ efforts to organize women workers and provide capacity-building, training and other measures.

d. Include women’s and LGBTQI+ organizations from the three countries in the CUSMA six-year review process.

e. Broadly engage North American Indigenous communities including First Nations, Inuit and Métis in the preparations for and negotiation for 2026 CUSMA review in all three countries.

f. Propose that all signatories to the CUSMA treat migrants and refugees as they should be treated under international law.

g. Create a path to permanent residency status for temporary foreign, seasonal agricultural, and undocumented workers based on the contributions they have made to our economies.

We appreciate this opportunity to provide input on the CUSMA review. We ask that, throughout the process, you maintain a focus on the workers and farmers and families who keep the economic engine of Canada running – and that you ensure they are at the table. If you have questions or would like additional information, please let us know. Thank you.

Submitted on behalf of the Trade Justice Network,

Gerard Di Trolio, Coordinator