I appreciate my colleague enlightening me, because it's interesting that his determination is that we will now know how people will vote on CETA. The dilemma is that there is no bill in front of the House for CETA, to either support it or not. There are certainly the texts of a document that are out there, and there are details attached to it—there's more information attached to it now than there was when we did the study. It's there for folks to then go and look at, and therefore we get input from our friends who are here today.
I'm sorry for this sort of go-around, but clearly it needs to be clarified. What happens is that, when an enabling legislation comes, whatever that looks like.... It may include Mr. Laws' intervention on geographical indicators. Maybe there should be something in there. Maybe there should be something about supply management, and that may well be attached to the bill that comes before the House. We will then indicate, by standing in our place.... The clerk will dutifully call Mr. Allen, Welland—as he usually does—or Mr. Allen, Tobique—Mactaquac, when it comes time to vote.
Clearly, there is no bill here for us to actually vote up or down on. There is a report, potentially, which we may amend, that wants a recommendation attached to it. But it can't be an instruction that we do something when there is nothing to be instructed to do. We can't say we support CETA legislation, because there isn't any legislation; there is just the text of an agreement. Many of these folks at the end of the table, and their organizations, have worked extremely hard on this. Well done, to them, for working hard on it.
The reality is that, if we're narrow in scope and all we've done is send back a report that we actually like because we only added a supplementary report to it—we didn't add a dissenting report to that piece—and the House has instructed us to do something else, then the issue becomes that we're being instructed to vote on something as if it were in the House of Commons, and then I need to see the legislation.
So if the parliamentary secretary has the legislation and would be willing to share it in camera, then perhaps we can come to some rational and reasonable decision, but I just don't see it. I don't think he has it, and I don't think he can share it because he would actually need to have it. As Mr. Laws quite ably pointed out, there's a side letter that is going to take a year to talk about things. I'm not sure the date of the letter, but it's not expired yet—I don't think—and I would suggest the sanitary things aren't decided upon, so that would mean the legislation isn't forthcoming.
So, I still wait for an instruction as to how.... If the Chair's allowing me to ask any question, then this is it. Or maybe we are being restrictive to the amendment. I don't know. I'm still not clear.
