Mr. Speaker, my friend's information base for the words he is using today is almost a year old. It comes off a draft on the Internet last May. The suppositions that arise from that draft have little relationship to any proposed multilateral agreement on investment.
It is an agreement that Canada is pursuing vigorously because it protects small and medium size business. That is the basic reason. The concept of some megacorporations coming in with a big foot and determining policy would have happened 30 years ago. Canada now has 54 bilateral investment agreements around the world. No one has taken us over. No one has interfered with our health care system, our education system or the way we deal with aboriginal people. Canada is the master of its own house. A multilateral agreement on investment will simply enhance that in years to come.
We want to protect our investors in other countries. They are mostly small and medium size business. They cannot afford a battery of lawyers to follow them around in litigation in the jungle out there. We need rules. We accept rules. We try to persuade other countries to go along with understandable rules so that all of us can benefit from the commerce that results.