Madam Speaker, I have focused primarily on the ecosystems and the environment in my talk because many of my fellow NDP members have done a very effective job of talking about the human rights issue. I was struck by what one of the members of my colleague's party said about an hour ago. If I understood him correctly, he commented that we were initiating trade with a country that would not even come close to meeting the terms of our own Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It really resonated with me.
A simple criterion and one of our main criterion for how we deal with trade issues in other countries should be this. Does that country meet even close to the Canadian standard in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms that protects our rights? How can we be trading with countries that treat either the environment or humans less well than we do ourselves?