Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing me these three minutes.
As it was put so eloquently by my colleague from the riding with the name too long to repeat for someone with only three minutes, the members of the Bloc will vote against this free trade bill. We have repeated it enough, although I think it cannot be ever said enough, that the real aim of this bill is not to expand Canadian and Quebec trade with Colombia or to get the innumerable jobs that one of our colleagues in the Liberal Party claimed earlier to expect from such a bill. The real aim is to give free rein to Canadian investors in Colombia to act to the detriment of human rights and people's aspirations for development. In addition, it testifies to the usual indifference of the current Conservative government to all of these humanitarian considerations and respect for human rights.
We in the Bloc do not oppose in principle the provisions to protect investors in such treaties. We understand that investors want to be protected up to a point, but there are civilized ways of doing so.
Let us take the example of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement—I am not referring to NAFTA, but to the agreement between Canada and the United States that preceded NAFTA. It contained a chapter on investor protection, chapter 16. It was the first agreement in the world that contained a mechanism to resolve potential disputes between both sides of the agreement. The agreement worked well in its day. No case of discriminatory measures against a foreign investor was reported. No case went to the arbitration tribunal. And still the value of Canadian investment in the United States increased considerably during this period.
The clause in the treaty with Colombia is totally abusive, as my colleague explained. As a result, the Bloc Québécois will definitely oppose this bill.
