All right, then I'll try to express this fully.
I commend Ms. Duncan on an ingenious argument. I won't go back in history to say that I was no great fan of NAFTA when it was brought in, for actually one of those reasons, but apart from that, NAFTA is at least a mutual agreement. It at least allows Canadians to sue...as well as other North Americans to sue Canadians. If we were to enter into an agreement on the environment that gave Canadians the right to mess with the American environmental policy process, there would be some mutuality allowing them to come here to mess with ours.
But quite frankly, I can't imagine any country in the world inviting foreign agents to just open an office in their country and have full rights to participate in their policy development process the way this act does. So without mutuality, I don't think Ms. Duncan's very ingenious argument holds up.
Second, and much more important, I'm glad that Ms. Duncan brought out the fact that simply talking about residents of Canada excludes first nations and perhaps other organizations. She has really pointed out another flaw in clause 11. I'm not talking about clause 11 here, except to contrast it with clause 12, because regrettably clause 11, as we have now approved it, does not refer to entities, foreign agents or domestic. Therefore first nations groups, as Ms. Duncan quite rightly points out, can still be denied standing because they lack a private or special legal interest, although individual first nation members would not be so denied standing under clause 11.
As a responsible and professional lawyer, when I look at the two clauses, headings don't have any legal effect, but they are both under the heading of “Public Participation” and deal with it. One gives rights to residents of Canada only, and the other gives rights to residents of Canada and entities.
It is not a responsible way for a legislator to proceed, having different rights for no apparent reason. I can't think of a reason. Maybe Ms. Duncan has a reason why in clause 11 she only gives rights to residents of Canada, whereas in clause 12 she gives rights to residents of Canada and entities.
For the sake of consistency between those two paragraphs, I hope my amendment will pass and make this a slightly more sensible bill. I wish we could do something about the definition of entities, but one way or another we certainly can't accomplish that in this paragraph.
Thank you.