Thank you, Mr. McKay.
With respect to point four, that Bill C-300 would alienate developing countries and would impose the will of Canada on other countries, I don't see anything in the bill that actually specifies that or would result in that.
Basically, as I understand it, what the bill is intended to do is to make clear to Canadian companies that there are standards that they ought to abide by in relation to what they undertake in their operations overseas and that if they don't abide by those standards, there may be repercussions within the Canadian context. That effectively is outlining what Canada expects of its companies. It doesn't say it expects that the Government of Papua New Guinea will do X, Y, and Z. It basically says that there are international standards, that international human rights law does exist, that it is expected of states to require their companies to respect human rights, and this is one way of doing it. So I'm very unclear as to how that would actually be the case.
If I can just get back to this idea that the standards are not clear, what strikes me as anomalous is that on the one hand companies, including companies that are members of the ICMM, say they respect human rights, yet on the other hand say that the human rights expectations are too unclear to give them guidance. I don't understand how it can be one and not the other.
I think we need to refer to what the special representative has said in relation to human rights standards, that it is clear that companies can impact the full breadth of human rights. The legislation, as I understand it, proposes that the guidance elaborated by the ministers would be based on international human rights conventions to which Canada is a party and on international customary law. As I've mentioned, the special representative basically says there are few, if any, internationally recognized rights that business cannot impact. As such, it is entirely appropriate that any guidelines developed by the ministers would draw from international human rights law, including the international bill of rights.
There is significant guidance provided at the international level in the form of declarations, comments, jurisprudence, and recommendations from the treaty bodies, as well as from other mechanisms. It would also obviously be relevant to apply international labour law.
In response to that—