If you don’t mind, I will answer in English. I understand French, but I am more comfortable in English.
I'll start with the first.
This was always our criticism of NAFTA. One of our criticisms of NAFTA was that it would place Canada in a very vulnerable position to have almost all of our exports—I think it's close to 87% now—going to the United States, so that we would then be helpless, or in a very difficult position, if ever there was a reason to close that border. And sure enough, this border has been closed. As my colleagues here have said, this was even starting before 9/11.
I would posit that with all we have offered and already given up under the SPP and other processes, it has not helped change that border situation. It's tighter than it ever was. As you know, the lineups for passports are so long and there are unmanned drones--American war planes--between the Montana and Canadian borders, for instance. The border security is tightening and everything we do does not seem to change that. So it is a very serious problem.
On your concern about harmonization, our concern around the regulatory convergence is not a more efficient way for my colleagues here to have a good trading system. That's not our concern; of course that makes sense. Our concern is that they have set up cross-border committees that are going to make decisions around regulations, from seeds to food to health care to social programs to environmental standards, that will then not be decided in the Canadian or Quebec parliaments, but rather by these cross-border committees, and it's an anti-democratic process.
Further, take a look at the regime of George Bush. Since he came to power, he has deregulated massively in everything from energy to automobile standards to the environment. One of the conservation groups said that he has cut 400 environmental programs, for instance. We are harmonizing to a superpower that has massively deregulated in many areas, and of course, then there's the problem of having Mexico in the mix as well.
So we're not talking here about sensible harmonization--nobody could be opposed to that--but we are talking about setting up a process of moving into a race to the bottom.
On the current status of water, here's the situation. Under NAFTA we are not forced to export our water; however, once we do start exporting, once any province starts to export its water, the terms of NAFTA come into being. NAFTA defines water as a good, and you're not allowed, under the terms of a trade agreement, to stop the import or export of a good for any reason, even environmental or conservational. So if any province decides to start exporting commercial exports of our water to the United States, the terms of NAFTA say that the Canadian government can't then come in and say no, you can't do that.
Mr. Baird, last week, said that Canada had a ban on the export of water. He probably thinks we do, but we don't. What we have is a voluntary agreement with the provinces, which are a mishmash. Not all of them have signed it; any one of them could break it, and if anyone breaks it, then that water is open, from all the provinces, to whatever corporation has got into that one province.
Moreover, they only banned the transfer of transboundary waters from the Canadian side. But the Americans aren't interested in transboundary water; they're taking what they need from the Great Lakes through the new annex. What they really want is that water in those rivers going north, and that's not touched by this.
We need a national water act in this country. We need water taken out of NAFTA as an investment, as a good. We need to protect this most previous resource politically, ecologically, and for future generations.