Mr. Chair, it has been the Canadian government's approach in recent FTA negotiations to negotiate both labour and environment side agreements. These do indeed have different provisions, and I think that's because the government recognizes that there are different issues at stake.
I mentioned the environment agreement briefly earlier. The way it works is that both governments are committed to implementing their environmental obligations, to implementing and enforcing their environmental laws, and to not derogate from those laws and their enforcement in order to attract investment or increase exports. If a citizen of either country is unsatisfied with the implementation of that, a citizen can write to the government, and the government is obliged to respond and to make both the question and the response public. If that is not satisfactory, then there can be consultations between the two governments, between Canada and Panama, for example, about an environmental issue. Those consultations can rise to the level of ministerial consultations, and if those consultations still do not resolve the issue, then there can be a panel established and the panel can investigate and write a report, and the report is made public.
This is very similar to the agreements that Canada has negotiated with other FTA partners. So far, we have not seen any dispute between Canada and any of its other partners rise to the level of their being or their needing to be these kinds of consultations or a report struck.
Our approach instead is to try to work with the other government to help it implement its environmental obligations. Our experience has been that this kind of cooperative approach with respect to the environment is more appropriate and can be more successful than a so-called punitive approach.
The situation of labour, which we spoke about briefly at the last session, is different. The failure to implement obligations under the labour agreement tend to arise from different reasons. Therefore, we've negotiated a slightly different approach with respect to labour.
There are some similarities and some differences between the two agreements. The government is satisfied that this is the best approach with respect to those sectors.