Thank you. I won't go through the paper in any detail. I'll just summarize some points.
Bill C-4 is an implementation measure. It adjusts Canadian laws to bring those laws into conformity with the agreement, with CUSMA, and it needs parliamentary approval, obviously, to make those changes to Canadian statutes. Those changes set out in the bill will allow Canada to ratify the treaty.
It's important to understand that the conclusion of treaties and their ratification is an executive act. It doesn't legally require parliamentary approval for the Government of Canada to ratify an agreement, but the policy for many years has been to submit major agreements, trade agreements in particular, to Parliament for parliamentary approval. Of course, before Canada can ratify any agreement, whether it's a trade agreement or otherwise, Canadian laws have to be brought into line with the provisions of the agreement. If Canada were to ratify an agreement and Canadian laws had not been made consistent with the agreement, Canada would be, as a country, as a state, in breach of its obligations under the agreement.
Let's come to Bill C-4. I want to give you a bit more context about Bill C-4. There is nothing that I could see in Bill C-4 that is in any way inconsistent with the provisions of CUSMA. I have to say—and I think this is important in terms of context—that CUSMA is a done deal. The negotiations are over. This committee is not being charged with renegotiating or proposing renegotiating the CUSMA. It is done. The U.S. has ratified it. Mexico has ratified it. It is now Canada's turn to ratify the agreement. That requires that Canadian laws be changed and adjusted in some respects. In some cases, it's a matter of tinkering, but in some respects, Canadian laws and statutes have to be changed. That's what Bill C-4 does.
This committee, it seems to me, has three options.
It can approve Bill C-4, possibly with some minor tinkering here and there. I don't think there's much that needs to be done in that regard, if anything. It can approve the bill as presented.
The second option would be to propose amendments to Bill C-4 with or without a recommendation that the treaty be approved. It could radically amend Bill C-4 to change its contents, making them inconsistent with what Canada has agreed to in CUSMA.
Third, it could refuse to approve Bill C-4 and refuse to recommend Canadian approval of CUSMA.
The latter two options or scenarios would mean that Canada could not ratify the agreement. This would be, in my view, an enormous setback for the country, and in fact would be without precedent. There has never been an instance in Canadian history where Parliament has refused to approve a trade agreement and to pass the necessary legislation. We know that in 1987-88 the original Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement was held up in the Senate after it had passed the House. An election was held and we know the consequences. A Conservative government was returned with a majority and the House subsequently passed the necessary implementing legislation.
In the case of the NAFTA, before it was presented to the trade committee or indeed tabled in the House, there were changes made to the NAFTA as renegotiated, because Canada, the U.S. and Mexico agreed that it would be necessary to add side letters to the negotiated text of the agreement. The NAFTA implementing bill was tabled in the House and was approved.
Canadian implementing legislation in other areas has been approved by the House. The European Trade Agreement—the CETA—and the trans-Pacific trade agreement have both been approved by the House. If any one of the negative scenarios that I outlined were to be proposed and approved by the House as a whole, I think the consequences would be disastrous. It would mean that the U.S. and Mexico would have ratified CUSMA, Canada would not have and, I assume, that Mexico and the U.S. would go ahead with the implementation and all of the other matters under the agreement. Canada would not be a party to that agreement. It would complicate things enormously in terms of supply lines and other matters. More than that, it would set back Canada-U.S. relations in a major way.
If this agreement, as I said—negotiated, signed, approved and ratified by the U.S. and Mexico—were turned down by Canada, legally, at least initially, the NAFTA would then remain in force as is between Canada and the United States. There would be serious doubts about whether the NAFTA would be continued by this particular administration under that scenario. The future of the NAFTA itself would be extremely uncertain.
The question then before this committee is what the consequences for Canada would be if Parliament, by following through with any such recommendation by this committee, were to refuse to approve the CUSMA and pass the necessary implementing legislation. That is the issue that you're faced with.
I know that in previous deliberations of this committee, suggestions have been made to reopen the NAFTA because one or another interest group is not happy with certain of its provisions. That is frankly a non-starter. The United States and Mexico, but particularly the United States, will not agree to reopen this agreement. It has passed the U.S. Congress. It's been ratified by the President, and the suggestion that Canada could go back to the U.S. government and say that it wanted to reopen this agreement is frankly a fantasy. It will not happen. Even if it did in the remotest of possibilities, even if the United States and Mexico were prepared to reopen the CUSMA because of Canada's insistence, we would have to look at starting negotiations again, going through all of the process of negotiating and putting on the table our starting position, and being prepared to make compromises, because, as Mr. Verheul said in his testimony, trade negotiations are questions of balancing concessions. Canada would have to put its starting bid on the table and be prepared to make concessions. This is, to me, the most unrealistic of scenarios.