Thank you, Madam Chair.
If you will permit, I'd like to split my time with Madam Block. I have a comment. I don't have a question.
My comment concerns the international aspect of this bill, which I don't think any of our witnesses have talked about, so I want to put this on the record. Bill C-48 concerns boundary waters for which we are in dispute with the United States. It involves the disputed waters around the Alaska Panhandle and also the waters around the Dixon Entrance, as well as issues concerning innocent passage, freedom of navigation, and the like.
The United States is not a party to UNCLOS, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and it's also a global maritime policing power, through the U.S. Navy, that has always been very clear about its determination to protect flag rights. Since the 1890s Canada has claimed these waters, both Dixon Entrance and Hecate Strait, believing they're internal to Canada. That's a position I support, but the U.S. doesn't recognize our sovereignty here.
As I understand it, the Government of Canada's foreign policy priority right now is protecting NAFTA, and I believe the Government of Canada should have a whole-of-government approach in ensuring that every resource of the Government of Canada is used to fighting for and protecting NAFTA, which is so vital to the approximately one-fifth of the Canadian economy that relies on trade exports to the United States. One of the things I have a concern about with this legislation is that it potentially will provoke the Trump administration while at the same time we're trying to get their attention and their support for the protection of Canadian jobs and Canadian interests in NAFTA. In that context, I think it's important for us, as members of Parliament, to put this on the record.
I think this is not well timed, and I don't believe it fits into what I believe should be a whole-of-government strategy to focusing every aspect, every department, every minister, and every part of the Government of Canada on the single biggest need, which is to protect our interests in NAFTA and to ensure that we can convince the Trump administration to come around to our point of view.