Mr. Speaker, this is an interesting motion, one that in spirit I would agree with but in practicality is going to be very difficult to deal with. That has been recognized by the countries that have been negotiating this GATT agreement for the past seven years. That is why it is not in the current GATT agreement.
The intent of this amendment is certainly good. It is to end child exploitation, especially in third world countries. The difficulty is that a multilateral trade agreement is not the forum for this. Children's rights are protected under the International Convention on the Rights of the Child through the United Nations.
Some of the difficulties were outlined by the member for the Battlefords-Meadow Lake when he said that individual countries do not have the resources to police this kind of intervention.
I would like to pose a question for the member: Do we have the resources? In other words, on every article of clothing or textiles that come from some third world country, how would we prove that this is not made using child labour? It is very, very difficult. I think we have to work through the International Convention on the Rights of the Child and encourage these individual countries to stop the exploitation in those areas.
Just another interesting little sidelight. It also raises some questions about practices that we have at home, practices that I think are actually quite good.
I have a grain farm. We have four children who all worked on that grain farm prior to reaching the age of 16. They learned responsibility at a very early age. They learned how that business worked. There are literally hundreds of thousands of businesses in Canada that have children of the owners working and learning the system, learning how to conduct business in those businesses. Would that not also raise the question of our own practices at home? I do not think those are bad practices.
I have to oppose this. The spirit of it is I think right, but we have to pursue it through the proper avenues.