Mr. Speaker, the United States has served notice that it will invoke section 20, the national security clause of the World Trade Organization, to keep the regulatory body from adjudicating a European Union challenge to the controversial Helms-Burton law.
The Americans argue they fear a Cuban invasion and that their national security is threatened. Therefore they will boycott a World Trade Organization dispute settlement panel struck to examine the trade legitimacy of the Helms-Burton legislation.
If the Americans can use section 20, why does Canada not invoke section 20 to maintain a secure supply of food as a national security issue? Why not invoke section 20 to keep an American attack on our cultural industries at bay, or to ward off an attack on our generic pharmaceuticals, or perhaps most important to protect the eventual invasion by the United States to direct our water from our rivers and lakes into the United States mid and southwest?
If Americans can use section 20 of the World Trade Organization to protect the most powerful military nation on earth from a Cuban invasion, surely we can use the same argument to protect our cultural industries, our food supply, our Canadian-