Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I would like to present three petitions with regard to the MAI which the Government of Canada is currently negotiating. It is an international trade agreement of the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris called the multilateral agreement on investment.
The petitioners note that the MAI is the latest in a series of regional and global agreements which, in the name of liberalization, trade and investment, expands the powers of multinational corporations at the expense of the powers of government to intervene in the marketplace on behalf of our social, cultural, environmental and health care goals; that the MAI is fundamentally flawed in so far as it seeks to protect the rights of investors without seeking similar protection for workers through binding core labour standards; and that the MAI is anti-democratic in so far as it would be binding for 20 years, thus tying the hands of several parliaments and future governments.
Therefore, we petition Parliament to reject the current framework of the MAI negotiations and instruct the government to seek—