Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that I too am wondering about the relevance of the remarks made by the member for Langley—Abbotsford. I find him incapable of ingenuity.
The Speaker suggested that he would have to be ingenious to be relevant. His remarks had to do with the Nisga'a agreement, the implementing legislation being debated today. I should say “his many remarks” because he spoke almost exclusively about this native treaty and not about the Civil International Space Station Agreement Implementation Act.
Yet, ingenuity was possible. For instance, it could have been suggested that the Nisga'a treaty should have been debated in the House before it was signed, or before it was ratified by the Government of Canada or the Government of British Columbia.
There is a parallel to be drawn here between domestic treaties, those having to do with aboriginal matters, those described by the Supreme Court of Canada as sui generis , and international treaties, because the process for each is, in many regards, similar.
Treaties are debated, discussed, negotiated by governments. However, to apply in domestic law, they also require implementing legislation, and sometimes legislation from both a provincial legislative assembly and the federal parliament.
I imagine that this is not something a person can do unless he is really ingenious: when he does not want to really address a bill such as this one, when he wants to waste the precious time of the House on a debate that ought to be kept for the appropriate time.
I want to speak of this implementing legislation, indicating what lessons can be learned from it and the path it followed in order to get before this House, after the negotiations that led to the Civil International Space Station Agreement.
The signature and implementation of treaties is an important issue. It is one that involves us all, because treaties are playing an increasingly important role in international life. Their numbers are multiplying. Hundreds of treaties are entered into yearly, and ratified by Canada and other countries.
This often requires parliaments to pass legislation to implement these treaties and to give them effect in Canadian internal law.
For the benefit of this House and those who are listening to us, I would like to say a few words about the process, particularly since I just recently introduced Bill C-214. This bill is aimed at getting parliament more involved in the process of concluding treaties, at democratizing in a way the process whereby treaties are accepted by the state and subsequently lead to the passage of legislation in order to implement the international obligations negotiated by the government.
I will therefore give hon. members a short course in international law. I am pleased that my colleague from Vancouver Quadra, who is also a professor of international law, is with us and will no doubt be able to add to my modest contribution. He will, no doubt, wish to share with us his thoughts on these proposals for increasing parliament's involvement in the treaty process.
I would also like to remind hon. members that an international treaty is something that has first been negotiated. As a general rule, negotiations are conducted by governments represented by officials—in this case, officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs—or by diplomats, the ambassadors. When very important treaties are involved, ministers of the government are also involved, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs in particular, since, under the Department of Foreign Affairs Act, it is he who is generally responsible for concluding international treaties.
Treaties are negotiated with other countries usually. Negotiations may take place with international organizations. Often, these organizations provide the forum for such negotiations. There is the negotiation, for example, of treaties in the context of the United Nations, which often acts as a forum for conferences, where debates are held on the treaties and lead to their passage.
It is not enough, however, to negotiate a treaty, because treaties, depending on the constitutional law of the country, sometimes require action by parliament to permit their acceptance by the country, so that the country can agree to be bound by the treaty.
This is where practices differ significantly from one country to the next. For some countries, like Canada and most countries with a British style parliamentary system, treaties are concluded, and the countries agree to be bound by the provisions in them, such as in the one creating the international space station, without parliament's involvement.
Here in Canada, a government can conclude a treaty and sign it after it has been adopted. It can even ratify it without parliament's prior approval or agreement that the country will be bound under the international treaty.
There are countries, however, that involve their parliament and can neither sign nor ratify—in most cases it is ratificationt— without the prior approval of parliament and the holding of a debate to give parliamentarians an opportunity to consider the text of the treaty and its provisions before the government commits internationally.
In France, for example, parliament must adopt an act approving any treaty before the French authorities can ratify it.
The practices are different, but they tend increasingly to involve parliament in the process leading to the conclusion of treaties and give it a say in the process, since the content of an increasing number of laws passed by parliaments depends on the treaties that were first negotiated by the government.
I believe that in parliamentary systems such as ours but also that of other countries, there is a real lack of democracy in that parliamentarians are asked, as we are today in the case of Bill C-4, to adopt laws whose content is largely determined by the content of treaties negotiated by the governments, even though their parliaments were not involved in the discussions on that content.
This is why I have introduced Bill C-214 which, I hope, will be the subject not only of a debate but also of a vote. This bill proposes that the House of Commons be involved in the conclusion of treaties by first approving a treaty and thus authorizing the government to ratify that treaty once the House has been informed of its content.
Some fear, however, that such a procedure might prevent the government from negotiating and accepting obligations pursuant to debates held between states. The example of the United States is often referred to; two-thirds of the U.S. Senate has to support any treaty the government—in this case, the President—wishes to ratify on behalf of the United States.
The formula I am proposing is one where approval by the House would not necessarily be binding on the government, which would, ultimately decide whether or not to ratify a treaty. This is not a procedure or formula that would paralyze a government, at least not in a system like ours where the government very often, almost always in fact, has a majority in the House and can get a resolution passed in favour of approval because of that majority.
My discussions, and some debates with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, have led me to conclude that the minister has considerable misgivings about such a procedure. He should not have any. This is a procedure aimed at making the process of ratifying treaties more democratic and involving MPs in the procedure for signing a type of document that is becoming more important in our societies and, I feel, will continue to do so.
For example, there are the debates and negotiations soon to begin at the World Trade Organization, leading to a number of treaties around the turn of the new millennium. These treaties arising out of the WTO millennium round will—or at least should—be debated in this House before the government makes commitments that will be binding on this House when the time comes to enact legislation implementing them.
We might also mention treaties pertaining to cultural diversity we want to negotiate with UNESCO and many other treaties that concern trade and cultural issues, individual rights and freedoms and information technology issues, since treaties concern all matters of interest to governments and to parliaments as well.
I believe also that transparency would require—and this is the focus of other provisions in Bill C-214, which I tabled in this House—the government to agree to table treaties in the House so parliamentarians might be aware of their content.
It would thus agree to members of this House knowing our international obligations and to the enshrinement of a practice that was carried on for a number of years in this House. It was abandoned for a number of years but, only a few months ago, it was revived after I lobbied increasingly in this forum and in other forums to have treaties tabled to properly inform this House of Canada's international commitments.
In addition, I wanted—and would like to convince my colleagues in the House of this—the government to do a better job than it is currently doing of making the content of treaties known, not only by tabling them in the House, but by publishing them in various forms, electronically for example, on an electronic site such as that of the Department of Foreign Affairs. This is one of the rare sites of the departments of foreign affairs of developed countries where the country's treaties may be accessed, with a few rare exceptions.
We must also make sure they are published in the Canada Gazette, as are the laws, and that they are published in the Canada treaty series, as they currently are but at more reasonable intervals, since sometimes it takes months if not years for a treaty to appear in the series.
These are changes in practice that, in my view, deserve to be adopted by this parliament. They would, in certain respects, modify the royal prerogative underlying the government's authority in this area.
This House, however, is empowered to abrogate part of this prerogative and adopt a much more transparent and more democratic procedure involving all elected representatives—not just those of the government party that sit in Cabinet—in important decisions having to do with treaties and the government's response to them.
As I make this proposal, I am aware, and wish to inform the House, that, in other Commonwealth countries, and I am thinking of Australia and New Zealand, and even in the United Kingdom, the mother of all parliaments and some say of this parliament, recent practices for concluding treaties have been modified to introduce greater transparency. Treaties are tabled in the Houses, accompanied by an explanatory memorandum, and distributed much more widely, with much greater parliamentary participation than we are seeing here, in the House of Commons.
There is no excuse for the resistance to these changes, certainly not the lack of willingness and transparency of a government that should realize, on the eve of the year 2000 and a new millennium, that changes are in order. These practices must be adapted to the new importance of treaties in the international as well as domestic order.
Bill C-4, the Civil Space Station Agreement Implementation Act, was introduced in this House without our ever having been able to examine its contents, without any examination before the treaty was signed.
According to my information, it was signed on January 29, 1998, and adopted on that same date. Signing already commits signatory states to a certain extent because article 18 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties stipulates that a state is obliged to refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of a treaty before it consents to be bound by it and ratifies it.
Thus, by signing the treaty on January 29, 1998, Canada assumed a number of commitments, without this parliament having been consulted. It is therefore necessary for a signatory state to agree to involve its parliament. Parliament must be involved in examining the treaty itself, not just its implementation, because implementation legislation depends on the treaty contents. This bill ought to have been introduced only after the House of Commons had examined the treaty.
In closing, I wish to state that I feel it is important, and hope to have the opposition parties' support in this, even the government party as well, to ensure that Bill C-4 will be the last such bill, and that in future all treaties requiring implementing legislation will have initially been approved by the House of Commons.
