Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-214, an act to provide for the participation of the House of Commons when international treaties are concluded.
I support the bill. I encourage everyone in the House of Commons to support it. There is a real lack of consultation and approval in the treaty making process. I wonder if people watching and listening to the debate today realize how much the House of Commons is cut out of the action when it comes to international treaties.
We get a chance to vote on an odd treaty which comes before the House, maybe a free trade agreement, but between 1994 and 1999 during the life of the government it has signed 470 international treaties and has ratified 295 treaties.
Most members of the House of Commons have never seen them and know almost nothing about them because the government handles them behind closed doors. The negotiations take place behind closed doors. The signing takes place behind closed doors. I do not even know who signs them. We do not even know who negotiates on our behalf. The government takes a group of NGOs, a big group of bureaucrats and a whole bunch of other people, and they all head over on a big bus to sign the deal. Then we do not learn about it until we read about it in the papers.
This is what the bill is meant to address. It is a perfect redress to this lack of democracy. What is happening right now has happened for too long in the House of Commons. Too much power has been vested in the Prime Minister and in his cabinet and not enough power is spread around to other members of the House.
The bill properly addresses the requirement of the government to be part of international agreements and negotiations but to come back to the House for consultation and approval. This is a good balance for the government and the House of Commons when assembled together.
The Reform Party believes that Canadians have a right to be consulted about international treaties. We believe it should happen through their duly elected representatives in parliament. We also believe that public debate, public discussion and public input are ways to improve treaties and to improve public participation in our democratic process. This is not something to be feared or something to be hidden or something to run from. The bill adequately addresses those points.
Canadians expect the House of Commons to advance solutions. Not just the bureaucrats, not just the government, but the entire House of Commons should put our minds and our best ideas together on all issues, certainly on international treaties which affect all of us in our day to day lives. Presently that expectation is not being met.
Bill C-214 sets out to change the problematic process of hidden negotiations. There was the problem which the government faced last year concerning all the rumours surrounding the MAI. Concerns were expressed about what the government was negotiating and proposing. What was our position in the negotiations? When it comes back, will we have a chance to ratify it before we are signed on to an agreement that will affect everyone in Canada?
The bill would ensure that it comes back to the House to be debated and talked about. We will approve it as an entire House. The government may decide to push it through with its vote, but at least we would have a debate and at least we would have a vote. Then Canadians would have a full hearing and a full airing of these important discussions.
The bill provides that all important international treaties must be tabled in the House of Commons for approval by resolution. No treaty may be ratified unless approved. This is a good balance between the necessity for the government to negotiate, to do fine work on behalf of all Canadians and through their representatives in the House of Commons to put a final stamp on it showing that we think it is a good idea.
The bill also provides that every international treaty shall be tabled for 21 sitting days prior to ratification. In other words, we will all have a chance to look at it. We will all have a chance to go through it with a fine tooth comb if that is our wish. Very importantly, an explanatory memorandum accompanies the bill, something which explains why it is in the best interest of Canada, whether there are tax implications, how it will affect Canadians, whether there are estimated expenditures to which the government might be obligating Canada, and all such things that Canadians expect us to keep an eye on. Under the current system they do not get the opportunity. This bill does not stop the government from doing its job; it just entitles all Canadians and all of us who are duly elected representatives to scrutinize these 400 or 500 international treaties that Canada has signed on to.
This bill proposes that the government not be permitted to ratify or modify a treaty without House of Commons approval, after the treaty has been tabled for 21 days. That would provide a good opportunity to go through the details.
Reform agrees with the provisions of the bill, but we would like the legislation to go even further. Before I explain that I would like to state our policy on treaty negotiations. Our policy book states that parliament should be asked to approve all agreements or declarations before they are ratified as Canadian positions. We think it is a good idea to include parliamentarians early on in the process.
I wrote a dissenting opinion following the foreign policy review in 1994. I wrote 40 or 50 pages which I am sure the Speaker has in his library. I wrote about the dismay that many of us felt when the government continued to sign agreements. In one case, the hon. André Ouellet announced Canada's support for a United Nations standing army, even while the standing committee was reviewing Canada's foreign policy.
The Prime Minister made a major policy address on the need for UN reform two weeks before the committee reported its findings to parliament. That undermines and undercuts the role of parliamentarians and places all the power and influence in the Prime Minister's hands. In this bill the Prime Minister would have a role, the cabinet would have a role, but the House of Commons would also have a role in the making of international treaties.
We only have to look at what happened in Seattle these last couple of days to see how important people feel international agreements have become. They are in many ways more important than the day to day business we do in the House because the hundreds of treaties that are signed by the government on our behalf make commitments on behalf of all Canadians on issues like trade, human rights, women's issues, family issues and the environment. They commit the House and Canada to billions and billions of dollars and legislative responses on any number of issues and Canadians do not have a chance to see them first. They should have that opportunity.
In our recently released foreign policy review, which was released by our foreign affairs critic a week or so ago, there is a four point proposal. The review goes into some detail, but I will quickly say that parliamentary ratification would be needed for all treaties. We would require an impact statement similar to the one outlined in this bill. We also ask that these international agreements work to strengthen co-operative federalism. If an agreement affects provincial jurisdiction, the provinces should be brought in early to make sure they understand the impact it will have on the provinces. That is one way to improve federalism. Perhaps it is a solution the Prime Minister should be thinking about.
All of these discussions and debates would help to better inform the public of what it is that Canada is doing on the international stage. Canada does a lot of good work. Most of these treaties would be routinely endorsed, but Canadians need to know about them. The best way to let them know is to have debates in the House of Commons.
I support this bill, and happily so, but I urge that we consider in the days to come even more ways of increasing the accountability of international treaties. We would like to see a national interest impact analysis, very similar to the one proposed in this bill's explanatory memorandum, but we would also like to see a family impact statement. How would this affect the family? Would it have tax implications? How would it affect children? Those things should be discussed and debated. The government should table them in the House when it tables the bill.
Our foreign affairs minister said earlier this year in New York, when he was talking about the security council, that we want to make the council more transparent, more democratic and more open. The trends have been going the other way. Our job is to express our concerns and introduce alternate options.
More transparency, more democracy and more accountability are what the bill will bring to the House of Commons and I am happy to support it.