I have lots of friends outside the realm of the New Democratic Party. He wrote a very interesting article in which he said: “Parliament approved Bill C-29. It was a lot like motherhood. MMT, a product of Ethyl Corporation of Virginia, has been banned in Europe and in California. Almost every major U.S. petroleum producer, the minister said, had indicated support for the decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to forbid MMT being marketed as a gasoline additive”. He went on to point out that one-third of the American market, because of acute air pollution problems, prohibits MMT in these particular areas.
In other words, Europe does it. The state of California does it. One-third of the American market does it. And so Canada said that we would also do the same thing, which we attempted to do in Bill C-29. However, along came Ethyl Corporation which launched a $347 million lawsuit against the Government of Canada.
These lawsuits by Sun Belt Inc. and Ethyl Corporation against the Government of Canada, were not against the Prime Minister and a handful of people sitting in some office. Actually, the Government of Canada is the people of Canada, the taxpayers of Canada. The Government of Canada is all of us, all 30 million people. We represent those people in this place. When Ethyl Corporation sues the Government of Canada, it is suing the people of Canada. Men, women and children from coast to coast to coast are being sued by Ethyl Corporation over the MMT issue.
We all know what happened. The government said to Ethyl Corporation that it was sorry, that it would back off and pull the legislation, that it would settle out of court for $20 million and that it would also provide a written letter of apology. That is what we did.
Talk about property rights. Talk about corporate property rights. One could not get a better provision than what we call chapter 11 under NAFTA which essentially guarantees the ultimate in corporate property rights.
I know my friend who sponsored this legislation has done it in the best interests of the constituents he represents as he sees it. I do not think it is the right course when it comes to property rights in our country. I am not a lawyer but lawyers have told me that about 90% of the cases in a law office are case law when it comes to property and that about 10% of cases refer to people. In terms of property being protected, the track record is very very good.
My colleagues elsewhere will articulate other reasons that this legislation ought not to proceed. I could talk about the provision of assets during divorce settlements as an initiative. If one of the spouses has property rights guaranteed and he or she owns 99% of the assets, how will that affect divorce proceedings in their settlements? These are all arguments we have heard many times before.
I want to throw in as part of today's discussion the fact that under chapter 11 of NAFTA we have legislated property rights to the largest and most powerful corporations in the country, particularly in the countries of the United States and Mexico. Now they want to expand that through the WTO into virtually all of the nations of the world that we trade with. That would be nothing short of catastrophic.