Madam Speaker, I have a question for the hon. member who made clear his party's intention with respect to the main motion. Unless I missed it, he did not say how his party feels about the amendment which states that Canada should not be a party to any international agreement which compels us to export freshwater in bulk form.
The member made an argument about NAFTA and the FTA which I might have expected from someone from the party that was the original architect of the FTA and NAFTA. I contend that his analysis of NAFTA is wrong and he is free to contend that it is right.
Should the hon member's analysis prove to be wrong over time, would he or would he not agree with the following which is contrary to his own analysis but not contrary to mine? If NAFTA proved to be an agreement whereby at some future date, after we had in some way commercialized the export of water and therefore subject to the terms of NAFTA were not able to put an end to that, should we no longer be a party to such an agreement?
Just to elaborate, under the investment provisions of NAFTA when the discussion here today has focused so far on whether or not NAFTA would prevent us from banning exports or putting a ban on exports after we had begun to commercially exploit our water resources for export, it might also be that the investor provisions of NAFTA would be a hindrance to the Canadian government acting. We already know that there is a company in British Columbia which is bringing an action against the Canadian government pursuant to NAFTA in the investor state provision because of a provincial ban.
There are a lot of reasons to believe that the member might be wrong on this. If time proved him wrong, would he be willing to support the kind of action we have recommended in our amendment?