Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Transport referred to me earlier as the member for Winnipeg—Birds Hill. I understand his reason for doing that. Many years ago when he and I were younger members of parliament I was the member for Winnipeg—Birds Hill and his riding probably had a different name.
I begin by registering our usual objection to bills originating in the Senate. We feel that there is no good reason this bill could not have come first to the House of Commons where it would have been considered by the appropriate committee and the good amendments made by the Senate would have been made by the committee instead. It is always a mystery to us why some of these bills end up coming to us from the Senate instead of going to the Senate from the House of Commons.
On the surface, in many real aspects, the provisions of this bill have a lot of merit. If processes at the border points and at airports in particular could be expedited, it is very hard to argue against that at a practical level. Nevertheless, there were a lot of concerns expressed by immigration lawyers and the Canadian Bar Association, as well as others.
This is not my particular area to critique, but after brushing up on it this morning I understand that a lot of these concerns were addressed by the government by way of amendments being made in the Senate. We commend the government for being open to amending its own legislation and for not being its usual pigheaded self when it comes to legislation. I attribute this to the open-mindedness of the Minister of Transport and we look forward to more open-mindedness on his part in respect of this bill and other legislation for which he might be responsible.
There are some remaining concerns about the bill having to do with privacy protection, which the member of the Bloc put on the record just minutes ago. There are concerns having to do with the power of U.S. authorities to detain people and a number of other concerns that the government still has to address. If the government can dispel those concerns, fair enough, but it was a legitimate concern in the first place which many Canadians had that this would be a further application of U.S. law on Canadian soil.
I say further because we in this corner of the House tend not to see this in isolation but to see it as a part of a growing trend where, bit by bit, Canadians become more subject to laws which are not of their own making; that is to say, not made in their own parliament. I am thinking, of course, of the effect of the North American Free Trade Agreement and other agreements on our ability to determine our own policies in many respects.
We have certainly seen an awful lot of that lately, thanks to chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement, whereby the Canadian government is now being repeatedly sued on various grounds by American companies which have more rights in Canada than Canadian companies. They can sue the Canadian government, while Canadian companies only have access to domestic courts. Thanks to chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement, American companies have access to domestic courts in Canada, but when that route fails them, if they do not have a leg to stand on, as is often the case, they can then continue to harass Canadian policy makers and Canadian polity, if you like, via the investor state dispute settlement mechanism that exists courtesy of the NAFTA.
Having said that, in respect of our larger concern, it is timely that this bill should be debated this morning because we note that the Canadian ambassador to the United States made a speech this week wherein he talked about the possibility of a customs union between Canada and the United States and further codification in areas as yet unspecified in our relationship with the United States. I hope that shortly I will be able to get a copy of that speech and perhaps learn more of the detail of what our ambassador had to say.
It ought to raise in our minds whether what we see before us in Bill S-22 is part of a larger agenda or trend toward the customs union and other ways of further integrating Canada with the United States, which I think would be of concern to a great many Canadians. It certainly would have been of concern to the Liberal Party of Canada when the Minister of Transport first joined it. It does not appear to be of concern to the Liberal Party now because it has been responsible for one of the biggest acts of integration, which is a polite way of putting it, vis-à-vis the privatization of the CNR, and its coming into American ownership at the level of about 60% of that vast Canadian infrastructure, as well as various other things such as going back on its position on the NAFTA.
However, this would still be of concern to many Canadians, even if it is no longer of concern to the Liberal Party. Of course the Liberal Party is in government and what it is or is not concerned about is very significant. It does not appear to be concerned about the continuing and deepening integration of Canada with the United States.
I wonder what we are to make of this speech by Raymond Chrétien, the nephew of the Prime Minister. Is he flying a kite for the government, a trial balloon or whatever metaphor one chooses? Is this something the government has in mind and has asked its ambassador to the United States to put into the public domain to see what kind of attention or criticism it attracts?
If he is not doing that for the government, what is he doing? I thought it was the role of ambassadors to put forward the position of their government. If he is not actually acting under instruction from the government then I would submit there is at least a good argument that he is overstepping his bounds as an ambassador by putting forward the notion of a customs union. Perhaps the minister or somebody else would like to say a word about just what the ambassador was doing when he made this suggestion.
It is hard for us to separate Bill S-22 and see it only in the very practical dimension that the minister asked us to view it in. Certainly from this very practical dimension it has a lot of merits. There are concerns that exist about the bill itself and for that reason it would be appropriate for it to go to committee as soon as possible. Let us have a good look at it from the point of view of the House of Commons to see if we can address some of the outstanding concerns.