Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Châteauguay for his question. There can never be too many opportunities to explain the shift that be triggered by some aspects of NAFTA's chapter 11.
We all agree in this House that foreign investments are entitled to some form of protection. However, there must not be an imbalance, as was the case with chapter 11, between the rights of businesses and the ability of the states to create the collective tools that the public wants them to have.
Under NAFTA, this was not fully duplicated in the Costa Rica--Canada investment protection and incentive agreement, two things present a problem. The first one, which is found in the agreement with Costa Rica, is that a private company can go directly to a court created under the agreement to take legal action against a government because of measures that it deems harmful to its profitability. This is the first problem and, in my opinion, a fundamental one.
The second problem with chapter 11 of NAFTA is the definition of expropriation, which is much too broad, as exemplified by the legal proceedings undertaken by UPS against the Canada Post Corporation, where UPS claims that Canada Post is guilty of unfair competition because it uses its infrastructures to provide courier services. We will get back to this later on.
I will wrap up my remarks by commenting on the matter of disputes. For a private company to sue a government directly, as part of an agreement which creates a tribunal, is most unusual. Apart from NAFTA, to my knowledge there is, no other agreement with such provisions.
In the case of the World Trade Organization, we have a perfect example involving Bombardier and Embraer in Brazil. Bombardier feels that it is suffering because of policies that allow the Brazilian government to subsidize Embraer's exports, especially those to the United States. Under no WTO agreement is Bombardier going to sue the Brazilian government directly. The company is represented by the Canadian government, which has filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization. The Brazilian government, on behalf of Embraer, is responding to this complaint. Governments speak for private companies. These are the sorts of mechanisms that we should have in NAFTA and in any free trade agreements we sign.
The impact of this chapter was underestimated. In an article that appeared in Le Devoir last May, Mr. Parizeau, who was in fact a supporter of the agreement, and no one would question his support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, admitted that he had underestimated the impact of chapter 11.
In conclusion, I know to his credit this summer, ministers for international trade from the three countries, Canada, the United States and Mexico, presented documents clarifying interpretation of this chapter. I examined these documents. In my opinion, they do not go far enough and the problem still remains.
The debate on the free trade agreement between Canada and Costa Rica is an opportunity to further consider this issue and to come up with solutions which serve the interests of Canadians and of Quebecers.