Mr. Chairman, I have a comment and a question. First I want to say how delighted I am to see the government playing the leadership role it has played over the years in the WTO, in particular when it comes to two issues, the first one being transparency and a clear rule of law when it comes to implementing a decision made by the World Trade Organization.
One would only have to look at what is happening across the border as well as at what is happening with some of our trading partners in some of the disputes we have with them to quickly come to the conclusion that we need a system in regard to trade disputes that is sane, a system, frankly, that responds to the needs of the business community, the needs of the community in general and the needs of nations respectively. We have only to look at the problem of softwood lumber as well as the dispute with Brazil involving the aerospace industry.
For example, it makes no sense at all to see a corporation, whether it is in British Columbia, Quebec or Newfoundland, wait up to five years not only for its case to be heard but to be decided. At the end of the day when a decision is rendered, it may then have to go through perhaps two, three, four or five years of different mechanisms of appeal. Before the end of it, some of those corporations may not exist at all.
Simply put, it is absolutely imperative for us as a government to be at the WTO table in order to ensure that not only do we have transparent rules but we have effective rules. It is important to have rules that bring some sanity to the system so that when a decision is made by the WTO against a particular country, that country would have to obey and implement the WTO decision. We must have a mechanism available whereby that particular country would be penalized if it failed to do so, not only in regard to the ability of the complaining party but also by the WTO itself.
Mr. Chairman, you know from your past experience about penalty boxes. A complaining country could have the option to put a specific country in the penalty box for two or three years, during which time that particular country could not launch any complaints under WTO rules or, at the option of that complainant, that country would have to cough up in terms of resources, financial or otherwise, to compensate the complainant.
Otherwise, as in the past, we would have a dispute with a specific country, take that dispute to the WTO and win at the WTO level. When it came time for retaliation, we would find ourselves not importing a heck of a lot from that country, certainly not enough to make a lot of difference, so what would we do? In that case my opinion is that we should have the option of putting that offending country in a penalty box. Once the time comes they would be out of the penalty box, but if they were to do the same thing two or three times the penalty should be increased.
There is another issue. I know that the government and the Prime Minister are exceptionally interested in the issue of access. We must have pretty clear rules when it comes to access. Canada wants to have access to other markets and vice versa. Access is a two way street. We cannot make the rules as we go along. When it comes to one of our largest trading partners aside from the U.S., and that is the European Union, some countries decide at a whim to enact what they call a precautionary clause just because they think there might be a problem, so they penalize others and impose duty on imported goods.
We need to have clear rules of law which means that science prevails, which means when we agree that this particular person is the arbitrator and a decision is rendered we need to listen, obey and comply. We cannot continue turning in circles and penalizing legitimate products coming into our country just because we think there might be a problem but we are really not sure.
Would my colleague agree with me that it is absolutely imperative for Canada and this minister, who is a great minister by the way, to be at the table in order to continue to defend not only the interests of Canadians but the interests of the free world when it comes to transparency, clear rules of law and fairness when it comes to trading?