Mr. Speaker, our position with respect to social rights is that they ought to be part and parcel of any trade agreement the government enters into. We sometimes wonder whether or not agreements which have as their basic assumption the whole notion of free trade or any such clauses, even if they are inserted into such agreements, could be effective.
I would remind the member that when the WTO implementing legislation was before the House it was the NDP in 1994, not the Bloc, that moved amendments to that legislation which called on the government to work toward a social clause in the WTO and to report progress back to the House, although I would say that the Bloc supported our motion with respect to the social clause at that time.
I think the question is still open as to whether or not simply inserting these social clauses into these agreements is enough. From the point of view of the NDP the basic philosophy of these agreements is simply wrong. They are designed by and for multinational corporations to inhibit the power of government not just with respect to social policy or labour standards.
Even if we were to adopt either the side agreements or social clauses these agreements would still be objectionable to us because the very principle of them is to enshrine the power of the marketplace over against the power of governments to act in the public interest. Creating a few exceptions and a few fancy clauses here and there will just not do the trick as far as we are concerned.