Mr. Speaker, it is pretty discouraging to hear the hon. member say he listened to my speech. He understood nothing.
He should first work on his terminology skills. I said “We do not have the texts. We want them before, not after, before” . That is clear. We do not have the texts. He says they will be out in a few days. We have absolutely no interest in the texts that come after. We want those that come before.
We want to know what the government is negotiating on our behalf. We want to express our opinion on the content of the negotiations so parliament may give the ministers a mandate, since they have no mandate to negotiate from the public. We are the 301 representatives of the people. The only way to legitimize the FTAA negotiating process is to have parliament vote.
There are no other solutions. We want the texts ahead of time so we can tell the government that we agree with this, but we do not agree with that, so it really knows it alone cannot decide in secret on behalf of the people of Canada.
The Liberal government may well have got more seats. It did not even get 40% of the vote across Canada. It better not try to tell us it is representative. That makes no sense. The government has no mandate to negotiate that. This was never an issue during the election campaign. There is not a word about this in the red book. The government party keeps saying “I got elected on the red book. Everyone will know what it is”. We know one thing about this government and that is it has never kept its promises, never.
When negotiations on the free trade area of the Americas began in 1994 in Miami, President Clinton decided he would Americanize the governments of America. We are following his plan, and the government has no mandate for that. It is shameful to stand up and claim that we are the ones not understanding anything.
Get with it, Liberals, find out what the words mean. Consultation means consult, not inform. They simply informed the governments, they never consulted them. They have to find a way to stop saying that.