Mr. Speaker, the second world social forum was held in Pôrto Alegre, Brazil, this past January 31 to February 5. With a view to counterbalancing the traditional Davos economic forum, some 55,000 people from all over the world met at Pôrto Alegre with the common objective of humanizing globalization.
In addition to being an ideal forum for the exchange of views and for contacts between the members of civil society, this forum provided more than one thousand parliamentarians with the opportunity to address potential solutions for certain problems, such as the controversial chapter 11 of the FTAA.
For me, this was an opportunity to speak of virtual parliamentarism, and to defend the inherent concepts of corporate social responsibility. Quebec was strongly represented, with a contingent of close to one hundred from civil society, labour unions, and representatives of government and of parliamentarians. It demonstrated that it is more than ever before one of the nations that supports a more human face for globalization.