Mr. Speaker, no, I would not agree with the statement although in theory that is what they are supposed to do. In response to the member for Elk Island, it depends very much on the agreement itself. If we look seriously at the agreement that exists in the European Union where there are labour standards and environmental standards, then yes, there are opportunities for people at the bottom end of the income scale to advance.
Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, the free trade agreement and the WTO, there are no such stipulations when it comes to environmental rights or labour rights. If we look at the maquiladoras stretched along the Mexican-United States border, we would look hard and in vain to find very many people, except perhaps the upper echelon in an organization, who have advanced. We would find that workers have generally not advanced. We would perhaps also find that a great many of them have suffered many environmental problems as a result of the fact that they do not have adequate environmental standards. That has become a cesspool as we know over the last 10 or 15 years.
Ideally, world trade should lift up all boats, as the saying goes, but it has not. It is fair to say that we have always had globalization, but over the last 15 years we have seen a more intense degree of globalization, yet all of the standards indicate that the levels between the top and the bottom are not shrinking. The rich are getting richer and the poor are indeed getting poorer.