Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the member for Vancouver South and I am glad that he is arguing for more openness, more transparency, more debate and so on.
However I know he was a member of the cabinet over the last couple of years before the Liberal government was defeated. I assume he was aware that there were many months of negotiations going on between his government and the U.S. government over the agreement that is now before the House.
It is not just members in opposition who are shocked to find this week that we are now faced with an agreement that only came to the light of day because American officials made it public.
Could the member tell the House whether there was any transparency between those who were negotiating this on behalf of the Government of Canada and the very cabinet on which he was a member? Did his cabinet make its colleagues aware?
However, my real concern, which is one of many, is that Canadians are truly astounded to realize that we are now looking at an agreement that clearly deepens the integration, militarily in terms of foreign policy, between Canada and the U.S. We have an agreement that, by the officials' own description, is now a permanent agreement, which is a very different situation from the kind of agreement we had in the past. The member for Vancouver South sat at the same briefing session as we did earlier this week.
I wonder if the former minister, the member for Vancouver South, could address these questions, please.