Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my Bloc colleague's dissertation and certainly the rule of law is fundamental to any international trade agreement.
What we are talking about, though, is whether or not the rules' mechanism that is in place now is adequate and is on a fair and level playing field. For example, the courts have defined a corporation as a person. Now we are defining it basically as a nation state where it seems to have equal status and maybe even superior status because of the investment protection that we are giving to corporations.
Under NAFTA we are now allowing the principle that an investor in a company is somehow eligible to claim these nation-state cases. For example, the mysterious Vito G. Gallo and this 1532382 Ontario Inc. are suing the Canadian people for $350 million. That will be perfectly acceptable under NAFTA because it seems that, if anything, it is weighted continually on the side of the investor and not on fair jurisprudence, which takes one competing interest against another and balances them out.
We do not see those in the trade agreement. It is all fine and well to say that the trade agreements might not have been great and that we should renegotiate them but I would say, fat chance. Why should we renegotiate them when we are putting in place further issues that down the road will simply hurt us. We need tribunals that we insist are based on the rule of law that protects everyone.
I also would ask the member about confidence in the World Bank. Right now we have a situation where the World Bank is a dumping ground for failed neo-con hacks. We have Paul Wolfowitz who was the guy who basically helped initiate a war based on a lie. He was so bad he was run out of Washington. Now he is at the World Bank with his girlfriend. We are supposed to say that all the developing states in the third world should trust Paul Wolfowitz. We are supposed to tell everyone not to worry because he will look out for everyone's best interests.
Now we are seeing South Americans saying, “Whoa, we've had a whole series of failed policies through the World Bank but we certainly do not have confidence in Paul the wolf”.
Where is the protection to balance off the competing interests between investors?