Mr. Speaker, one must put this in context. This is not a private member's bill that puts legislation forward, puts articles forward or possible legislation, this is a recommendation to the Government of Canada that it put in writing in the agreement what it already has done through an exchange of letters, to “legitimize” it, I think might be the closest word that I can come up with immediately. It has been stated that that is the desire. The desire is that water not fall under NAFTA and the exchange of letters said that.
The open-ended question remains, if there is some trading at one point or another for whatever reason, does bulk water then get captured by NAFTA under the heading of a good and it becomes a marketable and a commercial good? At that point it would be because the exchange of letters refers to water in its natural state. I believe that was an error at that time. I would not think that the Government of Canada would not have wanted to go further and make sure that it covered bulk water. All this motion is doing is inviting the Government of Canada to enter into those discussions, not to reopen NAFTA, although I would dearly love it if we did have some discussion around NAFTA.
We saw in the free trade agreement where it cost us a billion dollars to capitulate and now we see the trouble that we are having in the industry. There is a risk of being challenged again by the American side. NAFTA is not perfect. There is no reason that we should shy away from having some discussions with our partners in a trade agreement at any time.