Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question.
My answer is that we are signing bilateral agreements with countries where living, economic and social conditions are often pretty tough. Our mining companies, as my colleague and I both know, frequently fail to respect workers' rights and environmental standards.
That is why we cannot support this kind of agreement. My colleague mentioned the WTO, which offers a number of recourse options because it includes many countries and the rules are well-defined. Bilateral agreements can cover anything at all, and that is why we are saying that respect for the people and countries involved is not always included. In multilateral agreements, however, there are both rich and poor countries, so there are rules and the negotiations cover more issues. I think that makes it easier to respect all of the people involved.
When I speak here in the House, I often mention the fact that we have gone through some tough situations with the Americans. Just think of the softwood lumber issue and our partially closed borders. It is a kind of protectionism. When our truckers cannot cross the border freely to export goods, that affects the cost of production. But it does not look as though the government is interested in dealing with these situations. The government is hiding its agenda and trying to convince people that agreements with Colombia and Peru will support our economic growth. I am not so sure about that. We have seen the numbers, which suggest that the impact on our economy is negligible. All it will do is protect foreign investors in the mining sector. Fine, we are not against that, but the economic impact would be minimal, in our opinion.