Mr. Speaker, if I had a crystal ball and could see into the future I am sure that whatever the number is it would be pretty grim.
Earlier today, one of our colleagues spoke about how a company in Winnipeg and a company in Quebec lost the contract for building buses to Germany over the fact that they were underbid by $60,000, something that our colleague argued would be about the price of a set of tires for these buses. It just makes no sense.
We need to keep jobs here in Canada. Our workers need to be paid fairly. We have human rights standards, labour codes and minimum wages and we need to keep a lot of those jobs here.
Some people have said that the Canada-Peru labour standards agreement that is tacked onto the side, which I was talking about, is actually an improvement on NAFTA, so, hurray, we have won.
NAFTA just focused on the enforcement of labour standards, while each trading partner retained full regulatory control to establish or modify its labour and employment standards. This agreement is more substantive because it seeks to prohibit violating core international labour standards. It is trying to say that we do not approve of this, that we need to stick with international labour standards. It is making the attempt but there is absolutely no empirical evidence that this kind of enforcement mechanism even works.
It is great that we a little bit more language in there but where is the proof that this will do anything? Where is the proof that this will help workers in Canada and in Peru? There is no empirical evidence at all.