Again, Mr. Speaker, this is a totally separate debate from this discussion, but the part of the debate in which the member wants to engage is a whole question about extraterritoriality.
The Canadian government is not the sovereign government in Colombia or in any other country with which we do business, nor should it be. We deal professionally with political governments around the world. Our mining companies, as I said earlier, have some of the highest standards of corporate social responsibility of any group in the extractive sector. They are the companies that most countries want to attract, because of those standards of corporate social responsibility.
We encourage our extractive sector and Canadian business community in the development and implementation of corporate social responsibility initiatives, including involving local labour unions and local NGOs. We support the extractive industry's transparency initiative, which supports governance and transparency in developing countries through the full publication and verification of company payments and government revenues for oil, gas and mining industries.
We have put a number of checks and balances in place to make sure not only that Canadian companies quite frankly talk the talk, but that they also walk the walk, respecting the full political rights of other countries. We would not want some other country telling Canada what to do, nor do we want to be in the position of telling them what they should be doing.