Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague from Welland has also devoted his life to improving the lives of workers and their families in the trade union movement.
I have negotiated many contracts in my time. The first thing everyone knows about putting something in a side deal is that it means something. It is not meaningless. When there is the main body of an agreement and there are appendages and side agreements, it is not done for no consequence. It is done for a reason.
The first thing of note is the optics of it. What it conveys to the parties that negotiate the contract and anybody who reads it is that the parties that negotiated those agreements thought that those issues were secondary, not important enough to put in the main body of the agreement.
It also has to do with enforcement mechanisms. They are weak in this agreement for enforcing environmental and labour standards because they exist in side agreements. That is another flaw of this agreement and this bill.