Mr. Speaker, earlier in the day, on behalf of the Liberal Party, the member for Kings—Hants was advancing a theory that essentially stated that our trade policy should be based on the principle that if we engage economically with nations, somehow this will automatically have a positive effect on their human rights record. Of course, under this theory, there really is no practical reason why any country would improve its human rights record and there would be really no criteria to apply toward any country with which we trade. We could under that theory trade with any country in the world that has the absolutely most repressive record on any subject and just hope it would improve.
I am wondering what my hon. colleague's thoughts are with respect to when Canada should extend preferential economic relations with countries and what we should be expecting from those countries in terms of their human rights, environmental standards and labour standards as a condition before we trade, or should we have no conditions at all as the Liberal Party apparently thinks is the case.