Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to hear the member talk so passionately on the issue of human rights. Being of my generation, which was the Trudeau generation, and the discussion of human rights in our country during that era, it is quite shocking today to see the Liberals making haste to help conclude a trade agreement with a country with a record that even the United States in its pro-free trade agreement stance in the world is stepping away from.
I understand that the member was a mayor of a community. Probably in that capacity he worked within collective agreements. In collective agreements when there is a complex issue and both parties want to put it aside, they sign letters of intent, side agreements, that have no weight in law whatsoever but are an agreement to proceed in a certain manner. We have the same thing with respect to this agreement. The parties are talking about the rights of trade unionists and other rights in side agreements when they should be in the core of the agreement.
On the issue of free trade agreements, why did we fight them for so many years? All one has to do is look at Hamilton where I am from. We lost 50,000 jobs to free trade. In Ontario, in the first two years of the original free trade agreement, 500,000 jobs were lost. That is why we oppose them.