Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to provide some commentary on Bill C-46, An Act to implement the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the Republic of Panama, the Agreement on the Environment between Canada and the Republic of Panama and the Agreement on Labour Cooperation between Canada and the Republic of Panama.
This afternoon we are debating the four report stage motions which were moved by a member from the NDP. These four motions are all motions to delete certain clauses in the bill.
The first motion is to eliminate clause 7, which outlines the purpose of the bill. I think the bill probably would still operate even if we did not have the narrative about what the purpose is because it is almost self-evident.
The second motion is to eliminate the clause which designates that the minister is the representative of Canada. That is almost self-evident as well, although it is probably good to have it in there.
The third motion is to eliminate clause 12, which lays out the minister's authorized activities in his role.
The last one is to eliminate the final clause, which is the coming into force clause, i.e., when this bill would become law.
The member for Windsor—Tecumseh had indicated that, in substance, putting all these together probably makes the bill somewhat sloppy or inoperative and basically would kill the bill.
Now we know exactly why we are spending all this time on this. It is probably why the Speaker has given so much latitude to members who are speaking because there is not very much we can say. These are constructive motions basically to scrap the bill. Some people would rather talk about the bill, which is really not what we are debating.
It is interesting that there has been so much irrelevance relative to what we are supposed to do, but probably some of the more interesting commentary that we have had with regard to bilateral free trade agreements in general. There have been a lot of very good issues that have come up. Some relate to double taxation issues, or tax-sharing information, or multilateral versus bilateral agreements, and some of those benefits and whether or not we should be doing trade at all with countries that do not respect human rights, with countries that do not respect the collective bargaining process.
We talked about the fact that in this particular case the trade activity between the two countries is very small. It is $90 million one way and $30 million the other. It is inconsequential. Yet, there have been eloquent speeches about what a great thing this is for agriculture and so forth. That is nonsense, quite frankly. There is not a great deal of trade.
However, what there is, is a future. There is the expansion of the Panama Canal which is going to be finished, I think, in 2012. It is going to open up new opportunities.
The most important aspect that has been raised is that there is a problem in Panama. It has been identified critically by the OECD, and it has to do with tax evasion through tax havens. Tax havens are fine. Tax avoidance is fine. Tax evasion is illegal.
We need good faith with our trading partners. They may not be part of a particular trade instrument that we have, such as a bill like this one, but they should be part of the conversation. I think that members have basically said we need to have this conversation about how we are going to conduct ourselves in terms of having ethical trade with other countries around the world. We need that conversation. I hope that it will start as a consequence of the input of hon. members today and that we understand that even in Canada there are people who do bad things. There are people who are money launderers, who break the laws, all the things we accuse these other countries of. Let us not be holier than thou. We have problems ourselves. We have to clean them up.
Mr. Speaker, I will finish this speech at the next sitting.