Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Vancouver East for laying out some of the NDP's sincere and legitimate concerns about this bill and the points we have been trying to make. We have been urging the government to take into consideration and accommodate some of the reasonable concerns we have had about this.
I would like to focus on one comment my colleague made. Essentially the hon. member for Vancouver East was making the point that a free trade agreement with Canada is not a right; it is more a privilege.
In fact, if one wants to become a member of the community of free trading nations, one should be agreeing to a set of standards and rules that in fact stipulate that the standards of wages and living conditions in one's home country be elevated, complementing those high standards of wages and living conditions in the trading partner, in this case Canada. In other words, we should be raising up the conditions of these countries to our level and not allowing our standards to be pulled down to their level. It seems like a very straightforward notion, to my mind.
Is that in fact the basis of her objections to this agreement as it stands?