Mr. Speaker, it is too simplistic to say that a growing economy helps everyone. It does not. Growing economies sometimes only benefit the very wealthy in the country.
Let us go to Brazil and look at the leadership role it has provided in South America. It does not want to sign an agreement of a free trade nature with Canada. It has been building its own trading arrangements, with the Mercosur arrangement, with other countries from Central America.
Brazil looked at the NAFTA agreement with Mexico and saw the way it damaged that economy so badly. It is not interested in talking to us if we are talking about that kind of agreement. What it has done there is in fact much as the European Union did. It entered into agreements with other smaller countries that actually provided a transfer of wealth, outright dollars to it that would assist the country in building some of that infrastructure so human rights, environmental standards and labour standards were protected.
Brazil has been the leading country in South America doing that. It is the kind of country we should be following as a model, not countries like Panama or Colombia.