Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to my friend, the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources. Let me just counter a few of the points that he made.
Not only are foreign investors treated as well as domestic investors under this particular type of perverse treaty, foreign investors are treated way better. There is not a domestic company that could sue the Parliament of Canada because we passed a law it did not like.
That is what Ethyl Corporation of Richmond, Virginia did when it did not like a law passed by the Parliament of Canada to restrict the exposure of Canadians to a manganese-based gasoline additive that causes neurotoxic health effects in people. If it had been manufactured in Canada, that particular company would have been out of luck. Because it was a foreign corporation and had benefit of chapter 11 of NAFTA, it could sue.
Not only that, we do not need investor state agreements to open markets or to get investment. Examine Australia, it is a perfect case. It has 10 times more investment from China than Canada. The Australians are at over $600 million in investments from China, but they have refused to sign an investment treaty because they have decided, with a cost-benefit analysis, that such a treaty could create more cost and more damages than benefits.