Mr. Speaker, these are national agreements between two states.
If we look at Canada as being corporate Canada, the Conservatives are looking after the best interests of corporate Canada. We are ensuring that we want to do business for the long term to ensure that there is long-term prosperity for Canada as a nation. In order to do that we need to put in place the mechanism for us to resolve disputes, the mechanism for us to pay each other on time, and the mechanism for us to meet the same standards. These are the mechanisms we need to put in so that private businesses can get on with their own business.
When I was working in China in the early 1980s, these mechanisms did not exist. Every deal had to be negotiated individually, including 200 to 300 pages of contracts. Unfortunately, at that time China did not have the mirror image of the legislation.
What we are putting in place gets both countries to a level playing field.