Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his comments, and I would like to reiterate what he mentioned: the fact that the Conservatives and Liberals are actually of the same stripe on the issue of negotiating an agreement with a country with such an atrocious human rights record.
The approach of the Conservative government is to negotiate the trade agreements behind closed doors, and we should just trust it. However, we know this cannot be the case. We have seen it negotiate free trade agreements in the past in bad faith with civil society.
We can only mention the fact that Amnesty International last week revealed that the Conservative government limited the online consultation process to only six working days for the Canada-Colombia FTA human rights report, thus preventing any civil society groups from participating. Amnesty International also mentioned in committee last week that it had not been consulted by DFAIT on human rights implications to the trans-Pacific partnership, particularly considering that countries such as Vietnam may have lower human rights standards than Canada.
We see that the Conservative government, on the issue of human rights and free trade agreements, has consistently worked in bad faith with civil society.