Mr. Speaker, the government failed to negotiate effectively to defend Canadian interests. Effectively, the Americans are involved in an act of extraterritoriality in this case.
Beyond that, one of the reasons given by government was that the Americans would effectively shut down Canadian banks operating in the U.S. Canadian banks are very powerful in the United States. Banks like TD, BMO Harris, and Royal Bank are among the most successful banks in the world. Post-global financial crisis, where a lot of the American banks were sucked into the vortex of the mess caused by deregulation in the 1990s, our Canadian banks have been very powerful.
Some witnesses agreed with us that it was a straw man argument, and that it was ridiculous to say that the American financial system would effectively shut down the operations of Canadian banks if we did not capitulate to the Americans by agreeing to this bad deal. It is another example of the economic cost of bad relationships with Washington under the Conservative government.