Madam Speaker, the Belgium issue gave a lot of people a surprise, Liberals and Conservatives especially, because they were not paying attention.
People have been criticizing the investor-state dispute settlement clauses in these types of agreements for a long time, and so it was not a surprise to New Democrats when we found out that people in Europe were looking at those same issues and saying that they had a problem with them. It is not a surprise if we look at the model of the European Union, which is very integrated, but it does not have the same kind of investor-state dispute settlement clauses that are governed by the corporate elite. Therefore, if we have been watching and paying attention to the way these deals have been playing out, it was not a big surprise.
The best way to try and head off further surprises is to take our time, that is not rush it through Parliament here; to start listening instead of dismissing these concerns as being unreasonable; and then to change the agreement to get rid of those problematic provisions. We could then get people onside in Europe.