Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate my colleague's question, because it is extremely relevant. I gave the example of the time when I was the Quebec environment minister and banned 2,4-D.
We know that the provinces are responsible for directly regulating in health and environment much more than the federal government, even though environment is shared.
We also know that the provinces risk bearing much higher costs, especially for generic drugs, because they will be much more expensive and it will be harder to bring them to market because of intellectual property protections. Once again, the agreement is putting profits before people. We want to put people before profits.
The provincial governments should be extremely careful, because this agreement will have a chilling effect on the provinces’ ability to regulate in health and the environment. This is why, from our perspective, we need to proceed very cautiously before signing this kind of agreement.
To those who would suggest that the NDP always votes against free trade agreements, I will say that nothing could be further from the truth. In recent years we supported the Canada–Korea Free Trade Agreement and the Canada–Jordan Free Trade Agreement.
We examine these agreements on a case by case basis, and this particular agreement if far from guaranteeing provincial capacity, in particular, capacity to ensure the public is protected. And what is more important in a government’s mandate than protection of the public?