Mr. Speaker, I want to start by indicating that I will be sharing my time with the member for Regina—Lewvan.
I am pleased to rise on second reading of Bill C-31 to express support for the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement.
I come from a part of the country, Elmwood—Transcona that, like many parts of the country, has a very strong Ukrainian community, of which I am a part. My mother's father's parents originally came to Canada and settled around Gilbert Plains. They were farmers there. When my grandfather left the farm, he served in the Second World War and ultimately landed in Transcona working for the Canadian National Railway, as many Ukrainians did. Ukrainians came to be an important part of Transcona, and an important part of the railway there, which is my heritage. My grandpa worked decades for CN in the shops, and like many with a good employer, good benefits, and a good pension, was able to make a life for his family, retire, and live out his retirement comfortably in Transcona.
I am proud to be a member of the Ukrainian Canadian community. I am proud to represent a riding where that community is strong and active. I am, therefore, also proud to support this agreement.
There are many issues that I had expressed yesterday about the comprehensive economic and trade agreement with Europe that do not present themselves in the case of the bill before us, starting with the government following its own process: tabling the implementing legislation 21 days after tabling the agreement; and actually submitting the assessment that it is required to submit, including an environmental assessment. Therefore, in terms of process, I would say that the government has done a really bad job of CETA, but has succeeded in following its own rules with respect to CUFTA, which I think helps in terms of engendering a sense of trust and confidence in the process. This is thing number one.
Thing number two that is different is that we do not have the same contentious investor-state dispute settlement clauses in CUFTA that we have in the Canada-Europe trade agreement. This also goes a long way to alleviate some of the concern on this side of the House about the nature of this deal. It allows us to look at what it really is as a trade deal. It is a deal to lower tariffs on Canadian goods going into Ukraine and lower Canadian tariffs on goods coming out of Ukraine into Canada. On balance, when we look at that, there is already an existing trade relationship. There was a lot of business done already with Ukraine, and this is an opportunity to expand that level of trade. Therefore, overall, it is a good thing.
Members on this side have said, and I will say again, that we think it is important that there be a tougher human rights monitoring provision alongside this agreement to make sure that our trade is not being used to further the interests of an oligopoly in Ukraine. However, we are nevertheless supportive, and we would like to see it ultimately come to fruition. We believe this is something that should be part of the process going forward, but not a reason to stop the process here.
Another difference with this agreement over CETA is that there is an important political point, economics aside, to this particular agreement, because of the rich history between Canada and Ukraine, and because Ukraine is in a very difficult position with a belligerent neighbour that has already annexed part of its territory and has made it clear that it intends to and wants to dominate Ukraine. I think this agreement sends an important political message that Canada stands behind Ukraine, because economic muscle is a real tool that belligerent neighbours use against those they want to control. We are willing to help people in Ukraine who want markets to be able to sell their goods and continue doing business. Canada is open to being a good friend and ally to them, and not force them into trying to trade with a belligerent neighbour.
We want to provide Ukraine with positive options that allow it to continue to have a market for its goods through trying times. That is an important political statement to be made about the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement, especially important to make at this time.
Those are my general thoughts on the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement. A nice thing we could do, because Global Affairs Canada has actually issued some information about the agreement and what the government believes the impact on trade would be, is talk about some of the details. We do not have a comparable document, unfortunately, for the Canada-European Union free trade agreement.
I know some hon. members have gotten into those details. I will spare the House from going over them once again, but I want to highlight the fact that we can actually dig down into those details, because the government has endeavoured to make some of them available. That should be standard practice and it is shocking to me that it is willing to do that for a smaller bilateral agreement but when we talk about larger multilateral agreements that, it is fair to say, have a much larger potential impact for the economy, it is ridiculous that we do not have better information. If we want to make sound economic decisions, we have to do it on the basis of numbers. We have them for this agreement, but we do not have them for some larger potential agreements.
Before I sit down, I want to draw the House's attention to that and implore members on the government side to do a far better job when it comes to the larger agreements. There is a template for it with the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement and it is one that they ought to apply to other larger deals.