Madam Speaker, while I have the floor I want to thank the cafeteria staff for feeding us perogies at lunch today, which was very appropriate given the deal we are debating.
I want to thank the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of International Trade for bringing forward a trade deal to this House that the New Democrats are happy to support. It removes tariffs from steel to seafood, and aids exports, and adds Canadian jobs, without any of the downside of the other trade deals the government has been supporting, which give more rights to foreign investors to challenge disputes in the new investor court in the EU, for example, and undermine our environmental and social regulations.
Both the parliamentary secretary and the trade minister on the Liberal side have talked a lot about progressive trade deals. I would like to learn more, because we have had two very different types of trade deals in the House, one the New Democrats support and one we do not. Can the parliamentary secretary tell us more about his view of what constitutes a progressive trade deal and how this one fits with that?