Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I will conclude. I understand we are getting close to question period.
The trans-Pacific partnership has been talked because this involves trade rules and trade rules naturally are one of the fundamental issues being discussed. As much as I have encouraged and been supportive of the government ratifying the TPP, having been our party's Canada-U.S. critic for basically the last year, I am very pessimistic about the probability of the TPP being ratified. I base this upon the reality of the American political system.
There are two candidates, one who is vocally opposed to it and one who previously supported it and now does not. I also have had conversations with congressional leaders. This leads me to give the following advice to the government and to our party as we begin to take a look at our positions going forward.
With the likelihood being very small that the TPP will be successful, while continuing to urge its acceptance, we need to begin to position ourselves for the future. Acceptance of Bill C-13 helps us to do that, but we need to begin to think not where the puck is, but as Wayne Gretzky always used to note, where the puck will go. That means we need to begin to think about how to position ourselves on bilateral trade agreements with countries that are involved in the TPP if this agreement does not pass. If the United States is not going to be part of this agreement, we need to think about how we can begin to open up markets and expand markets, not just with current trading partners with which we have agreements, such as Mexico, but countries like Japan and other countries there.
This is a technical legislation, but it is necessary legislation. It is based on two basic things: free trade is good and the rule of law is necessary to have that free trade.
After question period I will be more than happy to take questions from my colleagues.