Mr. Speaker, I recognize my colleague's efforts to draw an analogy for why investor-state agreements are useful. He only criticized the NDP for its opposition. I guarantee the hon. member that I oppose investor-state agreements more. I have never voted for them at all and unfortunately my colleagues in the NDP caucus have done so. My colleague can take that with a grain of salt.
My concern is this. My colleague's nail factory analogy would be clear if it were this example. Let us say a nail factory is opened in a foreign country and the government of that country changes its minimum wage standards. It has nothing to do with the factory. It is not discriminatory. In a democratic society, if a government changes the wage standards or it changes the requirements for a company to pick up its own waste, then that is enough under the dispute history of investor-state agreements for a foreign corporation to have the right to bring an arbitration suit against the government. A domestic corporation would not have that right. That right is exclusive to foreign corporations. The litany of cases that are like this are not in any way categorized by discriminating against a foreign investor or being reckless or discriminatory. They are normal decisions of public policy that foreign corporations will have a right to seek arbitration relief in the hundreds of millions of dollars.