Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend bringing attention to the great work the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle is doing. I know he is excited about the implications in his own riding of having a leader just down the road.
I would like to respond to his points about property rights. I do not think Canadians I talked to would consider it a radical idea that we have constitutional protection for property rights. Of course, he knows it is subject to section 1 of the charter. I think most Canadians would be surprised to know that we do not already have constitutional protection for property rights.
He talked about investors as being financiers and property owners. Of course, he should include in that investor category union pension funds as well, that are protected by these provisions.
He asked in his speech about this whole possibility of frivolous litigation, but the reality is, that could exist in any context. It is important that we have an adjudication process. He recognizes the need for an adjudication process, yet he somehow thinks that a state-to-state process, which does not give individual investors any standing, or a process that would involve adjudication solely on the basis of domestic law as opposed to on the basis of the trade agreement, are sufficient. He should be able to see that none of these things is actually sufficient for what these provisions are supposed to do, which is to allow investors the opportunity to directly, themselves, raise issues in which governments violate trade agreements. That seems to me to be a basic fairness mechanism. Whether it is financiers, business owners, or union pension funds, surely they should have the right to seek some kind of domestic remedy, regardless of what their own domestic government thinks, if rights that are supposed to be afforded to them are not protected.
However, if he does not believe in property rights, maybe that actually explains the logic behind it. I would be curious for his response.