Mr. Speaker, first I submit for my hon. friend from Guelph that there is nothing about giving foreign corporations superior rights to domestic corporations that protect jobs in Canada; it is quite the opposite. I would also suggest that the World Trade Organization does not insist on investor-state dispute resolution agreements; the protection of foreign corporations to protect their expectation of profits is outside the WTO. There was an attempt to put it inside in the multilateral agreement on investment, which was rejected within the OECD. Therefore, these are independent of WTO rules.
We should never accept them unthinkingly. I suggest for all of us, with the deepest respect for my colleagues, that they are accepting investor-state dispute resolutions in trade agreements without thinking, because we have never debated them in this place properly. We should rethink them, renegotiate them and ensure that only in the case of a foreign government's seizing actual assets would we have the reason to be able to say it owes us money. We should never owe a foreign corporation money for protecting the environment in Canada, protecting jobs in Canada and protecting labour rights in Canada.