Mr. Speaker, this is a regular line by the left and the Green Party in Canada, to suggest that these international dispute mechanisms are somehow sinister. As a lawyer in Ontario I know, and as the hon. member is a lawyer as well she would know, that a lot of regimes have mandatory mediation processes and a number of elements to take disputes out of a long-winded laborious litigation process. Therefore, in a lot of these agreements, there are agreements for disputes to be settled in a specific way. That is what contracts are for: certainty, particularly when countries have different legal standards, whether civil code or common law, and some countries do not respect the rule of law. That type of certainty is what investors expect. That is what companies expect. That is what states expect.
I would love the hon. member to suggest for this House that it is somehow sinister in an agreement premised upon certainty to not allow parties to have choice of forum, choice of law. These are fundamental aspects of contract law. I hate how this sort of spectre of ISDS or mandatory disputes or the disputes mechanism we set up with China is somehow sinister, when it is actually meant to overcome uncertainty and incompatibility of legal systems. Does the hon. member not suggest that companies, governments and people have the ability to forge these decisions, whether it is ISDS or other mechanisms?