Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise tonight to speak to Bill C-228, legislation that would fundamentally reshape how Canada affirms its treaties.
I will admit that this is not quite the agreement I hoped to be speaking to after more than five months of trade negotiations with the U.S. Still, Bill C-228 raises issues that go to the very heart of how Parliament exercises its constitutional role.
The intent behind this private member's bill is commendable. It seeks to give Parliament a stronger voice in the treaty process to make the approval and adoption of agreements more transparent and accountable. Those are principles I support, but while the goal is worthy, I believe the way this bill goes about achieving it is flawed. At the risk of echoing some of the thoughtful concerns by my colleague from Wellington—Halton Hills North, I would like to briefly outline the key provisions of this legislation.
As written, the legislation would do three things. First, it would formalize the practice of ministers tabling major treaties in this place prior to ratification, along with an explanatory note. Second, it would require a committee of the House to review any proposed treaty and report back to the House. Third, it would require the Minister of Foreign Affairs to obtain the advice of the House before ratification.
While I am all for giving this place a bigger voice in the machinations of government, I am concerned about the second aspect of the bill, namely the requirement of a committee of the House to review and report back. My concerns are threefold. First, what is the purpose of sending proposed treaties to committee? Second, can the committees, as they are currently constituted, actually carry out the massive increase in workload Bill C-228 would necessitate? Third, and perhaps most important, I am concerned about a potential chilling effect it may have in a negotiating process.
To be clear, this is not a question of effort. The reality is that there are just not enough hours in a day, a week or a month for parliamentarians to thoroughly scrutinize the dozens, if not hundreds, of additional documents that could be sent to the relevant House committees.
To provide some context, since 2008, 467 treaties have been tabled in the House. By my napkin math, during that same time period, 341 pieces of government legislation have passed committee and received royal assent. We already face severe limitations on our ability to analyze legislation and conduct studies at our committees. With the addition of proposed treaties being sent into the room, the very few hours we have would be reduced even further. This means less legislation passed, fewer treaties approved, fewer private members' bills agreed to and fewer studies in committee.
For a microcosm, in the 41st Parliament, former prime minister Stephen Harper and his strong, stable, national majority government tabled 142 treaties in the House. If this bill were law then, that would mean that that Parliament would have had 142 additional study topics and 142 other very important committee meetings that would not have occurred. This is assuming the absolute best-case scenario, where each treaty is approved by all parties with little or no debate. Who knows how long a treaty may require at committee.
This leads to my second concern with the proposal to send this to committee, which is the simple question, why? Parliamentarians do not have the capacity to amend or change the wording of a proposed treaty. We are simply there to say yea or nay. We are not involved in the negotiation process. The government is, with ministers, skilled public servants, subject matter experts and diplomats hammering out minutia after minutia. I am curious as to what members would envision the committee process would look like. Would we treat the treaty like legislation? Almost everyone in this place has done line-by-line consideration of legislation before. We know how tedious, but necessary, it is.
Let us engage in a bit of a thought experiment. Let us say that tomorrow this legislation achieves royal assent, and additionally, the government announces we have a renegotiated CUSMA. It is a trilateral trade deal with revisions and additions. CUSMA then gets sent to the international trade committee. The agreement is about as long as the previous one, ringing in at just under 1,900 pages. What happens next? Do they do line-by-line consideration or clause-by-clause consideration? How are the offices expected to do due diligence in understanding each clause in the little time we have?
Does the committee supply simply a nay or yea? Does this end the deal? How much time is given to the committee and its members to consider the document? Does a 10-page treaty get the same amount of time for MPs to familiarize themselves with as a 2,000-page behemoth? Does rejecting the treaty mean that trade talks collapse?
This highlights an unfortunate reality that the legislation could not meet. Either the process is fulsome and done with attention to detail and due process that it deserves, in which case it quite possibly cripples the workload of the relevant committee, or it turns into a rubber-stamping process, in which case it is irrelevant and not needed. This, of course, ignores the other elephant in the room: It provides all parties with another legislative process that could be politically weaponized, further delaying the process.
All of this leads to a third issue that, in my opinion, is by far the most serious. This may be the first time that members will ever hear a Tory say this in the House, but the legislation's most worrisome aspect is the potential effect this will have on limiting the authority of the current government to do its job. The legislation would have a massive chilling effect on the government's ability to negotiate in good faith with other governments. Simply put, why would the nations of the world put any faith or effort into the treaty negotiation processes if the entire process can be derailed or held up in Parliament? This is particularly poignant given what is happening right now in Washington.
To be clear, the Conservatives wish nothing but total success to the government in its negotiating efforts with the U.S. We all want what is best for Canada and the U.S. We may disagree on how we are going to get there, but our goal is the same. I would like to take this opportunity to place on the parliamentary record my continued commitment, that of my team and myself, to extend our co-operation and support to the government negotiating team in any way we can. I reiterate to the Minister responsible for Canada-U.S. Trade, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister directly that my door remains open and that my commitment to constructive co-operation and engagement with our U.S. neighbours is unwavering.
However, I want to be clear: Members should understand that the willingness to co-operate does not exempt the government from rightful scrutiny and criticism where it is warranted. It also means that the government needs to signal its intent to actually engage with the opposition to get the best deal possible for Canada and end this unjust, unprovoked trade dispute. To bring this back to Bill C-228, the last thing I would like to do during any negotiation process is to signal to any potential trading partners that the government does not have the agency to negotiate on behalf of the government.
In closing, Bill C-228 is guided by good intentions to strengthen Parliament's role in treaty approval. However, as drafted, it risks slowing decision-making and blurring the line between advisory oversight and executive responsibility. I would like to applaud the member for Jonquière for his vision and efforts to empower this place, but, unfortunately, I cannot support the implementation of that vision as is.