Madam Speaker, today's debate has been extremely interesting. Bill C-228 is an opportunity for the Prime Minister to put words into action.
Like many, I was captivated by the Prime Minister's speech in Davos for a number of reasons. First of all, among all the wonderful things I have read in my lifetime are the works of Jan Patočka, the person who inspired Václav Havel, a leading Czech philosopher and author of the book The Power of the Powerless. I was fascinated to see the Prime Minister quote him.
What the Prime Minister said in Davos was that the power rivalry often causes great powers to forget their duty to middle powers and that carefully calculated interests often rule the day when it comes to international relations.
I thought this was interesting because we can follow Prime Minister's lead and draw our own analogy. Instead of talking about international powers, let us talk about the federation. In the Canadian federation, it is often carefully calculated interests that drive policy and our trade agreements. Perhaps to the Prime Minister's great misfortune, Canada is not a unitary country. Within Canada, there are national minorities, such as Quebec, that are trying to defend their own economies.
I want to come back to the Prime Minister's speech. Speaking about the supposedly rules-based international order, the Prime Minister said that the strongest too often exempt themselves when convenient and that trade rules are enforced asymmetrically.
The Canadian government often exempts itself when convenient. In the current tariff crisis, I have never seen the government take concerted or significant action on the infamous softwood lumber issue. I have also never seen the government seriously address the issue of the tariffs on aluminum. Softwood lumber and aluminum are the two main economic sectors currently subject to tariffs, and they are economic sectors specific to Quebec.
I was elected in 2019 during the negotiation of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, or CUSMA. We soon realized what the government had done. It had forgotten to protect aluminum. We were caught off-guard, and our political party had to fight hard to get protection for aluminum.
In his speech, the Prime Minister talked about living in truth, which is what Václav Havel wrote about in The Power of the Powerless. We need to stop living within a lie. The Prime Minister said, “You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination”.
What we are seeing here, regarding international treaties, is Quebec's subordination to federal power. I will not repeat the examples of the softwood lumber and aluminum sectors, but it is a reality. This bill calls for more consultation with members of Parliament and a mechanism that allows us to study these treaties in committee.
I was shocked to hear my colleague from Don Valley West say that strengthening our democratic processes would be a waste of time. I heard the Prime Minister's speech in Davos, where he said that we must clearly assert the values and rules governing international trade. Then, the Liberals come here and say that the democratic processes that enable us to assert the rules and potentially hear all sides are a waste of time.
Earlier, my Conservative colleague from Edmonton Manning said that this would significantly increase our workload. His leader spends his time saying that Liberal and Bloc Québécois MPs are lazy because they are not willing to do committee work at the discretion of the leader of the official opposition. However, when it comes to studying something as important as an international treaty, his MP says that it would add too much to our workload. In my opinion, these are considerations are erroneous, and MPs should have read the bill in its entirety.