Madam Speaker, I want to begin, of course, by acknowledging we are on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.
I did have a question for the minister that I was unable to ask, but perhaps I can work it into my speech.
I am sure many of the people watching today's debate in the Canadian House of Commons will be from Indonesia, interested in what Canadian parliamentarians think about their country and this trade agreement. Therefore, I want to start by expressing deep condolences to the people of Indonesia who, just last weekend, experienced an extreme weather event, likely due to climate change. The extreme rainfall event caused landslides. At this point, those landslides in West Java have killed at least 20 people, and there are dozens still missing. We are aware of the difficult time being faced right now by local governments and communities, including naval officials who are still stuck due to the landslides. It is a horrific event.
That brings me to the question I was going to ask the minister. I think I will start by prefacing my speech with this question. We have before us a bill that would appear to be an opportunity for the House of Commons to either agree and ratify a treaty or not. As a matter of law, this treaty likely was considered by both Canada and Indonesia to have come into force when the Prime Minister and the leadership in Indonesia signed the agreement back in September 2025. I think this is somewhat pro forma, which is troubling.
In Canada, which a lot of Canadians would not know, each government, each executive, the Prime Minister and cabinet, has a choice. They can choose to bring a treaty to Parliament for a debate and a vote, or it can be passed solely in cabinet by Governor in Council. In this case, the comprehensive economic partnership agreement between Canada and Indonesia was signed before it ever came to Parliament. We are now debating and considering an act to implement the comprehensive economic partnership agreement. It is kind of a hybrid here.
In the past, we have had many treaties where a prime minister has decided it is so important that we are going to debate it on the floor of the House of Commons and let Parliament vote on it. Let me contrast two with which I am very familiar. One was the time former prime minister Jean Chrétien felt that it was really important for Canada's Parliament, as a whole, to debate and vote on the Kyoto protocol back in 1997, the first of many legally binding climate negotiations that were concluded. Another example was when former prime minister Stephen Harper decided the Canadian Parliament did not need to debate or vote on a very dangerous agreement, which, in the end, was concluded by only a vote in cabinet, by an order in council.
That relates to what I am going to continue to speak about here today. It was the Canada-China Foreign Investment Protection and Promotion Agreement, or FIPA, which never was debated in Parliament but was only carried through the Governor in Council. It allows for, to this day, secret hearings if the People's Republic of China objects to any change in a regulation or rule by a local government, provincial government or whatever. We can then be sued for whatever amount by the politburo of the People's Republic of China because so many of their enterprises are state-owned. In any case, the FIPA with China never came before Parliament.
Each federal government has the option of concluding any treaty with a foreign power either through cabinet alone or through bringing it to Parliament for a vote. In this case, I am afraid that this is probably already a legally binding treaty with Indonesia before we discussed it here, and this is the implementation act to bring it forward.
It is very much the case that the Green Party agrees with the goals of the current government, that we need trade diversification. However, we would prefer far more effort to ensure that those agreements we make are with strong democracies that share our values. I can now quote her in this place because she is no longer a member, but former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland put it this way: “Democracies should depend on democracies, not dictators.” Even in times when we need more trade agreements, more trade diversification and less reliance on the United States, no question, we should look at, excuse the expression, whom we are climbing into bed with on these issues.
I am concerned about the fact that while it is true Indonesia is a democracy, it may be a democracy in name only. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, it has, for years, marked Indonesia down as a flawed democracy. There are many issues, such as were already raised by my friend and colleague from the Bloc Québécois, around human rights within Indonesia and with the fraying of that relationship within a real democracy where the people really decide what the policies are and really control their government. There are many democracies around the world where people may think that may not be the case. In any case, Indonesia still, on paper, is a democracy.
However, when we look at this agreement, and I do want to focus on one specific area and one specific company, we have had a lot of trade with Indonesia already. I question whether it has been to our benefit and whether we should not have reviewed some of these trade arrangements more closely. I speak, of course, of the fact, which is astonishing for most Canadians, that the largest of our pulp and paper enterprises across Canada is a company that is basically controlled in Indonesia. It is called Paper Excellence. It started by buying Northern Pulp in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, and over the years, it then absorbed Domtar, Resolute and Catalyst. It controls a vast amount of Canadian forest, and it runs pulp and paper mills across Canada.
By this agreement, we would now be giving the same thing I mentioned earlier in the foreign investment promotion and protection agreement, which would mean that the Government of Indonesia can complain and go to arbitration if we change our rules or laws and it affects their investments. This is a very strange situation.
The Standing Committee on Natural Resources subpoenaed the leadership of Paper Excellence to come before the committee to explain what it was doing with our pulp and paper industry and with our vast area of forest that it now controls. The entire corporation is controlled by one Indonesian billionaire, Mr. Wijaya, who refused to come before the committee and sent some representatives. The company, on paper, is registered in Vancouver, but again, there is no transparency. It is not listed on any stock exchange. It is the sole property of one individual billionaire.
By this agreement, which I think is already signed and in law, we have now given investment protection and the ability to go to an investor-state dispute resolution to complain if a Canadian province decides that it was a mistake to let an Indonesian multinational buy up Domtar, Resolute, Catalyst or Northern Pulp and now wishes to protect our forests, protect our forest workers and put in place more protections. I did hear the minister's answer that this agreement does maintain that we are going to seek sustainable development, promote the environment and promote fair labour standards, but we are dealing with a country where those things are rather unknown. It is not clear to me how, in passing Bill C-18, we will get to where we want to go.
In terms of the promised new day and how much this is going to deliver for Canadians, the estimate is that this will increase Canada's GDP by 2040 by 0.012%. Again, we do want to diversify trade, but we do want to be careful.
I look forward to the bill going to committee at second reading, where we can pursue some of these questions.