Debates of March 12th, 2026

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-13, An Act to implement the Protocol on the Accession of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, as reported (with amendment) from the committee.

An Act to Implement the Protocol on the Accession of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the U.K. is Canada's third-largest trading partner and ally, and with this new relationship, I can see the opportunity for increased trade. However, there have been missed opportunities, and not only with pork and beef.

Like many members of the House, I have met with representatives of 127,000 British state pensioners living in Canada, who have raised the issue of their pensions with me. Those state pensions are equivalent to our Canada pension plan. They and their employers made payments for years before retirement. However, unlike the CPP, their pensions are frozen at the rate they were at when first received and do not increase with inflation. This has been British policy for decades. That does not seem fair to me, because British pensioners are fully indexed in other countries, including the United States.

The Government of Canada has made multiple representations to the U.K. government over the years with the aim of negotiating a social security agreement to end this discriminatory policy, but there has apparently been no willingness on the part of Britain to have such an agreement. The CPTPP was a perfect opportunity to revisit the issue. After all, the British policy comes with a cost to Canadian taxpayers. It has been estimated that this policy costs Canada about $470 million annually.

Canada's social security pensions are indexed, increasing the purchasing power of our citizens wherever they choose to live in retirement and ensuring they have sufficient funds to live. In failing to provide reciprocity, the British government is relying on Canada to provide for its citizens if they should find themselves in need. The Liberals missed the opportunity to address this issue when they negotiated the Canada-U.K. Trade Continuity Agreement. They missed it again when it was not included as a part of the U.K.'s accession to the CPTPP.

The U.K. is Canada's third-largest single-country trading partner for goods: $39.4 billion in 2024. It is also the third-largest single-country trading partner when it comes to services: $21.6 billion in 2024. In the last decade, bilateral trade in goods and services has increased by 52.9%. Working to increase trade with someone we already have a strong relationship with would seem to be a good thing. The U.K. is also Canada's second-largest investment partner. Inbound direct investment to Canada totalled $97 billion in 2024. We want to see that number increase.

Bill C-13, if passed, provides immediate duty-free, quota-free, unlimited access to sweet corn. There is no volume limit, as there was under the previous agreement. It provides more liberal rules of origin for Canadian agriculture export interests, including meat, processed foods, sugar-containing products and pet food. It will provide enhanced protections for investors and their investments in the U.K., with greater predictability and transparency.

Canadian investors will also have access to arbitration for resolving disputes related to U.K. measures that breach CPTPP investment provisions. These are positive outcomes. As well, there will be guaranteed access to U.K. procurement opportunities at all levels of government, including regional and local contracting authorities, as well as guaranteed access to U.K. procurement opportunities undertaken by bodies governed by public law, including schools, universities and colleges, national museums and galleries, and national park authorities. This is good news for Canadian business.

Yes, the government failed to address some of the issues that should have been a priority when it was negotiating this agreement. Our beef and pork industry will still have complaints about the inequity of treatment compared with how U.K. producers are treated in Canada, and those U.K. pensioners living here will continue to be treated as a second-class citizens, unfairly, by their government because Canada's Liberal government did not do the right thing and stand up for fair treatment. I am sad that our government did not take a more principled stand.

However, I think we can all agree that Canada needs more trade and more diversified trade. We have seen the results when we put too many eggs in one basket. Could this bill have been better? I think that is true of any trade agreement. Sometimes compromises are made to allow an agreement to move forward. That may be the situation we find ourselves in here.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook—Brant North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Edmonton Manning for his excellent remarks, which started before question period, and for raising the issue about the British pensioners and his knowledge on that. It was surprising to hear that is a $470-million cost to Canada.

Why does the hon. member believe that the government was unsuccessful in so many missed opportunities to remedy that issue? Is it lack of will or laziness? What is the reason?

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, there is a saying that, in life, that we do not get what we deserve; we get what we negotiate.

I believe that the government has failed to negotiate well to finally resolve this issue, which costs the Canadian economy close to $500 million a year and made it unfair for some of the pensioners. They deserve to get a fair shot out of their investment for life, especially as seniors.

Negotiations could and should have been done better. This is an opportunity we have missed for the second time, and the government could have done a better job.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to a question I asked of the previous member.

Talking about the United States, a member of the Conservative Party, the MP for Bowmanville—Oshawa North, went down to the United States. He met with the President and the vice-president, came back and gave a report saying, in essence, that we should not have a hissy fit against the Americans. Following that visit, the leader of the Conservative Party will be going too. I am not sure when or if he will be meeting with the President and the vice-president.

Does the member believe that he will come back with a report that he can share with Canadians at some point?

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, if the government does its job, no one has to do anything, but the government is not doing its job. The hon. member knows that.

The Liberals have failed to come back to Canada and deliver on their promises. It has been one deadline after the other, and we still have not seen a result. If the government is suggesting that people should sit around, do nothing and not stand for Canada, then that is the member's problem. It is not our problem. I believe that we should never politicize this issue.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Edmonton Manning for raising the issue I have also been working on for years on behalf of British pensioners within Saanich—Gulf Islands.

There have been many years and many missed opportunities to try to negotiate with the British government on how it indexes the pension for Canadian expats. It does not make sense, and as the member rightly pointed out, it is a cost to the Canadian economy. It is also a needless worry to wonderful people. I am sure that each member in their own riding has had people come see them about this unfairness.

I carried with me a stack of petitions to try to hand directly to Boris Johnson when I went to a COP in Glasgow, and I had the help of my hon. colleague. I will not say his riding name because it will take too long, but we tried really hard to hand it directly to the Prime Minister of the U.K. so we could say that this is so unfair.

What do we do now? This agreement is in front of us. What can we all do collectively to push the government to get a proper deal with the U.K. government to defend our pensioners?

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. leader of the Green Party and I were together for many occasions when we met with those pensioners, trying to, first of all, listen to them and understand the issue—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I have to interrupt the member. There is an incredible amount of noise coming from courtyard, and there are people outside of the chamber interfering with the work of the chamber. Right now, I cannot even hear the member for Edmonton Manning.

I will let the member for Edmonton Manning restart from the point where he was to continue his reply.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. leader of the Green Party and I were together, more than once, to meet with these pensioners who, we believe, have been treated unfairly.

I believe that there is still a chance for Parliament to ask the government to push for that. This could be the second time that we miss such an opportunity, but it would be great if we could do it. It would be historical. We would help a lot of people, and it would be an act of fairness to all these people who deserve it the most.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech on Canada accepting the U.K. into the CPTPP. It is my understanding that Canada trades freely with the other countries in that agreement with respect to beef and pork.

Do Canadians have a legitimate concern that the government has failed to come to that agreement with the United Kingdom?

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is true. People in the beef and pork industries are not happy with this. The government could have negotiated better to get this because, again, this is a golden opportunity to do something better, and if that is missed, the industry will be hurt. It will be affected by it.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade and to the Secretary of State (International Development)]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate being acknowledged. You always look good in the chair and you do a really good job. I am hoping you will give me some leniency while I am speaking.

I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. I am thrilled to share my time with her, as I consider her to be a close friend in this place.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-13, which is an act to implement the protocol on the accession of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the CPTPP. I often try to say that five times really fast to see if I can get the acronyms right. Nonetheless, it is an important agreement that Canada is a part of. This particular piece of legislation deals with United Kingdom's becoming part of that agreement and Canada's ratification for that particular accession.

Very similar to what I did yesterday, when I was speaking to Bill C-18, which deals with the Canada-Indonesia Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement, I do want to acknowledge the work that has been done on this important legislation and this agreement, starting with the officials at Global Affairs Canada, who work extremely hard in representing our country. They work diligently and they make us proud. They wave our flag boldly and proudly, so I want to take this opportunity to thank them.

I also want to acknowledge the work of the Standing Committee on International Trade. We have a really good committee with all three recognized parties. We work well together in co-operation. The work that took place in relation to Bill C-13 is an example of that. Again, I want to acknowledge all members from the official opposition, from the third party, the Bloc Québécois and, of course, the government members for their thoughtful work in this regard.

I also want to take the opportunity to thank the British high commissioner to Canada, Robert Tinline, for his work. It is a pleasure to work with him. I also thank our folks at the High Commission of Canada in the United Kingdom, Canada House, including the deputy high commissioner, Robert Fry, who is a seasoned diplomat. Also, as of this week, former member of Parliament, a colleague from this place, the Hon. Bill Blair, has assumed his role as the high commissioner for Canada in the United Kingdom. He will be serving as well. It takes all of us to do this important work, and I am really mindful of the participation and the role of all of us in this endeavour.

CPTPP, or the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, is an important trade agreement that includes 11 founding members that make up the agreement. They include countries like Australia, Chile, Mexico, Singapore, Brunei, Japan, New Zealand, Vietnam, our own country Canada, Malaysia and Peru. For the first time, a new member has been added, and that is United Kingdom. The way the CPTPP is designed, it requires consensus among all founding members to agree to new members becoming part of it. Therefore, the 10 countries, including Canada, have collectively negotiated and have agreed that the United Kingdom can be made part of CPTPP. It is an important step and a symbol, in terms of the group of countries that have trans-Pacific as a natural point of bond, reaching out to a European country like United Kingdom and making it part of it.

In this moment in time, it is a very important message being sent, that we are not going to go the way of protectionism as we are seeing stated explicitly by the current administration of the United States. Putting tariffs on countries is not how we are going to grow our economy. In fact, we think that a free trade, liberalized trade, rules-based trading system is the best way to grow our economies, where we actually rely on each other's economy, leverage our comparative advantage in things that we are self-sufficient in producing and growing, exchange that, sell to each other and be able to benefit from other economies.

For Canada and the United Kingdom, as natural allies and friends with deep historical ties, to be able to take that step to join in and be part of this really thoughtful, large and comprehensive agreement is a very important message to the world and to other countries, which says that protectionism is not the way to create prosperity for our citizens. In fact, the way we should do it is by creating alliances, by making sure that we are part of each other.

I think it is also important to recognize that the U.K., as I was mentioning, from a cultural, historical and a people-to-people ties perspective, is very close to Canada. We share a lot. Economically, the United Kingdom is also an important partner of Canada's. In fact, the U.K. is Canada's third largest single-country trading partner, which is remarkable. I believe the United States is first, China is number two and the United Kingdom is the third largest single-country trading partner for Canada. We continue to see really impressive trade growth between our two countries.

According to the notes that I have, since 2016, Canada-U.K. trade increased by almost 53% to $61 billion in 2024, and that was under the signed Canada-EU economic agreement. That was then continued through the Canada-U.K. trade continuity agreement. Our two respective leaders, our prime ministers, our Prime Minister and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, are also working very closely together because they want to grow that relationship. They want to make sure that there is more trade taking place between Canada and the United Kingdom. This agreement, of course, is going to play an important role.

We did hear from a lot of stakeholders who came to the committee and presented really thoughtful opinions. I know that, in the House, members have been talking about it. We heard from the cattle industry, which has some concerns about access to the U.K. market, and we are quite sympathetic to those concerns. We are continuously engaging with the government of the United Kingdom to reduce these barriers. Having, of course, a more coordinated approach and making sure that we are part of an agreement like this will give us more opportunities to open those markets, but I do want to acknowledge their concerns. I want to say that we are quite aware of them.

The other issue is, and I know this will be discussed, British pensioners. Of course, a lot of us have heard from those British pensioners. They also presented at committee. It is an important issue. It is an issue that Canada continues to raise with the United Kingdom. In fact, just last week, some of us parliamentarians, from both the Liberal and Conservative sides, were in the United Kingdom as part of the Canada-U.K. Inter-Parliamentary Association. If someone were to ask all the members who were on the trip, we would tell them that, in every single meeting with U.K. MPs and with U.K. ministers, the issue of British pensioners was raised. It was always a very thoughtful, robust conversation. We did our utmost best to really highlight the unfairness on the British government's part in not indexing the pensions of British pensioners who live in Canada. We will continue to do that work, and we will continue to advocate for them.

At the end of the day, this agreement is a good news story. I urge all members in the House to support the legislation so that the U.K. can become part of the CPTPP. Therefore, we could have even stronger ties and bonds and economic prosperity, both for Canada and the United Kingdom.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-13 is the bill by which the United Kingdom will be brought into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP. All of the other countries, and I believe there are 11 of them besides Canada, accept beef imports and pork imports from Canada, yet the United Kingdom is putting up non-tariff barriers to that. I wonder if the member could comment on that. Was that an oversight on the part of the Canadian negotiating team?

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Langley Township—Fraser Heights was one of the members I had the chance to travel with, and I got to know him personally quite well. I appreciate his public service and his representation of his community. He would remember that in every conversation we had, including with the Minister for International Trade from the United Kingdom, we brought up the issue of these non-tariff barriers, saying that we should find a way to move forward to ensure that our cattle ranchers and beef producers are able to export to the United Kingdom. There are some issues around sanitary and phytosanitary circumstances. By having a deeper relationship and making sure the U.K. is part of this agreement, there will be more opportunities for us to really make effective arguments to the U.K. and to bring those barriers down for our ranchers.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague and I studied this agreement together at the Standing Committee on International Trade. I was disappointed that he voted against almost all of my amendment proposals, which were nothing more than requests for transparency, for reports on certain elements, on the environment, on human rights and on lawsuits by multinationals against governments. All I was doing was demanding transparency and accountability.

That said, I was even more disappointed that he voted against my amendment to ensure that the agreement would not come into force before an agreement on sanitary and phytosanitary measures was reached. It seems to me that, during negotiations, particularly when we are doing the United Kingdom a favour by helping it join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, we could have requested that meat be allowed to enter freely there.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be able to work with my colleague on the Standing Committee on International Trade. He has contributed a great deal to the work of that committee. The committee adopted an important amendment that was put forward by the opposition member.

That particular amendment would enhance transparency. It would allow for Global Affairs Canada to report back on the progress and the implementation of the agreement. I thought that was a good amendment, and that is why we agreed and made it part of this legislation.

[Dominique O'Rourke, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, to my hon. colleague, thank you so much for all the work that you are doing to boost international trade—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Members should address comments to the Speaker, through the Chair, not directly to the member.

I will let the member continue.

[Dominique O'Rourke, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for all the work that he does to boost Canada's trade globally. Canada has a goal to increase our non-U.S. trading, to double it over 10 years. I just wondered if my hon. colleague would expound upon the importance of partnerships like this one.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it will require a lot of hard work for us to really meet the objective of doubling our non-U.S. exports in the next 10 years. The work that is necessary is to deepen relationships with our existing partners and to build new partnerships. The United Kingdom is a really good example. It is a nation that, as I mentioned earlier, enjoys a very long-lasting relationship with us. This agreement would allow us to make it even deeper and create more opportunities to open more markets.

Similarly, we were talking about Indonesia yesterday. That is a new market that we are opening for our farmers, for our energy providers and for our manufacturers. Similarly, there is the work we are doing in negotiating an agreement with the ASEAN countries, like Thailand and the Philippines, and with the Mercosur countries, which include Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. In all those places, the work we are doing creates more opportunities for Canadian businesses and for Canadian farmers to be able to sell our produce. This will allow us to meet that particular objective that the member was referring to.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for splitting his time with me.

This is an alphabet soup, as people have mentioned. It is sometimes hard to see why the U.K. is suddenly joining the CPTPP and why we are discussing it today, but there are overlays and previous trade agreements. Perhaps something of a narrative might work to quickly review how we got to where we are today, and then I can highlight the concerns the Green Party has about it.

The trans-Pacific partnership agreement started quite a long time ago. As others have mentioned, there is a long list of countries that were initially involved, all of course in the Pacific region. There is Singapore, Malaysia and Japan, but then there are ones we do not necessarily expect, such as Peru as well as Canada and New Zealand. Of course, one of the instigators of the original trans-Pacific partnership agreement was the United States. However, back in President Trump's first term in 2017, he pulled the U.S. out of the trans-Pacific partnership.

Going back to Canada's trade relationships with the U.K., this is obviously not the first or even the most important of Canada's trade agreements with the U.K. Again, this goes back to trade agreements that countries enter into, and then when somebody pulls out, the pieces have to sort of reassemble.

Looking back at Canada's first trade agreement with the U.K., it was when the U.K. was part of the European Union, before the very tragic events that led to Brexit. For the U.K., and indeed the European Union, it was dreadful, with the skullduggery, the use of algorithms and social media, Cambridge Analytica and the sort.

There is a tremendous documentary for people who want to see how vulnerable our democracies are to the misuse of social media and those kinds of campaigns. It is called Brexit: The Uncivil War. I am not going to give a whole film review, but it does star Benedict Cumberbatch, in case anyone wants to look it up on Netflix. Members can watch it, and for parliamentarians or someone who runs for elected office, it may leave them feeling quite shaken about how vulnerable we are to misinformation and how the British public was misled into pulling out of not just a very good trade agreement but a governance agreement within the European Union that had a lot of benefit for the U.K., and that also had benefit for the European Union when the U.K. was in it.

Canada's first trade deal with the U.K., back to this particular piece, was the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, which was negotiated between Canada and the EU. Of course, part of the EU at that time was the U.K. Therefore, we had a lot of pre-existing negotiations and conversations, and then there was the TPP, which was negotiated without the U.K. but with the U.S.

What are the differences between these two agreements? Do they entirely overlap since we already negotiated them? We went back once the U.K. left the European Union, and Canada renegotiated the bits we needed so that Canada would continue to have a trade deal with the U.K. once the U.K. left the European Union. That got done. We have an existing trade agreement with the U.K., which is still called the comprehensive economic and trade agreement, but between Canada and the U.K. It is largely based on the previous agreement that was done with the European Union. Now we have the TPP and the CPTPP, which is without the United States but with the U.K.

Why do I go through all this other than to remind people of the threads they may have heard before? It is because there are differences between these agreements, and one is less advantageous to Canada and Canada's environment than the other. Both the CPTPP, which we are debating today, and the comprehensive economic and trade agreement, the CETA, include things called investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms.

The hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton has been the most engaged on this subject as we continue to debate it. I certainly agree with him and have always supported any efforts Canada can make to get out of such lopsided agreements, which inevitably, invariably and always give superior rights to foreign corporations investing in Canada or operating in Canada. Even if they do not invest, they can open up a post office box somewhere and be considered an investor.

Private sector corporations are bestowed with rights under investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms and agreements, the very first of which, by the way, we are now out of, which was chapter 11 of NAFTA, which ironically did not survive into the new negotiations when it became CUSMA. I am very glad chapter 11 of NAFTA is no more, but it was a prototype. Here is what it did. It said that if what a government does to a foreign corporation can be considered tantamount to expropriation, then that foreign corporation can sue the country in which it is operating. We have had S.D. Myers sue Canada. We had Ethyl Corporation of Richmond, Virginia, sue Canada.

Canada tends to lose on these challenges. Not only does Canada lose, but in general, the larger economic power wins. It is not always the corporation that wins, but if a U.S. corporation sues a government and the U.S. corporation is a giant, the U.S. corporation will win. If a Canadian corporation sues the U.S, the Canadian corporation will lose. There is a pattern. The larger economic power tends to win. The arbitrators are drawn from a rank of four. They are operating, $500 an hour, $1,000 an hour, lawyer kinds of people. The investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms, as has been established through numerous global studies, tend to favour the larger economic power.

It was a shocker when it first happened. This means that decisions and laws passed democratically by governments, whether at the provincial or federal level, could be overturned by secret tribunals run by for-profit secret lawyers who make a case and argue that something was done that cost the corporation money. They do not even have to allege that it was done with animus or that it was discriminatory towards that country or nation or corporation, just that it cost them money. For example changing the regulations to protect the environment or changing the regulations to protect workers, if it costs them money, the Government of Canada is going to pay out and pay a company from the U.S, which has happened to Canada an unfortunate number of times.

As we negotiate and discuss this agreement today, the CPTPP, it includes investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms that are of an order that is slightly less fair and slightly less transparent than similar agreements that were negotiated with the European Union under the CETA. Between the two, they both have investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms, but the one we are debating today, to which we are adding the U.K. and which means U.K. corporations will be able to sue Canada under the CPTPP, just as we are now allowing Peruvian or, more likely, Canadian companies to sue Peru if we are mining in their country and do not like the laws to which we are being subjected, will have less transparency than if we were working under the CETA. This is because there were enough elements that the European Union refused to pass the CETA as long as these investor-state dispute resolution measures were included.

I do not have much time left to wrap up my speech so I will end by saying that it is too late at this point to renegotiate and remove the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism.

However, it is time to shine a light on them and decide that henceforth Canada should get out of agreements that allow foreign corporations to have more power to sue the Canadian government, a province, a first nation or a municipality, for that matter. These agreements are corrosive to democracy. It is time to shine a light on them and start carving them out. It has now become routine with trade deals to throw in investor-state dispute resolutions. They are noxious.

[Jacob Mantle, Conservative, York—Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have to disagree with her with respect to investor-state dispute resolution. I know that she believes in the rule of law, so surely she must agree that when the Canadian government violates the rule of law, treats companies in a discriminatory fashion or expropriates their property or investments, there should be recourse. There is through these ISDS provisions. They are not secret. The Government of Canada is there defending those decisions. The decisions are almost always public and written, so the Canadian public can see what arguments were made and the decision made.

What is her solution to when the Canadian government is behaving badly, discriminating against companies or expropriating their property?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I can tell the hon. colleague from York—Durham that, for an absolute fact, there is absolutely nothing illegal about things the Canadian government has done for which we have ended up having to shell out money.

As for being secret, I recommend that the member have a look at the Canada investment promotion and protection agreement with the People's Republic of China, which must remain entirely secret throughout the entire tribunal. The results may be made public by Canada at the end, but the fact of a challenge by the People's Republic of China against the Canadian government is secret and must remain secret. We are bound to it for 35 years without ever having had a vote in the House, because it was approved by Stephen Harper's cabinet.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking my colleague for her kind words about the work I did on investor-state dispute settlement. I would also like to ask her about that.

How does she explain the fact that the two pro-multinational parties in the House, which have been trading power back and forth in Canada since the beginning, are constantly signing agreements with these archaic provisions? These provisions basically elevate multinationals to the status of sovereign powers, as though no other state-to-state remedies involving diplomacy exist. There is the World Trade Organization's dispute resolution body, for example. States are going to be facing off against one another.

Indeed, some countries are going to react badly to investments and behave in unacceptable and unfair ways, but that is where diplomacy comes in. There are adjudicative bodies. The notion of giving multinationals the right to subvert the democratic will of countries is outrageous. Does Canada condone the lawsuits brought against countries for anti-tobacco measures, minimum wage, carbonated drinks, the cancellation of pollution-causing projects and all kinds of other things?