Jim Prentice Breaks Conservative Promise to Introduce Treaties in House before binding Canada

The Conservative government's policy announcement of January 25, 2008:

The government intends to table all international treaties in the House of Commons before taking further steps to bring these treaties into force... Prior to the government finally binding Canada to an agreement, it will table the treaty in the House of Commons... The government will observe a waiting period of 21 sitting days from the date of the tabling before taking any action to bring the treaty into effect. When treaties require legislative amendment, the government is committed to delaying the legislation until this 21-sitting-day period has passed. (emphasis added)

Then on February 8, 2008 at a Q & A he said the following:

Questioner 1: I just have a question about the copyright bill. In the 2006 Conservative election platform it stated that you would plan to put international bills [treaties] before parliament to discuss them, and you said earlier that it would be something that would be important to discuss before it would be put. Does that mean that you would be putting the bill into discussion in parliament before ratifying it?

Prentice: If I understand what your question is, you're relating to the process by which the Conservative government committed in a previous election document to the ratification of international treaties, so it's a fair question. What we've made very clear is that the ratification of an international treaty requires three steps if you will. The initial step is the execution of the treaty itself. So in the context of the WIPO treaties they were actually signed by Canada in 1996 and 1997. That's step one. The treaties obligate the signatory countries to bring their laws into conformity with the international treaties. So that is step two, before you get to what you're asking about which is step three, which is the actual ratification by parliament of the treaties themselves. And so that third step can only happen after the second step has happened, and the second step involves bringing your national laws into compliance with the treaties as signed or initialed. So that's the way that we've said the process should work and that's something that we continue to be committed to. Frankly I don't know any other way you could do it.

Questioner 2: Just a follow-up question on that. A couple of weeks ago the Department of Foreign Affairs committed the government to tabling international treaties prior to going through the second step you mentioned, which is implementing them prior to ratifying them, is that going to occur with the expected copyright amendment?

Prentice: Well the Foreign Affairs [sic] will follow the process I've described. Before an international treaty is ratified by parliament there will be, it'll be introduced in the form of a proposed law and the specified periods of time, I can't recall the exact period of time that we spoke of...

Questioner 2 [interjecting]: 21 days

Prentice: So it will be in front of Canadians for that period of time before it is ratified but that doesn't affect the obligation to bring the law into conformity in the meantime.