On trading by human rights record

“If Canada is to avoid trading with a country that does not respect human rights, those rights must be unquestionably true fundamental rights that every person in the world has. Some of the declared rights, by the UN for example, were composed to support social democracy and are only legal rights in such democracies. They are not true fundamental rights. The so-called social and economic rights are an example. We should not base our trading policy on those because they are actually optional.”… reply to Erin O’Toole, MP, Conservative Party of Canada