Mr. Speaker, I would like to pick up on something I was speaking about earlier but which was exacerbated by a speech given by a Liberal member who spoke about the national interest.
In the context of talking about the national interest, a double standard exists between how we regard labour when it pursues its economic self-interest and how we regard capital when it pursues its economic self-interest.
When money markets act in ways that hold the country hostage, we do not take the same offence as some members take when a trade union is said to be holding the economy hostage in its economic self-interest.
What I was pleading for was that there not be this double standard that if we want to hold that everyone should be accountable to the common good or to the national interest, we have to do that with some uniformity.
We cannot say that trade unions or working people should be accountable to the national interest but the money marketeers, the currency traders and the money speculators can do what they like, act in their own economic self-interest and that our only role as a Parliament is to appease them, ask them what they want next, do whatever they want so that they will invest in our country. We need to to stop having this double standard.
Picking up on the comment that the Liberal member made about national interest, this is also an interesting concept given globalization and free trade agreements.
Why are working people asked to subscribe to a notion called the national interest? I believe in the national interest, but when we ask the same thing of the corporate sector we are accused of being romantic. We are accused of not being with it. We are accused of not understanding that there are no borders any more.
Investors, capital and corporations move all around the world doing whatever they want. Anyone who wants to talk about the national interest, except when they are trying to morally intimidate working people into giving up their economic self-interests, are called romantic. Why is that? Why is there this double standard when it comes to working people? I do not understand it.
I think ordinary Canadians sense there is something fishy when they are always supposed to act in the national interest but the people who can play with interest rates and the money markets and who can look around the planet for cheaper labour markets or weaker environmental regulations or weaker labour laws, that is okay for them. They can seek their economic self-interests; that is just called finding a good investment climate. However, when working people want to do the same thing, shame on them. They are not taking the national interest into account.
I say, shame on this House for accepting that double standard.