Madam Speaker, it is gratifying for me to see that a little over a year has just passed and we have had a foreign policy review in Canada and we have had a response to the foreign policy review by this government.
I was a part of that foreign policy review as well as my other colleagues on this side of the House and enjoyed the process very much. I enjoyed getting to meet the members of the standing committee who were involved and hearing the concerns of Canadians about where our foreign policy should be heading in the future. To a large extent this time around I believe foreign policy was driven by economic and trade policy.
It is a pity the government's response to this policy arrived on my desk about 20 minutes before I came into this House at 10 o'clock. It is very difficult for me to have an adequate response. I have to take this government to task for an ongoing series of short notices on these kinds of matters. What is there to hide here? I would have liked to have had adequate time to prepare my response and I simply did not have it. I must say I did get a fax of the minister's speech overnight and I do appreciate that. By necessity then I will be keeping my comments short.
My colleagues and I believe in trade liberalization and we believe in it wholeheartedly. We have viewed with great satisfaction the tremendous transformation as well of the government on this issue. We recall that not too long ago we had a Prime Minister who was denouncing freer trade with the Americans. Now we witness him trotting around the globe promoting trade as the granddaddy of free trade. We welcome that.
I would like to begin my response by taking the trade minister to task on his statement in the report. I quote him in saying that the era of tariffs is finally over. I wish that were true. I find his statement even more ludicrous because he ties it to a desire to eliminate trade barriers to export of our agriculture products.
How can the minister say the era of tariffs is over when we have tariffs of over 300 per cent on our supply managed products? They are coming down at a very slow rate. In fact, they are coming down by an average of 36 per cent over the next six years. However if you take into account that we have a minimum tariff reduction of 15 per cent on all tariffs plus a 51 per cent on minimum access, in fact the true figure would be more like a 16 per cent tariff reduction in supply managed products.
Therefore we will not see any free trade in agriculture products under the supply managed sectors during our time in this Parliament unless something is changed. They are still very high. I believe the government has to take some leadership in this issue of supply management, be honest with Canadian producers and tell them there is a real world out there that they have to adjust to. We have been saying this all along.
We are going to have retaliation from the Americans. It is starting to happen in this area. They are taking exception to our high tariffs in the supply managed sectors. They are looking for ways of retaliating. We have seen retaliation in the area of wheat. We see retaliation in the area of setting high tariffs on sugar products. Of course now we are going to have the cultural industries that are going to be hit.
We have to show leadership in this area and help our producers to make this adjustment. It is our view that the supply managed sectors should be given 10 years to move to zero tariffs so that they do not interfere with other aspects of our trading relationships, particularly with the United States. The government should sit down with this industry and try to work out a plan to make this happen. It should show some leadership.
The minister says that the government "must continue to manage effectively the Canada-U.S. economic relationship". We all know that the Americans are tough negotiators and they have the economic clout to carry through with their threats. I
ask: What is the point of not dealing decisively with these trade irritants that we have caused ourselves?
I will move to a second aspect of the government's response to the foreign policy review. On page three of the response the government states that it rejects the committee's proposal to establish a joint public and private consortium to assist in international business development. I am sorry to see that is the case.
This proposal would not entail any new government expenditures. In fact it would put into private hands some of the functions that government now performs thereby saving the government money. When we have a $40 billion deficit I would expect that we would be looking for ways to do that. Trade promotion is one that could fall well within that category and this recommendation should have been adopted.
I would like to see the government devolve wherever possible tasks to the private sector that it can do better. This is one area I believe there is room to do something in terms of trade promotion.
The final point I would like to make is with a statement that appeared on the very first page of Canada's foreign policy report. The statement reads as follows: "Many witnesses stressed the importance of Canadians getting their own house in order in terms of fiscal management, making the economic adjustments necessary". I could not agree more.
We are going to be going through a process within a few weeks in this very House that has to deal very aggressively with Canada's debt problem. That is also causing a lot of problems for Canadian business. The high cost of doing business in this country is not allowing Canadian business the opportunity to take full advantage of the trade deals that have been made. We have the World Trade Organization, we have the signing of the GATT, we have a North American free trade deal and we have the Prime Minister and the trade minister trying to broker some other deals together. I think that is excellent.
What we are missing here is a very important element. That element is that we have to concentrate on lowering the cost of doing business in this country. We have to get rid of internal trade barriers that are inhibiting our businesses, our opportunity to do business better. The concentration for the next while has to be here at home to resolve some of those problems; otherwise we are misleading our Canadian business people about the opportunities that are out there because we will not be able to take advantage of them.
We all know that when we have trade liberalization it is a double edged sword. I would like to see the government take a stronger approach to informing, to making our business people aware of what opportunities are out there, but also what they are going to be facing in terms of competition here at home.
In the past we have had barriers to trade within Canada, such as tariff barriers that have given our Canadian business people an opportunity to have all of the Canadian market or most of the Canadian market to themselves. That is no longer going to be the case. We are going to be facing increased competition at home and it is important that our business people realize that so that they can start to deal with this very important issue.
Only when our companies are competitive at home can we be truly competitive in the international sphere. I believe the trade deals we have signed are going to drag us kicking and screaming into the 21st century but it is a good thing we have done it.
Our party of course has issued a dissenting report the aspects on which it is based are: we have to have fiscal responsibility here at home; we have to tighten up in the area of the cost of doing business to our companies; we have to get our own house in order. We believe that trade promotion should be an aspect of business as well as government. We also believe that the cultural industries should be regarded as businesses in themselves.
We hear that the government in responding to the recommendations that it be involved in promotion, development and distribution of culture wants to pursue that. I believe that is a mistake. We also hear that some American distribution companies will not carry our cultural industries. I believe they are producing a good product. They will be carried in the same way that any other product is carried.
I do not think the government has a role in the area of culture. This should be left to the business sector or those sectors in the cultural industry that can do it for themselves. I believe they can compete very effectively.
With that, I welcome this response. I would like to have an opportunity to finish reading it. I have not had the time to do that with this short notice. I would ask that from here on in we be given ample opportunity to look at these issues with enough time to respond properly.
