Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time today with the member for Ottawa West—Nepean.
It is an honour to rise today to speak to this continuation agreement that has been set up with the U.K. as it relates to trade.
I am going to talk about why I think it is so important to have continuation right now in our trade agreements, particularly with this trade agreement, especially in the context of COVID-19 with everything that is going on in the world and the uncertainty. I will mention a couple of businesses in my riding of Kingston and the Islands that depend on trade, and I know they would want to know that there was stability in the marketplace right now related to trade.
Over the last year, there has been a great degree of change. With that change comes uncertainty, and that makes entrepreneurs and people who run businesses nervous. I would argue that probably the most nervous are the small and medium-sized businesses we all have in our communities. They are genuinely worried. They do not know what the world is going to look like in a week, four weeks, two months or even a year from now.
When we have trade agreements and trade relationships with other parts of the world that we have to negotiate, it is extremely beneficial to make sure, if we can put off those negotiations in order to maintain stability right now, that it is in the best interests of people, because they will know what to expect. It is one less thing business owners will have to worry about when they think about what is around the corner and what is going to happen two weeks or a year from now. As long as they know that certain markets are going to continue to move and operate in the same way that they have been, that provides stability to them.
I have been listening to members speak today on this topic, and I have been thinking about businesses in my riding that depend so much on trade.
The first I would mention is INVISTA, formerly DuPont, and it is one of the larger manufacturers in my riding. INVISTA makes nylon that is literally moved around the world. A lot of people probably do not realize that in order to make an air bag, for example, the nylon used in it needs to be moved to various parts of the world. The raw materials come from one area, I think in the United States, to Kingston where they get transformed into nylon. The nylon then goes to another part of the world where it is manufactured into material and probably goes somewhere else to be made into airbags. People usually find it surprising when I tell them that roughly 80% of the air bags in vehicles sold in North America come from nylon that is created and manufactured in my riding. When we think of large businesses that employ a lot of people in my community, we can think of why a business that operates on that scale would want stability in the marketplace right now as it relates to trade agreements.
However, I do not want to just focus on big business, because that is not what this is all about. There are many other businesses.
I think of Tom, who started MetalCraft Marine in my riding. When he was 25 years old, he built a boat, pretty much self-taught, and eventually turned his business into a boat-building company. He now builds specialized, custom boats that are shipped all around the world. He primarily builds fire boats, but other rescue boats as well, and then sends them to Panama, Europe and other parts of the world. The boats are built at a dock in downtown Kingston where he employs 60 to 70 people, such as electricians and welders, and are sent to fire departments and emergency services throughout the world. Someone like Tom wants to know that there is continuity in our trade relationships right now. I would imagine that Tom does not want any surprises or changes right now when it comes to a trade relationship, and he most likely does not want the anxiety of having to worry about what a different impact might mean to him.
I can think of an even smaller company, Tri-Art paint, in Kingston. This company started in the eighties in the back of a paint supply store making custom paint for artists: artisan paints. This has blown up into a worldwide company now, located on a small street in an old industrial area in Kingston where it is manufacturing artisan paints that are being sent all around the world.
I remember talking to the folks at Tri-Art when there was a lot of discussion about what Donald Trump was going to do with the old NAFTA, and the concerns they had. At that time, I talked to them about the new free trade agreements that were opening up in Europe. They were thrilled, because they were already selling so much of their product to Europe, and knowing that they could expand on that business and sell to markets in Europe was really rewarding for them. This is a small, family-run business. It is another great success story that developed into basically a worldwide distributor of art paint. I think of the folks at Tri-Art and what they are going through right now. People are worried about what their relationships are going to be like with the United Kingdom moving forward. They do not want the anxiety of having to worry about changes that may affect them. They want stability right now.
When I think of these businesses, I think of the stability that this agreement offers. It offers a time period almost like an extension of the trading relationship with the U.K. we had before Brexit. It gives them an opportunity to get through this time of uncertainty with the pandemic. Once we are out of it, our economy starts to come back and we start to see growth and pick up on new opportunities again, we can go back and more thoroughly get into the details to make sure that we finely critique and go back and forth in the negotiations with the U.K. That is how I see this agreement and why I see it as being so important right now, given the time that we are in.
I want to take the last couple of minutes I have to address some of what I have heard today in the House. In particular, as I said earlier, I heard Conservatives dancing around the issue. One Conservative in the House was talking about how there was not enough time to negotiate and look at the details of this. Another Conservative gave a virtual speech asking why this was not happening fast enough, saying that it needed to happen back in December and now we are still waiting. I found it interesting that they just seemed to be all over the place. We know at the end of the day that Conservatives are going to support a free trade deal. They are going to support this.
I think it is in the best interests of everybody to make sure that we give confidence to our businesses and to that trading relationship, so that it does not affect our market and the interconnected economy we have, but I also took note of a comment that a Conservative made earlier about how, until 2006, Canada had very few trading partners and if it had not been for the incredible Conservative government that came along, we would not have had any of the great trade relationships that we do now. The reality of the situation is that the global market started opening around that time. Lots of developing countries were removing and slashing tariffs, looking for agreements and looking for opportunities to work with other countries.
I think that globalization has really shown itself within the last 20 years in terms of making that interconnection happen. Of course, we are going to have struggles with that when we compare the ways the different economies work and the ways that they value things. That is why I think waiting until later, once we can get through this continuation agreement, to finalize and ratify something more comprehensive is the right way to go.
I am thrilled to support this today. I want to see this go to committee. I want to see this passed, so that we can get moving and make sure that confidence is with our businesses throughout Canada.
