Mr. Speaker, Canadians elected a minority government, and Conservatives fully respect the democratic will of the electorate. That is why, as His Majesty's loyal official opposition, we will carry out our constitutional responsibilities within the House.
On some matters, we will oppose the government as the official opposition, which is a constitutionally mandated role in a Westminster parliamentary democracy. On other matters, we will support the government, seeing as Canadians did not give the government a majority, which requires the opposition to play a role in moving certain matters forward in the House.
Conservatives respect the democratic will of Canadians as expressed in the last election. The government needs to do the same. That means the government needs to understand that, on certain bills in front of the House, we will oppose the government, and on other bills in front of the House, we will support the government.
It is not reasonable for the government to expect the opposition in the House to support it in all and any bills that it brings before the House. That would undermine the constitutional role the official opposition has in holding the appointed executive to account.
The Conservatives support Bill C-18, just as we supported Bill C-13, an act to implement the protocol on the accession of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, and just as we have supported many other bills over the past year in this Parliament.
We have supported the following six government bills: Bill S-2, an act to amend the Indian Act; Bill S-3, an act to amend the Weights and Measures Act and other acts; Bill C-4, an act respecting certain affordability measures for Canadians; Bill C-5, an act to enact the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act and the Building Canada Act; and Bill C-12, the strengthening Canada's immigration system and borders act.
Recently, we agreed that we would expedite the study and passage of Bill C-14, the bail and sentencing reform act. We have been clear that good ideas in the interest of Canadians will win our support. Including the bill in front of us today, we have supported eight government bills in this Parliament just in the last year.
The Conservatives support Bill C-18, an act to implement the comprehensive economic partnership agreement between Canada and Indonesia, because we support diversifying our trade with other partners, especially in the Indo-Pacific region.
This agreement would eventually reduce tariffs on 97% of Canadian exports destined for Indonesia. However, the government procurement in this trade agreement requires further scrutiny. Indonesian firms could bid on Canadian contracts, but Canadian firms could only bid on Indonesian government procurement if it is expressly opened. Indonesian government procurement is largely closed.
Other trading partners of Canada secured better agreements with Indonesia on government procurement rules, including the United Arab Emirates and the European Union. The European Union also negotiated a commitment to begin market access negotiations. Canada has no specific timeline to begin negotiating market access. For Canada, market access is left to further negotiations and no published coverage schedules.
However, Conservatives will support passing Bill C-18 to committee, but we would scrutinize the effectiveness of this agreement and point to ways that it could be better utilized.
I would like to conclude my remarks on our support for this bill by adding the following: Just signing trade agreements is not enough to diversify our trade away from our main trading partner.
To capitalize on these trade agreements and these investment deals, the Government of Canada needs to do two other things. These are two things that the government has not been doing and that, if left undone, would prevent us from significantly diversifying trade away from our largest trading partner.
The first thing we need to do is make Canadian goods and services more competitive to buyers in Asia and in Europe. Over the last decade, the Canadian economy has become uncompetitive, and many of our goods and services are no longer desired by buyers in Asia and in Europe. The trade data bears this out.
In the year 2000, Canadian exports, expressed as a per cent of our gross domestic product, were 42%. In 2024, the last year for which we have data, our global exports, expressed as a per cent of our GDP, had dropped to 33%, which is a 9% drop. Clearly, our products and services are not as desirable to foreign buyers as they once were. That is because the Canadian economy has become uncompetitive and over-regulated.
Our tax system has become a completely Byzantine mess, and this includes both the personal and corporate income tax system. We need to overhaul competition policy to make our economy more competitive. We need to eliminate regulation and the regulatory overburden that is strangling our competitiveness. We need to overhaul our personal and corporate income tax system in the same ambitious way that we once did in 1971 and in 1986. The government has introduced none of these types of reforms to get our economy moving and to make our goods and services more desirable for buyers in Asia and Europe.
The second thing we need to do is increase the physical capability of exporting more goods and commodities to global markets via the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Currently, we do not have the capacity to significantly increase exports of commodities or goods via our country's largest ports. The port of Vancouver, which is our largest port and a federal entity, is woefully inefficient. According to a Standard & Poor's global study that was commissioned in 2024 by the World Bank, the port of Vancouver ranked 389 out of 403 global ports for efficiency. It is critical to have sufficient trade corridor infrastructure to significantly increase the export of commodities and goods via our ports to Asia or Europe.
Here is another example of a lack of trade corridor infrastructure: Canada is the largest high-income nation in the world without a comprehensive national highway system, and by highway, I mean an autobahn, an expressway or an autoroute, a system that would run from coast to coast, be entirely grade-separated, have no cross-traffic and have four or more lanes, two or more in each direction, allowing travel that is unimpeded by traffic signals, driveways, stop signs or intersections.
I encourage anyone listening to go to Google Maps to map out the fastest way from Halifax to Vancouver or from Toronto to Vancouver. Every single route will route us through the United States of America, through the U.S. interstate system, which is faster and more efficient than any highway system we have in this country. That is just one example of the lack of trade corridor infrastructure that prevents us from significantly diversifying trade beyond that with our largest trading partner.
Again, the government has introduced no real plans to significantly expand trade corridor infrastructure or improve its efficiency.
As I said, we support Bill C-18, just as we have supported seven other government bills in the House. However, simply signing trade agreements will not do much to diversify our trade unless the government does the necessary work here in this country to make our economy more competitive and ensure that the essential infrastructure is in place to export our goods and resources to global markets.
