Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
It's a pleasure to be with this committee. It's the first time I've been on the international trade committee.
I think if we just built large ships out of wood and had half of them built in Quebec and exported, we'd solve our problem right now. Maybe you should all talk together after this.
As you know, the American free trade deal with Korea is stalled until after the next presidential election. One of the reasons it's stalled is that there's a lot of controversy about what this deal means for the future of Americans.
But there is one thing the United States does that we don't do. In 1924, in the first FTA agreement that the United States had, and right up to today, in every single free trade agreement they have, they block out, carve out, and don't even discuss marine and shipbuilding industries, because it is a vital industry to their shores and to their country. Yet in this country, a former finance minister said that shipbuilding was a sunset industry. It is not. I come from a region of the country that probably would build ships for a long time. Shipbuilding in this country can produce a tremendous amount of high-tech jobs, not just in steel and riveting and hammering away but in the high-tech sector of computers and technology. I remind everyone that when the frigate program was in, in the 1980s in Saint John, 25% of those benefits came out of Ontario and Quebec, and we're about to lose this.
So my question quite clearly is, if we're worried, as Mr. Pallister said, about the Americans signing a deal with Korea, and if it goes through but they leave out a very important segment of their economy, shouldn't then Canada do the same in order to protect what I consider a very vital industry in this country?
Before you answer that, because I probably won't get another question in, I want to say that every time we negotiate free trade deals with other countries, the labour rights, environmental standards, and so on always seem to be treated as a side deal. The reality is that it's very difficult to negotiate a trade deal with China when the wages are a fraction of what they are in our country. They may not be unionized; they may not have the health standards that we have. Doesn't that already put our producers and our workers behind the eight ball when we negotiate with countries where the salaries and wages and maybe certain labour laws or environmental laws are different?
And—I just say this as the sort of fiend that I am—when we negotiate free trade deals with other countries, shouldn't we try to match and increase the true labour standards and the health benefits of workers of other countries? We tried to do that with Mexico and it didn't quite work. So if we're negotiating that in other countries, shouldn't we—not as a side deal but entrenched in the deal—make sure labour and health standards and environmental standards are equal to what we have in this country?
Thank you.