Mr. Speaker, I cannot give you any personal descriptions of Mr. Pearson, but I too welcome the opportunity of speaking to Bill C-276 concerning Mr. Lester B. Pearson day.
Certainly to establish this as a holiday in honour of former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson is something to be considered, but today I want to raise some of the other considerations that we must have when we talk about such a day. As well, I do hope to pay some tribute to the former Prime Minister because it certainly is worthy.
It is clear from the member's speech that he holds the former Prime Minister in very high regard. I would never fault him for this since Lester Pearson did indeed leave the country a considerable legacy. I will talk about this a little later on in my speech and emphasize the things I remember him for.
To my mind politicians such as Mr. Pearson entered the public service for many reasons. At least two of those would be to help Canada grow and mature as a nation and because they were fascinated by the public life and all it had to offer and what they could offer it.
I do not believe when he ran for the job that Mr. Pearson would have expected to have a Canadian holiday named after him. After doing some research on him I think possibly he might have been somewhat embarrassed by such an offer. There are a number of better ways to honour the memory of a former Prime Minister.
For example everyone who tours around the Parliament Buildings will have noticed the dignified statues of our former Prime Ministers prominently displayed on the grounds of the Hill. Mr. Pearson's statue is among them and Canadians visiting the capital will see him in his favourite chair overlooking the front lawn.
As a former Minister of External Affairs and Prime Minister I am sure Mr. Pearson would also be proud that the building which houses the Department of Foreign Affairs bears his name, the Lester B. Pearson building.
These types of displays and other similar ones that may be proposed are quite appropriate and do a very nice job of honouring the achievements and memory of Mr. Pearson. I believe they are also a sufficient tribute.
On the other hand a Canadian holiday in honour of Lester Pearson is excessive no matter how well intentioned and sincere my esteemed colleague from Cambridge may be. As I quickly ran through the holidays in my head I found that only Jesus Christ and Queen Victoria had a statutory holiday and only two saints, St. Patrick and St. Valentine, had named holidays.
Coincidentally the second Monday of February which my colleague would like to be known as Lester B. Pearson day would have fallen on St. Valentine's day this year. Not only would I suggest naming a national holiday after a politician would be excessive but the date suggested will frequently fall on another holiday, albeit not a government holiday.
It is my understanding that the member for Cambridge would like to see a statutory holiday for Mr. Pearson just like the other two we have mentioned. If this happened, then what would be next? Would the third Monday of February be Diefenbaker day and the following Monday be Laurier day or John A. Macdonald day? If we start going down this path then we will have a holiday for every week of the year. We would not have a Mulroney day and we would probably at least all agree on that.
Above and beyond the principle of naming holidays after politicians there is the cost which should be considered. How much does a Canadian holiday really cost? If it is only a government holiday then the cost would be in the millions but if all Canadians were to take a day off work, what would that mean?
Not really knowing how such a calculation might be done, someone suggested to me that maybe I should take Canada's gross domestic product and divide it by 365 days. I admit this is a fairly primitive way of making the calculation but it is certainly more conservative than using the GNP numbers. If we divide the GDP by 365 we come up with a figure of $1.95 billion. I know that number might be exaggerated but I think the point we have to make is that the Canadian economy just cannot afford that sort of expense.
In addition, for businesses such as restaurants, corner stores and others which would stay open, such a holiday would force them to pay additional wages to their staff. For businesses struggling to survive the last thing they need is an unnecessary added expense.
While I do not agree with the idea that there should be a Canadian holiday for Mr. Pearson, this is not to suggest I do not think his achievements are praiseworthy. Any one person who could be ambassador to the United States, deputy minister of External Affairs, Minister of External Affairs, president of the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister and winner of the Nobel peace prize is obviously someone who has made a tremendous contribution to Canada and to the world.
While I have this opportunity to speak I would briefly like to discuss Mr. Pearson's Nobel peace prize. As we all know in order to bring an end to the Suez crisis in 1956 Mr. Pearson developed the idea of the UN peacekeeping force which could intervene and keep combatants separated. Of course it worked in the case of Suez and has been used ever since as a useful tool of international diplomacy and conflict resolution.
As Reform's foreign affairs critic I cannot help but reflect on this transition which peacekeeping has undergone since Mr. Pearson's days. Under the original formulation peacekeepers would only enter a country once there was a ceasefire agreement in place. They would then monitor this agreement and make sure that no flare ups occurred. In principle while the combatants were separated this would provide a window of opportunity for negotiations to bring about a lasting peaceful solution to hostilities.
Since the first peacekeeping missions, Canada has contributed troops all over the world and at every opportunity. However the requests for our help have continued to increase by the year and our resources are now stretched to the limit. I mean this in two senses. The personnel of the Canadian forces are stretched and our financial resources are limited.
Not only has our participation in peacekeeping become more of a burden, but the nature of peacekeeping has changed. Today our peacekeepers are going into more dangerous situations, often without the benefit of ceasefire and much more uncertain mandates.
Therefore, I was pleased to participate in the Canadian foreign policy review during which we discussed the peacekeeping legacy of Mr. Pearson in quite a bit of detail. It was decided during this review and with the input of Canadians from coast to coast that our peacekeeping tradition, begun by Mr. Pearson, was still a very important expression of Canadian foreign policy and that we would like to see the armed forces restructured in such a way that they can optimize their participation in future UN interventions.
Nonetheless, it was also realized that Canada can no longer be the 911 phone number for the world. In the future Canada must be more selective about the peacekeeping missions it goes on. I would like to personally ask this Parliament for the opportunity to debate the question of what specific criteria Canada should use to determine which peacekeeping missions will be the most appropriate for our participation.
I would like to see Mr. Pearson's legacy continue and I would like Parliament to deal with this whole issue in a way that will allow Canada to continue its role as an international peacekeeper into the next century.
In conclusion, there is no doubt the Right Hon. Lester B. Pearson made a very important contribution to the development of this country, and for that he does deserve honour, but this must be done in an appropriate way. While a holiday is too expensive for the Canadian economy and would set a dangerous precedent for opening the floodgates to more holidays for other political leaders from our past, I have no objection to the other tributes which already exist to honour Mr. Lester.
I commend the member for Cambridge for his loyalty and for bringing this bill forward. I was pleased to speak on it today.