Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank the government for giving us this opportunity to address some very important issues that will most certainly generate some very interesting discussion in this House and in the committees that are formed to address the twenty-first century and determine the kind of relations we want to have with the rest of the world.
I would say that I found the minister's approach to the problems and the issues facing us today most interesting. I felt there was a certain vigour in the approach to the future taken by the minister and the government, and I believe this augurs well for the coming series of extremely important discussions.
We know that such discussions were long overdue and that it was very important to get this process under way. Tremendous changes have taken place within a very short period of time. In 1989, we saw the Berlin wall crumble, and subsequently, everything that happened in the Soviet empire.
These changes, and I assume we will have an opportunity to discuss them at length in committee so I will not describe them all today, are taking place as a result of two important facts. The first one is, of course, the end of the cold war, and as a result, the end of the polarized state of international relations which had lasted for several generations.
However, the situation that existed before the present changes took place had the advantage of a certain simplicity. At the time, there were the good guys and the bad guys, and it was relatively easy to define Canada's role, for instance, in the struggle between the oppressors and the other side that wanted to liberate the oppressed and acted in the name of democracy. We all knew where we stood, so there was no need to sit down and wonder whether or not we would support the forces of democracy against stalinism.
Today, things are not that simple. The fragmentation process had led to the emergence of many new players on the international scene, where conflicts have become far more diverse and complex. As far as Canada is concerned, the situation is a far cry from the problems that existed in the golden age of Canadian diplomacy, in the days of Lester B. Pearson, for instance. After World War II, in which Canada had fought on the side of the Allies and helped to win the war, Canada played a very important role and won the recognition of the whole world. The Canadian economy was in excellent shape.
It was a time when there was no deficit and Canada's public finances were not in the vulnerable state they are now. When people talk about changes on the international scene, there have been changes that affected everyone, and these I mentioned earlier: the end of the cold war, the advent of many different players on the international scene, and so forth.
However, for Canadians and Quebecers, there is a new dimension with respect to the international environment. We have a debt that exceeds $500 billion, 40 per cent of which is financed by foreign interests. When we speak of independence, we speak of a concept that is no longer the same. When one is grappling with $200 billion in debt financed abroad in the very short term, a new kind of vulnerability enters the picture and becomes one of a range of factors to be considered when the time comes to define our collective future in terms of our foreign relations.
Clearly, independence does not have the same connotation it had in Mr. Pearson's day. Mr. Pearson did not have to concern himself with the reaction of Canadian lenders. He did not have to worry about the reaction of those abroad who finance Canada's debt. He could, with full knowledge of the facts, define with his government and with Parliament the country's foreign policy directions which depended very little on the reaction of others, in any case, but certainly on the reaction of financial markets. Therefore, many questions arise and it is not my intention, or was it the intention of the minister, to suggest a set course for our foreign policy in the future. What we are beginning here is a process of reflection.
This debate must fuel this process and provide an opportunity to formulate the major questions that we need to ask ourselves. Thus, we must devise a framework for action for the committees that will be sitting. The parameters must be more or less defined so that more specific proposals can be put forward.
With your permission, I would like to identify a number of questions and problems that need to be resolved, new problems stemming from the changes that have taken place.
The geopolitical changes alluded to carry enormous implications. For example, the end of the cold war has also signalled an end to ideology clashes. Today, few people in the world are arguing about who was right, Marx or Henry Ford. I am not saying that the issue is settled and that theorists now believe that Ford was right, but I will say that fewer and fewer people are interested in engaging in this kind of intellectual debate which, what is more, affected the political life of nations.
In Europe, it was extraordinary; some societies were torn by these debates, even at the political level. We were not affected to the same extent but our American neighbours lived through the excesses of McCarthyism. That a great democracy like theirs could be sidetracked by the fears born out of the cold war shows the impact ideology had on the world scene.
We ourselves witnessed the impact of Marxist-Leninist schools of thought and the emergence of various political movements on the evolution of life in Canada and particularly in Quebec. But it is now over in the sense that there is no longer any ideological war. We will not see a Canadian Parliament or a Quebec or other provincial legislature divided between Marxists on one side and capitalists on the other. It is over. This ideological war has been replaced by-