Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Motion No. 3, but I do want to comment on a couple of things that were said earlier this afternoon by the member for Don Valley West and the member for Rosedale. They both talked about how our Canadian magazine industry would not be able to compete if they did not have some type of protection. I reject that notion. They are talking about national security interests. They are talking about how we will be dominated by the United States because it is so much bigger and has so much more economy of scale.
My colleague from Medicine Hat talked earlier about other experiences with free trade. When we entered into a free trade agreement with the United States we heard the argument over and over that many of our industries would take a mortal hit and not be able to compete.
We know that this government was not in favour of the free trade agreement. They did a flip-flop at the last minute. Now I really question their sincerity about their commitment to free trade.
What is the experience with other industries? My colleague spoke about the wine industry and how well they are doing. I can tell members about agriculture, the industry I have some knowledge of.
Our biggest fear is the destruction of an industry. If we have subsidies and protectionism, we are hurt far more from that than we are from making trade rules that let us compete internationally on a basis of fair play. We think we can compete a lot better on the basis of quality product than we can on the basis of having to subsidize, because we cannot compete with the treasuries of other countries. Canada is simply too small.
When we talk about security, what about agriculture, food supply security? Do we need regulations to protect that? We found that we do not. The cattle industry is a good example. There was a big fear that the cattle industry in Canada would be basically decimated with free trade. What is our experience? Since 1988 we have had something like a 40 per cent increase in cattle sales to the United States.
We can do very well on the basis of a level playing field and free trade. Our cultural industries can also do very well. They can compete head to head. We have to produce a quality product to do that, but we are up to it.
The amendment we are talking about today strikes out the section of the bill that would impose an excise tax on periodicals equal to 80 per cent of the value of their advertisements. Our amendment goes to the heart of the bill and strikes out its most offensive part. It is assumed that this excise tax will never be collected because it will effectively kill the Canadian edition of Sports Illustrated and any similar ventures that could be on the drawing board.
It is folly for this government to attempt to protect Canadian culture in this or any other manner. If our cultural industries produce quality products of interest to the Americans or any others around the world, let them go out and sell to those markets in whatever way they can based on the marketplace. I am confident they will be able to compete. If Canadians prefer to buy American culture products that have been spiced up with some Canadian content, by all means let them, but I do not think we should be using cultural protectionism here because it probably hurts our industry rather than helps it.