Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise today to speak about the so-called agreement in Bill C-88 on internal trade barriers.
This bill is a total sham and should never have been introduced in the House. It has nothing to add to internal trade that is not already in place in the BNA act. It does not even maintain the same standard. Let me quote from section 121 of the BNA act. This is what we had before: "All articles of growth, produce or manufacture of any one of the provinces shall be admitted free into each of the other provinces".
What do we have now under article 101 of this provincial trade agreement? It states that the objective of the agreement is to reduce and eliminate, to the extent possible, barriers to the free movement of goods and services.
Is that not somewhat less than section 121 of the BNA act which says shall be admitted free? Obviously it is. I am concerned that the bill is like a Hollywood movie set. It looks good on the outside but there is nothing behind it. There are no teeth in this agreement and I have good reason to say that.
I tested the bill. A company in my riding has a contract with CN Rail to move its workers from Grand Prairie, Alberta into the Dawson Creek area of B.C., some 60 miles away. What did the company find? It cannot get a permit to go into B.C. It is being restricted even though it has a contract to move its cabs into that area.
We decided to test the new internal trade agreement. We asked the Department of Industry and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to get involved to see what they could do to help this company resolve the problem. They can do absolutely nothing.
This so-called trade agreement is nothing. It is just a loose agreement of empty words. It certainly will not do anything to address the problem of internal trade barriers which cost Canada between $8 billion and $10 billion a year. We simply cannot afford these kinds of costs. We are in a very competitive global trading environment and we have to give our companies the ability to build some economies of scale here at home before they launch into international business.
Let us talk about international business for a moment. Canada has signed some very good trade agreements internationally. We have signed the new GATT agreement, the Uruguay round. We have signed the NAFTA and previous to that the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement. We have better international agreements for trade than we have agreements for trade between the provinces. It is absolutely ludicrous. To pretend that this bill addresses the problem is just misleading the Canadian public.
The European Economic Community is now 15 member countries. There are fewer barriers to trade between those 15 countries in the European Union than we have between the provinces. Some decentralized federation. We need a workable agreement between the provinces and the federal government has to show leadership. That is what it involves. It must show leadership and broker the kind of agreement that is necessary. Obviously Bill C-88 does not do that.
Whole segments of the economy are not addressed in this bill. It does not include agriculture. It does not include certain government procurements or regional development. Those are all very significant barriers to trade.
A good example of how silly the trade gets within this country and the barriers we meet can be told in one simple example. A trucking company in Alberta had a gravel contract nine miles from the British Columbia border. It was working well within the province of Alberta, but at the end of the day the drivers wanted to drive their trucks into the nearest town to stay overnight in a hotel and eat in the restaurants. They were not allowed to do so. Why not? Because their trucks did not meet the requirements for the regulations in British Columbia. They had to have different axle spacings, an empty truck, certain permits they could not get without considerable expense. They had to bring in a special vehicle to take the workers into British Columbia to the hotel. That is how ludicrous this gets.
I suggest this is the type of situation there was in Russia some 10 years ago under communism. Surely we have to move beyond that if we are going to be effective in the world economy.
Nothing has been resolved in the area of natural resources and energy, all key areas of trade in Canada. The cost is estimated to be $8 billion per year. We cannot afford those costs. We must have a government that shows leadership and we certainly did not get it here.
The Prime Minister said that this was a modest proposal. Modest indeed. Most Canadians would see it as a complete waste of time and money. I am appalled that the Minister of Industry would bring this forward in the guise of a bill that is going to address the problems of trade restrictions.
I would ask him to go back to the drawing board. Bring the provincial premiers together. Bring the industry players together and show them what is the cost to our society. Show them what is the cost to their own industry. We can do much better. I challenge this minister to do so.