Madam Speaker, here it is at least a year after the legislation was introduced. It wends its way through the labyrinth of our political process and finally finds itself back on the floor of the House of Commons.
I thought I would be speaking to the bill yesterday so I thumbed through November 1 in history. Of course today is November 2. Interestingly Michelangelo completed his work on the Sistine Chapel, but it only took him four and a half years. The legislation is progressing apace, but no one will compare it with Michelangelo's work on the Sistine Chapel.
Actually to many observers it looks like a make work project. Anyone who has given the matter even a modicum of thought understands and appreciates how ludicrous it is in our country, united from sea to sea to sea, that it is more difficult to trade internally than it is to trade with any other trading partner we may have in the United States or elsewhere in the world.
When the legislation was being put together and the debate among provincial trade delegations was taking place, more people were sitting around the table trying to break down the barriers of interprovincial trade in our country than there were sitting around the table when we were trying to break down the trade barriers with the United States and to shape the North American Free Trade Agreement.
We had a situation where we were hopefully to have a North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico and there were less people sitting at the table than when we were trying to break down internal trade barriers within Canada.
How did we end up in that situation? How is that our country ends up in a situation like that? Just a moment ago my hon. colleague from the Bloc spoke. I have had the pleasure of spending many hours in committee with the member listening to him defend the unilateral interests of Quebec. I have never once, in the two years that we have been here, heard him mutter one word about the rights, the interests or the values of Canada as a nation. Every word that has come out of the hon. member's mouth and the mouths of all members of the Bloc has been directly related to Quebec, how they can better the interests of Quebec.
The precise reason we have a problem in interprovincial trade in our country is that we have a kind of parochialism about our institutions. It is one of the primary reasons there is so much discontent from coast to coast to coast. For years citizens of Canada resident in the regions of Canada on the east coast, the west coast, the prairies and the north were merely markets for the manufacturing centres of central Canada in Montreal and southern Ontario.
We now have an opportunity to break down trade barriers within Canada, which would greatly strengthen the economic prospects of all regions of the country, including the manufacturing heartland of Ontario and Quebec. And what happens? We get around a table to debate the opportunity to make our country better.
Canadians spent $1.5 million or so to have Professor Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School do a study on Canada's competitive situation in the world. Interested viewers may know the same study or a study very similar to it could have been obtained for $2,000 U.S. from the Harvard Business School video series. It is exactly the same; it is on competitive strategies.
In any event this $1.5 million study has a recommendation at page 98: "Extend efforts to increase rivalry". It is a well known fact that to get a better product at a lower price we need competitive situations; we need rivalry. Professor Porter in his study asked how we were to be competitive internationally if we were not first competitive at home. How are we to be competitive at home if we have trade barriers that restrict competitiveness? It just makes sense.
This reminds me of the situation we found ourselves in when we entered into the free trade agreement with the United States which
members opposite, I would remind them, fought so vigorously. By and large members on this side and I were very much in favour of it.