Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to my very first speech in the House of Commons in 1988. This was the issue I talked about when I opposed the free trade agreement; that water was a part of the free trade agreement.
I congratulate the member for Kamloops for bringing this private member's bill forward. On this issue we should have a general debate. Basically our country is water blind when it comes to understanding the complexities and depth of what is going on around this issue.
When I left high school and went to study in Texas I kept in touch with a few of my friends over the years. When I was running in 1988 for the first time to become a member of Parliament I received a call from an old college classmate of mine who said in that free trade agreement there has to be something dealing with water.
I asked my good friend Bert Edmondson to tell me more. He said the chief free trade negotiator for President Ronald Reagan was a personal friend of his and spent his entire life, including his Ph.D. thesis, studying North American water management, Clayton Yeutter. He worked as a young political assistant for Congressman Jim Wright who spent most of his time studying North American water management.
My friend, even though he was in Houston, an American looking out for the United States, gave me a little friendly heads up that there has to be something in that agreement dealing with North American water management.
I then talked to a few other people, lawyers and experts, much more expert than I was on this issue. I was going to focus on the whole issue of unfettered foreign investment, something I was opposed to, chapter 14. However, when this water dimension came into the deal that got my interest even more.
I remember standing on the other side of the House saying to then Prime Minister Mulroney: "If water is not part of this free trade agreement and yet there is so much worry about it, why do you not ask your friend, President Reagan, for a one-page protocol letter signed by him and you stating water is not a part of this deal? That would put all Canadians across Canada at ease." As the member for Kamloops said, whatever we do in the House or in any provincial house on the whole issue of water is subservient to the free trade agreement.
I could not sell Prime Minister Mulroney on getting a one-page protocol letter exempting water and of course the deal went through.
However, that very first month I was elected I discovered as an MP I had access to the Library of Parliament and the researchers. I remember asking them to find out a little more about Clayton Yeutter's Ph.D. thesis. Apparently it was on the whole issue of water. Lo and behold, about four months later his Ph.D. transcript from the University of Nebraska, pulled off microfiche, landed on my desk. It was about 700 pages on how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was to replumb the entire North American system. I remember after I received that Ph.D. thesis of Clayton Yeutter sending him letters complimenting him on this great thesis on how to replumb the North American water system. I asked him if he would comment as the chief free trade negotiator on whether it was in or out of the free trade agreement.
I never had an answer to the first letter, the second letter or the third letter. Therefore we must have our heads up on this issue.
I can remember the hon. member for Kamloops in opposition presenting thousands of petitions on the floor of the House, giving us a heads up on interbasin transfers. We have to deal with this issue.
To the member for Kamloops, his private member's bill today is in the right direction but it is too narrow. The member has said no interbasin transfers. As my colleague the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment knows, we already have an interbasin transfer from Lake Ontario into the St. Lawrence. That is one of the reasons we can maintain Montreal as a port. If we ever stopped that transfer from Lake Ontario, a joint decision made by the International Joint Commission, Montreal would not be a port.
This of course is something that was never discussed during the last referendum. Our friends who want to create their own country do not realize that Canada and the United States together, nation to nation, decide on the flow of water from Lake Ontario. We happily maintain Montreal as one of the great ports of the world. That in a manner of speaking is basin transfer.
I am happy to participate in this debate today. It touches on an issue we will have to deal with in a comprehensive way over the next three to five years.
A chapter in one of the books by the former premier of Quebec, Robert Bourassa, dealt with the grand canal, the recycling of water from James Bay up over Mount Amos, down into the Georgian Bay system, through the French River, into all the Great Lakes and through Lake Michigan into the United States. This chapter had a contribution by Tom Kierans from Newfoundland who spent his entire life working for that great U.S. firm, Bechtel Group Inc. I am intrigued by this idea.
What I am trying to say is this is an issue we will have to face up to. Fifteen years from now our American friends will not be able to carry on without Canadian water. What will we do?
The member for Kamloops, who has been consistent on this issue and is pricking our conscience and our thought process here again tonight, is giving us a heads up on a very important issue. I hope through my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment, and other colleagues we can take this issue on in a comprehensive way in the not too distant future.
Maybe, as the member said in his speech, there are many different factors in this equation, many intricacies related to our first peoples, our aboriginals, and our whole environmental system. There are the different types of waters, processes and everything else that we have to deal with. I hope we can get into that in the not too distant future.
With respect to my colleagues from the Bloc, water is really not a provincial debate or issue. When we look at the way 65 per cent of our waters flow north into James Bay, when we see the way waters flow back and forth, if there was ever a reason for my colleagues across the floor to convert from Bloc Quebecois to Bloc canadien, it is around the whole issue of water.
Unless we have a strong national government managing our water resources for the interests of all Canadians, the entire community is in jeopardy. The best way to secure the precious resource of water for all Quebecers is by making sure the national Government of Canada is working on behalf of all Quebecers. Quebec alone would not have the same capacity or the same thrust.