Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure for me to stand in the House of Commons today to address Bill C-88. I cannot say I am opposed to Bill C-88. That would be like saying I am opposed to good intentions. Bill C-88 embodies the good intentions of governments, even if it does not really address the major problems facing the country with respect to interprovincial trade.
It would be very instructive to take a moment to review the red book promise with respect to free trade within the country. It is found on page 22:
Interprovincial trade within Canada is hampered by as many as 500 trade barriers, according to the Canadian Manufacturers' Association. These range from preferential procurement to non-harmonization of environmental regulations. The CMA has estimated that savings from the elimination of these barriers could be as high as $6 billion, just under 1 per cent of GDP. A Liberal government will be committed to the elimination of interprovincial trade barriers within Canada and will address the issue urgently.
To compare what I have just read from the red book with Bill C-88 we will find there is a bit of a discrepancy. Bill C-88 represents the good intentions of the government on this issue and the good intentions of some of the provinces but it does not meet the red book promise. I mark this as one more broken promise of the government.
The government made a fundamental mistake when it laid out this red book promise. I do not believe right from the outset it was completely sincere when it put those words into the red book. Although everyone would like to have interprovincial trade barriers eliminated, the government was simply not prepared in the end to do the things it should have done and needed to do to bring about a more meaningful resolution to this very important problem.
Like my hon. friend from Lisgar-Marquette, I am distressed when I hear farmers cannot move their value added product across borders.
We have talked many times about the need to diversify on the prairies to allow people to go beyond being producers of primary products and shipping them around the world in that form. We need to move them about as value added products within Canada. To me that is fairly obvious and it is very important we start to move toward that by eliminating interprovincial barriers.
Tradesmen also have similar problems not being able to cross over boundaries and have their qualifications apply. Professionals are another example, lawyers and doctors and accountants who have to write exams in each province in many cases if they want to practise in a certain province.
I will talk for a moment about some of the specific problems with Bill C-88 and where we see some of the huge loopholes or some of the ways provinces can escape from being bound by Bill C-88.
When we look at the agreement fairly closely it really does not represent any kind of a new vision for Canada. The agreement is mostly a written text of the status quo. Compared with the Constitution and section 121 of the BNA Act, it is quite a bit weaker than what is already in the Constitution. Section 121 of the BNA Act states:
All articles of growth, produce or manufacture of any one of the provinces shall be admitted free into each of the other provinces.
That is the Constitution. Let me compare it to article 101 of the provincial trade agreement which the government negotiated last summer. The objective of the agreement is to reduce and eliminate to the extent possible barriers to the free movement of goods and services.
Let us compare that with what the minister set out in his press release of March 31, 1994: "The federal government is committed to working toward an agreement which is clear and concise; has a set of rules that will eliminate protective measures; includes an effective and enforceable dispute settlement mechanism".
This agreement really fails in all of those criteria. If people look at it they will agree it is ambiguous. It leaves entire areas untouched-agriculture, certain government procurement and regional government, to name some. It does not undertake really
to eliminate trade barriers, only to the extent possible. There are all kinds of loopholes and I will touch on those in a moment. The dispute settlement mechanism is not enforceable and therefore not effective.
Let me talk specifically about some of our major concerns with the loopholes in the agreement. From part III, chapter 4, general rules, the agreement allows for a party to exempt itself from most of the constraints of articles 401, 402, 403 on the grounds of legitimate objectives. Articles 401 through 403 really are the essence of that agreement.
It is very important that those articles have some teeth. Here is what we find out. Under the agreement, legitimate objective is defined on pages 6 and 7 as the following objectives: public security and safety; public order; protection of human, animal or plant life or health; protection of the environment; consumer protection; protection of the health, safety and well-being of workers; affirmative action programs for disadvantaged groups considering, among other things, where appropriate fundamental climatic or other geographical factors, technological or infrastructure factors, or scientific justification.
We have listed almost every possible excuse under the sun for allowing people to opt out of this agreement. That is the huge fundamental flaw of the bill. I understand the government's good intentions but it simply did not come anywhere near meeting its red book promise of addressing this problem with urgency, implying it would bring about an agreement as quickly as possible. This comes nowhere near that.
Our party does not want to be completely negative. We would like to offer some constructive alternatives. One of the things the government can do, which it has not done and for which there is a growing body of evidence that it should, is bring about a court challenge and use its standing in the Constitution to actually be more in charge of interprovincial trade barriers.
Section 121 gives the federal government control over barriers within provinces. There is no reason that could not happen. I heard some hon. members from across the way talking about whether it might be preferable to get consensus, et cetera. Of course it is. We want to work with the provinces. That is very important in this day and age when our friends from Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois, are saying they want to break up the country and that kind of thing.
At the end of the day are we here to please certain special interests in different provinces which make a tremendous amount of noise and get the government's attention in those provinces or are we here for everybody, for the common good? I say we are here for the common good, to do the things we need to do of the most benefit to every man and woman in the country, not just to few who make a big noise when it looks like their little area will be jeopardized and they will no longer enjoy protection from the government.
The free market has to decide these things. If we let the free market decide we end up in a situation in which we have the cheapest possible services and goods being provided to consumers and levels of government which means more money in the pockets of consumers so they can spend on other things, which means there is money for productivity, for the economy to expand, et cetera. It is absolutely the best way to go.
That the federal government has finally come on board on the whole idea of free trade underlines it is understanding that. It fought against free trade in 1988 during the election but has now come around and we are happy to have it on our side. The government did not show the same change of heart in this bill or at least it did not show a real will to bring about the demise of interprovincial trade barriers. Unfortunately Bill C-88 has been dramatically watered down from where it should be.
Some people may ask if this is something we really want to do in the courts. I remind people listening, the government has shown no hesitation to go to court on things like enforcing the gag law legislation. It has shown no hesitation in taking extraordinary measures to cancel deals like the Pearson airport deal. I think it should show the same will when it comes to Bill C-88.
Bill C-88 is for the benefit of all Canadians; if it would only pound down interprovincial trade barriers. It has good intentions, absolutely, but we have to ask "where's the beef?" It is simply not in there.
I want to talk about how important an issue this really is. It is a huge issue that is extremely important to the country. A good article came out in the August edition of Fraser Forum by Filip Palda. He talks about a study done in British Columbia about interprovincial trade barriers:
The B.C. study is right, however, in pointing out that the CMA's estimate of the benefits of free internal trade only focuses on three areas of the economy: agriculture; alcohol and government procurement.
Somehow the $6.5 billion gain from liberating a few sectors of the Canadian economy has become entrenched in the media as an upper boundary on the benefits of free trade in all sectors. The public debate has ignored that when a market grows several things happen: costs fall and producers become more competitive. Japan is a fierce international competitor because it has a large internal market. This market is like a school where students learn from each other. Efficient producers pass into the world market while bad producers fall into mediocrity or bankruptcy. The benefit of these intangibles is hard to put a number on but the number is probably larger than the commonly cited $6.5 billion. Studies of the entire economy suggest that the annual gains could be between 6 per cent and 9.5 per cent of GNP. This translates into gains in the range of $44 billion.
Many hon. members have spoken about the $6.5 billion that came out in the CMA study. I was amazed when I first heard it. I could not believe how much money that was. I did not realize at that time, and maybe other members did not either, that it was only the CMA looking at the effects that dropping interprovincial trade barriers would have on those three sectors.
If we extend it to the full economy, $44 billion is what this gentleman is suggesting could be the benefit to Canadians. That is a tremendous amount of money. When it is realized how big that amount is and what it could do for the economy it gives us an idea of how important this issue should be to the government.
I feel the government has failed us in Bill C-88. It has not shown any urgency. It did not get the Prime Minister involved to make this happen. It did not use its ability to push this through the courts. Therefore the agreement is very much watered down. Canada is no further ahead than it was before except that the government can say it has dealt with the issue. However when I look at this I have to say where is the beef.
I want to talk about the larger scope of competitiveness and why it is important to have interprovincial trade barriers dealt with. It affects our competitiveness in the world. The economist I have just quoted, Filip Palda, pointed to that when he talked about Japan and how its internal market is so large that it really prepares people for selling around the world. That is only one thing that comes out of knocking down trade barriers.
My hon. friend from Lisgar-Marquette mentioned this a few minutes ago. The economy has problems. He talked a bit about grain producers and people who would like to add some value to the product they produce. If value added products cannot be moved between provinces there is no way that producers will be ready for the world. It is critical to be able to trade between provinces freely so that a competitive edge can be developed.
This is only one in a long legacy of areas where the government has failed to help provide that competitive edge to Canadians. The most obvious one and the one that will follow the government to its grave is the fact that it has never really dealt with the debt and the deficit. That is what is taking the competitive edge off for a lot of businesses that want to sell around the world.
The debt at $553 billion and a deficit of around $32 billion, if the projections do not go all out of whack because of a possible coming recession, have led to all kinds of problems that make it extremely difficult for businesses to get out into the world and compete. With that debt and deficit come high taxes. High taxes mean that costs go up. It also means that employees are the ones who are bearing a lot of those taxes. Will they demand higher wages? All of a sudden we have that burden to contend with. It makes it extremely difficult to deal with other countries when we have those burdens.
Another thing that happens with a big debt and deficit is all that competition for money. Canada is in a situation where it has to offer higher interest rates relative to the rest of the world. It is a problem with our main trading partner, the United States. It causes costs to go up for producers and businesses cannot be nearly as competitive as they would like to be.
The government has failed people who want to export their products, whether it is within Canada or without, on a couple of fronts. First it has failed to knock down trade barriers. By not dealing with the debt and deficit it has also caused us to be in a situation where costs are such that it is hard to compete in the world.
Another point I want to touch on briefly is the idea of training. The government and the Minister of Human Resources Development have gone to great lengths to talk about and hold studies into training and what can be done to make us more competitive in the world. The minister has created plans such as the Atlantic groundfish strategy. We all know where that has gone. There are whole towns in Newfoundland where the entire population is training to be hairdressers. That is not going to work.
The problem is that there are no jobs there. The reason there are no jobs is that the economy is so burdened with interprovincial trade barriers, so burdened with debt and taxes and interest rates that are higher than those in the U.S. for instance, relative to some of our trading partners, that we do not have jobs. Instead of worrying so much about government programs to train people, let us start providing jobs by scaling back the debt and deficit and scaling back the interest rates and taxes.
Industry and small business will create the jobs. Do not worry about the government creating them. Small business can do that better than anybody.
Let me conclude by saying that I think the government had good intentions when it brought in Bill C-88. It wanted to eliminate interprovincial trade barriers. However that is all it is, an ode to a good intention. It is something like teaching children about ethics and morals by telling them: "Never make a promise you cannot keep". The government made a promise in the red book and I do not think it kept it.
I ask hon. members to improve the bill. I ask the government to make another effort in the very near future to bring about a meaningful interprovincial trade agreement.