Madam Speaker, first of all let me congratulate the hon. member for Prince Albert-Churchill River for the magnificent job he has done in this Chamber since his election and his great contribution to the passage of legislation and also the great speech made by the hon. member for Windsor-St. Clair a few moments ago.
In response to the hon. member's question, the answer probably is this. Since the Reform Party has been a member of this Chamber it has seen Canada internationally become somewhat of a hero not just in the economic field, not just in the field of peacekeeping, but also in the field of making international law, of standing up for the environment, of passing legislation that says that nations around this world can no longer plunder the resources of the sea and get a way with it; that Canada has led the way in the United Nations, at the United Nations conferences of the sea and the environment and
has consistently led the way in practically every issue that has dealt with the environment in the past three years; and also our economy.
I think that is why mainly the opposition party really does not want to become involved in any of these international activities of the Government of Canada. But of course the one exception is if these international agreements that we pass in the House help along, I suppose we could say their policies, that will assist in some way in their philosophical direction; that is, in giving tax breaks to the very wealthy or in having tax treaties, for example, that is fine.
The House will notice that whenever a tax treaty is introduced they always have been, if we examine the committee proceedings, very interested in giving huge tax breaks to the international corporations of the world who do business today. They are not too anxious to talk about transfer pricing or anything like that, but they are certainly interested in those across the board tax cuts to those very large U.S. corporations who do business in Canada and elsewhere in the world.