Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak to Bill C-11 today. I want to indicate that the Reform Party is supportive of the bill. Largely this is a bill which simplifies and harmonizes Canadian customs legislation.
When this bill landed on my desk for me to critique it on behalf of my party I thought we were getting a case of bills, but in fact it was only one. It was a foot and a half thick. Canada is simplifying and clarifying our customs codes. We are taking it down from 11,000 to 8,000 codes. We still have 8,000 tariff lines for import duties into Canada. We can do even better than that and I hope we can in the future.
This initiative came from industry. It wanted government to clean up some of these areas of customs tariffs. The free trade agreement negotiated some 10 years ago with the United States was one of the prime motivators to phase out tariffs. The tariffs between Canada and the United States had been phased out except in a couple of areas like supply management and textiles, that type of area. In response to that we were able to clean up a lot of customs lines.
The Reform Party supports this bill because we are supportive of free trade in general. We would even go further. We want to have further trade liberalization and we believe that the only protection Canadian industry really deserves and needs is protection from exporters from other countries that are selling product in this country that is subsidized or protected by tariff at home.
We feel we can compete head on on the basis of production with the best in the world. Industry in general is starting to recognize this. Companies such as Teleglobe have been privatized. They are saying we should open up investment because they want to be able to compete with the best in the world. There is a big market outside of Canada and if we want to do that, if we want to have trade liberalization in other countries we have to provide that at home as well.
That means we should move to a freer trade environment worldwide. We have good networks in place. We have good trade agreements. We must move further to keep this bicycle rolling down the road. We must move further to try to reduce tariffs and subsidies in countries such as those in Europe. By doing so I believe we will be able to reduce our tariff activity in Canada, our import tariff regime, even further than the 8,000 tariff lines we have for the protection of industry. That will mean industries that compete on the basis of production will compete head on worldwide in that new world out there. They have to be competitive as well. If they cannot be competitive, they probably do not deserve the support of Canada's government in providing tariff protection for them.
On that basis I would have to say that although Revenue Canada raises about $3 billion a year on tariffs, there is a very large bureaucracy that has to administer that tariff structure. We hear of Canadian government officials who travel to places like Georgia to check on their carpet manufacturing industry to see if they are not dumping into Canada. We see they have to be assessed duties. It is a very expensive regime to keep in place.
There are a number of areas within the Canadian economy that already have quite a harmonized basis of business. The steel industry is one example. When we think of trade in Canada we sometimes think of product moving outside of Canada or into Canada by the shipload. In fact, most of our trade does not occur that way. Eighty-three per cent of our exports go to the United States and most of our exports move across the 49th parallel day in and day out by truck. It is a small commercial quantity that is moving to service some need. It might even be that a parent company is either in Canada or the United States.
We are moving more and more toward a harmonized trade relationship with the United States in particular. This is reflected by the fact that we are going to be phasing out our customs duties in those areas. However, we have 8,000 customs duty lines left. The sooner we can move to trade liberalization so Canadian companies can compete head on with companies outside of Canada that are neither subsidized nor protected by tariff, the better off we will be and the sooner we will be able to clean up the rest of our customs lines.
We support the early implementation of the bill and we support its passage.