Mr. Speaker, on November 18 I rose in the House to ask a question of the government about the $1 billion deal which was being proposed with the Iraqi government. This deal was proposed by Mr. Zed, who had gone to Iraq and supposedly signed a deal at a time when we were at a very critical point in dealing with Iraq. It was refusing people access to various sites in the country. It was a time when the United Nations was proposing other action.
The timing could not have been worse. In my estimation, it greatly undermined Canadian foreign policy that this, in fact, was being pushed under the carpet by this government.
Basically this shows a real lack of foreign affairs initiative and policy by this government. It makes you wonder who is in charge of the foreign affairs department when a company, Summa Strategies, directed by ex-Liberal MPs Doug Young and Paul Zed, can in fact put forward a deal like this at such a critical time.
Shortly after the 1997 election these two gentlemen set up Summa Strategies as an Ottawa lobbying group. Obviously they are now taking great advantage of their contacts within the government. Mr. Young is acting for Canadian National Railways, a crown corporation he helped to privatize when he was minister of transport. No wonder Canadians are so skeptical of government and ex-ministers when they are involved in this sort of lobbying activities.
We need to tighten up these arrangements dramatically. Just imagine proposing to deal with a government like that of Saddam Hussein. While all the time arguing that this was a humanitarian deal for trucks and a number of items which were not listed, they went further to invite the foreign affairs minister, Tariq Aziz, to visit Canada, to visit the Prime Minister of New Brunswick, for which he claimed he had an invitation.
We in this House get tired of the government standing up, beating its chest and saying how wonderful it is. It talks about standing up to Saddam Hussein, yet we let this billion dollar deal to go ahead. Maybe the UN will scuttle it. We talk about how great we are in saving the world with land mines, meanwhile we are selling nuclear plants to India, Romania, China, Turkey and Korea, to name a few.
We talk about how we have solved all the financial problems, when in reality we have a $600 billion debt. We talk about a Zaire mission which we championed because the Prime Minister saw it on television. Then we found out that the day before the President of the United States called and suggested that that is what Canada should do.
We get tired of this sort of double standard and double talk. I question who is in charge over there? Doug Young, Paul Zed and Summa Strategies or the foreign affairs minister.