Mr. Speaker, let me first congratulate my hon. friend for being appointed as his party's spokesperson on international trade. I say to him and to his colleagues that I very much look forward to working with him on this important file to the benefit, ultimately, of Canadians and the Canadian economy.
He also touched upon the history of the Liberal Party. I urge him to reread the history of political parties a little more carefully. If he did so he would see very clearly that the history of the Liberal Party has always been one of a trade liberalizing party, a party favouring and wanting to bring down barriers.
On the contrary, the history of the party he and many of his colleagues supported before the Reform Party, namely the Conservative Party, has always been one of protectionism and building up the walls. In terms of the free trade agreement debates and the NAFTA debates, yes, our party had something to say; but our party, whether it was Mr. Turner, our former leader, or our trade critics at the time, never said that we were against freer trade.
We stood up for fair trade. We stood up for and spoke to a rule based mechanism. We spoke to a dispute mechanism that would not allow the might to be right but for the dispute to be settled based on facts.
Those are the battles the Liberal Party has fought, which has resulted in the side agreements on both labour and environment and the rules we as a country need to survive and obviously do very well. I think the member has the history on that issue quite backward.
He talked about the business community not being prepared to look as aggressively to a free trade area of the Americas or Mercosur. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our business community is incredibly bullish in the opportunities it perceives for companies in our country in the area of the Americas.
Our trade has shot up. Our investments in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Mexico have gone up. It has actually come from the business community for us to be facilitating trade by getting our policy signals right. It is very anxious to be in the free trade area of the Americas. Obviously it is anxious to get on a plan to go with the Prime Minister to another team Canada mission in Latin America.
Yes, the member is right about internal trade barriers. He is absolutely right that as we liberalize trade around the world, as we look to liberalize the Americas or APEC or get closer to Europe or the United States, that somehow in a very contradictory way these ancient walls still exist in Canada.
We have been working very hard on that file. My colleague, the Minister of Industry, has brought together his provincial colleagues numerous times. There was a reference in our throne speech to bringing down those walls. In the last meeting of the premiers I took considerable hope in the fact that all premiers but one was prepared to begin to bring down those barriers.
I urge the member and his party to talk to the provinces that have fought and resisted those barriers coming down. It is not this government. We have actually tried to lead the coalition and consensus of the provinces to bring down the barriers and ultimately make those companies better prepared and more competitive to face the world.
The member's last point was on dispute mechanisms. He said that we needed to work closely with the business community. On the other hand he said that we had to use those mechanisms.
When it comes to whether we should or should not activate those mechanisms quite often it comes from advice from the industry. If we take any commodity, many times the overwhelming consensus of not wanting to trigger a mechanism does not come essentially and exclusively from a government or a minister but from the industry. It too has to size up: “Do we go to the wall? Do we fight on this issue? Or, do we try to manage the trade so that we will forgo the kinds of expenses and the kinds of energies obviously implicit in any fight on any mechanism?”
I am also concerned and troubled, if it begins to set a trend, that every issue will get managed. Managed trade is not freer trade and one way trade is a dead end. We have to take stock of how the industry feels on a particular issue as opposed to simply going to the wall and in the end only hurting the industry even more.