Madam Speaker, I might just say on the last matter that there may have been consultations but not everybody was consulted. I only gave unanimous consent out of respect for the judgment of the hon. member, not because there had been consultations or discussion.
I am rising to speak to Bill C-55. It has been an interesting debate so far. The contribution of the Reform Party on this matter shows why Liberal government members continue to have it so easy. They bring forward a bill to try to protect Canadian magazines like the Legion Magazine and various other ones. They have what I would call the political advantage of having an official opposition that wants to attack such a proposition in the name of unfettered free enterprise or however it is that they defend this indefensible position.
From the outset I say that the NDP supports the bill with some reservations. Mostly our reservations come in the form of wishing the minister either would or could go further. What Bill C-55 will do, if it succeeds, is entrench the status quo. There is grandparenting of some existing arrangements which I would like to have seen challenged. There is nothing in the bill that particularly promotes Canadian magazines but it is a form of protecting them. I do not see anything wrong with protecting Canadian magazines.
When I listened to my Reform colleagues it was almost as if there was something wrong with the word protect when it came to this matter. It is also important to promote but there is nothing wrong with protect. These are the same people who talk day in and day out about protecting Canadians from various other things like crime and various threats to their security. There is nothing wrong with protecting Canadians from the economic power of the American magazine industry. I do not think that is something we should apologize for.
We are glad that the government has moved to find a way within the limits of the World Trade Organization to do what Canadians have traditionally done in this industry. Our quarrel comes with the fact that government members are not critical enough of the agreements in which they find themselves. I am talking particularly about the WTO.
There is a fundamental contradiction between the ideology, the world view embodied in the World Trade Organization, and the whole notion of the protection of culture. This is something the minister understood well in a previous incarnation. Perhaps she understands it every bit as well in this incarnation but is not as able to say so from where she sits now. However there is the fundamental contradiction between culture and free trade as it is understood at the WTO and NAFTA. The fact is that our previous policy has been tested against the ideology and the world view of the WTO and has been shot down.
It is fine for the government to come forward and try another way. What would also be useful would be for the government to say maybe this should tell us something about the world view of the WTO and about the wisdom of signing these kinds of agreements. That would be refreshing but we have not heard that from the minister and we have not heard it from the government.
Instead what we heard the other day, not from the Minister for Canadian Heritage but from the Minister for International Trade, was a government clinging right to the end to the idea of trying to preserve the multilateral agreement on investment, which many Canadians feel would pose a similar threat to Canadian culture, the kind of threat that various provisions at the WTO now provide.
This is an occasion to reflect on the larger conflict between protecting culture and the whole dominant world view or the dominant global ideology of free trade embodied in the WTO and in NAFTA. That world view was to be embodied in the multilateral agreement on investment but fortunately it will not be because the talks on the MAI at the OECD in Paris have broken down.
Why have they broken down? They broke down because Canadians and others all over the world, but finally the French socialist government, said this was an unacceptable way of setting up the relationship between governments and investors and between governments and corporations.
This relationship that was to be institutionalized through the MAI would have given the rights of investors and corporations a status and power that would have threatened the ability of democratically elected governments to properly exercise their sovereignty in the interest of their respective citizenry, particularly in the area of culture because as we know the French government wanted a complete carve-out of culture. They did not want the MAI to deal with culture at all.
This is an opportunity for us to reflect on this larger question. In her opening speech I heard the minister talk about standing up for Canada. Then she said what I think was kind of strange. She said the way we stand up for Canada is that we abide by the rules set by these global organizations.
I would say that Canada has obligations when it enters into agreements. When we respect those obligations it might be argued that we are doing the right thing from the point of view of international relationships, but I would not call it standing up for Canada if the obligations we are respecting are arguably not in the interest of Canada or in this case of Canadian culture.
I would say standing up for Canada is to point out how inadequate the rules of the particular organization are and seek to change them rather than try to somehow get around them or try another way without really admitting that we have probably signed on to something that we should not have. That is what I think we have here with respect to the Canadian signing of the WTO, which is far different from the GATT.
Whatever could be said about the GATT prior to the creation of the WTO in 1994 there was a voluntary aspect to it. The WTO is a quite different matter. The government should have thought much more seriously than it did before it signed on so uncritically to such an agreement as the WTO.
The member for Dauphin—Swan River who spoke for the Reform Party quoted somebody from the National Film Board—I think it was the chairperson—saying that the whole notion of protection of culture was becoming less and less sustainable. He seemed to indicate that he felt that person was perhaps making a fiscal argument. I was not there so I can only speculate, but I think another way in which protection is becoming less and less sustainable is the agreements the government keeps entering into.
It is not a question of fiscal sustainability. It is a question of sustainability in the face of repeated signing on to agreements like NAFTA and the WTO and the MAI, were it to have been signed, that put in jeopardy our ability to sustain policies which protect Canadian culture. It is not a question of sustainability in any fiscal sense. It is a question of being able to sustain policies in the face of signing agreements that constitute a challenge to these policies. I would say this is something the government ought to be looking at.
It is not a surprise to me, though, that Reform Party members seem so blasé about the potential disappearance of so many Canadian magazines and almost seem to make a virtue out of allowing American magazines to penetrate even further and dominate the Canadian market. I think they have a fascination for American culture that sometimes I find disturbing. We saw that only recently when we heard that the leader of the Reform Party's first reaction when he thought something problematic was happening in the country, that is the sovereignists might win the referendum, was to call the American ambassador and invite him to participate in some post-referendum process.
We support the bill with reservations. We regret that the government is not willing to challenge the agreements that make this kind of legislation possible. We regret that the government continues to pursue in what we think is an uncritical way further agreements like the MAI which would inhibit the ability of the government to act to protect culture. We regret that the minister of trade, instead of saying yes, the MAI is not only dead but should be dead, seems to be saying the MAI is dead and devoting the rest of his life to finding out how it can be revived, to finding a new venue for it perhaps at the WTO.
This does not give us any comfort. It does not give any comfort to Canadians who feel the Canadian government should have taken a position much more like the French government which found the whole underlying premise and intention of the agreement to be inadequate.
With all these reservations and regrets we nonetheless say that the bill should go to committee. We hope in the very limited way the Liberals seem able to act the bill will be successful in protecting Canadian culture and Canadian magazines.