I hear the Tories chirping over there. I remember Brian Mulroney standing arm in arm with the president of the United States signing “When Irish Eyes are Smiling”. With a name like Mahoney far be it from me to take on an Irishman, but I should add that we were not prepared and will never be prepared to simply climb into bed with an elephant like the United States. That is why we need the Seattle negotiations.
That is what the Tories did under the former prime minister and it led to a $42 billion deficit. What happened then?
We came into office in 1993. I was not here. I was elsewhere. But the government changed hands. The Liberals came in and we negotiated a trade deal in Chile. We negotiated trade deals in other parts of the Americas. We negotiated trade deals in Asia. We sent team Canada to Japan and all over the world. We showed Canadians and more important we showed the world that we are a nation of traders, going right back to the roots of aboriginal Canadians who were the first traders.
Port Credit is at the foot of Highway 10 in my constituency. It is named that because the aboriginals used to trade, and nobody had any money in those days, so they would simply trade back and forth and barter for credit, for goods or that type of thing. We are carrying on the tradition of the founders of this nation, the aboriginal Canadians, who were the first entrepreneurs and the first free traders in North America.
Members opposite say that with the policies the government has put in place with regard to international trade, globalization, world trade organizations, FTA, Chile and all of the agreements, we are being overzealous. I understand where they are coming from. It is a lack of self-confidence.
It is a problem that has been in the rank and file of the New Democratic Party since the days when my father was trying to get them to have a little more common sense about their policies and what they should be doing. He understood. I can remember Bill Mahoney saying to me that we have no problem with the NDP as long as it is not in government. This was the leader of the United Steelworkers of America. He said to leave them in opposition because they are not bad if they stand up and just chirp a bit and effect some social policy. Give them credit where credit is due, but for goodness sake do not give them the reins of power.
The proof of the wisdom of those words came through in 1990 when the people of Ontario decided through a mistake of some kind to elect Bob Rae. We all remember what happened. A province that was firing on all engines went into the worst recession since the Great Depression. A New Democratic Party premier intentionally decided to run $10 billion overdrafts. Imagine. It was almost as bad as Mulroney and the Tories. Actually, they were a little worse. Let me give the numbers.
The way government financing works is that deficits get piled on top of the debt at the end of the fiscal year. It is the same as a family that uses an overdraft to buy food and then piles the overdraft on top of the mortgage. Eventually the mortgage outstrips the value of the home.
Mr. Rae and the New Democrats had a great celebration. Remember the fanfare when they came in? Boy, they opened the doors to the world and it was going to be so wonderful. They took the debt of the province in five years from $39 billion to well over $100 billion. That province is choked with the burden that was put on it with the myopic, single minded, narrow lack of vision led and funnelled by the New Democratic Party policies that are developed at their conferences.
Members of the NDP get together, slap each other on the back and say “We are the social conscience of the world. We know what is best for Canadians. We should never trust the people in the streets to actually do things on their own. We have to do it all for them”.
That is the New Democrat policy. That is where the genesis of this resolution before us today comes from. The members of the New Democratic Party do not trust Canadians to be able to compete in the international global marketplace.