Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate today at report stage of Bill C-55, although I admit I am a little dismayed that we should be debating such a bill to begin with.
In my capacity as the critic for international trade for our party, I understand all too well the importance of trade to Canada. Forty per cent of our GDP is derived from exports.
Canada recognized a long time ago, and I suggest that even the Liberal government of the past recognized a long time ago, as early as 1947, the need for some rules to surround the trade issue. Canada has a relatively small population base and we need trade to survive. It is as simple as that.
A third of all the jobs provided in this country are related to exports. That is a simple fact of life. There is not anybody here who is not affected by that fact of life. Of that, 83% of those exports go to United States. We have this great big trade relationship, $1.4 billion a day crossing the Canada-U.S. border in a healthy, goodwill relationship. I submit we need to make sure that stays.
In that trade relationship, yes, we have some problems with the Americans in terms of agriculture from time to time. Problems with softwood lumber and other issues present themselves. This is a pretty small problem overall in terms of our total trade relationship but to those industries the problem is big.
Add to that the steel industry. It is subject to a lot of anti-dumping charges by the U.S. and I do not think they are really substantiated. They have to go through quite a process to comply. The compliance factor is very expensive. They are always on notice that there will be problems with the U.S. on the steel industry.
We have come a long way with trade liberalization. It has been recognized worldwide for the last 50 years, largely as a result of the second world war. A number of institutions were built to make sure we did not get back into those situations again, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and of course the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the United Nations.
One of the reasons the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was put in was so that we would not have Balkanization where there was no access to markets from other countries.
I have already made the case why we need that access. In addition, under the free trade agreement with United States and the subsequent NAFTA, trade between our two countries has grown by over 50% in 10 years.
That speaks volumes about the need for and the benefit of trade liberalization and yet we have a government that as far back as 1988 fought the free trade agreement. The minister responsible for Canadian heritage was one of the leading proponents of fighting the free trade agreement with the United States. She even fought it right up until NAFTA was signed.
Although the Liberal government all of a sudden was elected in 1993 it said at the time it would not sign NAFTA unless a number of important problems were addressed. It did not do that. It did sign NAFTA.
I wonder if some of the Liberals who fought this so hard are really committed to trade and trade liberalization. It seems to me we are seeing today that some of them are not.
Do we need protectionism in our cultural industries? A number of our speakers have already suggested we do not. I would subscribe to that theory. Our cultural industries need promotion just like any other industry. It needs to be promoted at our embassies overseas and through trade missions. I have no problem with that aspect at all.
We have a number of areas in culture that stand up very well but what we do not want is to have other countries take this same type of venue, protectionism, especially the United States. What would happen if the United States told Canada our artists no longer had access to Hollywood or Nashville?
Look at the number of Canadian artists who have developed their abilities by having access to that huge American market. We absolutely have to make sure that stays. This kind of legislation is the type we have come to expect from the minister, stick your finger in the eye of the United States and give it a good gouge.
What do we have from this minister so far? We have the MMT legislation, Ethyl Corporation. We were to ban the sale of MMT. It came from the minister. Of course we had to back down. The American Ethyl Corporation was paid $16 million as a result of the heritage minister's misguided policies.
We had the split run legislation on taxation, on duties, that went to the World Trade Organization that we lost. We had the endangered species legislation that had to be pulled as an embarrassing piece of legislation because the minister was not going to take into account the very users in the areas involved, forest companies, farmers and ranchers. We have of course the toxic waste situation where S.D. Myers in the United States is probably going to sue Canada under the investment chapter of NAFTA because the minister decided that toxic waste should not be exported to the United States, it should go to northern Alberta so we could burn it up there.
This is what we have come to expect but it is not what we should expect from a minister of the crown who should be introducing responsible legislation. This issue will come back to haunt us. I know the minister has introduced an amendment today, essentially backing down, saying this will not be put into effect for some time.
I noticed the tone of her remarks in question period during the last while has really come down a lot. She is trying to put this issue at a lower level, and rightly so. It should be scrapped altogether. The legislation should be scrapped because it is not in Canada's best interest.
I happened to catch a CBC program the other night where a number of the minister's own constituents in Hamilton were interviewed. The big issue for them is jobs and not whether split runs continue to enjoy Canadian advertisers. It is the fact that their jobs may be threatened. The Hamilton steel industry has enough problems with the Americans. We do not have to invent phoney ego trip problems by the minister.
What about the chemical industry, the plastics industry out of Toronto and other parts of the country which has had tremendous growth into United States, taking advantage of niche opportunities in that big American market? Are we going to kill those opportunities now because we risk retaliation from the United States?
It is clear that if there are any jobs to be lost on this issue it should only be one, that of the Minister of Canadian Heritage for irresponsible legislation.
Does Canada have the right to introduce the legislation? Of course we do. But is it the responsible thing to do? That is the question. Is it responsible to risk our big trade relationship with the United States? NAFTA, brought in 1993 and endorsed by the Liberals, says Canadians have the right to protect our culture. It also says as part of that agreement that if the Americans are not happy with that they have the right to retaliate to an equivalent effect.
Some people have estimated that equivalent effect to be $350 million of Canadian businesses that may be subject to tariffs and duties. Can our steel industry support having duties applied to it? We know what has happened to our softwood lumber industries in the past when that happened. It has had a very dampening effect on jobs.
It seems this is sending entirely the wrong message to Canadians, that one minister on an ego trip is willing to sacrifice the jobs of Canadian farmers, the jobs of Canadian steelworkers, Peerless Suits in Montreal which has actually had a tremendous niche opportunity and developed a business in the United States. It has developed this because the United States took a misguided view of things and put a tariff on wool coming into the United States.
We do not have the same tariff. We have seen the light. It has given Canadian companies in Montreal a tremendous opportunity in manufacture in wool suits. They captured a tremendous amount of the American market. We were not there 10 or 20 years ago but we have several billion dollars worth of sales of wool suits in the United States. That shows what can happen when we a view in terms of liberalization, in terms of duties and tariffs. This bill should be sunk. It should have the deep six. It should go to the bottom of Lake Ontario, the same place the minister referred to with some of the ships from the war of 1812. She put it in the same category as the American-Canadian battle of 1812 when American ships were sunk. That is where this should go, to the bottom of Lake Ontario.