Madam Speaker, I want to begin by congratulating the New Democratic Party for this motion today.
My first campaign in Broadview—Greenwood was all about the free trade agreement. I can remember that about a week into the campaign I received a phone call from an associate of mine from Houston, Texas who was close to Clayton Yeutter who was the free trade negotiator for the United States. He said “Dennis, Clayton Yeutter spent his whole life studying water. In fact he did his doctoral thesis at the University of Nebraska and in 1961 published `North American Water Management'. You had better make sure that when you are going through this free trade agreement you understand exactly where water sits in the agreement because this is a man who has dedicated his entire life to water”.
I took the time to get a copy of Clayton Yeutter's Ph.D. thesis from the University of Nebraska. I urge all members to get a copy of it. It is a 600 page thesis. If there was ever any doubt in members' minds as to whether water was a part of the free trade agreement, this Ph.D. thesis will take that doubt away. It is a part of the free trade agreement.
In my very first speech in the House of Commons I begged former Prime Minister Mulroney to get a one page protocol letter from Ronald Reagan saying that water was exempt. The then government would not do it. I wrote several letters to Clayton Yeutter asking him to acknowledge that water was not a part of the free trade agreement. He never responded to those letters. I have them on file. I also know that in the last few days someone has talked to Clayton Yeutter and he will now publicly admit that water is in fact a part of the free trade agreement.
Canadians do not even have a proper inventory of what our water assets are. We waste a lot of water. Before we export a gallon of water we should take stock of what we have.
I would ask the member the following question, keeping in mind that we have not done an inventory of water in our country.
Let us imagine that we went through that exercise and discovered that we did have some excess water. If it were properly metered, priced accordingly and Canadians were looked after first, would the Reform Party member then consider the notion of selling? Again, I want to say that would only be after it was excluded from the free trade agreement. What would the member's views be on sharing and selling of water only after we took the necessary time to take stock of it as an issue, province by province, region by region?