Mr. Speaker, this is not really a debate about monetary policy. My colleague from Durham came closer to the truth when he mentioned words like sovereignty in this debate. This is really a debate about national identity and the preservation of national identity.
As far back in time as money began, in the ancient city states of Greece, money represented and contained on it the images of the state. Usually on one side was a god or goddess and on the other side, some symbol of the state. In Roman times, the Romans put the effigy of Caesar on their coinage. They used that effigy to establish their identity throughout the civilized world at the time, all of the Mediterranean. In about 100 AD a coin with Caesar's head on it could be found anywhere, even in Britain. That coin said Rome.
Money still conveys that image. It still has that purpose. No country knows that better than the United States of America. The Americans know full well that when their dollar is circulated around the world, it says to the world “We are the most powerful country in the world”. It also says “We are successful. These are our values”. As the member for Durham mentioned, in the Soviet Union the real money of commerce is the American dollar.
Earlier this year I was on holiday in Belize. Belize is a small English speaking country on the shoulder of the Yucatan Peninsula in Central America.
Belize uses the Belizean dollar. It looks identical to the Canadian dollar, complete with the Queen. On the reverse of the Belizean dollar, the paper currency, there is a scene of Belize. Nevertheless, when it is flipped over, the Queen can be seen. It is similar to a Canadian bank note. I suspect that the Belizean dollar is actually manufactured in this city. Of course, the Canadian authorities print money for many countries around the world.
In Belize things can equally be bought with the Belizean dollar or the American dollar. I suggest there already is a pan-American currency in use everywhere in the western hemisphere and that is the American dollar.
In any store on Sparks Street paying in Canadian currency is fine, but paying in American currency is fine as well. We already have precisely the kind of pan-American currency that is proposed by the Bloc motion.
In Europe there is a long tradition of national independence, especially in France and England. The arrival and the power of the American currency in Europe has caused great concern and distress. Particularly France is concerned about losing its national culture, symbols and sense of identity to a kind of American hegemony worldwide.
This sentiment is echoed worldwide, the fear that the United States will establish its values everywhere. We have reason to fear that because global television now penetrates every corner of the world. English and American values are dominating the cultural message that is going out across the world.
One of the few things we as national identities have left to preserve our sense of self is our money. I was absolutely mortified and distressed in the 1980s before I ever became an MP when the previous government, the government of Brian Mulroney, came along and changed the Canadian currency, changed it to make it more neutral, less patriotic, less Canadian.
When I was young, as a paper boy I can remember the first time I obtained my own earned money. Collecting door to door I would be given a one dollar bill or a five dollar bill. Money in those days had scenes of Canada. I remember as a child looking at those bills and thinking that is my country.
Mulroney came along and as part of this whole pandering to the Quebec nationalists, the Quebec sovereignists, Mulroney tried to take away many symbols that represented Canada from things like our postage stamps and our money. I suggest that if we, and when I say we I mean all of us, French-speaking Canadians and English-speaking Canadians, want to preserve a sense of who we are, whether we think of ourselves in one region or another region, then we have to preserve those few symbols that are left to us as Canadians.
I suggest that in no independent country of Quebec is there ever going to be a currency that could survive for more than two weeks. Even in the proposition of independence was the suggestion that a separate Quebec would adopt a Canadian currency.
If that is the rule, that Quebec separate, alone or together, cannot have anything better than the American dollar bill to represent the French-speaking fact of this country, then how long would that French-speaking fact survive? It would not survive because the Americans are not tolerant of the nature of this land. The nature of this land is this beautiful country that includes two very strong linguistic cultures. That has no part in the American plan.
I see members of the Bloc Quebecois smiling. If they were to go to France they would hear the French talk about the Americans and the dominance of the English language in France, of Disney World and all the symbols of the United States that are invading France. The French understand how necessary it is to protect their country with its own symbols.
I suggest there is a reason for the Euro. It was recognized in Europe among those 11 countries that if they were going to survive not just as an economic entity but as a sovereign entity against the American cultural power, they had to have their own currency.
What is behind all of this is not monetary policy because it really has nothing to do with that. We are in a global economy. This really has to do with images, symbols and a sense of ourselves, be we Canadians or Albertans.