Madam Speaker, this is one of those motions where one cannot help but think that those people to our left, the members of the Bloc who put forward a motion like this one, are playing a game of chess. They are not thinking about the current move but about the next move or maybe the one after. We ought to give them a reluctant commendation for at least thinking ahead.
The level of our currency is a measure of our economic health. When we look at Canada's present economic health we get a 6.5 on a scale from 1 to 10. Compared with the American dollar we have a 65-cent dollar.
They are asking us to strike a committee to debate the issue. I am certainly in favour of debate. I might even be persuaded to vote in favour of a motion to strike a committee because perhaps this ought to be dealt with in considerably greater depth than we can do here. Perhaps we ought to listen to expert witnesses which a committee could do and which unfortunately we do not often get to do here because not many members are economic experts.
My initial reaction is that perhaps we ought to enter into the debate in such as way as to say yes, let us enlarge the debate. However, the underlying reason for this committee and for this study is intriguing. It has to do with the use of currency and the proposal behind the one we are debating.
We are debating a proposal to strike a parliamentary committee, but the idea behind it is to have a common pan-American currency so we will not have to do all the conversions and somehow, I suppose, hide the red faces of the Liberals for its economic policies which have brought us into such dire straits in this country. Our dollar's value on the world scene and particularly as it is pegged against the American dollar is at an abysmal low rate.
An analogy might be appropriate. I do not know if members have ever seen a house going down the road. I have seen this in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Quite frequently they move buildings down the road on many wheels. It could be 20 wheels or 24 wheels set underneath the building. It is intriguing. For a number of years a friend of mine was in the business of doing this and among other things used to haul huge grain elevators that go 100 feet into the sky.
The analogy I want to draw is how those wheels were constructed. If a large building is being moved along the road and goes into a hole, if there is not some sort of equalization between all the axles one axle stops carrying its load. Two things can happen. Additional weight transferred to adjacent wheels can blow the tires on that wheel, causing instability and if an elevator is being hauled it could tip. As a matter of fact my friend tipped one of his elevators because the technicians were not paying particular attention.
I was intrigued when I looked at the mechanism. Every one of the axles is tied together with hydraulic hoses and hydraulic rams so that when one wheel goes into a hole the pressure is immediately reduced, but as the other wheels pick up the load the pressure is transferred back to the wheel during the time it is in the hole. It is never relieved of carrying its share of the load.
Conversely, if one of the wheels were to go over a rock or a high spot on the road, again it could cause the structure to tip. It could result in the tires on that one axle exploding immediately because of the additional pressure from all the weight of the building being on one set of wheels when it is meant to be distributed.
As the pressure increased, the pressure on the rams was transmitted via the hoses to the other wheels supporting the structure. Two things happened. It prevented any one of the wheels from exploding because of increased pressure on it and it kept stability to the whole structure so it could go straight along. There was an additional mechanism available to raise one side to keep it straight if the road was uneven, but that has nothing to do with what we are talking about here.
What happens if we have a larger currency? It has been suggested that we should protect the Canadian currency by tying it to the American currency. A constituent in my riding, if he happens to be watching CPAC this morning, which I know he does from time to time because he is a retired person and has time for it, will be pleased to know I am now presenting his case. He strongly said we should tie the Canadian currency to the American currency, just do it arbitrarily and say this is what it is. My constituent suggested a time line. Perhaps it could be one cent per month over 30 months which would bring our currency back up to par with that of the Americans so there would not be a sudden change.
There is merit in that suggestion. When our economy has a fluctuation, when it goes down the tube, because we are in the larger package they pick up the slack for us and we do not feel an immediate hit in that situation. Eventually we would anyway, I believe.
The general principle of broadening the currency is to give strength to all countries that participate based on the overall average instead of on the vagaries of an individual partner.
One needs to be very practical when one thinks about and does any reading at all on the European Union, the new Euro coin and the Euro currency that is under way. As an aside, Westaim in my riding is a coin plating plant which, among other things, is providing blanks for the new Euro coin. I thought I would throw in that free commercial. That is proceeding.
Why would we not want to do this? I think there are a couple of reasons. I seriously question it. There are some countries in our hemisphere that are not carrying their load. They are inefficient, perhaps worse than Canada. They are very highly taxed as is every Canadian citizen. As a result, our overall economic efficiency is too low.
One really wants to ask the question: Why does the separatist party from Quebec put forward this motion today? I think perhaps, as I said in my introduction, it is thinking a move or two ahead in what it expects will happen, that Quebec will eventually separate. I suppose what we are hearing today is a tacit admission that when that happens the currency and the economic well-being of that province will be seriously threatened. I think that is a political reality.
Members of the Bloc are hedging against the future and hoping they can tie themselves to a larger currency so that the weight of that very uneconomic decision would be distributed over and carried by Canada, the United States and the other countries in the union.
I believe that in the move to do this the separatists better have a good share of realism. There are a number of countries which are being denied entry to the European Union because their economy is not strong. The European Union is working to make sure that its currency is strong, viable and very stable. The European Union literally is not permitting some countries to join because of their economic stability. Economic stability correlates very closely to political stability.
I would give advice to my separatist partners, whom I wish would simply stay in Canada. Let us work together and let us motor on. If they are going to go down this route, they should recognize realistically that there is a possibility that they would not even be permitted in because they would not be meeting the criteria for membership.