Mr. Speaker, yes, I was painting a very gloomy picture. I do feel that parliament has a lot less power than it had certainly when I arrived here 20 years ago this May. A lot of the power that parliament had in 1979 it has since ceded through various international trade agreements, depending on how we want to describe it, either to the marketplace or to the culture of those particular international organizations.
I am talking particularly about the WTO. Things that this parliament has done have been literally struck down by these international organizations. The member from Kamloops was talking about the MMT decision. Thanks to the investor state dispute settlement process in NAFTA, we now have a situation in which various decisions taken by governments can be challenged by corporations in the courts. Governments are suffering what is called the chill effect, that is, they are very reluctant to move on certain environmental matters because they may be sued in the courts.
I already mentioned the drug patent and property rights thing and the split-run issue. There is a long list. I say to the hon. member that there is a long list of things that parliament can no longer do. We in this place have lost a lot of power, not just to the international marketplace. We have lost it to executive federalism. We have lost it to the charter of rights. We have lost it in at least three different ways. We have lost it to polling. We have lost it to the media.
There is a lot to be gloomy about as parliamentarians. I think we should be concerned and I do not think we should puff ourselves up with a sense of false importance. We should be concerned about how unimportant we are in this place and about how many decisions that used to be made in parliament are no longer made here, for a variety of reasons.
I was concentrating on those national economic decisions that used to be made in this place but which now cannot be because of the free trade agreement. I cite a recent speech by the member's own former leader, Mr. John Turner, former Prime Minister of Canada, who spoke in the Canadian Club of London in January.
I circulated a copy of that speech to every Liberal member just a week or so ago and I recommend to the member that he read that speech by Mr. Turner. It certainly does not read like anything that anybody in this Liberal government has ever said since they were elected in 1993. One of the reasons why we do not have the power we used to is the total betrayal by the Liberal Party of the position it took on the FTA in 1988 and on the NAFTA in 1992.
If there is something to be gloomy about, most of it can be attributed to that betrayal. At least the Conservatives had the decency to run on the free trade agreement. At least you always knew where the Tories were coming from. They were coming right at you with a machete.
These people say one thing and do another and they continue to behave in that same deplorable way. I feel a little gloomy about it. I have a lot to be gloomy about when our country is run by a pack of people like the members opposite, who say one thing and do another.