Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak in the closing moments of the debate on Bill C-55, an act respecting advertising services supplied by foreign periodical publishers.
I want to acknowledge the tremendous work that has been done by the hon. member for Dartmouth. She has been one of the few voices in the House of Commons that has actually spoken out and described this legislation for what it is.
The legislation is a sellout. I think it is fair to say that today is a retreat. We are surrendering to the American forces on this issue. I tried to think of an appropriate way for members of parliament particularly at this time to accept a Liberal negotiating position. What could that be?
We would simply walk around for the next little while looking like prisoners because we have surrendered to the Americans. We have surrendered to American pressure. If we want to demonstrate the appropriate way to be in the House of Commons whenever we talk about something to do with the United States, we would strike the appropriate pose.
The appropriate way to speak on any issue dealing with the United States would be on our knees. This is the Liberal negotiating position. We are on our knees doing a variety of things. At the moment I am just going to speak about this.
We have seen this surrender to the United States on a whole set of issues. We started off a little while back with pharmaceuticals. We caved in to the American pharmaceutical lobby. Bill C-91 gave 20 year patent protection.
I remember Bill S-9. For some reason the Government of Canada decided that Canadians who contributed to American charities or to American university fundraising campaigns should get a Canadian tax deduction. One has to admit that it is pretty crazy when tax deductions are given to Canadians who contribute to American universities and colleges.
I will just resume the pose to go to the softwood lumber issue. Once again a lot of us, particularly those of us in British Columbia, could stand this way. We would be handcuffed because we are essentially prisoners of war to the United States. We had a free trade deal with the United States, or so we were told. Then it came to dealing with softwood lumber and the government caved in again to the softwood lumber lobby. Now we have to accept quotas on our softwood lumber.
More recently we looked at the Pacific salmon treaty. We got down on our hands and knees again, went down to Washington and again caved in to American pressure. We gave away our coho stocks. At this rate we are going to wear out the knees of our pants.
Then we got into the plutonium shipments. The Americans wanted to ship plutonium to Canada in order to dispose of it. We agreed and caved in again to the United States.
Next it was the willingness of the Canadian government to allow American warships with nuclear weaponry to enter Canadian waters. This was despite the fact that British Columbians had almost universally passed legislation saying that British Columbia and British Columbian territorial waters were a nuclear-free zone. The Government of Canada said it was going to ignore that. It was on the Americans' side, not on the British Columbians' side.
Time and time again we have seen the government cave in. The appropriate way to deal with American related issues is on our knees. There is no point standing up. We might as well be on our knees, wearing out the knees of our pants, going down to Washington and saying that this is the appropriate position for the Canadian negotiators.