Excuse me, the Canadian Alliance.
The question concerned the free trade agreement. We remember the huge debate that we had in 1988 leading into the election. In fact, the 1988 election was called the free trade election because that was the number one issue that dominated the hustings. We know that the Liberals, in fact every member seated opposite, raged against the free trade agreement.
When the Liberals took office in 1993 the economy was growing and it has been grown ever since. We have not had a downturn since they took office. Eventually it will happen and none of us wants to see that. However, the truth is that the Canadian economy has grown largely because of our export capacity, largely because of the free trade agreement which they railed against, but now they embrace it as if they invented it. We know full well they did not invent it. In fact, they were going to tear it up. They were going to nullify it.
With that growth in the economy comes an obligation on the part of government to do something about transportation. What I am leading to is that there are some parts of the country which are suffering because of our transportation links. One of those areas is Atlantic Canada. Unfortunately, the Canadian Alliance, formerly the Reform Party, looks at Atlantic Canada and says “What is wrong with you people? Why can you not get your act together? Why do you not have the kind of prosperity that we witness in western Canada, particularly Alberta and B.C., or the type of economic growth that we see in Ontario?” That party misses the point that we have been trying to make for years in this House, particularly the last three or four years, with respect to transportation. If we are going to grow the economy we have to have links in and out of our provinces to trade goods, which other areas of the country have been able to do successfully. Ontario has great transportation links to the United States.
We embraced the free trade agreement, along with the Liberal premier of New Brunswick at the time, because we saw it as an opportunity to enhance our markets to the south of us, because we are always forced to trade east and west from one end of Canada to the other. Since then we have not seen growth in infrastructure, particularly highways, to move our goods and people in and out as efficiently as might be the case. That has certainly hampered us.
I really believe the government has a responsibility to build that infrastructure. What we are saying is, give us a chance to compete and we will compete successfully, which we are doing. However, we are certainly denied some of the growth that other parts of Canada have experienced because of the lack of efficient transportation in and out of Atlantic Canada.
To add insult to injury, when the member for Cumberland—Colchester questioned the minister in the House today, the minister alluded to the airport in Toronto and the travelling time of two to three hours for people travelling to that airport. He inferred that in the province of New Brunswick we will at some point be left with one airport. Which one will it be? Will it be Moncton, Saint John or Fredericton? The government does not understand Atlantic Canada and it is not willing to do anything to help Atlantic Canada. It does not understand the big picture.
My party is saying that the government has to come up with a policy. The Liberals cannot fly by the seat of their pants on every issue. They have done it on health care and transportation, and the Canadian public will simply not tolerate that type of make it up as they go along, fly by the seat of their pants attitude.