Madam Speaker, today, the Bloc Quebecois put forward, for debate in the House, a motion that reads as follows:
That this House demand that the government bring any draft agreement on the Free Trade Zone of the Americas before the House so that it may be debated and put to a vote before ratification by the Government of Canada.
We have proposed this motion for several reasons, but I believe the main one is the lack of real trust between the government and the civil society, the government and opposition parties.
Unfortunately, as I have often said in my speeches, once bitten, twice shy. We must judge this government on its behaviour. I recall that during our second mandate, only a few days before we had a situation created by the MAI, the famous multilateral agreement on investment, we were gathered in a room on the first floor, on the Senate side. There, we had the great honour of receiving the secretary general of the OECD, Mr. Johnston, a Liberal who has served the government here and who was rewarded by being appointed to the highly prestigious position of secretary general of the OECD.
He was with us to talk about this famous agreement. I recall a sentence which struck me and which most of all shocked me. He said “It is up to us, the officials, to negotiate. You do not have to negotiate. Once the agreement is completely negotiated and signed, we will come back to explain it to you. It will then be up to you to sell it”.
These may not be the exact words used by the secretary general but it is, in substance, what he told us. He said to us “Do not bother with this. It is not up to you. Your role is to sell it after”.
What became of the MAI? Without the courage of the French government, and without Internet, which the members across the aisle have been praising since this morning, the agreement would probably have been signed. Most fortunately it was not. I recall some statements, like this one from the former president of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the French National Assembly, Mr. Jack Lang, who said about the MAI negotiations “I do not know who is negotiating what and on whose behalf”. This is what he said about the MAI, which had already been under negotiation for two years.
“I do not know who is negotiating what and on whose behalf”. We are probably in the same situation at the moment. Who is negotiating what and on behalf of whom to create the free trade area of the Americas? We know nothing about it.
We were told to look on the Internet, where we would find everything. I went on the Internet. I found all sorts of things on NAFTA, but nothing about what is going on at the moment.
And yet, when the Minister for International Trade, our government's homing pigeon, attended the October 1, 1999 meeting of the WTO, he said:
Canada proposes that ministers, in Seattle, commit themselves to enhancing the transparency of the WTO, so that secretariat working papers, formal contributions from members, draft meeting agendas and minutes will be circulated, with very limited exceptions, as unrestricted documents as soon as available in all three WTO languages.
A government minister said greater transparency was required. We have been calling for this since this morning. We want more transparency from this government. We want to be able to debate the agreement in this House, before it is ratified.
We do not want to be informed about all sorts of details that will be discussed at every meeting, subgroup, committee or subcommittee. We are asking the government to do its job. It has a mandate. We support the creation of the free trade area of the Americas, but the government has to do its job properly. At one point, it will have to report to us and to explain what it has done, before it is too late.
The Mulroney government, as was pointed out several times this morning, showed much courage when it had to face the stubbornness of the opposition of the day, which is now the government. It called a general election, even though, at that point, it only had the support of 19% of the voters, according to the polls. Everyone predicted that the Mulroney government would be soundly defeated.
Then they began talking about free trade. They organized forums. They held real debates. We had a taste of what democracy was like in Canada, instead of having to face the hypocrisy and the pretence of democracy that have existed since 1993. The government does everything behind our backs and always presents us with a fait accompli. We never get an answer to any question asked in the House. The government always evades the issue. It always says that the opposition does not understand, or know anything or know how to read.
The government, all of a sudden, has all the brains. It refuses to answer. Democracy is not doing well in this country. It is very important that we all agree on this issue.
We all know what happened with MAI. We must look at another point—raised by my colleague from the Progressive Conservative Party—the events relating to mad cow disease and Brazil.
If we pay close attention to what the minister is saying, one would be tempted to stand up and say “Excuse us, Mr. Minister, we should congratulate you on the fine job you are doing”. That is not the reality, however. If the situation is looked at more closely, we see that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has just been given a “blast”, forgive my English, by the auditor general, which is a clear illustration of the terrible mess that agency is in.
The agency has received a knockout blow. The auditor general has said it is incompetent, is understaffed, is not doing its work. He also said it was in league with the industry. The industry had reached the stage of checking its own food production. Not the agency, which lacked both funds and staff.
The minister was not too pleased at this situation. He wondered what he could do to improve the image of the agency. So he calls them up to inquire “Could you maybe turn up a mad cow or two somewhere?” He is told “Well yes, one in Brazil. Maybe”. Brazil is a long way from here and is the only country in America in which Portuguese is spoken.
The languages of the WTO are French, English and Spanish, whereas the language of Brazil is Portuguese. They refused to reply to our questionnaire. We have no information. Brazil, poor Brazil, has a population of 160 million. It is the second largest country in America in terms of population, and third largest in terms of area.
As far as our economy is concerned, Brazil is an important trading partner. So what do they do? We announced that Brazilian beef was banned. Finally the agency has an improved image, it is doing its job at last. I could continue for a very long time, but you have just indicated to me that I have only seconds left. I must state in closing that we have grounds for concern about the lack of transparency of this government.