Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today to respond to the throne speech. I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Calgary East.
I thank all the residents of Saanich—Gulf Islands for doing me the great honour of re-electing me to the House of Commons to represent them. I also thank my wife and my family, who have stood beside me for the last three and a half years and who are so important to me in doing this job.
I am the international trade critic for the Canadian Alliance, while my colleague from Lethbridge deals with the agricultural issues in international trade. It is difficult to get into all of the issues, but there are some that are very important and I will focus on those.
I was encouraged to hear in the throne speech that the government will work toward creating a free trade area of the Americas. Canada can be number one of the Americas if we put our minds to it, if we work together, and if we put policies forward to ensure that we have free trade.
Parliament has been sitting for only a little over a week since the last election, but I have to admit that I find some of the comments coming from the government and its cabinet ministers quite alarming. I will focus on those.
Two issues are very important to Canada on the international trade front. One is the softwood lumber agreement with our friends to the south, the Americans, which expires next month and which is very important. At present, Canada has $1.2 billion in trade every day with the Americans. Over $10 billion a year is traded in softwood lumber. The industry is very important to Canada's economy. There are thousands of jobs at stake.
Yesterday as we were trying to put forward our concern about being in sync and having a unified position, in response to a question the Deputy Prime Minister maintained that “there is no threat or action on countervail against Canada on this matter”. That is the whole issue.
This issue has been before the U.S. senate, while in January Ottawa launched a challenge to a U.S. law which states that countervail duties are non-refundable even if the Americans lose a WTO challenge on countervail action. That law is seen as an incentive for the U.S. government to impose countervail duties even when an action is not likely to be upheld by the WTO. Our own people in the international trade department, our own trade officials, conceded that they expect the United States to immediately begin action to impose duties on Canadian lumber once the deal expires on April 1. This issue puts thousands of jobs at stake right across Canada. I ask the government to look at this.
To his credit, the international trade minister seems to be saying the right things. He is saying that he wants to let the agreement expire, which is the position of the Canadian Alliance. The member for Vancouver Island North has done a lot of work on this file and he has advocated this for the last year. Do we need to let this expire? Do we want to get to free market trading with the United States on softwood lumber? Canada has to aggressively go after this.
We want to let this agreement expire, but the Minister of Industry has come out with a position in which he says “I think the renewal of the existing agreement is something that will be part of the mix when we sit down at the table”. Canadians do not want that. Industry does not want that. The international trade minister does not want that.
Yesterday the Deputy Prime Minister waded into this debate by saying there was no threat of countervail duties. That is exactly the threat we could face from the U.S. Canada has to take a very strong position.
Hopefully members of cabinet will sit down and decide that there is only one position, not three, and that they can speak with a unified voice on this matter. I do find it alarming that the Deputy Prime Minister said yesterday there is no threat. In fact, right out of the U.S. senate, this is exactly what they are threatening to do. At the confirmation hearings of Robert Zoellick, the U.S. trade representative, the Americans said that this is the most important issue between our two countries and that they want him to make it his first priority after his confirmation. Again I ask the government to look at this.
There is another issue we need to bring up as we go to a free trade agreement with the Americas, if that is our goal. We are now engaged in a dispute with Brazil over Embraer. Canada has gone to the World Trade Organization. Last year it won that case. In December the World Trade Organization gave Canada the option of imposing sanctions against Brazil as the only way to fight this measure, but to date Canada has done absolutely nothing.
Again I am concerned, in that we want to enter into free trade agreements with the Americas, which I absolutely 100% endorse, but even in the dispute we have now with Brazil, Canada is not acting with the tools available under the rules of the World Trade Organization. We have been one of the principle proponents of these tools and have advocated for them, yet we have not been using them. I find that alarming.
As we go toward free trade agreements, Canada enjoys a very strong trading relationship with the United States, $1.2 billion in trade every day. The U.S. is our most important trading partner. Over 80% of Canada's trade is with the United States. There is no question, I would argue, that we have been considered one of the favourites of the United States and vice versa. We have done a lot of trade with them. That is about to change. There is the new administration in Mexico under Vicente Fox and the new administration under President Bush, and President Bush has made it very clear that he is looking to expand trade throughout the Americas.
International trade amounts to 40% of the wealth created in Canada. It is so critical to our economy and, if we are not completely on the ball, we could be left behind in this evolving free trade area. Brazil will play a role. We know Mexico will be at the table in a major way and will become a very powerful trading partner in the Americas. It is important for Canada to get a very strong trade policy and aggressively pursue it, not just with the United States but with Mexico and the states throughout Central and South America.
With regard to the actions we have seen from the government in the last week, I am not sure if the government members are really sitting down and getting their position right or if they are all jockeying to see who can get out of cabinet first to get in front of the cameras. It is alarming when one says one thing and one says another. The headlines in every major paper across the country last week said that the Minister of Industry and the Minister for International Trade are fighting over who gets control of this file. Quite frankly, Canadians really do not care who is in charge of the file; they just want to make sure that someone is and that Canada has a unified voice.
My colleagues and I, throughout this parliament, will look at all government policies and put forward constructive options that we believe will advance Canada's position in the international trade market. I believe Canada can be number one if we have the courage to stand up to all these other nations, to make sure that Canada is on the forefront of these free trade agreements and to actively pursue them.