Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time.
I had the opportunity over the Christmas break to go to Australia with my family. I have the good fortune to be married to an Australian. She has been away from her country for 18 years so we thought the Christmas break would be a great time to visit her homeland.
While there we were at a place called Heron Island which is on the Great Barrier Reef. Madam Speaker, if you ever have an opportunity to visit an absolutely idyllic setting I recommend it to you.
It was quite idyllic unless of course one had the misfortune to be seated next to a lumberman from Montana. I had a rather unpleasant lunch with an American lumberman and his wife. I will distinguish between the two by saying that his wife was really quite pleasant but he was not.
Needless to say, I got quite an earful about rapacious Canadians and how we engage in unfair trading practices and have subsidies and stumpage fees, et cetera. I do not claim any great expertise in this area, but I thought I gave about as good as I got. I expressed to him my views as a parliamentarian that we were as fed up as fed up could be with the gross hypocrisy of American interests in that area.
It seems to me that free trade for the Americans is only free trade if it works for the Americans. If it stops working for the Americans it then ceases to be free trade.
I pointed out to that individual that in pretty well every free trade dispute with our colleagues to the south over NAFTA-like issues, most disputes had been resolved in Canada's favour and that we were heartily sick of being dragged into the courts and proven right.
Needless to say, my views did not endear myself to this Montana lumberman and he and I parted ways. He then saw his way clear to leave the island the following day, by private helicopter may I say.
My little vignette is in some measure a reflection of what goes on in Canada's relationship with the Americans on a daily basis. We trade about $1 billion a day. Clearly the U.S. is our most significant trading partner and clearly we are its most significant trading partner.
Canada is a trading nation, has been a trading nation and, for the foreseeable future, will always be a trading nation. Something in the order of 40% to 45% of our gross domestic product is dependent upon trade. The comparable figure, which is quite an interesting figure, is that it is about half for the Americans. About 20% of their gross domestic product is dependent on trade.
In the last election four out of the five parties essentially ran on free trade platforms. The one party that did not run on a free trade platform got around 10% of the vote and barely hung onto official party status.
Free trade enjoys pretty broad support among Canadians, something in the order of 65% to 70%, but, as I said, we are heartily sick of being dragged into court. Fortunately, we seem to be winning most of the disputes.
Americans trade and we, on the other hand, trade freely. We are not a colonial power. We cannot and do not use threats of military intervention to get our way. We need agreements and therefore we need rules. Rules based trade is better than gunboat trade. The resolution therefore is timely because it gives Canadians another opportunity to reaffirm their commitment to free trade.
Is it difficult? Of course it is difficult. Does it take up a lot of time? Yes. Do we have an endless number of lawyers? Yes we do, but let us look at the alternative. Are we to become an isolationist nation? I do not think so. Are we to somehow or other become a colonial power? I do not think so. For the foreseeable future what we are doing is the way we will go.
The softwood lumber agreement expires this month. Canada's position is pretty darn clear on this one: Trade in softwood lumber should be governed by the WTO rules or the NAFTA agreement, period, end of sentence.
The motion reads:
That this House support the government's will in its efforts to restore free trade agreement rules for lumber and inform the United States that it rejects any obstacle to that free trade process.
It is a pretty difficult proposition on which to argue.
The negotiations will be difficult as the U.S. congress and president are clearly captives of the lumber lobby. It is a powerful and well-financed lobby. To give members some perspective on the role of lobbyists in the U.S. system I will treat them to another vignette.
I had occasion to be in Chile representing Canada at a conference on tobacco reduction strategies. I along with the American senators were the only English speakers at the conference. As we are wont to do, politicians being politicians, we chatted. I asked the U.S. state senators why they did not run for congress. I asked them why they did not move up and run federally. Their response was, money. I asked what the problem was with money.
The problem is that to be a congressman in the United States one needs $1 million every two years. That means that a person would need to have $10,000 a week. It would mean that every Monday morning a congressman would need to find 10,000 bucks somewhere, and if he or she is from Montana, Idaho or one of the large lumber states, his or her $10,000 would most likely come from one of the lumber lobbies.
I began to understand, in my own little naive Canadian way, the intersection of money and politics in the U.S. On another occasion I could possibly reflect on how it is distorting democracy in our neighbour to the south. It certainly gave me a new perspective on how lobbies interact with congress in the U.S.
Canada is in tough here. The entire political machinery of the U.S. congress and the executive branches are lined up against Canada on this issue because they are captives of the lumber lobby.
The position taken by my separatist colleagues opposite would be laughable if it were not so pathetic. Quebec wants to go it alone with the Americans. Good luck to it. I am sure George Bush lies awake at night wondering what that wily Landry will think of next. If Canada has to muscle up, so to speak, just to get the Americans to deal in the area of WTO and NAFTA-like rules, what will poor little pathetic Quebec do to get its fair share?
Quebec wants it both ways, as if that were news. It wants to negotiate for itself but have an economic partnership with the rest of Canada. Of course if the economic partnership does not work in any particular sector then it will gas the economic partnership and go on its own.
I was in my riding, as you probably were, Madam Speaker, during our break week. Frankly, I got a pretty good earful from my constituents about transfers to Quebec. They were a little irritated with the gross up in equalization. That was immediately following the gratuitous insult concerning the chiffon rouge but before being told we have no real culture.
It is about time Mr. Landry looked at where his bread is buttered and realized that Quebec, in spite of its government, has prospered in Canada. It has done very well, thank you very much, under the softwood lumber agreement. It has increased its share from 20% to 25%.
It would be a novel idea if Mr. Landry paid a tad more attention to the model and business realities of a large provincial economy rather than hurling gratuitous insults at the rest of the country.
The real reason the lumber lobby is spending its money on lawyers and politicians is that the industry has not modernized. The American industry is in the dark ages. It has not modernized like Canadian mills and therefore it cannot compete with Canadian mills.
In summary, this is all about power. This is all about lumber power. This is about Canadians hanging together. If we do not hang together we will certainly hang separately.