Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to the special debate on the upcoming summit of the Americas. I think we all agree that it is an honour for Canada to be hosting this summit. I hope it will prove to be a milestone in the creation of a new free trade area of the Americas. The Canadian Alliance has consistently championed free trade as being in the best interests of Canadians and others.
It is well known that the Liberals once opposed a Canada-U.S. free trade agreement and NAFTA. They promised that once they were in government they would abrogate those agreements. We are happy they did not follow through with that commitment.
However, even Liberals can learn from their mistakes. Just a few weeks ago the Minister of Industry, in Davos, apologized to former Prime Minister Mulroney and acknowledged that he was right about free trade and they were wrong. We appreciate that acknowledgement. They should acknowledge that because in 1989 two way Canada-U.S. trade was $235 billion and by 1999 it had grown to $626 billion, an increase of more than 150% in 10 years.
I will be sharing my time, Mr. Speaker, with the member for Medicine Hat.
Far from damaging any of our identity or sovereignty, free trade helped to establish rules and procedures to clarify our trading relationship with the U.S. We would benefit from a similar approach with the rest of Latin America. Now we can build on the success of free trade and NAFTA to deepen and improve these relations with the rest of the hemisphere.
The FTAA would provide the mechanism to begin to extend some of our prosperity and the opportunity for prosperity to other countries. Therefore, we welcome these negotiations on the FTAA.
While the Liberals have learned to mouth the rhetoric of free trade, the reality is they cling to protectionism in their hearts. Some of the actions taken by the Liberals in recent months may threaten the prospect of negotiating a successful FTAA.
Chapter 11 of NAFTA, the foreign investment provisions, give protection to Canadian businesses abroad and also to foreign businesses in Canada. Under NAFTA, from 1998-99 U.S. investment in Canada increased by $15 billion to $168 billion, while Canadian investment in the U.S. jumped by $10 billion to $120 billion. Both countries have seen large increases in foreign investment and in both directions.
Most countries in the Americas actually feel that foreign investment provisions similar to those in NAFTA would be to the mutual benefit of all countries. We believe that. However, the Government of Canada appears to be leading the charge to undermine those foreign investment rules. We should not fear including chapter 11 in the FTAA when its inclusion in NAFTA has brought benefits to Canada and the United States alike in a reciprocal way.
The Minister for International Trade, who appears at times to be unsatisfied with the decisions of NAFTA tribunals in a few selective cases, has called for new side deals. Those side deals would amend the meaning of the NAFTA chapter 11 provisions. The official opposition is concerned that retrograde stand will limit free trade and deny protection for Canadian businesses operating elsewhere in the Americas, and perhaps prevent the 34 countries of the Americas from reaching a broader trade agreement. That is our concern
Another concern we have with the government's trade policy is the centralist, father Ottawa knows best approach that the federal government takes toward consultation with the provinces.
First the provinces expect the Liberal government to include them in the context of the negotiations on the free trade area of the Americas.
Contrary to the federal government of the day and its openness when the free trade agreement was negotiated with the United States some fifteen years ago, and then NAFTA after it, the Liberal government is refusing to put a formal mechanism in place for co-operation with the provinces in matters involving their participation in negotiations with other governments.
Without questioning the federal government's foreign policy jurisdiction, there is a way to have the provinces participate fully in the negotiation of international agreements and to extend the provinces' constitutional jurisdiction to the international scene.
Australia should serve as an example. In recent years, it has reviewed the international treaty and agreement negotiation process. This exercise has resulted in significant reform in order to include each of the states in the process, including through the establishment of a council of treaties comprising the Prime Minister and the provincial premiers as well, along with a representation of the provincial officials on the standing committee on treaties. With a little imagination and a lot of goodwill, a consensus may be found in which all Canadians win.
Quebec, for example, has been at the forefront in having the provinces participate in international forums and organizations. This theory is known as the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine, following interventions by Paul Gérin-Lajoie, a former minister of education under Jean Lesage.
Unfortunately, Ottawa's stubbornness is what catches the eye, when we should all be busy developing a strong position in support of Quebec and all the provinces in the perspective of the free trade area of the Americas.
I know there are many other citizens, especially young Canadians, who have fears about the consequences of the FTAA and other global trade deals. I know many young people are planning to protest in the streets of Quebec during the summer. I respect the protesters' right to free speech, the right to disagree and even at times to loudly disagree. That is one of the privileges we have living in a democracy. However, I hope the government will ensure that there is law and order in the streets of Quebec and that the summit itself is not disrupted. I also hope that in doing that the government will be fair toward legitimate protesters and not attempt to use police authority to prevent political embarrassment as it appeared to have done in Vancouver during the APEC summit. We hope that can be avoided.
What concerns me most about the prospect of wide scale protest in Quebec City is that it shows that perhaps we as leaders in democratic societies have in some ways failed some of our young people. We have not been able to demonstrate to at least some of these members of the next generation that democracy, freedom of trade and freedom of markets are not just about making money for multinational corporations, but also ensuring individual freedom and holding out hope for the future.
The free market system allows a university student sitting in a college dorm to dream up a computer program that will make IBM or Microsoft tremble, and says that the law will protect these innovators against large monopolies that might try to intimidate them out of business. International trade agreements protect the intellectual property rights of entrepreneurs against companies and governments that would profit from their ideas.
In trying to expand free trade, whether in the Americas or globally, we are trying to broaden the circle of productivity and exchange so that the same right to create and innovate which we uphold for our citizens will be extended to citizens of the less developed world as well.
We want the property and the commercial rights that are enjoyed by a computer science student in St. John's or a small business person in Burlington to be extended to the citizens of Santiago, San Salvador and Bogota as well. We have to demonstrate to our young people that free trade, free markets and democracy are not about favouring the rich but that it is a noble, principled cause that enables the poor to enjoy opportunity and experience progress, prosperity and peace.
Last year when the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank held meetings in Prague and the Czech Republic there were protests, as there have been in other global trade and finance meetings. It was striking that most of the protesters were from western Europe and the United States. The majority were not the local Czech students. However these young people were not complacent. Hundreds of thousands of them crowded in Wenceslas Square in 1989 during the so-called velvet revolution and forced out the communist dictatorship that had ruled the country with an iron fist since the Dubcek reforms were crushed in 1968. Those young people of the Vaclav Havel generation had lived under a government that had denied free trade, free markets and free speech. The young people of Prague saw the alternative and they knew what the democratic west had to offer was a better and more principled alternative.
We as politicians and business leaders in the democratic developed countries have to learn to make not only an economic case or an intellectual case for free trade and free markets, but in fact a moral case as well that upholds the virtue of freedom. We have to show our youth that a democratic form of freedom of enterprise respects individuals, respects their individual potential and respects their freedom to grow, to achieve and to become all that they were providentially intended to be. That is why we support these initiatives and that is why we will continue to stand for these principles.