Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for sharing his time with me on this extremely important topic.
The last Liberal member who spoke indicated his government's position on this issue. Undoubtedly those members are very much in favour of the resolution. He talked about transparency and continuous information which he feels the government has been giving. There is no doubt about the fact that the party opposite as well as a couple of other parties on this side of the House, along with ourselves, will be supporting the resolution.
If all of us think that the government has been doing such a wonderful job, why is it that the resolution was brought forth? We do have some concerns. Perhaps in its disillusionment the government has lost sight of the fact that what it thinks is clear, continuous and transparent is not clear, continuous and transparent to the public.
We just witnessed a very interesting weekend. People who watched the happenings in Quebec looked at them from two different points of view. Maybe I should say they looked at them from three different points of view.
One group looked at the deliberations that were under way among the leaders of the various democratic countries in the western hemisphere, realizing that if there is agreement in the next four to five years for free trade among all the countries all of us will benefit.
Our party is not one to decry free trade. We were the party that introduced free trade, as my colleague mentioned, much to the chagrin of the present governing party that opposed it to the point where it convinced the people of Canada to defeat the Tory government and pass the reigns of power over to it because it was against free trade.
However we all know and history will show what happened when the Liberals took over. It was the same as when they defeated the Clark government because they did not agree with the gas tax. They failed to say that they did not agree with the amount of tax placed on gas. When they got in power they tripled the amount the Tories had suggested. Consequently they again fooled the people but were in power.
It is irrelevant where they stood at the time. Right now they are supporting free trade and pushing for an agreement with more countries than we presently deal with. That is good for us and good for my province of Newfoundland. As the statistics quoted by my colleague show, we have benefited greatly from free trade.
We sometimes wonder if in pressing for free trade we overlook some of its implications. If we asked government or many of us in the House about free trade, we would say that it eliminates a lot of barriers and creates a better economy in many of the countries involved.
That is the aim of governments such as ours. The aim of politicians such as us is to try to create a better environment in which our people should live, a better environment economically but also a better environment socially, environmentally and in every other way.
Perhaps we dwell on the economic side too much because many of the people who are heavily involved in free trade are people who benefit directly, the large conglomerates, et cetera. There is nothing wrong with that because these are the people who invest and generate dollars that improve the economy generally.
It is government's role to make sure that the economic stimulations that occur from trade benefit the other sectors we talk about in society. In Canada we have done very well, even though there are pockets throughout the country that certainly need more assistance from a social perspective, our health care, education and social needs. This is not because our economy is such that we cannot address these needs. This is because the policies of the government opposite, the lack of foresight, and the lack of ability and will to address the social concerns allow these problems to exist in society.
In the countries that are less well off than we are, where we see great social needs, free trade hopefully will generate the fiscal capacity of many of these governments to address the problems that must be met. As they speak in the House these problems perhaps will be accentuated by members of the NDP who are against free trade because they think it is a negative toward helping people.
It is great to be idealistic socially. It is great to talk about all we have to do for our people, but to be able to do anything for our people we must have the fiscal ability to be able to do so. In order to spend money on health care, education and social problems, social needs, we must generate the dollars first. We must make before we spend unless we do like NDP does quite often, which is spend and then let someone else pick up the pieces afterward.
That is not the way we operate and certainly I have to say not the way the government is operating. If in their policies, if in their moves toward a free trade state in North America they would be open and transparent, all the players could be involved. We could pass along our ideas and suggestions for improvement to the government. They will be talking to the various sectors, not only the huge conglomerates, the multinational corporations, but to the average person in the country, many of whom have some tremendous ideas.
If that had happened prior to Quebec we would not have seen what we did. I said there were three different ways of looking at what happened in Quebec. One is the from the business perspective. Another is from the social perspective as the NDP and many other concerned groups across the country would look at it. I respect their right to have concerns. We also had people who just saw what nobody wanted to see: people throwing Molotov cocktails at police, throwing bricks, throwing chunks of pavement, acting disorderly, breaking windows, tearing shutters from windows and just making a nuisance of themselves.
These were far and few between but unfortunately these things make the headlines. These are the things people saw flashed around the world. Canada is known as a tremendous country where we live together in peace and harmony and show leadership. If I were outside the country looking at what we saw on television, I would be asking if this was Canada, this running from police and throwing rocks at police, et cetera. Let me say again for the record that I thought the police did a magnificent job over the weekend.
If the government had shown leadership in the beginning, had been transparent and awake enough to know that some local issues like softwood lumber and potatoes could be addressed at the conference if we had the right people there, it would not be running at the last minute to try to get the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food through security. It should have been taken care of. There was a lack of foresight and vision.
That is why we are asking that in the future everything it does be transparent and clear so that all of us will know what is going on. If all of us in the country knew what was going on, surely if it is good for the country it is good for the people and most of us would support it. We would not need to have a fence around our leader.
“Elect me so that you can fence me off because I am afraid of you”. There is something wrong with that picture. Leaders of this country or any country should be able to walk among the people they serve, and if the people knew what they stood for they would be able to do so.
My time is up. There is much more I would like to say but hopefully in the future we will have learned from the mistakes of the past.