Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Canadian Alliance it is an honour for me to speak to this issue about two great Canadians, a French Canadian and an English Canadian. What better time than right now to talk about this in the difficult times we are all faced with today.
These two men, Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, were unifiers and builders. They were individuals who saw Canada as a whole, Canada as a nation, Canada as one nation indivisible, a country for all people, embracing the diversity we have; they were individuals who embraced this diversity not as a weakness but as a strength. That is what Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier would have done then and that is what they would have said today.
These two gentlemen would be rolling over in their graves if they could see what has happened to the unification of our country, if they could see how our federal-provincial relations have been weakened, if they could see how the threads, actually steel, that bind us together have been chopped up and put down in order to support smaller and more parochial interests. These men would not tolerate this. They would say how, in this big country, do we embrace what is strong in our country and how do we actually try to improve and build bridges among all Canadians?
They would abhor the fact that in our country language has been used as a political tool rather than as a unifier. Language, an agent of communication and unification, has been used as a political tool to turn one Canadian against another. What a tragedy it is in a country like ours that is fortunate enough to embrace two great languages, English and French, that these languages have been used as a political tool to turn Canadian against Canadian. Both these gentlemen would find this utterly abhorrent.
They would also find it sad to see that federal-provincial relations have come to a stage when provinces are looking to the federal government as to what they can take and individual responsibilities have been blurred and marred so that Canadians are not getting the best bang for their buck, so that political institutions cannot work as effectively as they should.
What Macdonald and Laurier would want to do, perhaps, is ensure that the federal and provincial governments each do what they are able to do best, that responsibilities are well delineated and that we are able to ensure that Canadians are able to get the services they need when they need them in the most effective way possible and that national standards are adhered to. A Canadian who lives in British Columbia or a Canadian who lives in Quebec or one who lives in Newfoundland should be able to receive pretty much the same types of services.
Unfortunately, with the balkanization of critical services in health care and education we do not see that any more. We see dramatic differences across the country. Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier would both want to change that. They would both want to find ways to get some equivalency across Canada today.
They would also see in the country we have today that sometimes we focus on what Michael Ignatieff calls “the narcissism of the minor differences”, where we tend to focus on the small things that divide us rather than the great things that unify us. If the tragedy of September 11 has told us one thing it is that we as a country are one nation regardless of where we live, and that the problems we have within our own borders pale in comparison to the international challenges we have. September 11 has shown us that we live in a global environment with global challenges, where our economy is intimately entwined with the economies of countries around the world, where our individual security is intimately entwined with the security of our neighbours and our allies.
This makes it even more important that as a country we broaden our horizons to see that we have to participate in the global economy perhaps better than we have. Canada has to look to ways to improve our economic competitiveness, not by looking within our own borders but by saying that we will compete internationally. We need to break down the barriers to trade that exist within our country and abroad. We need to lower our tax structure to make us more competitive. We need to improve our education system because we know that a child being educated in Canada today, perhaps in Ottawa, is competing not only with the child in Toronto but with children who live in Tokyo, Beijing, Delhi and Cape Town.
As individuals here, we are competing on a global playing field. The tragedy of September 11 also indicated that our individual security was entwined with our allies.
Unfortunately, over the last eight years our defence forces have been gutted. Our ground and troop component is less than 55,000 people, when it was 90,000. From a navy perspective, we only have one frigate that is functional.
Again, from the army perspective the minimum requirement for an international endeavour, such as what we will be asked, is a brigade. A brigade is made up of 5,000 men and women. We have not functioned with 5,000 personnel in over nine years. How are we expected to function? Furthermore, our defence department said that for us to transfer 5,000 people it would take more than three months, and we could not sustain that number for more than six months in the field.
Our airlift capabilities are almost non-existent. As a colonel in the military recently said, it is “a near catastrophe”. Therefore, we cannot transport them without our voting to rent planes from our allies.
Our CF-18 fighters, one of the most potent weapons we have, is in dire straits right now because we have less than 24 of our 120 that could put into the field. There are questions about whether or not those fighters could actually integrate with the Americans fighters because some of the systems on board are obsolete.
We have superb men and women in our military, men and women who are willing to work hard to ensure that our security will be protected. Yet they have not been given the tools to do the job. They will again be asked to go perhaps to a foreign land to lay their lives down to protect our citizens as well as the citizens of our allies.
The war on terrorism will be an international war to root out those individuals who would rather blow up the negotiating table than sit at it. Unfortunately, negotiations for those individuals are over.
Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier would have ensured that our military had the tools to do the job and that we would be able to meet our commitments, commitments our country made in 1994. Our white paper in 1994 made a whole series of commitments, almost none of which we can meet at this point in time.
Unfortunately, it took a catastrophe to draw our focus toward this, but I am hopeful. We will offer the government constructive suggestions to improve the security of our country, both domestically and internationally.
In closing, the bill is a good bill. These two gentlemen, our former prime ministers, French and English, are true Canadian heroes. We do not do enough to uphold these individuals who were outstanding individuals and Canadians, individuals who tried to build our country.
As legislators today, as we sit here with this great responsibility, we can look back to the past and learn a number of things that will allow us to do our jobs better and more effectively for all Canadians.