Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for St. John's West.
To warm up I want to read into the record the opposition motion that we are debating today:
That the House of Commons express its regret and apologize for offensive and inappropriate statements made against the United States of America by certain Members of this House; that it reaffirm the United States to be Canada's closest friend and ally and hope that the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq is successful in removing Saddam Hussein's regime from power; and that the House urge the Government of Canada to assist the coalition in the reconstruction of Iraq.
We support that motion. I am glad it is before the House because some of the points that have been made and some of the language used by government members are uncalled for. They are undisciplined and very condescending and Canada will pay a price for that. In fact it is paying a price today in our relations with the United States of America.
We can disagree on what started this in terms of the war. We can disagree on the United Nations process and the Americans acting unilaterally, but at the end of the day, there is a way to express those feelings without resorting to the kind of language that some government members have used in the past number of weeks. They continue to do that because the Prime Minister allows them to do it.
If we look at the Prime Minister's record as a politician, the theme of anti-Americanism runs consistently throughout his career. I have many examples, Mr. Speaker, some of which you have been privy to, some of which you have experienced yourself. I want to go through some of them.
It goes back partly to when the Progressive Conservatives formed the government in 1984. One of the first things they wanted to do was to abolish the Foreign Investment Review Agency, FIRA. That was shortly before your time in the House, Mr. Speaker. The Liberals raged against that. Their position was not founded on reason, principle or fact in any way. It was simply an attack on America, because the Foreign Investment Review Agency had been set up by Prime Minister Trudeau specifically to keep American investment out of Canada. That was what it was set up to do. One could argue that it had an impact on European nations and Asian nations as well, but it clearly targeted the United States. We paid a big price for that in terms of lost investment and opportunity in Canada.
That was the start. The present Prime Minister encouraged that type of rhetoric, that type of debate in terms of the Liberal opposition to that initiative taken. It carried into the free trade debate and the 1988 election, the election which saw me enter the House of Commons as well as yourself, Mr. Speaker.
I know some of these remarks may be painful for you, Mr. Speaker, but I want to remind you and the listening public that again the Liberals at the time took a very undisciplined approach to that initiative. The language was very condescending. Their position had very little to do with reason, fact or principle. They were just raging against an agreement which they considered un-Canadian. The anti-American sentiments that came out of that election, I believe, took a heavy toll on the Liberal Party. Some Liberals survived.
However the fact is that the Canadian public sometimes sees through that smokescreen, that veil of protectionism. When we came back to the House of Commons following that election, and again the Liberal Party took a particular position on it, one of the things we attempted to do immediately was to join the Organization of American States.
That organization includes not only the United States but just about all the South American countries as well, including Mexico. It is a bilateral group which is there to promote economic and political stability within this hemisphere.
The language coming from the Liberals at that time again was totally anti-American. It had nothing to do with reason, fact or principle. It was simply anti-American. The litany of the sense of what the Liberal Party was all about came to the floor of the House of Commons day after day. It was nothing really to do with fact or reason.
When it came to the gulf war in 1990-91, I can remember, the former prime minister of Canada, John Turner, standing in his place in the House supporting the United Nations initiative to take action in the gulf. When he spoke in the House of Commons in support of the Conservative government's position, every single member of the Liberal Party left the chamber. He was standing alone, a former prime minister of Canada, because he was the only one in the Liberal Party at that time who had enough backbone to stand up and support what the rest of the world was doing through the United Nations in the gulf.
The enemy was the same enemy, Saddam Hussein, who had invaded Kuwait after having invaded Iran.
The Liberals' position was totally based on that familiar theme of anti-Americanism. Public opinion turned on the issue. Eventually the public got behind that. They could see that this guy by the name of Saddam Hussein, this monster, had to be dealt with. When the public got behind the issue, eventually the Liberal Party got behind it. The present Prime Minister, then the leader of the opposition, stood in his place in the House and completely changed his position but with a qualifier. He said that they would support sending troops to the gulf but if hostilities or war broke out, they would leave. He has not changed and neither has the Liberal Party.
One article I was reading the other day pointed to an open mike at a NATO summit that the Prime Minister was attending in Brussels in 1997. He did not know the mike was turned on and he said of his foreign policy that it was not to do what the Americans do but if one railed against the Americans one would be successful as the prime minister of Canada.
We paid a big price for that. Individual members of Parliament now have to take it upon themselves to resolve problems that normally would be resolved by the Government of Canada if we had a strong relationship between our government and the government in Washington, which we do not have. I can speak of circumstances in my own riding. I have to work directly with American senators and congressmen to resolve border issues simply because there is no goodwill in Washington and Ottawa. We cannot rely on that goodwill to resolve problems.
When the phone rings in Washington today and if the call is coming from a cabinet minister or anyone remotely connected with the Liberal government, they simply do not answer the phone or do not return the call. What they are telling us, and it is coming from businessmen all across the country, is we are going to pay a price for this in terms of investment and opportunity.
There are many examples today where we have started to pay that price. There are contracts in the aerospace industries that are just not happening because they do not want to do business with us. Tourism is going to suffer.
We must put an end to those remarks. The Prime Minister should have condemned those types of remarks to make it perfectly clear to Washington, Ottawa, and Canadians that they are not acceptable.