Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate this morning for a variety of reasons. The first point I want to make, and the one that concerns me the most in some respects, is the haste with which the government has brought the bill forward and wants to move it through the House.
The government regards it simply as a housekeeping bill, something that can be dealt with in a morning and then we should move on to something else, and Lord knows what it might be, but something that would be equally important or maybe just something else to fill time in this place because the agenda is not stacked up very well here.
What did the bill have to be brought forward at this time? The obvious reason is that time is running out for the tariff agreement. However, why the bill had to be brought forward in this manner I find disturbing. I think that underlying the haste of the bill is concern about Canada's ability to continue to compete in the world economy.
My friend from the NDP who just spoke raised some interesting issues about labour standards. I think we are all concerned about the exploitation of labour in third world countries. It is not a very pretty sight. To a large extent, it includes the exploitation of children, the most vulnerable in our society, and women. That is something that hopefully in this country we have moved beyond. We still have a place to go to ensure that labour standards are up to what we would expect. Nevertheless, these issues seem not to be addressed.
I do not mean to move off the concern about labour standards too quickly because, as I say, it is an important issue, but there is another underlying issue that has to be of some concern. Someone mentioned the tariffs on materials and products that are no longer produced in this country, which has to be a bit of a joke. What are we protecting? If we are not producing a particular material, why is that? Maybe there is a bigger question behind it. If we were producing that particular product, why are we no longer producing it?
There is an interesting parallel to denim. About a decade ago Canada took the tariff off the importation of wool and cloth for men's suits. For some reason, and I am not really privy to all of the reasons, the manufacture of men's suits now flourishes in Canada to the point where Americans come here to buy suits produced in Canada from materials produced here. There are some happenings in the manufacturing world which may on the surface appear beyond explanation, but I think there are some rationales behind it.
Perhaps in this instance there have been some initiatives by industry to produce materials in a way which is more cost effective. There has been an investment in capital so that the industry is allowed to flourish.
As I have said, the bill wants to continue with the tariffs that are already in place for another 10 years without any investigation of the impact they may have on Canadians or whether these kinds of laws even assist Canadian business or are a detraction from it.
I become disturbed when I look at the issue of tariffs and the government's concern about the competitiveness of Canadian industry. It would seem that for the last number of years, certainly while the Prime Minister was the finance minister, a great deal of Canada's competitiveness in the world marketplace was as a result of a Canadian dollar that just kept spiralling lower and lower.
I am sure everyone would agree that simply having a weak dollar as the bulwark of our manufacturing industries is not a recipe for long term manufacturing success but that seemed to satisfy the government. The government did not seem too concerned that somehow or another the best interests of Canadians were being undermined by that low dollar. We were certainly paying higher prices for the goods we imported from elsewhere because of our low dollar, but it was felt the trade off of being able to export cheaper was good enough. The problem behind all that, of course, was that businesses started to rely on the low Canadian dollar and investment in the means of production declined. Canadians, in real terms, lost their competitive edge on the world market.
It seems to me that is the issue here. We have great concerns about Canadians' competitiveness in the world market. I chose to speak to the bill this morning because government does not seem to be addressing that concern. By attempting to move the bill through the House quickly, the government is showing a complete disregard for these very real concerns that we have.
I would like to give some examples of why I am concerned.