Mr. Speaker, it has been interesting to sit and listen to the comments on this topic. One would think, from listening to people and from what we often hear on television, that globalization is an evil thing that will destroy our world, create poverty in every nation, destroy our health system, and it goes on and on.
We cannot return to the isolation and we cannot return to the trade barriers. The world is not geared for that today. I am not just talking about trade. When I walked into the lounge yesterday I saw our Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food speaking to us live from Lethbridge, Alberta. I came into the House last night for the votes and they were before us.
Not only has globalization increased in every field, but we live in a world where globalization is part of us and we will never return because of what we have attained over the last 50 years. I remember as a young person saying that one can take a pole and stick it in the wheels of a buggy to try to slow it down but it will never stop because we continue to move ahead.
In moving ahead, we see all kinds of imperfections. We see all kinds of things that go wrong. If we go back a century ago, the Wright brothers had some real problems. They did not fly very high, but in 100 years, Mr. Speaker, look what we have done in that field. Through that, we have a society that is a truly globalized society.
When I was a boy and my MP returned home from Ottawa, it was three days travel on the train. Today it takes a few hours. No one would want to go back to those conditions.
I walked into the General Motors dealer the other day, not to buy a new car but to look at some new models that had been perfected in an agreement with General Motors and were now being made in Korea. The ideas of joint ownership, joint manufacturing and sharing joint information is part of this new globalization. Heaven forbid if we were to ever put up barriers to stop the free flow of ideas, inventions and so on.
I am presently involved in a bit of a misunderstanding that has been brought to my attention by Rotary International, which has a yearly exchange of young entrepreneurs. These people, who are professionals in business, have exchanges with rotary clubs here in Canada. It is a wonderful experience. It has been going on for over 25 years and we would not want to stop it.
We often hear things about globalization and how it will ruin our society. Well, very few people will go home tonight and not turn on the TV. When one thinks of what we are able to do now and how quickly information can spread across countries and between our neighbours, we would not dare go back. The world in which we now live is a global world, not just because of trade but because of communication, language and telecommunication. It is a world of trade in areas other than just the things we manufacture.
We will never have a perfect trade system. We never had it in the past and we will never have it in the future. One of the things that I, as a western Canadian, constantly face are the barriers put up by countries in the way of subsidies. Those are the things that hurt our province badly. We have lived with that and have suffered because of it but it has only been recently that our standard of living has gone down because of it.
Before World War II, the United States declared itself self-sufficient; that it would live within itself. That was a disaster. Regardless of how small a nation is or what continent a nation is on, no nation in today's world can live as an island to itself. I have great fears when I hear people say that we must restrict this or that because Canada is a world trading nation. To have any nation, including our nation, move into a position where that trade would be restricted would be extremely dangerous.
Some people say that globalization will ruin our culture. At the same time, the same people say that the importation of people into Canada makes it a multinational and that we are enriched by that, but yet when it comes to trade, it is somehow an evil effect.
In Canada, we often hear that on CBC and we often hear that coming from the rulings of the CRTC. I am not too sure that in this world of communications that we have today that globalization would really protect us very much. Those countries that have isolated themselves and have thrown trade barriers around themselves will eventually involve themselves in civil wars of all kinds. Isolation today simply will not work.
We have world patents in medicine. North America and Europe have been able to supply to the world, through globalization, many of the medicines that help stem epidemics.
The bill does not and did not intend to address the difficulties we as a nation have with the world trading organization. We are often hurt very badly by the slowness in settling disputes. We also have a lumber industry in Saskatchewan and we, too, were hurt by the United States on the softwood lumber agreement.
I think most Canadians would agree that the number one danger of these trade agreements is that the problem takes too long to resolve. I know the bill does not deal with that in particular, but we need to take some time at a later time to see what we can do to bring disputes to fruition and to an end so that nobody gets hurt for any long period of time.
Some day I would like to see a world where everything trades as freely as possible. I would like to see a lot of the barriers lifted. I do not think the living standards around the world would be hindered in any way if we were to extend free trade, lift the barriers and the taxations and so on which prevent the goods flowing back and forth.
We will support the bill. We think it is a good bill. I do not particularly like the differences in labelling certain countries. I do not think that will serve as too much value if you want to look down the road in 10 years, and we do need to look at trading and sharing our information and accepting their information. My colleague from North Vancouver did a magnificent job in explaining that world trade and sharing these ideas is bound to follow the trade, as it does in transportation, as it does in communication and so on.
We are not totally satisfied with the bill. I personally have some disagreements with it, but the bill is a good bill in principle and my party will be supporting it.