Mr. Chair, I am happy to speak on this subject, but I am not happy about the circumstances we find ourselves in here today, especially late in the day. Canadians have until October 31 to make submissions, whether it be business, members of Parliament or provincial legislatures. We find this very difficult to accept.
I do have a lot of respect, and I say this at the outset, for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and also the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. However, I have difficulty with the government's position on this and the fact that we have several agencies that are involved in this, yet we have a small contingency of Liberals here tonight.
I want to begin by putting some of this into context. We have seen a trampling of Canadian rights in terms of our relationship with the United States. We have to put this into perspective. We have not been standing up for ourselves since 9/11. We have not been standing up for our country and specifically for the northern border between Canada and the United States versus what has been happening on the southern border between Mexico and the United States.
Quite literally, we have allowed the Americans push both of those borders into the same category. That is why we find ourselves in the position we are in today. It is because many people in the United States view their northern border in the same way as their southern border.
The most recent example of that is the fact that we are going to have minutemen patrols, with their vigilante and citizen groups, patrolling the borders between northern states and Canadian provinces. They are doing this because they believe there is insufficient security there.
This has also been compounded when the government did very little to raise these issues in the NSEER program at the time. The NSEER program categorized Canadian citizenship. For example, if individuals were Pakistani nationals in the past and now were Canadian citizens, they were fingerprinted and photographed at the border. To this date I have Canadian citizens who used to be Pakistani nationals that cannot get scrubbed of the U.S. visa program. It is a serious problem that we have not yet addressed. It is one of the things that we do not stand up for is the fact that a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. Hence, we now have a system where we have a passport requirement for this nation that will be a drag on our economic development.
This problem has been raised before. I raised this problem on April 11, 2005 at the industry committee. It is very important to note this because at that time we had Ms. Michele MacKenzie in front of us from the Canadian Tourism Commission. I asked her specifically about this issue. I said:
This is the biggest threat to tourism we have right now. If a family of four consisting of two American adults and two American children come to Canada, it's going to cost them an additional $350. That's if they're willing to actually get in their car and go down to the processing office.
The answer I received from Ms. MacKenzie at that time was:
The research we're pursuing right now on the passport issue is going to cost us in the vicinity of $50,000. That's a specific piece of research. We are not budgeting for the passport issue per se. We're a marketing organization. We will use that information to help us market more effectively, given the concerns we have around this issue.
I responded to that by saying:
We have a growing trade deficit in tourism with the United States, our most important market, and we have $50,000 to deal with the most important issue facing tourism.
What was happening at that time with the Canadian Tourism Commission was that it was worried about spending $17 million of taxpayers' money to move from Ottawa to Vancouver, as opposed to the biggest economic threat that we faced in tourism in recent history and probably the country's history.
To put this in perspective, when we finally got the board to respond, it did spend approximately $150,000 to $200,000 to do an extensive study that was done and then hidden from the general public. It was not posted until July on the Internet website. It had the impacts and effects of significant magnitude to our tourism industry. Members can go to the tourism website and read it.
We are looking at a loss of revenue of $1.756 billion in Canada over three years and a $785 million loss in Canadian revenue in the United States. I want to break it down because this is not only an Ontario issue or a Quebec issue. This is a national issue that is very significant.
The projected loss of business alone in those three years from Atlantic Canada was $135 million; Quebec, $223 million; Ontario, $859 million; Manitoba, $33 million; Saskatchewan, $18 million; Alberta, $86 million and British Columbia, $403 million.
It is important to note that the hotel association which represents $12.6 billion of investment in terms of tourism in Canada has been expressing this concern. We want to talk about solutions. I would like to thank Rob Evans of our Holiday Inn Select who has been very active on the border issue in Windsor for many years, as well as this file. In his final summary he came up with a recommendation that states:
In the estimation of the Hotel Association of Canada we believe this initiative cannot be completed or implemented by January 1, 2008. Accordingly, we believe implementation must be delayed.
People have been speaking out about this and I would follow it up by ensuring we note that some of them have been Canadians. Once this was in the press, the U.S. ambassador, Frank McKenna, said, “many Americans will stop travelling to Canada if new U.S. entry laws make it too much of a hassle to get back home”.
He went on to say:
—Canada would lose out on a lot of casual, cross-border traffic in the form of impulse tourists who cross just to catch a hockey game or do some shopping.
It's a very real fear that will have significant implications for our economy.
Why have we not heard the same type of statement by our Prime Minister? Why have we not heard the Prime Minister demand a course of action? I do not find this acceptable from the government's position.
Furthermore, we had other people speak out about the issue. I would point to the Mohawk Nation. Chief Ransom said:
Most of our Tribal members will not be able to afford a passport and many do not believe they should have to even apply for one. For our Tribe, it will result in tremendous economic losses that will devastate our community with no benefit to us.
Quebec Premier Jean Charest said:
It would be a further impediment to travel and trade. The border must be part of the solution to enhance international trade, not a problem.
Manitoba Premier Gary Doer, along with North Dakota Governor John Hoeven, said that it would “affect tourism and trade”. Doer estimates the change could cost Manitoba's tourism industry $33 million every year.
I think it is important to note that I asked a question in the House of Commons about the fact that Hillary Clinton and New York Governor George Pataki held a joint press conference. We are talking about a Democratic and Republican initiative to speak about this initiative. Why is it that their voices, American elected officials, are carrying the day for Canadian issues that affect us so dearly? That is not acceptable, especially given that at that time the Prime Minister was in New York and could have said something. He should have made a point. We should not be sitting floundering here tonight deciding what we will do about it. We should have had that leadership long ago.
We have had many different people speak out against this U.S. initiative. I pointed earlier to the northern border caucus and I would point out that we have been doing some work with them in terms of our border caucus on the Canadian side.
Many people are interested in finding a resolution to this. I think the solution is to stop this initiative and call for its delay immediately because it is not only in the best interest of Canadians, it is also in the interest of Americans. Why is it so difficult for us to say that is the case?
If we look at the fact that the implementation of passports is done under the guise of national security, I would suggest that it is a ruse. The fact is that it was passports that allowed the 9/11 terrorists into the United States to begin with. This is not a solution for us.
It is very difficult to understand. If we have continual economic damage on our border because we are not investing in the infrastructure, in the staffing and in the necessary means to get past this, we will watch our economies erode significantly in the northern hemisphere. That would render us vulnerable to security issues as we will not be able to afford to do the things necessary to ensure we are safe.
Another issue that is important to note is in terms of the government's attitude. I do not know what its thoughts are in terms of the Canadian Tourism Commission but what it essentially is saying to all the border communities is that they are hung out to dry.
One of the things we noted in the committee was that they were looking at the effects of, for example, the convention business. Vancouver, Montreal and other spots like that would have difficulty procuring conventions. The additional costs that delegates from abroad would have to incur to get over to Canada would be a factor, but the reality is that on our border communities we will lose not only an economy but a culture, where we have brothers, sisters, friends, relatives, business acquaintances and many Canadians who actually go over to work in the United States. All of those relationships will be impeded.
We will change significantly the dynamics between our two nations. We will find a distancing that will be very harmful in the way that we operate domestically in the world, which is why it is important for the government to get out in front now and say that enough is enough, that it has to end and that it is not in the best interests of either of us.