Mr. Chair, I cannot relate this to jobs, but we could do the math. Two billion dollars would be the cost to the tourism industry the first year of implementation. If we do the math, it is simply thousands of jobs lost if this initiative continues on the path that we think it is going, unless the Government of Canada can stand up and help us change the minds of the Americans.
We have all mentioned the convention business and so on, but one of the things I want to mention is that this country of ours is pretty complicated. It is a big country and the border situations that will be faced by individual provinces and individual members of Parliament are pretty unique. We all have our own personal examples.
One example I want to use of how it will have an impact on the people that we represent is the area of Campobello Island. Campobello Island is in the Bay of Fundy and can only be accessed by travelling through mainland United States.
I think I am correct in claiming that I am the only member of Parliament who has to travel through a foreign land to get to part of his riding, which is Campobello Island. It is about an hour and a half by road to get to Campobello Island. It is connected by bridge to mainland United States. We could get there by boat but it is mostly impracticable for most of the year. We have done it, but most of the time we rely, as every citizen would, on going into mainland United States. It would mean that every citizen on that island would require a passport to go for basic necessities like gasoline. There are no gasoline stations on that island. There is no hospital on that island. For most of the drugs and medical services the people have to go to the mainland.
The situation could arise where in the middle of night a 95-year-old woman who is deathly sick in the nursing home on Campobello Island had to go to the hospital in Machias, Maine. How would she get across the border without a passport if this is implemented? How many 95-year-old citizens have passports?
Another example would be school teens. Campobello Island takes great pride in its basketball teams. Great basketball players have gone through the system on Campobello Island. If a basketball team is travelling to some other school in Canada, every one of those students, all the players and the coaches, including the bus driver, would need a passport to get off of the island to go through mainland United States to get to some other part of Canada and back home.
This has not been thought through. That is why the Prime Minister of Canada has to stand up and be heard on this issue, and heard very strongly.
Here is another example. If American citizens left the United States and got into Canada without a passport, how would they get back home? They would be refugees in Canada, Americans unable to get back into their home states. This is something that American senators and congressmen actually talk about. Think about it. One of the most prominent senators in the United States, Hillary Clinton, the wife of a former president and who I think wants to be president herself, admits that this kind of slipped by them. In fact, most of the senators and congressmen who actually voted for this legislation now openly admit that they made a huge mistake.
I think it is up to us to point out to the Americans that this has to be fixed. Canada is important to the Americans. It is time that the Prime Minister understood that. It is time that he went down to Washington immediately and talked with those parliamentarians, with those senators and congressmen in the United States. I used the term “parliamentarians”, but obviously it is a congressional system, a presidential government.
However, the truth is that the Prime Minister has to take this seriously. We have seven more days before the comment period actually expires. We had better make our case as strongly and forcibly as we can to the United States of America and be strong enough to stand up and say that this will not work, and to please reconsider it. We should provide some suggestions to see if we can do it together and make our economies work.