Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie for his most relevant question.
I would like to cite a few figures here. He was saying that trade is intensifying. One of the indicators of that fact is that Canadian exports, as a percentage of everything we produce, are increasing phenomenally from decade to decade. In 1971, for example, 18.2% of what we produced was exported from Canada, Quebec included. In 1980, the figure rose to 24.6%. So nearly a quarter of Canadian production was exported. At the moment it is 38%, that is, almost 40%. The figure for Quebec is even higher.
Indeed, we can no longer separate from our production processes our responsibilities for human rights, union rights, environmental rights, social rights and cultural rights. Since 40% of everything we produce goes abroad, we must keep in mind that this is production on a planetary scale.
Unfortunately, yesterday we were reminded that this reality is quickly catching up to us. The closure of the Wal-Mart in Jonquière fools no one. It is an anti-labour move, which we are obliged to denounce here. However, if we have no action outside Canada and Quebec to denounce anti-labour activities, we shall find ourselves isolated. In any case, within North America Quebec is already fairly isolated in this regard. This Wal-Mart incident is going to be a common occurrence here, just as this sort of thing happens every day in Mexico, Honduras and pretty much all over the world.
I completely agree with the hon. member that the division of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade into two entities will weaken Canada's capacity—even though, at the moment, that capacity below what is expected of Canada—to establish a trade policy that serves foreign policy, and what the hon. members across the way like to call the promotion of Canadian values.
In that sense, this division is politically harmful to Canada, and indirectly, to Quebec. What is more, it is economically harmful, because the current foreign affairs function plays an important role in promoting our export interests. This is true for Canada, but also for Quebec. As a result, everyone will lose. The only winner in this situation will be an economist vision of globalization that jettisons everything to do with the environment, culture, social rights and union rights.
In closing, I would add that the civil society groups very rightly defending these causes will find themselves shunted back and forth between the department of Foreign Affairs, which will say that Canada's trade policy and international economic relations are the responsibility of International Trade, which in turn will say it deals with international trade only, and so matters to do with the big international conventions are the business of Foreign Affairs. Thus these groups will find themselves in no man's land with even less of an audience. They will no longer be able to put pressure on this government, which is already extremely weak in terms of its planetary social responsibilities. Such pressure will be even less significant, and we shall see drift, something that has already begun with this decision by the Prime Minister.