Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to follow my learned friend and colleague from Edmonton--Leduc on this issue which has been brought to our attention today by the Bloc Québécois in its motion.
My friend is absolutely correct. There is no leadership from the government. It always waits until there is a crisis and then wrings it hands and asks what to do. It seems to think that providing a bit of money will solve things. There is no plan. There is no vision from the government with respect to where it wants to go. There is no vision with respect to how it is going to develop jobs in Canada. There is no vision as to how it is going to make Canada the great country it was back in the 1950s and the 1960s when there was a real industrial policy to create jobs.
We are now in a global environment. One thing this country has is some education but not enough in order for us to compete, survive and prosper in this complex and difficult world we live in.
High technology, research and development and so on are the ways of the future and Canada could be the leader, but the government has no vision in this area. When we turn around to see how traditional industries are doing in this country, the government is hoping that things will work out well. Things have not been working too well in the textile and apparel industry in Quebec. Looking at it closely, we see that in many ways the government is the architect of these problems.
Let us take a look at the free trade agreement that the government has signed. I am the first to say that we should be supporting the less developed countries. Unfortunately, when I look at less developed countries I find that corruption is everywhere and is endemic. In these countries the problem is not jobs or education. The problem is that the leadership in those countries are helping themselves to all the cash. Less developed countries are poor and impoverished because they have been made that way by their leadership.
We have an obligation to help those countries, but not to the point where we hurt ourselves. Let us look at the trade agreements that we have signed with less developed countries.
We allow the countries to import materials so they can put people, children too, to work in sweat factories, so that the countries can ship that material and clothing back to our country and compete with workers in Canada.
When trying to build the economies of lesser developed countries we must start with agriculture, which is where every economy starts. Many of these countries are in areas where they can grow more than one crop in a year, but the leadership says, “We are not interested in agriculture. We just want your aid money to flow in our direction so we can put it in our pockets. We will build a few mills along the way and we will put our children to work. In that way not only will we take your money, but we will steal your jobs at the same time”. That is not the way to build fair and free trade.
These countries are allowed to take 75% of the content of the stuff that they make, which is imported from somewhere else rather than being made at home, and then flood the market with these textiles because, as my friend pointed out, labour is cheap in those parts of the world.
The government sits on its hands and does absolutely nothing. When a crisis comes at the very last minute it says that it has a package for displaced workers. The government surely should have been thinking long before that time because education is what makes employment and labour portable from industry to industry. Looking around the country we have seen many issues come up in the last few years that have destroyed industries. Where is the government with its policies? It has none.
A few years ago the fish stocks on the east coast collapsed. In essence a welfare situation was set up to allow those people to continue on because the government had no vision of building employment in that part of Canada. Canadians on the east coast are as hardworking, as energetic and as willing to contribute to our economy as Canadians in any other part of the country, but the government has no policy to promote jobs in that part of the country.
My friend made reference to the softwood lumber industry on the west coast. All people can do is watch the jobs disappear, even though the government thought there was an agreement. The Liberals negotiated NAFTA with the Americans. Now we find that it only works for the Americans; it does not work for the Canadian lumber industry.
The agricultural industry in Alberta has been devastated because of BSE. We thought we had guaranteed access to the American market by virtue of NAFTA. Now we find that we do not. Farmers have suffered. The loggers in B.C. have suffered. The fishermen in Atlantic Canada have suffered. Now people in the textile industry in Quebec are suffering. Where is the vision of an industrial technological strategy by the government for us to compete in complex global trade?
Just a couple of weeks ago the government finally was forced into an agreement on equalization with Newfoundland and Labrador. The Prime Minister had made a commitment that he was going to ensure that the resource revenues would flow to Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia. He made that commitment during the election, but the election was over and he basically said, “What agreement? I do not have to honour that”. Thank goodness for the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador who held the Prime Minister's feet to the fire and forced him to live up to his commitment.
Now some money is flowing to that part of the country where jobs and wealth creation can start. The government was far more interested in taxing Canadians, keeping the money and putting it into government programs. The sponsorship program is in the spotlight today at the Gomery commission. Some $250 million was wasted.
The Liberals just want the money to come in their direction so they can turn around and look after their friends and not worry about the Canadians who have to pay those taxes. It is all for the benefit of the Liberal Party and the Liberal government, so they can stay in power. They make promises at election time with no thought about keeping them. It does not worry them as long as they win the election at any price. We are not going to let the Liberal Party sit over there thinking that any price means a loss of Canadian jobs, be they in Quebec, in Newfoundland and along the Atlantic coast, in British Columbia, in Alberta, or anywhere else in the country.
Canada has been a great nation. We are only 30 million people but we have had the capacity in decades past to demonstrate to the world that we are a leader. That comes from leadership. It comes from having a plan. It comes from saying that this is how we are going to make Canada strong; this is how we are going to make Canada prosperous. Waiting until the jobs disappear and then wondering what we should do is no strategy at all.
I would hope that based on today's motion from the Bloc Québécois the government would realize that this is a wake-up call for it to sit down with the provinces and the leaders in the private sector in this country. A new strategy must be developed to ensure that Canada is a leader in the world; that prosperity is ours because we have earned it by working hard for it; that we can compete in the world because education makes us capable of paying much higher wages than elsewhere. If we do not do that, the future will be grim indeed.
China, with hundreds of millions of workers and a population of 1.3 billion, has the ability to overwhelm not just Canada but the entire western world through its capacity to produce more for less. If we think we can sit idly by and it will all happen and we are going to be fine, we are all going to be rich, it is not so. It requires leadership and unfortunately I do not see very much coming from that side of the House.