Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the hon. member's comments and I am still trying to find my way through the buzz words.
The issue here is not trade. The issue here is assuring Canadians that the government has a bottom line when it comes to fundamental issues, and that this is not a race to the bottom. Helping Canadian companies overseas is not the issue and is not what we are talking about here.
When a company is good in business it brands itself. That is a fundamental in business. We just need to look at Burger King. When it was a small company it came up with the phrase “Home of the Whopper”. I know a lot of people think that is the phrase of the Liberal Party, but it is actually the trademark of Burger King.
When we had the Canadian lapel pins that were branded “made in China”, the Liberals were perfectly proud of that until somebody found out and it then became a sense of embarrassment.
I would like to ask the hon. member a simple question which we asked earlier in the House but did not get any answer to. Air Canada, which is a symbol of this country, is a private company that has survived on millions of dollars worth of grants. It has just shut down jobs in Canada for maintenance and mechanical work and has shipped those jobs down south to El Salvador. From my history lessons in school, El Salvador was the land of death squads where Jesuits were murdered at the university. It has an horrific human rights record.
If we are willing to brand ourselves and be proud of our trade, how would the hon. members feel about Air Canada having a slogan stating “Air Canada, maintained and brought to you by the sweat shops of El Salvador?” Is that what we are talking about?