Mr. Speaker, this is the first time I have had a chance to address the House with yourself in the Chair. I would like to congratulate you on your appointment. I look forward to participating in debate in the House of Commons over the years and to your interventions.
I am rising today again on a border issue that affects not only my constituency of Windsor West but also constituencies across this country. The issue I am rising on is called the western hemisphere travel initiative. This is actually the first late show debate that we are having in the House of Commons in this session and my constituents will not be surprised that I am using this opportunity to talk about the border issue once again. I hope to give Canadians a broader perspective of what is going to happen with the WHTI.
The WHTI involves the implementation of passport requirements or another document for U.S. citizens to get into and out of their country. The actual document requirement has not been finalized yet. Canadians are going to require a passport as well in order to get into and out of the United States. This will be a big problem because it will affect our tourism and trade industries.
The question I asked the Prime Minister related to the abandonment of the position of the Canadian Parliament on this issue. We had come to a resolution during the last Parliament and I would like to revisit the history of this issue.
Days after the actual implementation was announced by the Homeland Security Department, I immediately wrote the previous Liberal government calling for action. We are not only going to suffer consequences to our tourism industry, but we will also suffer socially and culturally. Our borders will be clogged and individuals will no longer travel between our two great nations for varying types of reasons, whether for pleasure or for work. This is critical because our relationship with the United States will erode.
We put a lot of pressure on the Liberal government, and I will give the Conservative Party some credit with regard to that pressure. A take note debate was held in the House and the present Minister of Veterans Affairs pressed this issue as well. We came up with a position that was adopted by the House and we submitted our objection to the WHTI.
That take note debate was important because it outlined our position on why we were opposing the WHTI. It also laid down the framework of where we were going in the future. When the Prime Minister went to Cancun to meet with President Bush and President Fox, he immediately capitulated the position that had been adopted here in the House by agreeing that we would have to endorse this without any type of plan in place.
I specifically asked why we were abandoning the position that was championed with the Conservatives, the New Democratic Party and the Bloc to get the Liberal government at the time to make a submission. That four page submission was the starting point of a formal argument about the effects of the WHTI, the implementation of passports, and the consequences to our national economy. Four independent studies have confirmed the grave consequences.
The Prime Minister's position was rather puzzling because of the champion work that the current veterans minister had done on this file. It seemed like a capitulation that was not going to be in the best interests of Canadians. At that time I asked the Prime Minister to present a specific plan as to what the government was going to do.