Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to enter the debate on this very important issue.
I would remind the House of words that were spoken by a gentleman for whom I have great respect, who is now the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development. He used to be the finance critic for the Reform-Alliance-Conservative party. I came to the House in 1997, but he said something in 1998 when he was chastising the then Liberal government about the Canada pension plan, EI and all of the support programs that help pensioners and workers. He said that the best social program is a job; that the best thing we can give Canadians is a full time job. He was absolutely right. When Canadians have jobs that they like and can depend on to look after their families, they have pride and dignity.
Mr. Speaker, as you know, my family came to Canada in 1956 and settled on the west coast in Vancouver. My brother worked in a lumber mill in the same job for almost 45 years. My dad worked in upholstery and was a postman. My mom and dad ran a group home for many years in Richmond and Burnaby, B.C.
I was very proud when I got my first full time job as a fibreglass worker at Lansair at the south airport in Vancouver. I eventually worked at a hotel, then at Canadian Airlines and now I am a member of Parliament. I have had the good fortune of having a job, being able to look after the financial needs of myself and my wife and children as well. I have been very blessed having lived in Vancouver, the Yukon and now in Nova Scotia, that I have not yet lost a job. I have moved to follow my work but I have not yet lost a job.
I can only imagine the tragedy and travesty for people who live in mill towns and smaller communities where the mill shuts down, like in Red Rock, Ontario. Their livelihoods are gone. They say goodbye to their friends and families, sell their homes and off they go. I know all too well what happened to the fishing communities in the great province of Newfoundland and Labrador and the other maritime and Atlantic provinces when the northern cod fishery collapsed. Thousands of people lost their jobs.
Now we are losing jobs because of what we consider unfair trade deals with one of the largest economies on the planet, which is China.
China's economy, by all accounts, is doing remarkably well. There has been a huge transformation in China over the last 20 to 30 years. The federal government still gives CIDA money to China. The Canadian International Development Agency still gives money to the developing nation of China, one of the largest economies on the planet. A member from Calgary often raised the question of why the government continued to give CIDA money to China. That is a debate we can have in the near future.
We all know that China does not have environmental, human rights and workers legislation. It does not have EI, workers compensation, health and safety standards, et cetera. It does not have those things for its workers. Also, the salaries that workers are paid in China are nowhere near the salaries paid in Canada. The former Liberal government and the current Conservative government tell the workers, communities and businesses in Canada that they have to compete with that.
Mr. Broadbent, the former leader of the NDP, said very clearly that it is not free trade. It is not even fair trade. It is unfair trade when we compete with a country that has no respect for human rights, environmental or labour standards or any other aspects that we in Canada in many cases take for granted.
The rights of workers in Canada did not come about because of the goodness and graciousness of governments. They came about because of the hard work of people on the picket lines, of people who died on the picket lines. Mr. Speaker, you of all people know very well that the Winnipeg general strike was a turning point in this country. I do not mean to say that you were there at the time, but you are fully aware of it.
One of the great leaders of our party, J.S. Woodsworth, wrote about how that strike spurred him and others on to a more socially democratic way of life so that workers could have the benefits to look after their families. It is now 2007 and the threat is competing with countries that are not balanced in any way when it comes to equality of fair trade.
I have absolutely nothing against Chinese workers, their families or the government in any way, but it would be nice to know that China was on the same level footing as we in terms of the environment, human rights, worker safety, worker salary, et cetera, but it is not and the committee, therefore, came up with a motion and we are asking the government to honour it. We will have the opportunity very soon to see whether it wants to accept the will of Parliament.
I want to go back a bit and go over the Conservative track record over the last 13 months. The government rallied and railed against the previous government for appointing its friends to various positions. What is one of the first things it did? Michael Fortier, an unelected Conservative fundraiser, or bagman some people say, was put into the Senate and made a cabinet minister.
The next thing it did, almost at lightening speed, was accept the first of many floor crossers. A gentleman who was from Vancouver Kingsway was a Liberal member at 10 a.m. and became a Conservative cabinet minister at 11 a.m.
Then, during the campaign, the Conservatives wrote a letter on the Prime Minister's behalf to a widow of a veteran in Cape Breton and said that if the Conservatives formed the government, they would extend VIP services to all widows of veterans, regardless of time of death or whether they applied. The word “immediately” was in there.
Then they sent a letter out to Danny Williams, the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, basically reflecting the motion that the now Minister of Fisheries presented when he was in opposition. In a motion brought forward by the Conservatives, he said that the Conservatives would invoke custodial management on the nose and tail of the Grand Bank and Flemish Cap immediately.