Madam Speaker, there is no question about what we have seen in the riding of Welland from north to south because it is five communities. I talked about Statistics Canada, but the income level in my own riding is now one of the poorest in the province of Ontario. It used to be the highest. Before NAFTA, it had the highest per capita income in the province of Ontario as a manufacturing centre. It is now at the bottom, with increases in child poverty, family poverty and family breakup, and all of the social ills that come with that. It was because of this blind sense that somehow free trade is good for people. The government will feed it to us, so we should just eat it because it is good for us. My old gran used to say, “Just have this cod liver oil; it is good for you”. There was no proof that it was good for us; we just had to take it. Preceding that, my whole sense with the Liberals was that they wanted us to just do it because we would be better off at the end of the day.
My riding of Welland is living testimony to the failure of not only chapter 11 but NAFTA. It is quintessentially the place, ground zero, for what NAFTA has wreaked upon the Canadian economy. We have seen, as I said, the income level from the highest in the province not less than 20 years ago to one of the lowest in the province, in a matter of less than one generation. It is tantamount to the absence of any sense of leadership from either the previous Liberal government and certainly from the Conservative government about what it takes for folks to actually prosper in the economy.
Those parties have no sense of it. They talked about their management. They talked about how they were able to do things, but when it comes to helping Canadians, to help manage their economy for them, Canadians got left behind. Shame on both parties when they were in government for allowing that to happen because my constituents are saying that someone needs to help. That is why they are looking at us as parliamentarians and saying, “It is time for you to step up. It is time for you to enact trade deals that are good for us, not for multinationals”. It is about us, our neighbours, our friends, our colleagues across our constituencies, our children and our grandchildren when they come. It is ultimately about helping them. That is why I thought all of us came to this place.
The stats clearly show that what the Liberal government and the Conservative government have done to Canadians is absolutely dishonourable. We have let them slide behind because of what we have done. They did not do this. We as parliamentarians, the Liberal government, the Conservative government, did this to them. They did not ask for it. They sent folks here honestly who simply said what the member for Kings—Hants said this morning, “You are better off”. The truth is, they are not. Saying it will not make it so. To stand in the House and say they are better off is patently false. It is just false. Not only is it false, it is unfair to those out there who are listening to us say it and hoping it is true, even though their reality and their life is, “I know it is not true”, but they are hoping maybe their neighbours are experiencing something that they are not. If truth be told, their neighbours are experiencing exactly the same thing, which is that they are all sinking. We have allowed them to sink and not even bothered to give them a life vest. That is absolutely wrong.